On 2012-07-09 14:42, Claude Almansi wrote:
> Have kids gone completely clean-mouthed since?

My 14 y/o son currently revels in *English* foul
language learnt from games and movies, mostly without
any feeling for the nuances of foulness. Trying to stop
him of course only encourages him -- predictable at
that age! :-) Luckily he is aware that it's a kind of
game, particularly as it includes imitating various
English accents.  He's mean at imitating both Swedish
and English accents.

His half-brothers are 13 years older than him, so he
naturally learned Swedish foul language quite early,
mostly without knowing the 'literal' meanings. At the
age of three he one day at story reading time shouted
the equivalent of "Move over, you bugger!" at a little
girl. The teachers had a talk with me after that, but
they knew that he had two teenage brothers, so they
were mostly amused.

My own mother was rather strict, and I went to a
kindergarten for disabled children, so I was
essentially ignorant until I first attended an ordinary
school at age 9, except for what I heard during summer
leave from my three years older cousin, when we were
left unattended by our grandmother. I soon got up to
par both linguistically and in terms of knowledge of
reproductive mechanics. My mother still likes to tell
the story of the day when I called everything _fitta_
"cunt", and she didn't know the word because Swedish is
not her L1. When my father got home we were both
informed about the inappropriateness of the word.
My mother was also informed about its meaning, of
which I apparently remained ignorant for the time
being! :-) BTW my mother manages to tell the story
without actually uttering the word in question. When I
again got into a 'special' school some months later I
was considered a problem because of being so
foul-mouthed.

In my experience from both myself and my (step)kids
children, and especially boys, learn not only foul
language and adult knowledge but also slang and local
dialect in the schoolyard and playground. Short of
making sure that overprotected children only interact
with other overprotected children adults probably never
have stood and never will stand a chance of controling
these things in a long run. As parents we have put the
effort into making our kids understand that foul
language is foul and why, and to monitor their use and
non-use thereof, but honestly I believe that most
youngsters would pick up that too without parental
intervention. There's no education more effective than
peer-pressure!

/bpj