Kontrastive Überlegungen: Schimpfen Lateiner anders als Deutsche?
Contrastive Reflections: Is Swearing in Latin Different from Swearing in German?

Summary/Abstract: Swearing and cursing are immediate and obvious expressions of emotions. While this kind of communication almost certainly exists in almost all cultures and languages, studies about it are generally limited to the individual language, or are often conducted from a popular science perspective. As far as the German language is concerned, the use of insulting and swear words is associated with the discourse of scatology, morphologized and lexicalized in word formation, phraseologisms, etc. Yet, for the Latin language such analyses are almost completely missing. My contribution aims at a typological comparison of Latin and German, especially in the period of their direct contact – the Middle Ages.

• Details
• Contents