I was a lexicographer for over twenty years, so I know everything there is to know about compiling the entry fuck in English for a bilingual or monolingual dictionary. From the smallest pocket dictionary to the largest several-volume tome, I have had to analyse fuck. And to be perfectly honest, it really isn't all that interesting! It usually means almost nothing! Had she not been cremated, my old granny would be spinning in her grave at the thought of her granddaughter being paid to discuss the nuances of fuck in meetings, given she told me once she would never let that disgraceful word cross her lips! Analysing the use of the word fuck in Denmark is quite interesting. There seems to me to be an inverse correlation between how good a Dane is at English and how bad they are at getting the nuances and the register of fuck when speaking English. Poor English speakers tend to avoid it, whereas decent English speakers take the now Danish word fuck and transpose it back into English as if the two fucks are direct equivalents, which they certainly are not!
Often I notice when I am on Facebook that foreigners who are excellent at English - in particular Scandinavians, Dutch and the likes use it when writing their facebook statuses in English for things like:
- '3 minutes late for nursery today - fuck!'
- 'Foggy weather today - fuck!'
In the past I came across two examples of fuck in a very non-native context.
Firstly, a few years back I was wandering around a large toy shop in Arezzo in Italy when I was stunned to hear the music piped in the background was Lily Allen's 'Fuck You'! A catchy, cheery wee tune but believe me - you are never going to hear it piped into Toys R Us in the UK or US! And later the same day I was passed in the street by a couple, who looked around 45 years old, walking up the main street in Arezzo holding the hand of a child - a little boy of about 6, 7 at most, wearing a simple black T-shirt, plain except for the slogan 'FUCK OFF!' in large upper case white letters. You simply wouldn't see that in a native English country.
Since moving the Denmark I am knee-deep in weird examples. Danes have taken fuck into Danish as a standard swearword, but it has strangely become much milder in Danish. Here are just some examples...
- Teachers happily use the English word fuck in front of their class to express mild annoyance, even when the kids are as young as 7 or 8. Things like 'Fuck I forgot the marker pens for the whiteboard, I'll be back in two minutes'. That certainly didn't happen back in Newton Mearns!
- School kids therefore use it back to the teacher and no one bats an eyelid. Imagine the teacher announces something along the lines of 'Sorry kids, I'm gonna have to cancel the art lesson today', he would fully expect the kids to reply 'Awwwwh, fuck, that's annoying!' In Danish fuck really is like damn, or milder still like awwwh. One of the things my youngest struggled most with when we came here was remembering that it was absolutely fine, and even expected, that you would say fuuuuuck when speaking in Danish if you were disappointed in class but you sure as hell needed to remember not to say it to granny on visits back home if she was two seconds late passing you the ketchup!
- Often on news reports and documentaries on prime time TV again people being interviewed use fuck at the drop of a hat. Here are a couple of examples from recent TV: Today we have had severe flooding in the north of the country. We're here in Aalborg with a local businessman Lars Jensen can you describe how it affected you? Oh yes, I got up and came downstairs to find the cellar flooded, I thought Fuuuuuck! This is a completely normal broadcast. You even get it for surprise. Here's another example: We are getting reports that the Queen just indicated she intends to abdicate, we're here with Mette Nielsen who works in the local Coop. What did you think when you heard the news Mette Nielsen? Well, I just turned to my boyfriend and went fuck, I wasn't expecting that!
- Watching the Danish version of the Great British Bake-off, someone screws something up every week; they burn their cake, their icing is too runny, whatever, again old ladies weep fuck in unison on prime time telly, before being comforted by the judges or the presenter.
But where it goes wrong is when Danes think the Danish word fuck is translated into English by the English word fuck. A reasonable assumption but usually a very wrong one.
I'm not a prude, as someone who gets paid to analyse language, I have always been more than comfortable with using it and even prefer my kids to use the words they mean rather than some pointless euphemism. I remember back when Marcel was 11, which wasn't yesterday, his primary school asked parents with interesting or different jobs to come in and give a talk to the p7 (age 11) classes about what they did. I think back then I was the only lexicographer in the school, though was joined a few years later by an ex-colleague. So, I volunteered. As we neared the date of my talk Marcel, a bit of a teacher's pet goody-two-shoes type was looking more and more ill-at-ease and I couldn't tell why. We often had discussions about language and pragmatics at home and I didn't shy away from discussing any words that came up with my kids. Eventually he blurted out in a panic 'Mum, you know you're not allowed to analyse the word fuck at my school in your talk, don't you? You'd get me into trouble!' I laughed. While I had, of course, tailored my talk to suit the sensibilities of Newton Mearns 11-year-olds, it was reassuring for Marcel to know he could trust his mum not to cause a linguistic uproar. Léon, on the other hand, would probably have encouraged me as a means of acquiring some sort of legendary status...
But the bottom line remains: just because you have taken a word into your own language and changed the pragmatics and register of it doesn't mean you can just transpose it back into its original language the same way! I really am considering writing a course for foreigners to get them to understand this concept in all its glory.
