What is your favorite insult in your native language that doesn't exist or cant be directly translated in English?
Ill start:
"Me cago en tus muertos" - ill shit all over your dead relatives. Spanish.
Teletubbyzurückwinker.
Someone that waves back at the Teletubbies.
Specific and evocative as fuck. German really is amazing.
This is by far the best one.
No harsh words or vulgarity but lots of emotional damage.
Schnitzelkind. Breaded-veal kid (wienerschnitzel / milanesa). Basically a kid so ugly, that the parents needed to put a schnitzel around his neck so that at least the dogs would play with him.
Is that what it means? We had a kid at school everyone just referred to as "Schnitzeljunge", never knew where that name came from.
Triangeljosti.
The Jostiband is a Dutch orchestra for people with a developmental disability, mainly people with down syndrome.
A triangle , or triangel in Dutch, is possibly the simplest instrument you can think of.
So calling someone a ‘triangeljosti’ is basically comparing them to someone who plays the simplest possible instrument in a band for developmentally disabled people.
That’s so specific. lmao
I'm wheezing. Never heard it before but the image is livid in my head.
This reminds me of the not-very-edifying-at-all moment when "joey" became a universal term of abuse in UK playgrounds.
Huh, that's a rare one.
Never heard that one being used, though.
It’s not super common but I do hear it on occasion.
That just sounds like ableism
Well, yeah, it’s an insult so it’s not exactly meant to be flattering for either the insulted party or the person they are being compared to.
I mean, OP asked for insults. You should be prepared to see some you don't like (which is the point of an insult after all).
It absolutely is. Many insults are.
As an autistic I aprove, if you arent saying this to a ND or mentally disabled person.
I mean if any intelligence-based insult is, this one certainly is. The thing is it is better to be smart than not, so trying to shut those all down is probably a fool's errand.
كول هوا
"Kawl hawa"
Literally "eat air" in Arabic
Means shut up
That's hilarious
That’s a really good one.
Oh that is fantastic. I need to use that one.
Salame
Yes that's right, it means salami and in spanish it's used to call someone an idiot. Soft insult, but I use it, and saying so and so is a salami in english would only get me weird looks.
Seems to be used in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Being from Spain, I’ve never heard Salami being used as an insult.
English has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult)
That's interesting, I didn't know. It seems gammon makes reference to the color red and to anger, and according to the link, it has some political connotations. None of that is applicable to salame, it's not so much about being angry or hot headed in any way, it's just a way to say someone isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
same in Italian
Calling someone a 'silly sausage' in English is a very gentle way to say they are being foolish, sometimes endearingly. Typically it's used for children. So not far off!
Never heard that one! Interesting
“April Fools, you little sausage!”
I am going to use it. Ie. You got a salami in that noggin?
In Quebec French, people sometimes say of someone who's not particularly bright:
"His mom rocked him/her too close to the wall."
It's just so... vivid and random.
Oh cool, we have a very similar one in German: "His/her swing stood too close to the wall."
Wait I've never heard this! so like
"Sa mère l'a bercé trop proche du mur"?
Yes, exactly! Or, "Ya été bercé trop proche du mur."
Amazing thanks!
A strong insult in french would be to tell that someone has been "fini à la pisse".
I don't know how to translate that but it would means that their dad did not have enough sperm so he used urine to conceive them.
While not my native language, in Japanese, many insulting things to call people are often translated as English curses, but actually are just increasingly disrespectful ways to refer to the listener. The actual translation for them is just "you" but not respectful. This might not be a complete list, but I got most of them at least.
Anata - Polite way of saying "you" but not often used in conversation except between spouses or lovers. It's preferred to use the listener's name instead.
Kimi - Rude in a polite setting, but not explicitly disrespectful, necessarily.
Omae - Now you're on the level of picking a fight, but good friends often use this for each other.
Temee - Extremely disrespectful
Kisama - Extremely disrespectful
Kono yarou - Extremely disrespectful
Is it Japanese i am think of that has an exclusionary “we” form? Almost as in “We(all of US but not YOU) were invited to the party.”
That's correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.
So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, "Mary has a beautiful face") causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (... But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.
Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like "as for x..." which can imply a "but..." at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity
Many languages have that. I’m not familiar with Japanese, but it’s not on that article’s list at least.
I'm not a native speaker, but I've heard Japanese doesn't have any outright curses. That is, there are no words which are always bad, just bad in certain contexts.
Omae and Kisama were how one would refer to emperors. There are no more emperors so referring to someone that way is always sarcastic.
Naruhito?
mnko begs to differ.
Really interesting. I watch anime occasionally and I've been wondering about this. But suddenly the dramatic shoutouts between the good guys and the big bad makes a little bit more sense.
I'd be glad to hear more examples!
"Omae wa mou shindeiru"
"NANI?!"
In Chile, not really an insult but rather a lament over how dumb people are sometimes:
"Si los weones volaran, pasaría nublado" (If dumb people could fly it would always be cloudy)
In Germany we have the saying: "Herr lass Hirn regnen. Oder Backsteine. Egal Hauptsache du triffst!"
Which roughly translates to: "lord let it rain brains or bricks. Doesn't matter as long as it hits"
German: "Dich soll der Blitz beim Scheißen treffen" - Lightning shall strike you while you're taking a shit
Best insult ever, imo.
"Spargeltarzan", which is German for "asparagus Tarzan". Basically someone who is physically weak, but tall and lanky.
I also like "Lauch", which just translates to "leek", the veggie. Oh, and "Bohnenstange", which means bean stalk. We do seem to have quite a few vegetable-related insults in German, now that I think of it...
Wir sind halt auch Kartoffeln
Yiddish is not my native language but I think this one is so good it absolutely deserves a mention:
All of your teeth shall fall out except one that gives you a massive toothache.
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender. It's a grave insult which implies lack of agency and dehumanisation, and thank to some rightwinger assholes in parliament is also a specific transphobic insult now.
While in english it's completely normal thing to say if you're not sure of a person's gender.
So definitely not my "favourite", i would never said this to anyone in polish and i occasionally get a hiccup of misgendering someone in english because of that, but interesting from language point of view.
Is it kind of like calling someone "it" as an insult in English?
I'd say so, and I've seen it used in the same transphobic contexts.
Pretty much yes, the closest thing that would be.
While in english it’s completely normal thing to say if you’re not sure of a person’s gender.
Well...
You can use "they" without being insulting, as it still presumes personhood, but if you call someone "it" you're dehumanizing them and stripping personhood from them, as "it" is used for objects and things, not people. It sounds like what you're translating would be closer to "it" in English than "them" or "they".
This seems like a thing in Slavic languages in general. In Russian the equivalent is "одушевленные и неодушевленные существительные" - animate, and inanimate objects, so I guess they add one extra pronoun to the usual three, which is just for objects. I think some genderqueer people prefer using the plural pronoun in that case ("они" instead of "оно"). Is that possible in Polish?
The neutral gender is perfectly grammatical in polish, just it was never used for people other than small babies, i seen some effort to use it in literature for gender fluid or genderless people but it's rare and don't get positive reviews. It might catch some day though, i don't know.
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender...While in english it's completely normal thing to say if you're not sure of a person's gender.
Maybe I misunderstand, but you should never call someone "it" in English, except for animals and babies. Calling someone "it" is considered dehumanizing in English.
Yes, what i meant that in english you call people in 3rd person "them", "they" regardless of their gender, but in polish neutral gender would always be "it". That's why it's so insulting to use it despite it is gramatically existing. Polish had pronouns literally build in every noun, verb and adjective.
Portuguese is full of these, but how about vai pra casa do caralho.
Which roughly translates to "go to the dick's home", basically another way of saying "go fuck yourself", but even more vulgar somehow.
Portuguese here. "Diz que vais cagar e baza", which translates to "Say you go shit and get outa here", when someone is not welcome.
Brazil "eu caguei e andei" (I shat and walked). Functionally equivalent to "I don't give a shit" but in Portuguese one actually shits but doesn't care to wipe and walks away or walks at the same as is shitting.
I've heard 'caralho' used to be the name for the lookout on top of a ship's mast (later turned into yet another word for dick) and sailors were sent to duty on the caralho as punishment?
I'm not Portuguese though, so if any native could confirm ...
Mandar alguém para o dito já é insulto que chegue, quanto mais dizer-lhes para lhe encontrar a morada...
Another portuguese gem: "tens um parafuso a menos", which means "you have a missing bolt" (LOL), a way to call someone crazy
Băga-mi-aș pula-n coliva mă-tii de să-mi sară coaiele din bomboană-n bomboană
This is a highly niche one in my native language as well, as one must also know what is colivă - it's basically a desert that we eat at funerals with m&m-sized candies in it as well. So it roughly translates let me stick my dick in your mother's coliva so hard that my balls jump from candy to candy
That is elaborate, vulgar, and 100% delightful. I love hearing stuff like this. Cursing in American English is so boring lol
Does the insult mean the colivā is served at your mother's funeral, or that it's the colivā your mother made? Also in what kind of context you use this insult?
I'm not the OP but usage is dealer's choice. It's smooth jazz all the way down.
My personal favourites from Finnish.
"Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa" "Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley" Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.
I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.
"Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu" "You can't take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon". This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.
“Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley”
That's totally something we'll use. Thanks :D Also I'm stealing that. I'm stealing that insult and Americanizing it and you can't stop me
In Denmark you have:
In Tamil: சோத்துல உப்பு போட்டு தான தின்ற?
Translation: Don’t you add salt to your food?
Context: This is when somebody doesn’t react/listen/change no matter how much they are insulted. The other party asks if they add salt to their food, or if they only eat bland food, and thus have lost all emotions and have become as bland as their food.
It’s a bit difficult to explain, but the general belief is that food reflects your emotions and reactance and moods. Bland food - emotionless, spicy food - easy to anger, etc.
அடடே லெமில தமிழனா
Neraya per irukkom boss.. nethikku kooda oruthar muyal nu username, rabbit profile picture vachukittu Mayan paintings pannittu irundharu..
Vaanga !kuttichevuru@lemmy.world ku.. oru Kai kuraiyudhu
Here are a few Austrian ones:
"Häferl" (Cup): someone with anger management issues
"Du rüttelst am Watschenbaum" (You are shaking the slap tree): I'm close to deliver the fruit of said tree to you.
"Ohrwaschlkaktus" (Ear cactus): Someone with large, protruding ears
"Saubauch" (Hog belly): A way of telling someone that they are fat and dumb at the same time. But in a nice way.
I'm definitely gonna start working "You're shaking the slap tree!" into my rotation.
There is also a second part to it: Rüttel nicht am Watschenbaum, die Frucht sie reift du merkst es kaum - You're shaking the slap tree, the fruit is ripening while you hardly notice
That's amazing.
"Κλάσε μου τα αρχίδια" which literally stands for "fart my balls" in Greek.
It's a way of telling someone to go fuck himself.
Which can also be lovely further embellished such as "πάρε φορά και κλάσε μου τ'αρχιδια" ("take momentum and fart my testicles") or "θα μου κλάσεις μια μάντρα αρχίδια" ("You'll fart me a yard of testicles", usually utilized as a defiant answer to a physical threat)
My favorite has to be zkundyksicht, it comes from "z kundy ksicht" which literally means "a face [that came] from a cunt". "Z" = from, "kunda" = cunt, "ksicht" = a rude way to say face.
Oh my god cuntface is my new favourite insult. Thank you for this!
Glad I could be of service!
ksicht is very similar to the German "Gesicht" for face
It's probably German in origin, we were occupied by you guys (and Austrians) for quite some time.
German Korinthenkacker (currant shitter) is someone who tries to win an argument by looking at unimportant details.
This seems so fucking useful on the internet
The disapproving and insulted look of a Canadian when you've done something so stupid that they can't even apologize for it.
It's when there's no apology or jokes, just the look, that you know you've become the stupidest fucker north of these here prairies and bears ya know.
I learned what that look looks like by watching Letter Kenny.
三小 in Taiwanese literally translates as “what sperm?” But it means “what the fuck”.
the full saying is 看三小/看啥小
literally "see what semen?"
meaning more like "the f*** you looking at?"
you can also say 供 (講) 三小 which means what the fuck are you saying?
There's a good one in Cantonese I learned from Hong Kong movies. It translates to "Are you talking?" but the implication is "You're making noise, but is that supposed to be human speech?" Lei guuung yeieh!?
In French, "pisse-vinaigre" or vinegar pisser, for someone that complains about everything
In the dialect of the Italian province I'm from, my favorite insult is "Perdabàll", which literally means "balls loser" as someone who's so stupid and useless that could even manage to lose his testicles
I thought you were gonna say it means someone who's married.
No but for that we use another genital: we say "S'é infigá" which roughly translates to "He got pussy-ed", meaning someone that got enslaved by a vagina
Very Belgian: He doesn't have all his fries in the same bag / Il n'a pas toutes ses frites dans le même sachet
Meaning that he's/she's dumb or confused :D
Similar to "He's one can short of a six pack"
I love this one, reminded me of a similar insult in Chilean Spanish: "Le faltan palos pal puente" (he's a few sticks short for a bridge)
Word: Muji
In Devnagari (Nepali): मुजी
Meaning: A woman's pubic hair
In sentence: तँ मुजीको गाला फुट्नेगरी पड्काउॅछु।
Translation: I'll slap the living crap out of you muji.
Makes me look at this differently now
Not my native language but the German language has some pretty fantastic words/insults like "punchable face" (backpfeifengesicht) and "brain denier" (gehirnverweigerer).
"Dich soll der Blitz beim Scheißen treffen!"
May lightning strike you while you shit. One of my personal favourites.
Not really an insult but:
"Hänellä ei taida olla kaikki muumit laaksossa"
"They don't seem to have all moomin in the valley"
When someone is talking crazy, etc
"Enculeur de poules mortes" which basically means dead chicken fucker. It's translatable but sounds so much better in french.
Something about how fancy French sounds, juxtaposed with how vulgar the insult is, that makes it stick.
Like a guy in a tuxedo, but with his junk out
In English it's more like a guy at Walmart in sweatpants with his junk out; not that shocking
I’m a native English speaker so I can’t really contribute much to this post, but I remember watching a hidden camera prank show in the 90s, and the victim of the prank started yelling at the guy who pranked him. Unfortunately, I don’t know what language the show was in.
The TV show translated the insults he used and put it in the subtitles… and one of the insults was “curse the pig who delivered you”.
It probably sounded fine in his language but I remember thinking how oddly specific and personal to insult the midwife who helped your mother give birth to you lol.
Maybe there’s someone here who can recognise what phrase and language was used here?
It sounds like something they would say in Arabic. Arabs have the best insults.
When a man balds at a young age, we say 'they were still shaving his mom when he was born'
Pretty brutal, eh ?
I dont get it.
They shaved the private parts of women before giving birth back then. (Maybe it's still a thing somewhere today, I don't know.)
Du hast doch nicht alle Tassen im Schrank - German, you don't have all your cups in the drawer.
Telling someone he is stupid via comparison to cups. Why? Who knows.
It's like saying somebody is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
My favorite way to say that somebody is stupid is to say "Er ist dumm wie drei Meter Feldweg", translates to "he's as dumb as three meters (a bit more than 9 yards) of dirt road".
Reminds me of ones like "You're one fry short of a Happy Meal", or "You've lost some marbles". They generally imply that you've lost or are missing some mental faculties.
Heard one: Your mother has a penis and your father is jealous of it.
"Te falta una patata para el kilo" (in Spanish)
English: "You're missing one potato for the kilo."
When you want to call someone a fool or an idiot, you question if they're in their right mind, if they use their head before speaking or doing something.
"I piss in your mother's death"
Alternatively, "May Stalin fuck you"
And yes, I live in Eastern Europe.
"mange tes morts" in french, can be translated to "eat your deads" which is like go fuck yourself
German: "Du Lappen"
Translates to "You rag", pretty much calling someone a loser or idiot.
Gea mor net af die Kondl. "Don't step on my milk jug". You're annoying me and you better shut up or go away.
Konnsch mor in Buggl oirutschn. "You can slide down my back". I don't give a fuck.
German dialect from Tyrol.
Calling a male a "nephew" in Chinese 契弟 kai dai is calling them a male prostitute.
Usually it doesn't mean target male has actually been used sexually, but commonly used for general belittlement.
This term comes from ancient times: Traveling businessmen who would take a young boy with them for sexual use, but if anyone on the road or destination asked who the boy was, the business man would euphemistically explain "He's my nephew"
契弟 kai dai is commonly translated as "nephew" but it means "adopted brother"
Probably "sluta vara en så lagom rolig person". It isn't directly an insult. However, it's not something you would love to hear. It translates to "stop being a person who has the just right amount of fun".
Another thing my friends say when they are med is: "Din jävla ångvält!" which translates to "You fucking steamroller!".
It just sounds much better in Swedish.
Oh, I've several. Irish people love a good curse.
Go mbrise an diabhal do dhá chois May the devil break your legs
Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire do chnámh do dhroma May the devil make a ladder out of your spine
Go n-imí an droch aimsir leat That the bad weather leaves with you
Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat May the cat eat you and may the devil eat the cat
And my personal favourite: Lá breá ag do chairde, dod adhlacadh May your friends have a fine day, burying you
Altough it's more like a "gypsy curse", but there's one that translates to sth like "I wish you'll having ten rings but none fingers"
Not that it’s untranslatable, but I enjoy it quite a lot.
Поцілуй бузька в калатало - go kiss a stork on the knocker.
If you ever heard storks, you’ll recognize the dismissiveness of this statement.
"Ge zijt a foorwijf"
You are a fair removed. People working the carnival / fair scene don't have the best of reputation. In Belgium we had a song about this phenomenon and the real fair people were all kinds of angry about the stereotype. The thing is about stereotypes: it really has a base in reality.
GIJ SE LILLEK FOOORWAAAF, GIJ SE LILLEK FOORWAAF!
Brazilian portuguese tends to lack impactful phrases, but is full of single curse words. A big portion of them a clear example of how much negative bias there is culturally against certain groups (gay men, women in general, disabled), unfortunately :/
One that isn't often used, but that I almost always laugh loud whenever I hear, is "Enfia uma dentadura no cu e sorria pro caralho", which roughly translates into "Stick a denture up your asshole and smile at the dick". For when simply saying "go fuck yourself" isn't enough.
If you want to say that you don't care about something (as in: "I don't give a fuck"), in Serbian you would say: "My dick hurts". And that's an expression you'll hear almost daily. A less used variant of that, but still legit is: "My balls are beeping".
While not insulting, I'll throw in our way to say: "I'm/You're fucked". It's: "Jebao sam/si ježa u leđa", which means: "I/You fucked a hedgehog in the back"
Brilliant lol
Another one from there. Sranje kroz gusto granje meaning shitting through a dense bush. You say that when something is really fucked and it rhymes.
Haha, we have a similar one in Spanish. "Me suda la polla" means "My cock sweats", and it means the same thing, "I don't give a damn".
That's not exact:
And in the theme of insults from Spain, a loaded one is also: Me cago en tu puta madre = I shit on your fucking mother / I shit on your removed mother
See, the thing with "puta/puto" is that it literally means "removed", but it's used to empathize cursings just like "fucking" is used in english. We're even misusing it by putting it before verbs, imitating it's use in english.
See, the thing with "puta/puto" is that it literally means "removed", but it's used to empathize cursings just like "fucking" is used in english. We're even misusing it by putting it before verbs, imitating it's use in english.
I think the Polish word 'kurwa' is coincidentally similar.
Nawab from Pleymo taught me the last one.
Me cago en tus muertos = I shit on your ancestors / I shit on your dead relatives. Me cago en todos tus muertos = I shit on all of your ancestors / I shit on all of your dead relatives.
I've found this one even stronger and more insulting: Me cago en la sangre de tus muertos = I shit in the blood of your dead relatives
French Canadian here
All of our swear words are Catholic church vocabulary words. As a never Catholic I always find them hilarious when I say them. They can basically be used as stand-ins for words in the same way as we use “fuck” in English or strung together.
“Saint Ciboire” was my grandmother’s favorite when I would fuck something up.
baptême [ba.tae̯m]: "baptism"
câlice [kɑːlɪs] (calice): "chalice"
ciboire [si.bwɑːʁ]: "ciborium" or "pyx", receptacles in which the host is stored
criss [kʁɪs] (Christ): "Christ", or crisser, a more emphatic version of sacrer, both verbs meaning "to curse"
esti [əs.t͡si], [ɛs.t͡si] or ostie [ɔs.t͡si] (hostie): "host [cookie]"
maudit [moːd͡zi] (m) or maudite [moːd͡zit] (f): "damned" (or "damn")
sacrament [sa.kʁa.mã] (sacrement): "Sacrament"
saint [sẽ]: "Saint", added before others (ex. saint-simonaque, saint-sacrament, etc.)
simonaque [si.mɔ.nak] (simoniaque): from the sin of simony
tabarnak [ta.baʁ.nak] (tabernacle): "tabernacle"; typically considered the most profane of the sacres
viarge [vjaʁʒ] (vierge): "the Virgin Mary"
Moïse: Moses
Qui dit Moïse?
Ma grand-mère de 80-quelque me l'a déjà sorti les quelques fois où je l'ai vue vraiment fâchée. C'est un peu désuet comme usage je crois, mais ça existe définitivement.