# palabrotas - bad words



## sabrinita85

Hola:
he visto que a veces, los foreros escriben las palabrotas con asteriscos, por ejemplo "co**" en el título.
Lo que me pregunto es:
¿no sería mejor dejar la palabrota tal cual de manera que si alguien la busca con la función "Search" puede encontrarla?
Gracias

Hi,
I realized that sometimes, foreros write dirty-words marked by an asterisk, for example "fu**" in the title.
And I wonder: why don't let the bad word as it is, so that the person who search for it can find it?

(Sorry for my bad English )

Thanks


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## TrentinaNE

A very timely inquiry, sabri, as the moderators have been discussing this very dilemma amongst ourselves recently.  We'll post our consensus thoughts soon.  

Elisabetta


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## heidita

I would think then, rule 19 should have to be changed. Unless the poster is asking for a specific translation or a specific question about swear words, which is allowed, "dirty language" is not. 

I remember having a simple _shit_ deleted once. So, imagine really "bad words", sabrinita.

What does occur to me, and what might be a good idea, is to add a hyperlink to the for example sh**. this way a learner would not "stand in the dark", so to speak.


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## TrentinaNE

> 19. Please keep your language clean and decent. This includes personal inflammatory language as well as obscenities.


 
I don't understand your point, heidita. Rule 19 seems to say "avoid 'dirty words'/obscenities except as a subject of translation." 

The issue sabri raised stems from the fact that the warning symbols that we ask fore@s to use in their posts about such words cannot be used in thread titles, and we have had complaints from some members about viewing offensive words like  _fuck_ or the Italian _bestemmia_  _diocan_ in thread titles. However, if we insert asterisks to mask those words in thread titles, we lose the ability for future members to search for them, which leads to opening new and redundant threads with the same problem. So the moderators are thinking about how best to satisfy the conflicting tensions here. 

Elisabetta


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## jester.

Ok, here are my thoughts on this topic. My knowledge about the forum software is very limited, so I don't know if there is a way to censor those words without affecting the search engine.

But that doesn't even matter because I would like to raise the question if it is even necessary to censor those words. It is my belief that context and intention make words offensive. A word in itself cannot be offensive.
In addition, it is WR's aim to discuss words and their meanings - supposedly "bad" words included. So, in the academic and educated context WR provides, I think that such words cannot be offensive, at least if they are used as a topic of discussion.

Another point is that everybody knows those words, so even if they are censored, everybody will recognise them. In my opinion it is quite childish to make such a big fuss about writing and reading these words. I nevertheless support the - already implemented - rule which demands that potentially offensive words be marked by those tiny exclamation marks in posts in order to show learners of the language the possible consequences of using these words. I am strictly against the censorship of those words by means of replacing letters by asterisks.

I would especially like to comment on the undelined statement in the following quote.



TrentinaNE said:


> The issue sabri raised stems from the fact that the warning symbols that we ask fore@s to use in their posts about such words cannot be used in thread titles, and we have had complaints from some members about viewing offensive words like  _fuck_ or the Italian _bestemmia_ _diocan_ in thread titles.
> _Warning symbols partially removed due to technical restrictions_



As I said, I believe that words like  _fuck_ or _bestemmia __ __diocan _(not censored intentionally) cannot be offensive in the context of the WR forums. They can only be offensive to people who are afraid of those words because of... Well, whatever, I don't even understand why anyone would be offended by seeing the word _ __fuck_. (And please don't say that I cannot assess the gravity of this expression due to the fact that English is not my native tongue. If anyone came to the German forums to discuss similar words in German, I wouldn't be offended either.)
But I must say, and now I'm referring to the quote, that I was shocked when I read that some members dared to complain about those words in thread titles! 
They are part of your language! And they are - consequently - part of the topics discussed at WR.

I suggest you (the complainers) read the following quote again:



> The WordReference Forums Guidelines
> Mission Statement
> 
> I. WordReference.com provides Forums for exchanges about translation, word usage, terminology equivalency and other linguistic topics.
> 
> II. The Forums promote learning and maintain an atmosphere that is serious, academic and collaborative, with a respectful, helpful and cordial tone.


You see? Word usage. Not word censorship… An atmosphere that is serious, academic and collaborative, with a respectful, helpful and cordial tone. Not one that is childish, offensive and too posh to discuss words people use every day.

So, in order to conclude my post, I would like to say that we should not censor words; neither at the expense of the efficiency of our search engine nor at the expense of our freedom of discussion.

By the way, wouldn’t one warning symbol suffice to mark the “bad” words? The forum software won’t even let me mark all of those words with three warning symbols each…


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## jonquiliser

I'd agree with Jester here, all aspects of language should be possible to discuss, and the words in themselves aren't the offence. Then people can point out in the discussion how they are perceived in various contexts; as offensive, condescending, more neutral, 'obscene', sexist etc. It's all part of language, and learners/speakers of any language should be able to discuss that.


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## Thomas1

My random thoughts:

What if a word has got a few meanings? Some of them can be "acceptable" from the point of view of public etiquette and some may not. Each and every makes up the langauge heritage, though.

There are also cases in which a word could have been used mistakenly without the author's knowing it or the author gave it their own meaning.

And, what about cases in which writing a word is offensive/abusive to people for cultural reasons rather than its being an oath?

So far I have found no reason for censorring them in the titles -- open to see them. 
I see nothing wrong with such words in thread titles -- they make up a language inventory and they aren't bad in themselves it's people who imparted them the sense. If someone needs a workaround, in the course of the thread, they may use its commonly accepted counterpart or the option with asteriks.


Tom


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## danielfranco

Yes.

However... One of my co-workers is also an educator at middle school level. He is very excited and pleased with this site and all the learning opportunities it represents. But he tells me that he feels conflicted about recommending it to his pupils knowing that "bad words" are discussed openly. 
So he doesn't.
And it's not that he minds the profanity, or that he is a prude, or nothing like that, but he cannot just assume that every parent will understand the serious, collaborative, academic atmosphere of this site and not find offense (especially in this litigation-happy society!)
So I understand that it's all part of the language, and that ALL language enthusiasts should be able and willing to discuss any aspect of a language. But it's also true that children also roam these pages, and SOME parents are all against "bad language".

But, to those parents, I'd pose this question:
Are dictionaries banned in their homes, in light that some of them also contain definitions of "bad words"?

Who knows? I guess it's difficult crafting an all-inclusive policy. Somebody will always be left out (or feel like has been left out).

[Funny: I've just entered the word "fuck" in the dictionary look-up, and there's a single, lonely forum entry: "fuck face"  I guess that's the only decent usage of the word!  ]


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## cubaMania

I personally don't care whether the site adopts a policy of allowing discussion of offensive terms or a policy prohibiting such discussions.

My opinion: we should either ban those words from discussions entirely, or spell them out.  They could be marked as "Possibly offensive:" both in titles and in discussions, but using those asterisks strikes me as plain silly.  The asterisks, while pretending to rid the site of offensive language do no such thing.  Meanwhile any little kids left out there who are not completely jaded and are still eagerly searching for "dirty words" will know to go in search of the *** entries, and adults searching for a serious discussion of a term can't find it because they don't know to search for c**j*n**t.


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## heidita

danielfranco said:


> [Funny: I've just entered the word "fuck" in the dictionary look-up, and there's a single, lonely forum entry: "fuck face"  I guess that's the only decent usage of the word!  ]


 
Where have you looked ? There are like a million (yes, never exagerating!) entries in any of the dictionries I have and here for instance.

I am stunned: what the heck is this: for *c**j*n**t ??????*


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## jonquiliser

Yes, in the dictionaries _fuck_ comes up, but when checking the English-Spanish forum section, there is one single forum entry for fuck, the one danielfranco mentions, _fuck face_. When instead doing a search for _f*ck_, there's a decent list of forum discussions popping up


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## cubaMania

heidita said:


> ...I am stunned: what the heck is this: for *c**j*n**t ??????*


 
jejeje, gotcha, heidita.  It is not an actual offensive term.  I just typed miscellaneous letters and asterisks as an example.


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## Etcetera

Whatever our opinions on "bad words" may be, they have become part of the language. And it's necessary to know them - just so you would know if you were told to mind your own business, for example. 
And I suppose that it's not just knowing swear words that makes a person actually use them. Look here, we all know a number of "bad words", but not all of us use them oftener than twice or thrice a week (some people, I suppose, manage not to use swear words at all). It's a matter of upbringing, after all: if the parents don't use swear words, at least when their kid can hear them, it's quite unlikely that the kid would use them.


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## jester.

Where's the sense in that? If you know what you want to look for, you could just look for culo instead of culWR. 

Why do you want to transform words like culo in the first place? This is the key question behind this debate.


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## TrentinaNE

The words at issue are usually spelled out in the body of the messages, where the  sign can be applied. Just expand your search to look for the word of interest in the body of threads, rather than the title. 

Elisabetta


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## jester.

Chics said:
			
		

> I mean, if there are no rules (and we can't write _culo_, for instance), how I know what to search? _cu**_ or another thing? Which one? If everybody writes always the bad words in titles folowing a single rule, we'll be able to search then afterwards.



Right, but, in my opinion, it is nonsense to impose a rule about spellings of certain words if they already have an accepted way of spelling.


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## TrentinaNE

chics said:


> But it's so dull! Most people search in the dictionary... if I search with the searcher I can't know if threads with "fuck" are talking abaout it or just complaining...


The latter is a violation of Rule 19, as I quoted in the 4th message of this thread, so if you come across it, please report the post. 

Also, the fact that "most" (I'd some "some") people can't be bothered to use all the research tools at their disposal is, in my opinion, *their* problem, not the forum's. 

Elisabetta


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## chics

I don't know if it's only their problem, when it's because of other people that simply "don't like" the word or "feel upset" by it. And after the forum decides which are the Bads who have to suffer and which the Good ones.


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## Alxmrphi

I find it pretty pedantic that members would be offended on a language forum where people are asking about the words and not using them or directing them about anything, if the person asking doesn't understand that word's connotations and the reader knows this but gets offended, yeah, pedantic.


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