#you don’t like slang you don't like “vulgar” words you don’t love your language. Period.

[maybeitsalivescribbles]

Oh oh!!!!! Can you do prompts about "Language"!!!

Been wanting to write a language related fic for months but can't think of any cool ideas :(

Best regards,

@heroes-villains-side-blog

Ah, apologies for the delay, I’m not always online.

Anyway, let’s see what I can do:

Language

There’s yet another prophecy about doomsday, but it’s encrypted/in an ancient language. Time for Hero to ask for Renowned Linguist’s help once again, aka Villain under their secret identity.

Superhero claims that Citizen’s body language shows that they were lying during their interrogation. They’re not. They just really, really don’t want to be here.

Hero and Villain are the only two who can speak a dying dialect. Reluctantly, this brings them together.

Same idea, but they’re absolute nerds and speak Vulcan or Elvish fluently.

Hero&Sidekick (or Villain&Henchman) share a second language the other team don’t speak. It’s great to yell messages at your ally that your foes can’t understand.

Hero and Villain don’t speak the same language. They need Henchman/Sidekick to be a translator to understand each other. The translation might or might not be accurate.

Villain has captured someone who knows things, but speaks in a language they can’t understand. They use an online translator. Confusion ensues.

Villain has captured someone who knows things, but speaks in a language they can’t understand. They kidnap Sidekick to force them to be a translator. Sidekick tries to communicate with Citizen and find an escape plan together without getting caught.

Villain’s Evil lair has a great gadget able to detect any kind of human voice to detect any intrusion. Shame that Hero speaks ASL, then.

Once captured, Villain has a lot of four-letter words to say about the way the heroes treat them. Hero whumps them into watching their language.

I hope these can be useful to you! (I'll keep your other ask for later.)

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[pikahlua]

ok i am kinda curious about bakugou's linguistics just straight up... how much does he *actually swear* in comparison to just being edgy? i know japanese and swear words are kinda weird. i think "kuso" is the most common thing to come out of his mouth as a 'swear' but that can also just mean like "crap" right? (calling his mother "baba" ig is what im classing as edgy/rude). i guess i'm also asking how accurate is fan perception of his swears per sentence? 😂

Japanese swear words are kinda weird.

So are English swear words though. Which is kind of important to this context.

English-speakers tend to think of swear words in terms of words you're not allowed to say as a child or words that would be censored on the radio/network TV or words that would garner a PG rating in a film. This is a very...Puritan concept. American, western, what-not.

Things don't exactly work like that in all languages. Those rating systems only came into existence in the late 20th century. Words that are extremely rude in one English-speaking country could be considered not so bad in another.

And then there's Japan. (nsfw link: vulgar language (see? even our concepts of "nsfw" can be different))

There's this phenomenon in second-language classes, especially when the students are younger, where people get their hands on a translation dictionary and immediately look up all the swear words. The problem is, what are you actually translating? "Crap" has a literal meaning that can be translated into other languages, but which word has the same vulgar context as the word "crap” in English (you know, as opposed to the word "poop")?

I haven’t lived in Japan for an extended period of time, so I can’t speak to this, but I don’t get the impression that there’s as big an obsession over there with swear words. That is, I don’t know how common it is for people to be punished for using a particular word because of its vulgar meaning. It’s faaaaar ruder to speak to someone with a rude speech pattern than to say a vulgar word.

So the first answer to your question is that Bakugou does swear. He says “kuso” a lot. But honestly, I’m trying to think of words in Japanese that might count as swear words as you’ve described them...and there aren’t many to begin with.

What you’re considering “edgy/rude” is...a lot closer to what vulgarity actually is in Japanese. You may have heard words like “teme” and “kisama” translated as swear words, but technically these are all just words that mean “you” with varying degrees of rudeness. The translations you read of these words change them to “bastard” or “asshole” or whatever because you speak English. That’s how they can translate to you the context of what is being said.

So that’s why a lot of Bakugou’s canon lines have vulgarities thrown in occasionally. It’s not that there’s a word being directly translated that means “damn” or “bastard,” it’s that these English words give you a better idea of how he sounds in Japanese. There isn’t a Japanese word for “ain’t,” yet it’s slang that might better capture the tone of a particular line. Things like that.

In a sense, Bakugou does swear every other word. That’s because he may speak a full sentence in a rude grammar pattern. Many of the words in that pattern will be chosen or conjugated to be rude in Japanese.

You know that relatively recent meme where people will be like:

You damn nerd! [affectionate]

I love this meme because honestly this is a lot closer to what Japanese is like. (Maybe that’s the source of the meme? I don’t know.) A lot of Bakugou’s canon speech just comes with a [derogatory] tag, basically.