Those Hostie Quebecers

Following up on our earlier post on linguistic taboos, the Washington Post has a great article about cursing in Quebecois, where it seems that it is religion, not sex or bodily functions which is the basis of much of their vulgarisms.

“Oh, tabernacle!” The man swore in French as a car splashed through a puddle, sending water onto his pants. He could never be quoted in the papers here. It is too profane.

So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.

… The French here also modify the oaths into non-words, depending on the level of politeness desired. The word “bapteme” — baptism — is used as a strong oath, but a modification, “bateche,” is milder. The sacramental wafer, a “host” in English and “hostie” in French, can be watered down to just the sound “sst” in polite company. “Tabernacle” can become just “tabar” to avoid too much offense.

The oaths are so ingrained that one cannot converse fluently without them, said Lapierre. “I teach them in my class.”

More from Language Log.

4 thoughts on “Those Hostie Quebecers

  1. This article brings back fond memories of my grade eight francophone science teacher teaching us (anglo Ontarians) to say “tabernac” and “sacre bleu”.

    My own impression, after leaving my small town and meeting a few non-Quebecois francophones, is that these words don’t have the same impact for francophones in the rest of Canada, even those along the border of Quebec. But that’s purely anecdotal.

  2. Yeah, I recall it being common but fairly mild in Franco-American New Hampshire – the one I recall was pronounced “moussie-tabarnac,” and Pat Boucher insisted that it meant “Jesus Christ.” Actually, this post clears up some of that childhood mystery for me – thanks!
    adam

  3. Chinese cursing takes avoidance to interesting levels, the most basic curse of all being 他妈的 or 妈的,i.e. “his mother’s…” or just “mother’s…”. I don’t know of any full form that refers to mother’s (anything “dirty”), and given how often some people say it, it took me a while to realize just how shocking and foul this reference to the most sacred person around can be.

    So, a couple of questions…

    Does the use of deictics to stand for unmentionables in Chinese–i.e. 那个, or “that”, which can stand for a lot of “dirty” things, and is sometimes the only word that polite people ever use to refer to such things–operate as vulgarity?

    Which are more prevalent–language where the dirtist words are the words for sacred things, or words so basic as to be unavoidable, which have come to be obviously and shockingly “dirty” in certain contexts? or languages like English, where vulgarity is pretty much always identified with words (“fuck” and “shit”) that have no clean usage (the fact that “ass” has one has much to do with the popularity of the word “donkey”)? There’s one obvious difference between such languages…the censors have it much harder in Quebec and China!

  4. Lily,

    Allow me to suggest that the avoidance you mention is either restricted to Mandarin or to the Mandarin taught in schools. While doing fieldwork in Taiwan, my wife and I were startled to hear mothers in our neighborhood cursing their children by shouting at them in Hokkien ka* li nia* (Mandarin, gan ni niang; literally “Fuck your mother”).

    John

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