Strong language is common to many cultures, but Norway has a wide variety of dialects and the same is true of their use of salty expletives. Listen to this weeks episode to find out more about how to curse in Norwegian and how Norwegians themselves feel about cursing. 

Profanity is to strong feelings what the bell is to the Pavlovian dog. Research has found that reading and writing swear words has an emotional effect, but not nearly as much as saying and hearing them.

The utterance of a singel f- word quickly indicates the state of a person - whether they are surprised, excited, angry or aroused - and the intensity of their state. Steven Pinker in the Stuff of thought, lists five different ways we can swear: descriptively, (du er en f.) idiomatically, ( det er f. meg vanskelig) abusively, ( f. ta deg) emphatically ( det var f. meg bra) and cathartically (f,!!) Absolutely none of these functions require swearing- yet we still choose to use them. This episode will give you insight into the variations of Norwegian swearing. Enjoy!

Study materials and a transcript of this episode are available at

https://norskbloggen.no