Job Discussion Forums

[dyak]

[BethMac]

I'm not sure I completely get the meaning of "taking the piss" from your example. Is it the same as "just kidding"? I have a feeling I'd screw that one up so I'm better off not using it.

[Phil_b]

Taking the piss = making fun of

[Stephen Jones]

To take the piss is the same as to take the mickly. It means to make fun at somebody else's expense.

[leeroy]

Swearing, I believe, began in London. May I?

(to) take the (f*cking) piss. verb

1. to make light of a humourous event, often at s/body's expense; "When we found him with his pants-round his ankles and fast asleep we couldn't help but take the piss..."

2. to make unreasonable demands; "Teach for �10 an hour? You're taking the f*cking piss!"

3. to describe an undesirable or unenviable situation; "It really took the piss when the c*nt that stole my wallet ended up shagging my girlfriend too."

[dmb]

Leeroy, surely you're taking the piss. Swearing began in London. I don't belive you. I can't back up my disagreement. Etymologists, Can you back Leeroy up. Where did swearing begin. I reckon it started with the cave men as in "Ah F.u.c.k. That's hot. Oh look Let's call this fire."

[leeroy]

Oh yeah dmb! Before London, swearing simply didn't exist. Neither did rain, actually, slow trains or ugly girls...

[dmb]

Wow. You learn something new every day. I thought ugly girls started in Scotland. When did you send them north?

[FGT]

The word "swearing" seems to crop up quite a lot in this thread.
If I say "F*** off!" or "F*** you!", I consider I'm swearing. If I say "The film was F***ing brilliant" or "That was f***ing hard work" I don't see that as swearing, it's using the vernacular (to harp back to a previous thread).

I liked the way the original poster presented these words (mostly phrasal verbs) to his students, "don't use it, understand it". It seems to me that some of us who call ourselves teachers could also use the lesson.

I'm amazed that people using this site don't know what the idiom "to take the piss" means. Those of us from non-US origins who teach English for a living take pains to teach US/UK and other Englishes. When will our American brethren follow suit (at least as far as their own language acquisition is concerned)? Then it's up to the individual, and the circumstances, whether or not they decide to teach it to their students.

[guty]

now now leeroy, dmb,
lets not be pedantic about this, there is not one part of said islands which does not have all the aforementioned in abundance

[mjed9]

All these swear words

"P1ss" "Sh1t" and F*ck"

are old pre Norman words used generally by all anglo-saxons with none of the emotional content they are now afforded.

When William the Conqueror came into power in 1066 he decreed that these words belonged with a lower class of people and instigated a change. His reign introduced "urinate" "defecate" and "fornicate" and from about that time forward these other words became "bad".

At least that's what I read somewhere (on the back of a postage stamp)

[nomadder]

FGT, the reason others don't know Brit idioms is they just have not been exposed to them. I'm glad BethMac had the courage to ask. I happen to like British TV, movies and and books. In North America you can obviously seek out the books if you want but the other thngs aren't as abundant as they should be.

I think there is a cable station now with lots of BBC type stuff but I'm not sure. Otherwise it's PBS and Are You Being Served? rerereruns for the most part. I remember learning the word s.h.a.g. from AB Fab and I was well into my 20's then. I would love to see more British stuff but it isn't happening right now. And what happened to the music for that matter? Have you let Britney et al take over? Help stop American Cultural domination please.

That rant over, imagine hearing daily English and yet not knowing any swear words. You'd often be in the dark. The f word is used in so many ways. It's fact of life whether we like it or not. Meanwhile how many words are banned here in this forum? It doesn't seem right somehow. English teachers who have lots of their lingo censored even when used in everyday expressions.

Trying to get swear words from the Japanese was impossible but according to a book I had, there are tons of them.

[leeroy]

I find the beep machine here to be patronising - and somehow very "American". I don't need to be protected from bad words, and am responsible enough to use them, well, responsibly. (Most of the time, anyway ).

Similarly I think it is also patronising to "shield" students from swear words, they frequently occur in real life - and I have never heard students use them innapropriately. To my joy, a Japanese student reported that he had gone to the pub the day before, and exclaimed "What the f*ck man, it was like, �3.20 for a beer!?". It was perfect - far better and far more natural than "The pub which I went to was prohibitively expensive".

Swear words, functionally, usually express an extremity of some kind, a sort of intensity - they add a subjective slant to the speaker's message - attaching extra meaning often in the form of opinion or attitude towards (typically) the object. Consider the differences...

Where are you? / Where the f*ck are you?
What's that? / What the f*ck's that?

By ignoring these differences, you are depriving students of large chunks of functional English - and the cultural aspects that resonate underneath them.

My (poor) initial outings in Spanish have been heavily laced with expletives (er.... "Tienes un culo putamente grande!"). A strong (and often amusing) message is easier for me to remember than "Can you direct me to the post office?" - though it is somewhat lacking in practicality...

I can speak for Britain when I say that swearing is integral to our culture - and a pre-requisite to achieving any level of fluency in English involves awareness of linguistic-cultural elements such as "f.ucking rain again!". So, in my context at least, yes I won't shy away from swearing.

With a class of Korean 10 year-olds, though, perhaps a different strategy is in order...

[johnslat]

Dear leeroy,
It's not the use of "swear words" I have a problem with - it's their overuse. True, the occasional F-word, in an appropriate context, can add intensity, but all too often the F-word (and others) are "done to death", employed so often (sometimes every third word or so) that they lose any force or special significance and become instead merely irritating or boring. I suspect that all too often this represents nothing more or less than an extreme vocabulary deficiency on the part of the swearer.
Regards,
John

[BethMac]