Humour VI

If we're mocking local politicians, here's the Czech President in action:

The language isn't significant in visual humour.

It's not really meant to be funny, but I can't help but laugh. Got to love the responsibility and honesty that characterises the fifth estate in Britian:

Fair point! Maddy Maddy Di Di Maddy Maddy Di Di Maddy Di Di IMMIGRANTS Di! Won't someone think of the house prices?

If you want to see a drinking culture, you should come here to Prague. Boivojova street is 1,100 m long and, if my hasty count just now is correct, contains 27 purveyors of alcoholic beverages. That's one every 40 metres. And that assumes you don't go anywhere near a side street.

That sounds like Viz! If I can find the right issue, I will have to reproduce the 'Dear Mother Superior' advice column, for all your theologically related quandaries. Seems appropriate for this forum.

Well that's simply not true at all. One of the things that's always bothered me in fiction is that the only things people say in their native languages (when they're foreigners in an English-speaking group), are the very phrases that you pick up quickest living in a foreign country - greetings, simple exclamations, yeses, noes and swearing. I often swear in Czech, even though my spoken Czech is terrible.What's more, if you look at countries heavily saturated with English-speaking media (the ones that don't dub, that is), you'll often find that people use 'fuck', 'shit' and the like quite a lot. Try watching any Dutch-language television.

Without having watched Firefly, form your description isn't the idea that the Chinese became some sort of dominant culture, and so their swearwords have been imported into the English-speakers vocabulary - just like Serbo-Croat swearwords in Slovenian and English swearwords in Dutch (they do use them naturally at times of shock, I can assure you of that, but it's also true that they're considered less offensive than native swearwords. So reality TV with some guy shouting 'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!' after stubbing his toe is perfectly acceptable to broadcast at two in the afternoon).ABE: and, to reiterate, you're completely wrong. I know many non-native speakers of English who still swear in English in situations of pain and shock.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.