Unfortunately, for once, you can’t write down the words that come to mind at the moment. They would all be rude, obscene, vulgar, totally inappropriate for a serious newspaper. The most beautiful power words come to mind since you read about the study that Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay recently published in the “Psychonomic Bulletin & Review” introduced. It bears the sonorous title “The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity?” Roughly translated, it asks whether there is a pattern worldwide when people curse, scold, let off steam in their respective languages.
One wonders, of course, whether a scientific study is needed for this? The amateurish impression when traveling to various countries: Those who swear are usually quite loud, use short, crisp words which, once they are understood, are surprisingly often synonyms for faeces or touch on social taboos. Luckily there is science! Because in this case she comes to a surprising result. The two British researchers, who also delved into the lowlands of Hungarian, Korean and Russian curse art for their study, found that the great thing that many different languages have in common is the absence of certain, rather soft consonants, namely l, r, w and y .
If you think about it, it makes sense. With words that wobble around in the mouth because of loud ls and ws, nobody can get emotional relief. Although: the French can obviously already do that. The rule does not apply to their national language, another result of the study. Merde.
Read previous episodes of the column here. You can find more good news here.