I hope this isn't too controversial or indecent (there go my American cultural sensitivies), but this week I wanted to talk about swear words. I read an article recently that talked about generational differences between swearers in Swedish and also the cultural differences between Sweden and the U.S. when it comes to obsenities. Interestingly, it seems like most of the very traditional swear words in Sweden actually originated from religion! I find this interesting, of course, because Sweden is not a particularly religious country today, it has a lot of atheists, and culturally they just don't talk about religion so I find it neat that their religious-based swear words remain even today. For instance, the most common swear word you will here in Swedish is "fan". People say that when they hurt themselves or when they're very angry. It literally means "devil" but it would be the equivalent to saying the F word in English. That said, people say it all the time in many different contexts because Swedes don't place too high a value on swear words and don't find as many instances in daily life where it wouldn't be appropriate to swear. Unlike the U.S. where swearing is less common and there are more restrictions on where and when someone should use swear words. It's all about time and place in America versus Sweden where they very rarely care. Swedes also often say "helvete" which means "hell".
As the article was mentioning, many younger Swedes these days are adopting American swear words! They say their own versions of the F word and the S word (fack and skit), whereas the older population does not typically use these American curse words and instead sticks to the old-fashioned/religiously-based swear words they grew up with. Also interestingly and not surprisingly, Swedes find no reason to bleep out swear words on TV or in movies. They don't see the words as having value and therefore they don't try to put restrictions on their usage. So if you watch TV in Sweden you will not only get to hear the traditional Swedish swear words but also common American curse words! A lot of the Swedes I know have actually found it funny that Americans are so sensitive about using curse words and the poor job that we do at bleeping these words on TV anyway. Below is the link:
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