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Thread: F#*%

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    Default F#*%

    Surprise! Why the F-Word Is OK to Say
    The f-word may be considered one of the English language's most offensive swearwords, but researchers from Victoria University in New Zealand report it may be okay to say it at work--under certain circumstances. According to these daring researchers, saying the f-word within the confines of your own work team helps to build and reinforce team morale, reports New Zealand's Dominion Post. They came to this startling conclusion after analyzing the conversation patterns of a work team laboring in an unidentified soap factory.
    The eye-popping findings:
    --The f-word was easily the most commonly used swearword.
    --When it was said within the context of this close-knit work team, it was not considered offensive.
    --Since the basic attitude in the group was one of friendliness where the workers genuinely liked and respected one another, they could use such oaths without being rude or insulting.
    --"Forms of f*** occur frequently in certain contexts and serve a range of functions, including the role of positive politeness strategy," wrote study leader and linguistics professor Janet Holmes in the international Journal of Pragmatics. "F*** is regularly associated with expressions of solidarity, including friendly terms of address."
    And there's also good news for work whiners! The study found that complaining to a sympathetic colleague can help build solidarity among co-workers. The researchers defined whining as a "long or repeated expression of discontent not necessarily intended to change or improve the unsatisfactory situation." Complaining is an emotional release that can build rapport. "Teammates regularly have a moan to each other," Holmes wrote in the journal. "Whining to a sympathetic co-worker both reflects and constructs the close relationship between team members, thus consolidating the team's solidarity."
    A word of caution: Swearwords, especially the f-word, must only be said in the appropriate context. But the fact that it can be said at all at work and be acceptable is proof positive that our language is constantly evolving.
    Last Edit: September 28, 1996, 12:58:29 PM by Element Edited 156 times

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    Default Re: F#*%

    I'm not sure where I got the source from, but from what I remember a long time ago, FUCK is an acronym. In the times of the plague caused by rats in ye olde england, a time when the population was dwindling due to spread of disease, the king of England sent a message: 'Fornicate Under Command of the King'. Now, I could be wrong (goodness knows, if I am someone/some source has had me on for a good while), but this is apparently why it has come into our vocabulary in the context of sex.
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    Default Re: F#*%

    I would love to hear Malibu's sex Brittish accent sometime.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Here's the short explanation for fuck. I lifted it and added emoticons.

    Popular etymologies agree, unfortunately incorrectly, that this is an meaning either Fornication Under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the latter usually accompanying a story about how medieval prisoners were forced to wear this word on their clothing.

    Deriving the etymology of this word is difficult, as it has been under a taboo for most of its existence and citations are rare. The earliest known use, according to and , predates 1500 and is from a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled Flen flyys. The relevant line reads:
    Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli.
    Translated:
    They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].
    Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original it is written in cipher to further disguise it.

    Some sources cite an alleged use from 1278 as a personal name, John le Fucker, but this citation is questionable. No one has properly identified the document this name supposedly appears in and even if it is real, the name is likely a variant of fuker, a maker of cloth, fulcher, a soldier, or another similar word.

    The earliest usage cite in the dates from 1503 and is in the form fukkit. The earliest cite of the current spelling is from 1535.

    The word was not in common (published) use prior to the 1960s. Shakespeare did not use it, although he did hint at it for comic effect. In Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) he gives us the pun "focative case." In Henry V (IV.iv), the character Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, a word meaning to strike, but commonly used as an Elizabethan euphemism for fuck. In the same play (III.iv), Princess Katherine confuses the English words foot and gown for the French foutre and coun (fuck and cunt, respectively) with comic results. Other poets did use the word, although it was far from common. Robert Burns, for example, used it in an unpublished manuscript.

    The taboo was so strong that for 170 years, from 1795 to 1965, fuck did not appear in a single dictionary of the English language. In 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism "fug" instead, resulting in Dorothy Parker's comment upon meeting Mailer: "So you're the man who can't spell fuck."


    The root is undoubtedly Germanic, as it has cognates in other Northern European languages: Middle Dutch fokken meaning to thrust, to copulate with; dialectical Norwegian fukka meaning to copulate; and dialectical Swedish focka meaning to strike, push, copulate, and fock meaning penis. Both French and Italian have similar words, foutre and fottere respectively. These derive from the Latin futuere.

    While these cognates exist, they are probably not the source of fuck, rather all these words probably come from a common root. Most of the early known usages of the English word come from Scotland, leading some scholars to believe that the word comes from Scandinavian sources. Others disagree, believing that the number of northern citations reflects that the taboo was weaker in Scotland and the north, resulting in more surviving usages. The fact that there are citations, albeit fewer of them, from southern England dating from the same period seems to bear out this latter theory.

    There is also an elaborate explanation that has been circulating on the internet for some years regarding English archers, the Battle of Agincourt, and the phrase Pluck Yew! This explanation is a modern jest--a play on words. However, there may be a bit of truth to it. The British (it is virtually unknown in America) gesture of displaying the index and middle fingers with the back of the hand outwards (a reverse peace sign)--meaning the same as displaying the middle finger alone--may derive from the French practice of cutting the fingers off captured English archers. Archers would taunt the French on the battlefield with this gesture, showing they were intact and still dangerous. The pluck yew part is fancifully absurd. This is not the origin of the middle finger gesture, which is truly ancient, being referred to in classical Greek and Roman texts.

    For more information on fuck and its usages, see , by Jesse Sheidlower, Random House, 1999, ISBN 0-375-70634-8. This is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the word available.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by SportsWriter2
    Here's the short explanation for fuck. I lifted it and added emoticons.

    Popular etymologies agree, unfortunately incorrectly, that this is an acronym meaning either Fornication Under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the latter usually accompanying a story about how medieval prisoners were forced to wear this word on their clothing.
    Sporty, my eight grade english teacher pushed the "For Unlawful Carnal knowledge" story. It got a lot of giggles in the early 70's.....
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    Default Re: F#*%

    Being a fan of general-semantics, I think it is absurd people go crazy over certain combinations of phonemes and/or their written counterpart.

    I ask these same people who get upset over seeing human and animal genitalia if they go crazy when they see a flower since flowers are the sex organs of some plants.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    The rule about splitting an infinitive comes from Latin grammar, because it's actually impossible to split an infinitive in Latin. There's no other reason to require this; it's just an example of overly educated folks being snotty.

    I think the same is true of the rule that prohibits ending a sentence with a preposition, which is now considered more acceptable than it once was. I think it was Churchill who said, of an upstart copyeditor who tried to correct his grammar: "That is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."

    Also, my understanding is that no language is "more simple" or "more complicated" than another. All living languages change constantly, and generally speaking, they simultaneously become simplified in certain respects and more complex in others.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Human language is a living, breathing, evolving entity. We can't control it any more than we can control the flow of the jetstream across North America.

    All language usage is determined by people who speak (and create) the language every day. Those of us who consult on dictionaries are forever explaining that linguistics is a descriptive discipline, not a prescriptive one. The purpose of dictionaries is simply to describe how language is already being used (and to homogenize spelling and try to nail down regional variations in pronunciation and dialect). All dictionaries are snapshots of the language that people have already created for themselves.

    Twelve years of hounding by schoolroom grammar Nazis scares people into thinking that language belongs to the grammarians and language perfectionists. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina
    Also, my understanding is that no language is "more simple" or "more complicated" than another. All living languages change constantly, and generally speaking, they simultaneously become simplified in certain respects and more complex in others.
    All language is brutally efficient. Humans are naturally linguistically resourceful to a truly amazing degree.

    You are right that no language is more simple or more complex than another. It's just that we humans are cognitively constructed to make comparisons as a way of dealing with the world. That is why we English speakers may say, for example, that Russian has a really "complicated" grammar. We are making an unspoken mental comparison to modern English grammar. But such a statement is laughable to a Finn. On the other hand, the Russians think modern English is just impossible to pronounce and the lack of uniform pronunciation rules just drives them crazy.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    OMG I LOVE LANGUAGE GEEKS!!!!!!

    JZ, it's true that English has an unusually large lexicon, mostly because it has been influenced by contact with so many other languages. More insular cultures have borrowed less, I believe (though Japanese may be an exception, as it has a whole separate syllabary that is used solely to represent words of foreign origin).

    However, if you look at ALL the aspects of a language (i.e., phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and lexicon) , I think you find that it all balances out. English may have a larger lexicon than, say, Kivunjo (a Bantu language), but Kivunjo morphology makes that of English look like "checkers compared to chess." Steven Pinker claims that in general, "the creative powers of English morphology are pathetic compared to what we find in other languages." (He's a neurolinguist at MIT; I suspect some of you here are familiar with his work, which is heavily influenced by Chomsky. Pinker's pop science stuff is awesome.)

    Oh, and incidentally, the Eskimos do NOT have 200 different words for snow!!

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    Default Re: F#*%

    ^C'mon, JZ, admit it....Now you're just trying to make me horny, aren't you?

    About Japanese: I just meant that the country is much more homogeneous, and therefore the language hasn't had quite as much direct contact with other cultures as has American English. Yet, they've certainly borrowed a lot of words from other languages, particularly English. The syllables in Katakana are mostly exactly the same as those in Hiragana. The only difference is the addition of syllables beginning with /p/ and /b/ sounds (maybe one or two others). So I think it's more that they wanted to denote foreign words with a separate group of symbols, in order to set them apart as foreign, rather than that foreign words COULDN'T be represented with Hiragana. We should go ask Wwanderer about all this!

    I'd write more, but the fact is, I should be writing a paper on the Navajo language at this very moment....

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    Default Re: F#*%

    These are some very enlightening replies.
    Usually the article inspires more humorous replies.
    Where every one is trying to come up with as many creative ways as they can to say the f-word as possible.
    Last Edit: September 28, 1996, 12:58:29 PM by Element Edited 156 times

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    Default Re: F#*%

    ^That's cause the SCJs (and the girls who love them) are a bunch of morons, losers and dropouts

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina
    ^That's cause the SCJs (and the girls who love them) are a bunch of morons, losers and dropouts
    I meant I like the way the thread turned out most of the stereotypical views of SCJ poster or debunked just from this thread alone.
    You should post the link on the pinks site Nicolina.
    Last Edit: September 28, 1996, 12:58:29 PM by Element Edited 156 times

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Wakarimasu.

    Off-topic, but did you live there Jay?

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina
    I'm betting that number of syllables per word (or per morpheme) averages out to be about the same for all languages (except maybe Hawaiian?) Does anyone know if this is true? TOO, perhaps?
    Oh you sexy thang, please don't make that bet. You would lose, and that would break my heart.

    Many South Asian languages manifest a huge variability in the number of syllables per word, and they go all over the map (quite literally -- the diversity is geographically linked, as you might expect). They also utilize unisyllabic, bisyllabic and trisyllabic structures, which really muddies the water.

    Also, are you talking morphology or phonology? The game is different for spoken and written forms for Chinese, for example, which has a rep for monosyllabic words, but the tonals in the phonology throw everything way off (it's actually the greater variety of sounds that allows more monosyllabic words).

    Finally, Thai has tonals too, but no spacing between letters, which is a real joy in defining word separation.

    And yes, I'm blatantly trying to get you off.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    I used to date a cute 3.96 GPA in psycholinguistics who knew all this stuff, but I couldn't get it up for her.

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by The Other Owner
    Oh you sexy thang, please don't make that bet. You would lose, and that would break my heart.
    Are you sure about that? Don't you think that might depend on what is at stake in the bet?


    Quote Originally Posted by The Other Owner
    Many South Asian languages manifest a huge variability in the number of syllables per word, and they go all over the map (quite literally -- the diversity is geographically linked, as you might expect). They also utilize unisyllabic, bisyllabic and trisyllabic structures, which really muddies the water.

    Also, are you talking morphology or phonology? The game is different for spoken and written forms for Chinese, for example, which has a rep for monosyllabic words, but the tonals in the phonology throw everything way off (it's actually the greater variety of sounds that allows more monosyllabic words).

    Finally, Thai has tonals too, but no spacing between letters, which is a real joy in defining word separation.
    Well, I understand that morphemes can be a single phoneme (rather than a syllable, as with our plural -s). So I'm not sure how you would even count "syllables per morpheme." I was thinking 'per morpheme' because languages with more complex morphology will probably have longer words: a verb that includes seven or ten different morphemes (to denote things like mode, aspect, subject marker, classifier etc.) will probably be longer than a verb that only includes two or three morphemes. Does this, in fact, have something to do with whether or not languages have more syllables per word? I can see, too, how tonals would change the count and allow for more monosyllabic words....

    So, the question is: what did I lose?

    Quote Originally Posted by The Other Owner
    And yes, I'm blatantly trying to get you off.
    Believe me, it's taking a lot of self control right now to keep my hands on the keyboard

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    Default Re: F#*%

    Quote Originally Posted by Katrine
    I would love to hear Malibu's sex Brittish accent sometime.
    Aw shucks Kat! I'm sure you'd change your tune once I open my mouth though...!
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    Default Re: F#*%

    Oh wow...I could hardly love a thread topic more than this one, and if it had not been for Nicolina's tip, I would have missed it entirely. Thanks, Nic! And I know that I am a bit late, but maybe I have not entirely missed the boat. Anyway, here is my take on some of the issues, particularly with respect to Japanese.

    - I don't know any particular reason to think that all human languages have exactly the same degree of complexity; why should they? If nothing else, since languages develop and evovle via the usage and creativity of their speakers (as has been pointed out several times in this thread), it would seem almost inevitable that the languages that are (or have been) spoken by the most people and in the most different circumstances/contexts and for the longest periods of time would end up being the most complex. (Also, as an aside, I don't see how a language's "complexity" is well defined enough to make the claim really meaningful. I mean what exactly would it mean to say that language A is 25% more complex than language B?)

    - That said, I definitely agree that languages that are simple in some ways may be complex in others, and that this tends to balance out and make their overall complexity (whatever that means, exactly) more similar than one might think at first glance.

    - For example, spoken Japanese is incredibly simple and easy in many ways/dimensions in which most European languages are complicated. However, Japanese politeness levels (keigo, see for example http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2049.html) and their proper usage is almost unbelievably complicated and highly developed. It permeates the grammar of the language to its roots and deeply influences the whole culture. For example, if I were to say to someone, "I see Nicolina" in proper Japanese, I would have to conjugate the verb "to see" with two suffixes, one specifying a politeness level to Nicolina and one to the person to whom I was speaking. And, if the sentence were more complex, with say additional nouns or adjectives in it ("I see beautiful Nicolina walking down the street towards me."), I would need to make the politeness levels of the different words all agree properly. Etc. Imagine, for a moment, the impact on a culture and world view of a native language (in which you *think* as well as speak) which *forces* you to make constant social hierarchy rankings of everyone. And, of course, native speakers use keigo not only in its most direct sense, but also in complicated ways to express humor, irony, sarcasm, flirtiness etc.

    - Written Japanese, with its three alphabets, is nightmarishly complex and probably the hardest major language in the world to learn to read and write. Japan is the only place I have ever been (and I have been quite a few) where you can routinely hear one highly educated (PhD level, say) person ask another if they can read, say, a sign posted in a museum...or a passage in a serious book. (Literacy at the few thousand kanji level needed to read a newspaper is essentially universal, the highest in the world I think, but there are 10,000 or more additional kanji that are used in Japanese, often in specialized contexts, that not all educated people would recognize...depending on their interests etc.)

    - It is true that Japanese can mostly read Chinese fairly well because the kanji (ideograms) have the same meanings in both languages, although the words themselves are different. However, there are a few hazardous exceptions. For example, the combined kanji for "love" and "person" means something like "mistress"/"lover" in Japanese usage but means "wife"/"husband" in Chinese usage. Or, the kanji characters for "hand" and "paper" when combined refer to a letter (written message, as in "Dear Bob...") in Japanese usage but the Chinese use the same character combination to mean "toilet paper"! Construction of plausible embarrassing misunderstandings are left as an exercise to the reader.

    - I was under the impression that their is a fairly well known (to linguists) inverse correlation of the number of phonemes (basic sounds) used in a language and the length (in phonemes) of its basic words...which makes perfect sense of course. It is like binary vs decimal numbers; the former is much simpler in the sense of having only two basic symbols but pays the price of having to express the same numbers in far longer strings of those 2 symbols. Japanese and Hawaiian have far fewer phonemes than most languages and thus must use much longer strings of syllables for common words. There are also an exceptionally large number of homonyms (http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html) in Japanese (also a result of its of phonemic poverty), and its is fairly common to see a Japanese speaker rapidly trace a kanji in the air with his/her fingers to make a meaning clear when homonyms cause ambiguity (the knaji are totally different, of course, because they specify meaning, not sound).

    Well, enough for one message...if anyone is still reading it.

    -Ww
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    Default Re: F#*%

    Welcome to the Dark Side, Wwanderer
    Thanks for the insights...


    Damn, I should have chosen Japanese as my paper topic. I could have used Stripperweb as a reference!

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