(no subject)

Chatting with Bill at work. Bill's the only person in my Standard Life group who's older than me (38) and has travelled an awful lot (bringing back a wife from one of his Argentinian trips). We were talking about watching subtitled films and he mentioned that in Argentina they tone down all of the swearing in the subtitles, so that "Fuck me! We're completely fucked!" becomes "Oh darn it, we are in some trouble, aren't we?" This has the presumably unforseen side-effect that people who don't speak English think that they're using mild swear words when they're actually venting some of the worst filth you can think of.

His favourite example of this was watching a 13 year old playing cards with an old man in a public park. Whenever the child was dealt a bum hand, he'd shout out, in tones of mock 13-year-old indignation "Fuck your mother!"