For lack of a better topic, I decided to dig an old one out for today…you will probably never come to appreciate it from me but one thing you will automatically start doing once you live in Ireland, is curse like a sailor and find nothing wrong with it. It took me only a couple of days, as far as I remember, to adopt the frequent usage of the f-word (in a variety of rather colourful and floral combinations), the s-word and a number of things that cannot be so nicely abbreviated. I found I have enough reason to be cursing like a local as soon as I found myself confronted with the local weather, local food and local “bureaucracy” (which is in inverted commas because it is so the opposite of German bureaucracy but it still does not speed things along). Soon I watched myself use the bad words in every sentence and by now I’ve gotten so used to it that I don’t even think about it anymore. Interestingly, a friend from the US (the ubiquitous BoB) drew my attention to the fact that he has started the excessive cursing as well but that he would never practice that to the same extent in the US…so he is basically screwed if you consider that I would never be able to transfer the cursing into German, he on the other hand will have a pretty hard time getting rid of it. I have to say however, that it kind of grew on me….it’s not like cursing is something entirely bad here, it’s more like terms of endearment for the way life is…and it’s not frowned upon at all which indeed must be something very Irish and all of us have made great use of the opportunity, let’s just leave it at that…and a picture of Noam Chomsky (the little old dude at the podium):
