"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

   -- Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)

Fri Oct 14 2016 13:03:35 EDTfrom fleeb

So cleave to the Germanic wordhoard, lest your swearing grow romantic.

-- http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-and-the-history-of-english/

Hm, this is a rather odd article in the sense, that it seems to introduce an ad-hoc hypothesis "vulgar is germanic" and then goes to great length in order to find examples. Especially two claims strike me as odd:

to scatological and sexual verbs (doubtless you can spot what scheissen and ficken mean, but might have been more stumped by chier and baiser)

Ok, ficken and fuck are easy to guess, but both are only one instance of this word. In french, baiser is just one and originally meant to kiss, iirc. There is also niquer, wich probably comes from forniquer. I guess you have no problem recognizing that one.

Now, shit and scheissen are a bit more difficult, yet also easy to guess. But I think chier can easily be recognized, especially when used in swearing. Especially when you spot the common root of the word, which is an old proto-indo-germanic root. It is the same in the german word Scheidung (divorce) and Schisma (shism) and also in your word science. It means to part or separate things. So in this case, french, english, german, normanic, latin and germanic have the same ancient root.

See:

Scheiße: From Middle High German schīze, from Proto-Germanic *skītaz, from Proto-Indo-European *skei-d- ‎(“to part”). http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Scheiße

Scire: From Proto-Italic *skijō, from Proto-Indo-European *skey- ‎(“to distinguish, to dissect”). http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scio#Etymology 

And whilst the German family looks familiar, with its Vater, Mutter, Bruder, and Schwester, the French one, with père, mère, frère, and sœur looks distinctly foreign.

This is a constructed example as well, especially since here you english readers probably have a small advantage. The latin root pater- is known in german, which is like an union of Vater and père, I guess your word parents could give a hint in the right directon.  Fraternity and fraternitas might also be known, but you americans have the word sorority, we have nothing like that in german.

In general, I can say that with a lot of knowledge in english, a bit in french and still less in latin, I am able to understand a lot of the western european languages, as long as they have romanic and germanic roots. But I am often not able to understand bavarian or austrian words. For example, you might understand the german word pissen, but the austrian popular word for that is brunzen. Similar to that, the austrian pudern for sexual intercourse is hard to guess.

I'll leave you with this ode to germanic language by some sensitive australian guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVkNmve0cLw (partly NSFW for some images and noise)

Yep, and I can't think of any common words in german, which use these roots. I mean in history, we learn the "egalité, fraternité et jenesaisquoi" of the french revolution. Maybe from religious context, there might enter a word coming from frater- enter your life. But in general we'd have a harder time recognizing french influences.

Btw, ever heard the French swear? My experience is that they are much more likely to use swearwords and they escalate drastically into a territory which would be considered really rude in germany. And probably in america, too.

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Wonder if this matador would agree with that poster...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/18/world/spanish-matador-gored-to-death/index.html

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