The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

by Bill Bryson

Among the Chinese, to be called a turtle is the worst possible taunt. In Norwegian, devil is highly taboo—roughly equivalent to our fuck. Among the Xoxa tribe of South Africa the most provocative possible remark is hlebeshako—“your mother’s ears.” In French it is a grave insult to call someone a cow or a camel and the effect is considerably intensified if you precede it with espèce de (“kind of”) so that it is worse in French to be called a kind of a cow than to be called just a cow. The worst insult among Australian aborigines is to suggest that the target have intercourse with his mother. Incest is in fact so serious in many cultures that often it need be implied in only the vaguest terms, as with tu madre in Spanish and your mama among blacks in America. Often national terms of abuse are nonsensical, as in the German schweinehund, which means “pig-dog.”