Cursing

I started cursing when I was really small, like maybe around 4th Grade? Well actually I knew curse words like way earlier than that, but when I was in 4th or 5th Grade I became really, really, really vulgar. Not disrespectfully though, i.e. I don't curse in the family or to older people, basically it's a friendly thing. Kind of. I remember cursing at my neighbour friend who was 4 years older than me at school, then he told my mother and I was scolded for that. (Now that I think about it, it's so funny how the "I'll tell your mama" threat is not always an empty threat.)

Anyway, after about 1 or 2 years when I was in secondary school I stopped being so vulgar. Partly because of the change of school which of course is unfamiliar, and also because of me realising how annoying and "ugly" those words are. I still occasionally cursed of course, out of anger or frustration, mostly just for myself, but generally I didn't. I started to see vulgar people as really, um, vulgar and annoying. Yeah I was easily annoyed even when I was younger. The same thing applied to English swear words and when I came to Singapore my language was still very family friendly. If I ever said a swear word, my friends would be like "Did you just swear? OMG I can't believe you just swore, I thought you never said those words.", which I found funny because while I am not vulgar, that doesn't mean I can't, or don't know how to swear, right?

But then in 2011 when I was roommate with 3 crazy Indonesians, especially 1 very vulgar one, I started to get "infected" by these people and started cursing more. I don't know if they made me realise that I had more angst in my head than I thought, or they were the ones that brought the angst to me, but being already the easily-annoyed-and-offended person, it was quite easy, and um liberating for me to throw that kind of words around to so called express myself (lol). I think I started to be more vulgar outside the room too, especially online, and some took notice of that. It was funny though, because since I rarely cursed, when I cursed (online) my friends thought that I was really really really pissed and always tried to calm me down, which I found both funny and really sweet, and made me thankful for the great friends I had despite me being such a boring person. Anyway, as I became vulgar, I still found it very difficult, almost impossible, to swear in Vietnamese. I would prefer the F-word over the Đ-word any time, because seriously the đ-word is such an ugly word by itself. So as the L, B, CMNR, VCL and all the others Vietnamese curses (I felt bad just typing those acronyms). I don't know if it's because I've grown up with Vietnamese and have a really deep connection to the language, as opposed to English which is frankly just a foreign language to me (I love it though). I also listen to a lot of hip hop and rap music and I realise that if those songs are translated to Vietnamese, they are going to be so offensive and vulgar they're going to be called "nhạc chế" aka "really terrible and offensive songs made my underground artists who are not really considered artists in Vietnam because let's face it, if artists wearing skimpy clothes aren't allowed on stage but bikini girls competing for pageants can, how would you think songs will swear words are going to be treated". But it's not just the Vietnamese culture that I'm referring (jabbing) at, it's also me. I would probably feel so uncomfortable and disgusted listening to a Vietnamese song with all the Đs and Ls and Bs and CMs, while at the same time I have been practising so hard to be able to rap along this:

But the thing is, most English-speaking people are comfortable with swearing, so I'm not the only one. Yet when being translated to Vietnamese, I can hardly utter a curse. But sometimes that's OK though, because I won't throw vulgarities at annoying people on the streets in Vietnam, who are going to kick my ass if I do.

I'm just weird. Like fcking weird.