I was told by a Canadian anglophone that the French Catholic tradition was strict about cursing, so what happened over generations was that actual Church words turned into the cussing words.. the example given was the French word of "Tabernacle" if you say it with loud outrage by itself, it is definitely cussing..
All those swear are in violent reaction against the Catholic Church which was prominent at the beginning of the century. This is before, nowaday, people just use these words by habit and as a cultural identity. I'd say that a vast majority of young Quebecers are agressive atheist.
In Quebec a lot of our modern taboo words are religious themed. Unlike many other cultures however, it's not religion that made them taboo, but rather the fact that we had a heavier than most religious presence in our political and education systems up to the 1960s, and when we 'woke up' as it were, a lot of religious terms became swear words. Today the province is much less religious than say the US, on average, and most of our swear words remain that way.
The swear words in Quebec originate from old religious principles, yes. You can differentiate between "good" and "bad" (swear) use of it purely from written context or verbal cues. The verbal cues are a lot easier to pick up on. Sarcasm, angry face, crass conversation amongst friends, etc.
In the 90s in Montreal it was a very common expression. Haven't heard it in a while. I avoid it because people might think 1940s, and that would be disrespectful.
These days: "on s'en câlisse" (most cursing is church-based because it is unlikely to offend anyone).
There's a conjecture (I hesitate to call it theory because it's not very well fleshed out) that profanity tends to reflect the taboo and/or sacred things of a society.
Quebec used to be a highly religious society heavily controlled by the Catholic Church until the 1960s. Quebec profanities are full of slangy modifications of terms that, translated literally, mean things like "chalice" or "eucharist". English used to be like that as well. Damn and Hell were harsh words. With the decline in our religiosity has come a decline in the severity of the words. Most societies have taboos about sex and bodily waste, so little surprise that there's a profane term for those things in most languages.
And what about today? Some of the most profane words in contemporary English are slurs used against racial and sexual minorities. N-word, F-word (no, not that one, the other F-word), and so on. Speaking these words invokes transgression of the most sacred values of society. Some are considered so powerful or dangerous, that simply saying them aloud is believed to have the ability to cause psychic harm, which is more than a little reminiscent of the old beliefs about the risk of supernatural destruction being inflicted on communities by God that tolerate blasphemy.
As you note, I think this is likely a universal human tendency. There's always going to be the sacred and the taboo. And taking a big fat verbal shit on them will always outrage people.
I am the same. I curse a lot in English and French (I live in Quebec) but I can't stand cursing in my native language. I always shared your theory too. I think we are somehow shielded from the cultural baggage of foreign swear words. They're just "funny" instead of offensive.
Although it may be true that "les sacres" (swear words derived from religious terms) were a form of insurgency against the power of the church, their usage extends far back into the beginning of the 19th century: http://www.maisonsaint-gabriel.qc.ca/fr/musee/chr-20.php
I'd also like to see some cross-linguistic analysis of swearing.
For example, English uses a nice mixture of profanity (religious references, like "goddammit") and obscenity (sexual words and bodily functions, like "fuck" and "shit"), but not much literal cursing. But not every language does that. Quebecois French, for example, uses profanity almost exclusively (where the worst single word you can say means "tabernacle"), and nobody pays much attention to obscenity. And then there's Dutch, which relies on literally cursing people (among the worst things you can say to someone are to tell them to "catch cholera" or "cancer off", and the worst thing you can call someone means "cancer patient"), while obscenities are minor insults, and while profanities are historically more serious, they're not nearly as common as the curses.
Not really (I don't go to church). All swear words are pronounced differently from the actual word (see 'joual' on google). The priest (or anybody else) can say the word in proper french and it won't be heard as a swear word.
Also, I think it has to do with how you use the word. When it's a noun, it's pretty clear that you're not swearing.
Being French, I find this part of the English language ironic given how expressive and concise the remainder of the language can get, all the while swear-words feel like few and raw.
Funny that you mention English as better for cursing; as a French, I've always found the English catalogue of dirty words and insults quite limited. There doesn't even seem to have more than 2 or 3 common names for genitals of both sex, or even several dirty names for sodomy. Imaginative genitals naming coupled with religion, dirty things and weird sexual practices allow for some nice compositions :)
The Dutch have a way of using disease names as a source of profanity. Cancer, cholera, TBC, smallpox, all of these can be swear words. Corona will probably make the list soon enough. (Compare the Quebeckers with their chalice and tabarnak.)
Honestly, when you consider the etymology of "profanity" and "curse word", they all go back to religious roots. Even the use of deliberately misspelled and mispronounced curse words is called a "minced oath".
We don't really have a good word for swearing that's not a religious reference. The closest we have is "obscenity", but that traditionally only refers to sexual words. For example, "fuck" is obscenity, but "goddammit" is profanity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity
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