SOUTHASIAN LANGUAGES are no strangers to swear words. Swearing, or the use of offensive, “dirty” or indecent language, is a universal linguistic behaviour exhibited to navigate social taboos, express intense emotions, exert power over others or build solidarity. Swearing is a normal human behaviour and not some deviant form of communication to be swept under the carpet.
Swear words may originate from several social and cultural taboos, and can be categorised into different groups that define “forbidden language” across cultures. One major category comprises terms related to sex, defecation and bodily discharges, sexual acts and tabooed bodily organs such as genitalia. Another set traces its origins to the domain of religion and the sacred, where sacrilegious or irreligious usage of sacred words comprises swearing. Verbal insults are also frequently based on animal metaphors, the mocking of physical or mental disabilities, or attacking kinship – most notably through references to mothers. There are swear words based on themes of death, illness and even cuisine. And, lastly, a large number of swear words also have their origins in casteist, racist, sexist, homophobic and ageist language, as the linguists Keith Allan and Kate Burridge have explained in Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language.
Insults through animal metaphors are widely found in Southasian languages, where a specific animal, bird or reptile’s name is used to target a person’s intellect, cleanliness or morality. For example, in Hindi, calling someone a kutta (dog) or suar (pig) denotes filth and subservience, while the expression ullu ka pattha (son of an owl) denotes stupidity and idiocy. That same meaning is encoded in goru (ox) in Nepali, chhagol (goat) in Bengali, bhains (buffalo) in Gujarati and the Kashmiri khar (donkey).
Some examples of profanities derived from the semantic domains of tabooed body parts, sexual activity and kinship are kela (penis) in Assamese, muji (pubic hair) in Nepali, kæri (semen) in Sinhala, sunni (penis) in Tamil and lañja koduku (son of a sex worker) in Telugu.