Should You Learn to Swear in English? 🤬

Ow; From time to time, as you are learning English,

you might wonder if you should learn to swear.

You might wonder if you should learn to use words

like the F bomb or what we sometimes call the F word,

or what we jokingly in Canada

refer to as H E double hockey sticks,

or words like S H I T or B S,

which is kind of a short form for a longer word

that I'll put right here.

Or that thing that sounds like something

that holds back water,

but actually has an extra letter

and it means something else entirely.

So, maybe you've wondered

if you should learn to swear in English.

Well, in this English lesson,

we'll talk a little bit about swearing.

I'll talk about when English speakers do swear,

when they don't swear,

and then I'll help you decide

whether you should learn to swear in English.

(upbeat music)

Well hello, and welcome

to this English lesson about swearing.

Before we get started,

I did want to mention that I didn't actually hit my finger

with this hammer.

That was just a little joke to introduce this lesson.

And I did want to ask if this is your first time here,

don't forget to click that red subscribe button

and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn

just a little bit more English.

So, when do English speakers swear

and how often do English speakers swear?

Well, English speakers swear

when they want to emphasize something.

They swear, sometimes, to sound cool.

Young people, I think, sometimes swear a lot

because they think it makes them sound cool.

English speakers swear, sometimes,

when they hurt themselves by accident.

That can cause a swear word to accidentally slip out.

And they might swear when something goes wrong

that they weren't expecting.

I kind of swore the other day

because my camera started to fall over,

and a swear word slipped out as I was grabbing my camera.

So, those are the situations when English speakers

sometimes swear, but how often do English speakers swear?

Well, not as much as you might think.

When you watch movies

and when you watch television,

you might think that English speakers swear all the time.

In some movies, there's an F bomb every few minutes.

In some television shows,

especially ones that are on later at night,

there might be swear words like crazy,

but generally, in everyday speech,

English speakers, if they do swear,

it's when they're by themselves,

or when they're informally talking to people they know well.

So, that's when English speakers swear.

It's not as often as you might think.

I think it's worth mentioning

that many English speakers don't swear at all.

They may choose not to swear for religious reasons.

They may choose not to swear

because they think it sounds unprofessional.

Or maybe they just weren't raised

in a home where swearing was common,

so it's just not part of their everyday vocabulary.

I should mention this as well.

I do occasionally swear, but only in two situations.

I sometimes swear when I hurt myself by accident.

And I sometimes swear when something goes wrong.

When I was a teenager,

I actually swore a lot more when I was with my friends.

And I think I got used to it,

but I usually don't swear in life.

I would say that the chance

of me swearing on any given day is close to zero, usually,

unless I do something dumb

or unless something bad happens to me unexpectedly.

There are, of course, situations

where it's just not cool to swear.

You will usually not hear English speakers

swearing around children.

That's just not cool.

You usually will not hear English speakers

swearing in the workplace.

It's considered very unprofessional.

Although it kind of depends on the job.

At my job, people do not swear.

I work in a school. There's lots of kids around.

But when I used to be a construction worker,

there was a little bit of swearing on the job site,

but there was also a lot more people

hitting their thumbs with hammers.

So that maybe explained it.

So it kind of depends on the job,

but generally it's considered unprofessional.

You usually do not hear swearing in a formal setting

or in public where there's lots of people around.

So you usually won't hear people swearing in a restaurant,

especially if it's a nicer restaurant.

So, those are just a few places

where you usually don't hear swearing

or where it's just not really cool to swear out loud.

So, do you, as an English learner

need to learn how to swear in English?

Well, yes and no.

And please do watch the rest of this English lesson

so you can understand why I'm saying yes and no.

Yes, you need to be able to recognize

and understand swear words.

When you watch movies or when you watch TV,

or when you read a book,

you need to know what those words are,

and you need to know what those words mean.

It is very important that you have an understanding

of what words are used in English as swear words,

because you don't want to accidentally learn a word

and think that it's not a swear word,

and then accidentally use it publicly later.

That can be a little bit embarrassing.

In fact, sometimes I'll notice,

in the comments on my videos

or in the chat during my livestream,

that English learners will use a swear word,

and sometimes I think they don't quite understand

that it's not really appropriate or cool

to use that swear word then.

So, yes, you need to learn swear words, not to use them,

but you definitely need to learn them

so that you can recognize them.

So, that gets me to my second point.

No, you don't have to learn swear words

so that you can start swearing.

You don't need to learn swear words

if you are learning English

so that you can use them in everyday conversation.

You don't have to learn swear words

so that you can type them

when you're writing an email to somebody.

In fact, if you are learning English

and you never say or write a swear word

for the rest of your life,

no one is going to think that's odd.

In fact, the amount of times I hear a swear word

in a given day is very, very low, if not zero.

So, yes, learn swear words so you can recognize them.

But no, you do not need to learn swear words

so that you can use them.

Well, thank you so much

for watching this English lesson about swearing in English.

I hope it helped you learn a little bit more English,

and I hope it helped you decide how you're going to approach

learning swear words when you learn the English language.

I'm Bob the Canadian. Thanks again for watching.

If you're new here,

don't forget to click that little red subscribe button there

and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn

just a little bit more English.

And if you have the time,

why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?