In my mid-teens I spent a few summer weeks in beautiful Brittany on a school exchange. My classmates and I exchanged more than grammar lessons with our French peers, swearwords being among the most popular items of cross-cultural education. I eagerly tried out these new swears (and did the same when I learned German), but my awareness of their social nuances remained crude – partly because the internet hadn’t happened yet.
As the years passed and my fluency in these languages declined with disuse, I seldom resorted to their swears – the emotional gratification was limited, and I didn’t feel authentic enough: I had im-fucking-postor syndrome. But I never forgot the feeling of swearing in a foreign tongue, the impish appeal of going native with these tantalising taboos. The phenomenon is especially interesting because swearing, linguistically speaking, is neurologically unusual.
Which brings us to multilingualism.
Strong Language 