Swearing? Too b— right!

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 1

Swearing? Too b— right!

(By a stag reporter)

The retiring Dutch Ambassador is quite right. We are a foulmouthed lot. Some of us swear all the time. Our printer, who comes from Yorkshire, even swears at the editor. Sometimes the editor swears back. But we don’t mean it, Mr Ambassador, honest.

Just to make sure, several public and private bars were visited yesterday and eavesdropning was done. The conclusion was that although swear words of the most objectionable kind were being bandied about, they were just so much padding to make up for lack of substance in the conversation. Visitors—especially ambassadors — should completely disregard them. Everyone else does, with the possible exception of schoolteachers and ministers of religion. [And even they are adopting the words complained of these days to show that they

are not any better than anyone else.

Anyone making a serious study of the kind of language used in, say, a public bar, is immediately faced with the question: what is foul and what is mere punctuation? In their own social circles, New Zealand’s top swearers would probably deny that they swear at all.

Pay close attention, and it soon becomes clear that they don’t know what they are saying. A simple sentence, such as “It’s Andy’s turn to buy a round but he’s hiding in the toilet” becomes extended by the addition of swear words—often the same word repeated monotonously —to read: "It’s Andv’s turn to buy a round but the ’s’ hiding in the toilet.”

Some had developed this to an art form, even to the refinement of introducing the great Australasian adjective “bloody” into the middle of a word, turning it into a sort of articulated word capable of going around verbal

comers. As for example in. “anti-bloody-social” when speaking of one who refuses that last glass that would turn him into one of the many drunks observed by the Ambassador. Such wordsmiths swear, not for emphasis or out of anger, disgust or surprise, but simply to put their mark on the conversation . Undoubtedly the most colourful language to be heard last evening was from a groun of Maori drinkers in a central public bar. “This is a of a place,” said one. “I’ve been in a few blues down here, eh? I’d get a ioker down and then wait for him get up. Then the would get me down, and while I’m down on the ground the — will — start to kick me in the —— head. Thev don’t fight fair down here.”

In the. lounge bars the drinkers seemed more inclined to good old-fashioned blasphemy than to obscenity in speech. For example, “My God, did you see the city rate

increases?” and “Christ I may have to sell the boat or the bach.”

The three B’s — “bloody,” "bugger” and “bastard” — cross all social lines, whereas the really naughty fourletter words seem more acceptable at the lower and upper reaches of the social scale. They don’t seem to care what they say,’whereas the middle grades do try to be genteel. Immigrants are a different kettle of fish. Britons enrich the New Zealand vernacular with curiosities from their own regions and dialects. But most European immigrants have to learn English as she is spoken in New Zealand. They start with the most frequently heard words — the foul ones — and it may have been the sound of his fellow Dutchmen cursing in English that so shocked the ambassador. There is no doubt that in the deeper, sterner voices of Netherlander, our common swearwords take on a depth and vigour that they seldom achieve with the rest of us.