Saturday, June 9, 2007

Three hundred hairy bears!

I don't know any Hebrew swear words because when I was growing up, my dad would only curse in Polish or Arabic. His most common swear word was to yell, "Cholera" but if he was extremely irked he'd revert to Polish for "blood of a dog".

Apparently Slovenian has similar issues. According to a guest on Travel with Rick Steves today, Slovenians are really polite because they have no swear words in their language. If they're really pissed off, the worst thing they can say would be, "Three hundred hairy bears!". And if they're really, really mad at you, they'd say, "May you get kicked by a chicken!"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just the other day I was explaining to someone how many swear words exist in the Turkish language. In my opinion, they are far more derogatory compared to English. if you're so inclined, you can google 'turkish swearing' and the first link should probably do.

Anonymous said...

ok i just tried it on my computer and i suggest that you don't try that at work! abort abort!

SabraGirl said...

Holy crap - thanks for the not-work-appropriate warning! Who knew that Turkish swearing was so closely related to boobs? :-)

Anonymous said...

you would be surprised- i can't even read the cyprus newspapers online at work. i haven't been reading recently but up to at least a year ago the saturday issue came with a complimentary full nude pin-up for your viewing pleasure.