Of Mother-insults and the Ten Legendary Beasts of Baidu

This NY Times article about a YouTube children’s song which has a double-meaning in Chinese is now one of the most shared-articles on the web. Although the online version of the article has lots of links, readers may have missed the full translation of the song’s lyrics over at China Digital Times. The prudishness of the NY Times also provoked this more in-depth discussion on cursing from Slate:

While it’s not quite a universal insult, variations on the command to commit incest with one’s mother appear in every region of the globe. Anthropologists note that, across cultures, the most severe insults tend to involve a few basic themes: your opponent’s family, your opponent’s religion, sex, and scatology. Because motherfucker covers two of these topics—plus incest, a nearly global taboo—it’s a popular choice just about everywhere. In Mandarin Chinese alone, riffs on the basic phrase include Cao ni ma ge bi, meaning “fuck your mother’s cunt,” and Cao ni da ye, “fuck your elder uncle.” Given the Chinese culture of ancestor worship, Cao ni zu shong shi ba dai, or “fuck your ancestors of 18 generations,” may be the worst incest instruction of all.

There is a certain tension in the article between the importance of ancestor worship in Chinese culture (also see here) as a particular explanation for this phenomenon, and the universality of such insults. But I suspect the focus on universality is primarily there to give them an excuse to share such colorful phrases as “If the streets were paved with pricks, your mother would walk on her ass” and to quote anthropologists on “colorful entries in the motherfucking canon” from Africa.

Also worth reading is this Ethan Zuckerman post, which links us to the Danwei Hoax dictionary of legendary obscene beasts, and his earlier post on The Cute Cat Theory of the internet, as well as Rebecca MacKinnon’s followup “Eluding the cat.”

P. Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim on Twitter.