Vulgar Language

Recently in my days, well mostly since last summer actually, I've been doing what I can to pick up some Chinese. Right now I'm only learning words and not sentences. If any of you know the real game of Mah-Johng, then you know it's not like how we are used to playing it on the computer. There are a lot of rules and terms involved, well I can play that game fine with anyone actually. That's the level of my Chinese, yet I know more words than just that. Thanks to friends I know some of the more vulgar words, which is fine enough for me. I don't really pay attention to those types of things when it comes to learning another language anyway.

Yet, what has inspired me to make this post is the fact that I learned some funny things, came up with some ideas as to why they exist this way in a language, and something I'm toying with about the website. So let me get to the funny parts of what I want to say.

Last night I was learning more words. More body parts. That is what I've really been learning recently is body parts. I can basically say every general part of the body...well kinda. I remember plenty of them, but there are still a few that I'm working on. Last night I learned a few things that made me kinda laugh. Three things to be exact, this is where my questions on life begin.

So as my girlfriend, Exotica, was teaching me some of the words, we came across the female anatomy. There are some strange names for their more private areas...well they are strange when you directly translate them.

The first one I want to point out is the word for vagina. For now I will use such words as vagina because I haven't came up with with my own answer about the website. Anyway, the direct translation for it is "personal lips". This was interesting, and it made total sense, but it is weird that since Chinese is such an old and large language, that there would be such an indirect term for vagina. No, I don't remember the word, and no I will not write down the Chinese words for it, because if you want to learn go find out yourself.

The second one was very funny for me. I laughed for a while with this one. It is the word for breasts. It makes total sense as to why they can be called this, but it's still odd that there is such an indirect word for them. So, the direct translation for breasts is, "milk house". I'm sure you are feeling just as I did last night when I learned this term. Again, it's a very indirect way of calling a part of the body something. I mean, almost the rest of the body doesn't have something like this.

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The third one was the funniest of all to me. It had me laughing the hardest and the longest. This is the word for anus. That's right folks, this is the funniest of all. This one isn't as indirect, but it is very strange. You can look at the translation in two ways, so you could either translate the word for anus as, "buttocks eye", or you could translate it to the funniest one as fart eye. See the word for butt and fart are the same in Chinese. So in this case it just depends on how you look at it. I looked at it as "fart eye". So this here is where my more philosophical brain kicks in.

Why would the Chinese language be this way from Mainland China? You ask, is there a difference? Oh yes, there is a big difference. In Hong Kong they speak a much different language. In Taiwan they even speak a little different. So you can think of Hong Kong being like Germany to the USA. The languages are very similar but they can't be understood unless you really learn the language. As for Taiwan, that is like the USA to England. The words are pretty much similar, but there is a different accent and there are different words. Yet my theory for all this isn't over.

In Mainland China when the communist party came into power. There was a cultural revolution. They tried to do away with all vulgarity. They also simplified Chinese. I think in doing so they took some of the more offensive and vulgar words out of the language and gave them euphemisms. This is why we have words such as Milk House in the language to describe a body part. Yet I could be wrong about this. This is just a theory that no one has an answer for me so far.

If you look at it, we have done that in English for a long time. We never got rid of our vulgar words, but we made euphemisms. After all, the word Fuck wasn't always a dirty word. It had it's own meaning. Yet, it was made to be dirty later. This has happened often. We use words all the time that have nothing to do with vulgarity, yet they are used in a vulgar way. So I just find it interesting that when you look down deep into a word, it's really not vulgar at all, it just depends on how you use it.

This is where my problem comes in. I started out wanting to keep this website free of more offensive language. Well in the articles at least. I used the word ass during my flame at Steve Balmer though.... but that was out of pure anger and the need for emphasis. Yet I've done all I can to keep my language clean. After all, one day everyone may use Ubuntu , and they may see my website and run in fear if the language is too harsh. So I'm just not sure where I want to go with it. Feed back from everyone would help. Email me your thoughts. Just go to the Contact section of the website and you'll find how to email me there.

Next week Monday I'll have something a little more Ubuntu related.

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Vulgar Language