Glock 23 wrote:Although, I must comment, it appears in public the "C" word can be used alot more often without repercussions than the "N" word. I see a double standard.
The 'c' word is very commonly used in Britain and the Commonwealth as a ...well, almost as a term of endearment, bizarre though that might sound. An Australian friend with whom I chat regularly on MSN, will often hail me with an, '
oi, c***!'. Last week, I bought two bicycles but couldn't get them here in France, so bought them via plastic in the UK, lending my friend in London the price of his as he's pretty broke. So he was able to go into the shop and pick 'em up and is now using his, with mine sitting in his hallway. I can't get over there yet, so although I own a fantastic Dawes bicycle, I can't use it. When he sent me an e-mail recounting his first ride on his, I responded with a jealous, '
Ah, ye're a c***!'
But I agree that the word is very,
very offensive. At the beginning of the year, I was doing
Short Cuts by Raymond Carver with my fourth years (probably 10th grade in the US), and as one of the short stories had a few swear words (
Tell the Women We're Going, if my memory serves me correctly), I'd photocopied the pages and blanked out some of those words. Only problem is that one of the girls was off ill on the first day we did that short story, and when she came back in the next day, I'd left her copy of the story at home, so I photocopied it again, but of course forgot to blank the words out. As we're reading out in class, they came to a stop and asked, 'Sir, what's the word you've blanked out?' I replied that it wasn't important, and that if they really wanted to know, they could buy the book when they were older. The girl who had the 'uncensored' copy looked up and with obvious glee, yelled out the 'c' word at the top of her voice.
I then had to explain what the word was, its translation in French ('chatte'), and advise them not to use as it was (IMHO)
the most offensive word in the English language.
