[imagesource:wikicommons]

Words are only descriptions of meaning, and if you really mean it, there are some colourful ways to express yourself in any language. After all, a bear does not ‘defecate in the copse’ – it shits in the woods.

A new study has now shown that Johannesburg ranks as the second sweariest city in Africa, and considering South Africans’ penchant for telling it like it is, we’re surprised we don’t feature at the top of the list.

The word experts at WordTips analysed 1.7 million English-language geotagged tweets against a database of 1,600 profanities to uncover the most and least foul-mouthed countries and cities, and despite Joburg’s respectable second place in Africa, we don’t even make it to the top ten in the world.

Since language is an organic beast, the ruder end of this lexicon has evolved as internet users have given centuries-old cusses new meanings and associations. In fact, swearing has become almost ‘normal’ these days.

“It’s hard to prove”, says Michael Adams, author of In Praise of Profanity, “that people are swearing more than they used to”.

“For one thing, while people swear a lot on social media, it’s hard to show that social media users are a representative sample of the population.”

True, but if we look at social media through the lens of the recent WordTips study, Americans appear to have the biggest vuilbek of all.

English is either the official or co-official language of the five nations whose citizens swear the most while tweeting in the language. This isn’t because English-speaking nations are tweeting more frequently in English.

According to linguistics professor Jean-Marc Dewaele, people who speak English as a second language may be less prone to swear because cursing is taboo and difficult to acquire. Web users from non-English speaking nations might also not know how offensive a swear word is, or when it is permissible to use it.

Among the five sweariest cities on every continent, North America beats everyone by swearing more than any of the top five on other continents, with Baltimore, Maryland having the dubious honour of cursing the most.

As noted, social media language is hardly a perfect indicator of how people normally converse. If it was, most people would be illiterate assh***s, and we know only half of social media users are.

Business English and Movie English have been superseded by social media English, and it appears to be evolving into an abbreviated monster that has embraced swearing as a ‘normal’ way of communicating.

This may concern language purists, but we might argue that the younger generation has already mangled English to such an extent with skibidi, rizz and shoz, that swearing is at least the foul-mouthed devil we know and understand.

[source:wordtips]