Shelley Howells: Effing and blinding to turn cyberspace blue

Oh, the joys of living in multicultural Auckland. The delights of exotic foodstuffs, the rich cultural exchange, the 8-year-old's ability to swear fluently, not only in English, but in Cantonese and Korean too.

Foul language is a bit of an issue in our house. I swear. A lot. Colourful cursing is a bit of a hobby, really. The Scottish/Irish side of the family tree is to blame. The accents (think Billy Connolly) always made cussing sound so darn good, so effective, so satisfying.

Not that we kids would dare swear in front of the olds. I guess the idea was to look, listen and absorb the fine art of offensive language for future use. I knew I had become a woman the day I used the eff-word within earshot of mum, and didn't get a thick ear for my trouble.

And so I try to explain the benefits of this parenting technique to my son, along the lines of "do as I say, not as I do".

This is only partly because I think that kids swearing is vile and unacceptable. He needs to learn when not to swear - when he's being told off about swearing, for example. Most importantly, half the pleasure of swearing comes from the sheer wickedness of it. Giving the go-ahead for effing and blinding now (think Osbournes) would rob him of that pleasure.

And so, he has resorted to virtual swearing (warning: the following links contain very bad language indeed). The swear-o-tron allows him to simply glide the cursor over the screen resulting in a foul racket that lives up to the site's promise that it can swear far more vigorously and effectively than any human. Naturally, this site has been banned (ie, added to my favourites, removed from his). Naturally this site led me to search for more net expletives.

What a treasure trove of foulness! Swear Away provides a click-and-swear service, while Buffy's Swearing Keyboard lets you randomly hit your keyboard and make Buffy, of vampire-slaying fame, swear. At the Celebrities Swearing site you can hear recordings of curses from the mouths of Cher, Debbie Harry and others.

If you have something you want to say, but lack the crudity to put it into foul words, paste your comment or quote into Choose Your Rudeness to have it converted into plain bad language, or "cursing Cockney" slang.

As for my boy's multilingual colourful language, I find the Insult Monger's Swearausus very useful. Here you can discover how to insult, swear, cuss and curse in 121 languages.

There are times when swearing simply won't do, and once again the net provides. For those having trouble resisting swearing at co-workers, one blog supplies a list of more seemly alternative expressions, while another site lists long-lost wholesome curses such as "by jingo" and "criminy".

Academics love swearing, or at least the study of it. One example is "A Study of the Semantics of Swearing in Australia", in which a student gets to use four-letter words and get credits towards his honours degree.

For those offended by bad language, They Should Know will, for fee-paying Americans and Canadians, phone and tell off someone for swearing on their behalf. They can do it anonymously, and will report back on the reaction.

For those who wish to cure themselves of the habit, there's the Cuss Control Academy, a US organisation whose book, courses and presentations are dedicated to curbing cursing. Their home page provides 24 good reasons to not swear, as well as 10 "tips for taming your tongue".

But the final word on swearing on my net crash course came from Angry Kid, one of the Shockwave animations on the Atom Films site. The Angry Kid swearing episode could have been filmed in many a frustrated family's car, and illustrates the "do as I say" method very clearly indeed. The poor, authentically horrid kid's attempts to work out what language is legal by his dad's standards is sheer, simple, brilliance. I'm still not sure if it is funny or sobering.

Drat.

* Email Shelley Howells

Swearotron

Swear Away

Buffy's Swearing Keyboard

Celebrities Swearing site

Choose Your Rudeness

Swearausus

Alternatives to Swearing at work

Alternate swear words

A study of the semantics of swearing in Australia

They Should Know

Cuss Control Academy

Angry Kid