In Armenian culture, cursing is extremely taboo and not tolerated, and maybe the best evidence of this is the fact that Armenian doesn't have very many curse words. And of the ones it does have, more than half of them come from other languages. Generally speaking, profanity in Armenian culture is associated with the lowest, most uneducated, uncultured people. The stereotypical caricature for this would be your typical 40-something year old goxakan man who has poor sexual morals, doesn't know responsibility, and has aggressive tendencies. Indeed the general rule in Armenian culture is that cursing is only for men, and men should never do it front of women, children, or elders. I do wonder though... will attitudes towards cursing change in the coming decades?
I think it's fairly hard to ignore that Armenian culture is becoming more western and liberal by the day. People, particularly younger generations, are abandoning the old shame-based mentality surroundings things like sex, other people's opinions about their life choices, and so many other things. So I wonder, will cultural attitudes towards profanity change, too? Could Armenian become like most languages and have "casual cursing?" I honestly think this might be the case. I already hear people casually throwing English curse words like "fuck" into their Armenian sentences, signifying that people don't care as much as they used to about profanity. Now obviously curse words in a foreign language are not going to be as strong as ones in your native language (especially Armenian), but I think it says something about changing attitudes. As for Armenian, I think if more educated and classy people start to throw an occasional քունած into the mix, it'll soften people's feelings and weaken the view that cursing is something only uncultured people do. I usually find Armenian profanity really disgusting and vulgar because I associate it with people who often lack decency, but when a mature and shnorhqov person says an expletive it adds a nice little artistic effect. And given the overall trend of society becoming more open and relaxed, I could see this trend catching on, as hard as it might be to believe now.
What do you think? Will Armenian cultural attitudes around cursing become more relaxed in coming years? Why or why not?
