I’m more dubious about ev psych than most here, I think. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather than some sort of optimization.
The fact that people can insult each other so easily may well have some evolutionary history.
Any theories about why people are so apt to remember insults for years?
It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather
than some sort of optimization.
I’m a bit of a polyglot who’s sampled broadly from some very, very different language families and that rings true.
You can be insulting in Chinook Wawa or Ojibwe (speaking disrespectfully or very bluntly), but cognates for most familiar English swears are either lacking altogether or of very recent coinage. The closest you’d get to everyday, non-personal swearing in Chinook Wawa sort of means “eeeewww”; the word “bad” could be a matter-of-fact descriptor, a vaguely-literal or nonliteral grammatical particle, or just a very blunt statement more impolite than anything.
Chinese has quite a varied vocabulary for profanity and insults, but the literal translations would almost sound cutesy to foreigners (傻瓜, “sha3gua1” in Mandarin, means “stupid melon” but has about as much social bite as “idiot!” or “dumbass!”).
Japanese has a lot of profane words, except that it’s much easier to be insulting without actually using any of them and some of the ones whose literal translation would be profane or impolite in English are used with much less weight. This is true of some dialects of Chinese too (there’s a phrase that probably best translates as “holy fuck” in both Chinese and Japanese but isn’t nearly as impolite as its English equivalent, although it’s not exactly good manners either.)
I’m more dubious about ev psych than most here, I think. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather than some sort of optimization.
The fact that people can insult each other so easily may well have some evolutionary history.
Any theories about why people are so apt to remember insults for years?
I’m a bit of a polyglot who’s sampled broadly from some very, very different language families and that rings true.
You can be insulting in Chinook Wawa or Ojibwe (speaking disrespectfully or very bluntly), but cognates for most familiar English swears are either lacking altogether or of very recent coinage. The closest you’d get to everyday, non-personal swearing in Chinook Wawa sort of means “eeeewww”; the word “bad” could be a matter-of-fact descriptor, a vaguely-literal or nonliteral grammatical particle, or just a very blunt statement more impolite than anything.
Chinese has quite a varied vocabulary for profanity and insults, but the literal translations would almost sound cutesy to foreigners (傻瓜, “sha3gua1” in Mandarin, means “stupid melon” but has about as much social bite as “idiot!” or “dumbass!”).
Japanese has a lot of profane words, except that it’s much easier to be insulting without actually using any of them and some of the ones whose literal translation would be profane or impolite in English are used with much less weight. This is true of some dialects of Chinese too (there’s a phrase that probably best translates as “holy fuck” in both Chinese and Japanese but isn’t nearly as impolite as its English equivalent, although it’s not exactly good manners either.)