We watched the German DVD release, which carries a '12' rating for Germany, but using the English soundtrack (I hate dubbed films). Because of the '12' rating, we allowed our 11½ year old son to watch with us. Much embarrassment as the four-letter fornicative flew forth - especially when uttered by the old lady. We do not allow our children to use such language at home, and do not use it ourselves (except when discussing its use in a film). Probably our son has heared it used often at school, by older kids, but to hear it at home, in front of parents, in a movie, was a bit awkward. There was no real need for it. either. Lesser words could have been used without changing the effect.
In Germany, the sch----- word and the blö- word are used often, but have much less power than their linguistic equivalents sh-- and bl---- and are thus considered acceptable. The linguistic German equivalent of the four-letter fornicative (swap the 'u' for an 'i') is hardly ever used as a swear word (it would sound silly), but is used as a midly crude word for sexual intercourse. Germans often assume that sh--, bl---- and f--- are of a similar strength to their equivalents, which can cause embarrassment when they visit anglophone countries.
What we need is an Expression of Power, to be used in moments fo high stress, but which causes no embarrassment. Two British entertainers, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, suggested (and I hope it survives IMDB's automatic censorship) "peepobellybumdrawers". I can see, however, that this would be difficult to dub in place of four-letter fornicatives or excrementives.
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gerdd
9 years ago
"peepobellybumdrawers"
???
That must be roughly equivalent to the Bavarian "Himmihergottzifixsakkerment!" - which may sound rather blasphemous to you if you can pick up a few of the Latin or German bits, but to the Bavarians, a German tribe of more than average religiousness - Roman Catholic in flavour - and more than average loquatiousness, which on occasion may lead to conflicts like this ...
On another note, the use of a crude word for sexual intercourse as a swearword would sound perversely bizarre to the typical German. But they are trying to get with the program, which is why they have just announced a sequel to the immensely popular *beep* Ju Goehte" (www.imdb.com/title/tt2987732/) called unabashedly *beep* Ju Goehte 2"
If those two titles sound English to you, you're right, but the spelling (which I had to corrupt a bit here both for modesty's sake and to accommodate my laptop's non-German keyboard) is intended to be purely phonetic and indicative of the somewhat weak English skills of the kids in the movies.
To me this is all highly amusing ...
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gerdd
9 years ago
Hahaha! They've done it again! Twice!
Where in my previous post it says *beep* I had a somewhat corrupted spelling of a certain four letter word from the English language - they caught it anyway. This is PRICELESS!
I haven't been able to call up the page I gave you above - IMDB is currently running a D'oh! which seems to prevent certain links from working. So I am dying to find out how they spell the titles of those movies (but you'll find them in Wikipedia in case of doubt ...)
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