BICTH!

Francophones in Quebec are often overheard employing American swear words in the middle of entirely French conversations. We're told this is partly because of their novelty, but it's also partly because American swear words possess no real meaning to people who didn't grow up forbidden to use them. Young Quebecers say "fuck" all the time, and it's amusing to me because--as a big employer of the word "fuck"--they never get the usage quite right. But who can blame them for not knowing how it works given that their swear words consist of variations on things like "the host" and "the chalice" and the highly, highly offensive "tabernacle?" (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can find a tutorial on Quebecois swear words here.) What do words like "fuck" and "bitch" even mean when your knowledge of rebellious verbiage is dependent entirely on your Catholic upbringing?

Honestly, I'm not convinced American swear words possess much meaning for Anglophones, either. I think all this stuff about certain words being "bad" is utter nonsense, which is part of the reason I found the following much more entertaining than offensive:


And really, I can't blame them for the error. That "tch" sound is a tough one.