As I passed a couple of school boys in the street this morning, they noticed they had just missed a bus and one of them let out a swear word (a fairly mild one) to express his mild frustration and displeasure.
It quite surpised me, which is something on reflection I put down to the fact that these days, I rarely spend much time in the company of kids when there isnt an adult present (aside from me – its still a bit hard to believe that I qualify).
Of course I hear adults swearing pretty often – particularly as someone involved in the world of stand up comedy – and thats not unusual, according to the interesting wikipedia article on the subject, one study showed that swear words make up roughly 0.5% to 0.7% of all words spoken.
Of course when kids are around, most adults dont let themselves swear in front of them and it suddenly struck me as immensely strange that, because of the power attached to these few words, we have two separate groups of people – children and adults – each going around swearing freely amongst themselves, whilst trying not to swear in front of members of the other group for fear of offending them.
Its a bit ****ing weird if you ask me 🙂
Hi Rich, yes your right. We all swear but as you say, its seperated between children and adults, strange really when you think about it. I think the kids don’t do it in front of adults because fear of getting into trouble and adults don’t do it in front of kids for the fear of teaching them to swear.. yet we all do it regardless.. i suppose that could count for other things in life as well? Interesting blog Rich.
Kind Regards
David