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Satire/sarcasm doesn't always work cross-culturally (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/justpost@lemmy.world

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No joke here. I just think stuff like this is interesting.

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[–] pixelscript@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

One of my Dutch friends explained to me that many of Dutch's darker swear words and related expressions tend to be derived from ruinous diseases. One of them roughly translating to something akin to, "I hope you catch the plague". Can you corroborate that?

It was part of a greater discussion about the roots of cultural differences. The Netherlands have a much more persistent memory of the era of plague and thus their taboos derive from it. Here in the US, less so.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

And tuberculosis is also a popular one over there.

[–] Sir_Fridge@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

We curse with pus (etter), tbc (tering), cholera (kolere), plague (pest) and more recently cancer (kanker). Although that often hits a bit too close home for some people. There's more that I'm forgetting right now. I have heard people describe something bad as being AIDS. So new ones are actually being added.

One of the theories is that it came from Yiddish where diseases are also used as curses. Another popular theory is that because the Dutch population isn't very religious we switched to diseases because that's whst we feared in stead of God. The truth lays probably somewhere in the middle.

[–] Hagdos@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

It's true. Cancer (kanker) is a very common swear word, as is kankerlijer (someone who suffers from cancer) as insult