Looking back on it now, I don’t remember how I learned that French-Canadian profanity is in a class by itself.
Although French was my first language and I grew up in a bilingual home in Massachusetts, my parents certainly didn’t teach me how to swear a blue streak in French. And I’m damn sure (make that darn sure) that the nuns at St. Joan of Arc School in Southbridge, Mass., did not instruct us in the fine art of cursing “à la française.”
My best guess is that some of the more street-smart kids at our bilingual elementary school picked up a few juicy expletives from their relatives early on and shared them with the rest of us during recess. Whatever the explanation, I eventually figured out that English curses derive from human anatomy, sexual acts or bodily functions, while the strongest Québécois swearwords are religious in origin.
Take, for example, calice. This is the French word for chalice. It's not a remotely nasty word in and of itself. Quite the opposite. Yet it is commonly used as such in Canadian French.
The same is true of tabernacle, which is spelled the same in both French and English and has the same meaning in both languages: a locked receptable for holding consecrated Communion hosts. While no English speaker would shout tabernacle if he whacked his thumb with a hammer, many a speaker of Canadian French has done just that (while pronouncing it tabarnak).
So too with Calvaire, the French word for Calvary, the hill where Jesus was crucified. A simple place name in English. Something else entirely in French, if the speaker is angry enough.
Slate culture critic June Thomas tackled this topic following the recent premiere of the fifth season of Mad Men, in which Don Draper’s new wife, Megan, “reverted to her mother’s native tongue to express annoyance” by muttering calice when she got angry.
“Chances are this was American cable’s first exposure to French-Canadian profanity,” Thomas wrote. “Like many other Québécois French curses, calice has its origins in Roman Catholic ritual.”
So, what’s the appeal of converting religious terms into swear words?
Citing an article in The Economist, Thomas wrote: “The theory is that it was a form of rebelling against the Roman Catholic church, whose clergy were a dominant force in the lives of Quebeckers, providing health, social services and education, until they handed these powers over to the state following the social upheaval of the 1960s.”
Although I don’t recall precisely when and where I picked up these swearwords, I do remember using them from time to time as a kid - and getting caught by my religious, French-speaking parents.
Their outrage was palpable.
In fact, I’m convinced they would have been far less upset had I unleashed a rant containing every imaginable English expletive in one long, cuss-laden sentence than they were when I uttered a lone calice or Calvaire or tabarnak.
Although French was my first language and I grew up in a bilingual home in Massachusetts, my parents certainly didn’t teach me how to swear a blue streak in French. And I’m damn sure (make that darn sure) that the nuns at St. Joan of Arc School in Southbridge, Mass., did not instruct us in the fine art of cursing “à la française.”
My best guess is that some of the more street-smart kids at our bilingual elementary school picked up a few juicy expletives from their relatives early on and shared them with the rest of us during recess. Whatever the explanation, I eventually figured out that English curses derive from human anatomy, sexual acts or bodily functions, while the strongest Québécois swearwords are religious in origin.
Take, for example, calice. This is the French word for chalice. It's not a remotely nasty word in and of itself. Quite the opposite. Yet it is commonly used as such in Canadian French.
The same is true of tabernacle, which is spelled the same in both French and English and has the same meaning in both languages: a locked receptable for holding consecrated Communion hosts. While no English speaker would shout tabernacle if he whacked his thumb with a hammer, many a speaker of Canadian French has done just that (while pronouncing it tabarnak).
So too with Calvaire, the French word for Calvary, the hill where Jesus was crucified. A simple place name in English. Something else entirely in French, if the speaker is angry enough.
Slate culture critic June Thomas tackled this topic following the recent premiere of the fifth season of Mad Men, in which Don Draper’s new wife, Megan, “reverted to her mother’s native tongue to express annoyance” by muttering calice when she got angry.
“Chances are this was American cable’s first exposure to French-Canadian profanity,” Thomas wrote. “Like many other Québécois French curses, calice has its origins in Roman Catholic ritual.”
So, what’s the appeal of converting religious terms into swear words?
Citing an article in The Economist, Thomas wrote: “The theory is that it was a form of rebelling against the Roman Catholic church, whose clergy were a dominant force in the lives of Quebeckers, providing health, social services and education, until they handed these powers over to the state following the social upheaval of the 1960s.”
Although I don’t recall precisely when and where I picked up these swearwords, I do remember using them from time to time as a kid - and getting caught by my religious, French-speaking parents.
Their outrage was palpable.
In fact, I’m convinced they would have been far less upset had I unleashed a rant containing every imaginable English expletive in one long, cuss-laden sentence than they were when I uttered a lone calice or Calvaire or tabarnak.
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