I normally say that non-natives speakers should stay away from swear words. They just do not realize how bad they can sound.
Nang Pan has asked me if Russian and Arabic have particularly powerful swear words. I think they do but I am not a speaker of either language. Cantonese certainly is full of swear words, much more so than Mandarin, but I do not know how that compares with other languages.In Swedish the most commonly used swear word is “devil” while Cantonese speakers and Spaniards use the “f..k” word very often. The French Canadians like oaths associated with the church, while Frenchmen prefer “s..t” or words associated with sex. The Japanese are not strong swearers. What about elsewhere in the world. Inuits, Turks, Lapplanders, Bushmen, Javanese, Mongolians, people from India, Persians? Anyone know?
