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Why Can’t the English?
Set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears
There even are places where English completely disappears
In America, they haven’t used it for years!
– Lerner & Lowe (My Fair Lady)
Since taking over production on London Calling I have learned to straddle two worlds, both the old and the new. I change between idioms and spellings more than some people change underwear. I take care not to criticise or criticize, to labour or labor too hard, and to know when a good defence is a good offence.
English and its variants in the colonies is a great and robust language. Its roots are everywhere – in German, in Dutch, in the Latin of ancient Rome and the church, in the French of Norman invaders. But most notably it is the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. It can be beautiful and melodic. It can be cutting and witty. But not on Twitter.
Here is a typical exchange from the show account:
Invariably a modern Englishman, particularly on the left, will succumb to calling you a four-letter vulgarity linked to the female anatomy that either begins with a C or a T, whereas when Americans go the genitalia route it’s almost always masculine, as in “Don’t be a person whose first name is formally Richard!” or “I think you like to Hoover the male appendage of others!”
Why is this? Are our English cousins misogynistic at heart? Or is it just that the democratization (or is that “democratisation?”) of the internet means that the language no longer sends its best into battle? Wordsmithing is dead and it has left the field to the yobs and the gits.
Published in General
It is caused by a lack of vocabulary and imagination.
Centuries of practice during which the shock value of certain words has worn pretty thin, I would guess (being a native speaker myself). The word you’re referring to goes back to at least the 12th century, and was pretty widely used in the middle ages. Dozens of towns had what we might call a “red-light district” whose main feature was the alley where ladies of the evening plied their trade, said alley usually being called “Grope[word]e Lane.”
The word fell out of favor in more dignified, and perhaps more refined times, but certainly seems to have reappeared in the last few decades (it’s been pretty common most of my lifetime. I’m in my seventh decade on earth). Perhaps it’s not something new at all, but just a throwback to a coarser time. I think (were I to pay much attention to Twitter at all) that all other things being equal, I’d rather the occasional (if rather predictable and tedious) vulgarity in an otherwise fairly standard English exchange than the creative and seemingly endless filth which, on a regular basis, erupts forth from the purveyors of popular culture, both here and in the UK.
But why the difference in the masculine and feminine in insults?
I theorize that the Englishmen who use the feminine vulgarity do so because they’ve never actually been introduced to the real thing.
Yes. I have another theory as well. The Brits (men and women) have a long history of cross-dressing for entertainment. A number of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies are based on women dressing up like men and Restoration comedies love a good romp with men in petticoats. It’s still prevalent in British theatre. and improv. Perhaps over the years the cross-dressing has extended to language. It certainly gets a bigger reaction that way — and perhaps that’s the idea.
Yard signs for Jeannie Ives, a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois, have been getting vandalized with the c word. Sometimes just one word, sometimes with a verb and article. Photo cropped, but you get the idea.
Personally, I’m tired of the F-word. Let’s bring back swive!
Duplicate.
This, I believe. Now, it has been said that more intelligent people may use naughty language, unfit for the ears of well-bred horses or women, more than less intelligent people. But they generally know when and where to use it.
When 1% or 10% of the population could read and write, they were a more élite group, often steeped in the use of other languages and in Shakespeare or Chaucer. Thus, they knew how to insult with or without the use of the common, Anglo-Saxon terms. Now that literacy rates and computer usage rates are closer to universal in most of the Western world, you could be dealing with anyone on Twitter, which is often a good reason not to.
And many a woman was in a breeches role as time went on, too. So, should them women be calling people Richards?
Afternoon EJ,
Quoting my nephew from Halifax, near York, stop being a “big Nancy, a girl’s blouse”. Consider that calling someone female naughty bits attacks not only their behavior but their state of emasculation, where as calling someone a Johnson, one is saying that your life as a male is an inferior version. Also, I would suggest that prior to calling some one female naughty bits, one has taken note of where they were born, went to school, and the married status of your parents. Another aspect on English society is the universal ability of folks to spot where each other were raised by their accent and to take note of each other’s accents.
Well, the Brits do also call each other a bellend, if such a word is permissible here thanks to it being mostly unknown this side of the Atlantic. I had to look it up the first time I saw it in print. In fact, I responded to the person who had used it, “Hey, I learned a word today!”
WTS?!
I will have to pay more attention to this. We have started watching all kinds of British shows since we subscribed to BritBox. Sometimes I have to look things up to make sure I get the meaning of some of the “insults”. I have not paid attention to the “gender” of them. I shall start.
Americans don’t use the same slang(ie: C or T) as the Brits because Americans have become society of Pussies.
My Australian friends uses the subject word with such frequency it no longer even registers with me. That said, I was shocked when the word crept out of my mouth (actually I was yelling) when a friend was lauding Nancy Pelosi. I was too horrified to confess to my priest, so called the best Catholic I know and repeated the conversation. Her exact words: It’s not a sin if it’s true. (I have never heard friend even day “damn”)
The word is often coded as See you next Tuesday. Or C U Next Tuesday.
“It’s not a sin if it’s true”
Professional level funny.
Possibly. Although I doubt that’s true in all cases. Probably more a case of “familiarity breeds contempt,” if you ask me.
But your response did remind me of a marvelous comment on a recent post by @iWe, said comment being made by @django, and recounting a humorous story.
As I always say, there’s a reason they’re called “stereotypes.”
Just call her an ice cream horder.
I guess I’ve spent waaaay too much time with nine year olds! One day, I had some girls come to me all in a dither because someone had said the “S” word….Turns out that it was “Shut up!” Ha ha ha ha ha!!
There have also been plenty of children who used much more vivid and vulgar words in their conversations–But those sweet little girls cracked me up that day.
Where does wank rank?
On our first trip to London, we were doing the jet-lag zombie march near Parliament and crossing over the Thames after our overnight flight. When we reached the side opposite Parliament there was graffiti spray painted on a concrete wall that said, John Major is a t-word.” Our first introduction to London and to the lingo. We laughed, and then I had my picture taken next to it.
And, btw, love, love, love James and Toby. They could do a podcast a day and I’d listen. Thanks for producing, EJ.
In the tank with Yank.
Gropec##t Lane
She,
Do we know, without knowing why we know, that some insults are worse because, when used, they have the potential to incite physical attack by implying that assaulting the person is, somehow, acceptable ? I’ve never heard of Gropec##t Lane, but the “grope” part of it seems to be the answer to why I didn’t feel just outraged when Maher, called Sarah Palin a c##t, or when that stupid “comedian” called President Trump’s daughter the same thing. The word used, especially by people with some status and cultural influence (Maher) seemed something worse than just insulting and shockingly crude.
It’s been a different kind of professional experience. I’ve produced hundreds of telecasts and never had a relationship with talent where I’ve never physically met them. We’ve talked on the phone, text and email regularly, yet never met. It’s a different world.
If want to hear some non-stop cursing, including the aforementioned female naughty bits, try The Thick of It on Britbox.
For sure not in the fiwst wank.
‘Your Mother Was A [ select one animal ], And Your Father Smelt Of [ select one vegetable ].’
Tinny, not woody.
I admire your persistence in behaving according to the spelling norms of each society you inhabit. For a while, I was reading only police procedural and murder mystery women writers, all of them British, and it was hard to swing back into the American spelling.
You’ re also someone I have hoped would come along to explain this one four letter word to me: bint. It is not used in the US, that I know of, and it doesn’t seem as risque as the C word, but what does it mean? (The Scrabble dictionary simply states “Woman.”)