Swear words across different languages are missing certain sounds while swearing alternatives tend to sound similar, according to new research.
By Devin Pike
Two peer-reviewed studies, recently published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, suggest global trends in trash-talking.
The first study found that swear words across different languages often lacked sounds that, in the English alphabet, would be made by letters such as L, W, R and Y.
This profanity pattern suggests that these sounds, called "approximants" by linguistics experts, may seem less offensive to listeners no matter what language they speak.
The second study found that alternative swears or "minced oaths" - such as saying "darn" instead of "damn" - often included those same L, W, R and Y sounds across several languages.
The authors of the study concluded that there may be a universal pattern in curse words across different tongues, where approximants are often ignored when cultures develop new swears.
University of Otago head of linguistics Hunter Hatfield welcomed the findings and said there's "more than curiosity" behind the study of curse words.
"There's been a long-held belief for about 100 years or so that the reasons words have their sounds are just historical accidents," he said.
"Studies like this [involve] people trying to indicate that 'yes, there's a reason beyond historical accidents that swear words have certain sounds to them'."
Hatfield said letter sounds like L and W are said with an open mouth and sound softer, whereas letters like T and D are said with a barely-open mouth and sound "very distinct".
"There's this idea that certain sounds are stronger than other sounds and more distinct than vowels," he said.
"The types of sounds most different from A-E-I-O-U are ones where you completely close your mouth, those are the sorts of sounds swear words are making like 'cuh', 'duh' and 'tuh'."
The studies involved 215 participants who spoke six different languages who were asked to rate pairs of made-up words.
The subjects judged words without approximants as "swear words" 63% of the time.
Though there's more than 7000 languages in the world, Hatfield said small studies like these open the door for future research on sound patterns in languages, such as in emotional expression.
"When people are angry, do they accentuate those 'cuh', 'duh' and 'buh' sounds even more? Rather than using a particular word, [can] you just take a word and make it more spitty? I'm guessing you can."
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