US Profanity < Danish Profanity

Every Friday night, I watch X-Factor with my host family. It's basically the Danish American Idol, except that the judges aren't mean - but yes, the judging panel does still consist of a black guy, a crazy woman, and a snide old man.  And instead of Ryan Seacrest, the host is some woman who wears absolutely ridiculous clothes, which always make for good conversation. My favorite part about this show, however, is that fact that every single song is sung in English. One episode the theme was "Danish composears" and some girl still sung in English, because that's the way the Danish band wrote the song. As it turns out, there's one more thing in the show that is in English - the supportive signs that the fans wave around. One in particular caught my eye, numerous times, as it turns out, since the camera kept going back to it. It said, and I quote, "Mohammed, you're the F*CKING GREATEST!!!" With one exception - the whole word was written there, and it wasn't censored at all. Clearly, the Danes don't quite understand that that's really the worst curse word us English speakers have got.

Here's another one of my favorite examples of the differences

 in the acceptability of "profanity" between the US and Denmark. This ad was posted on the sides of bus stops for around 3 weeks. It's seemingly short stay wasn't due to some angry groups demanding that it be taken down - that's just how long ads stay around before they get rotated to something else. I got a good chuckle every time I passed one for about 3 weeks, and I'm glad I managed to take a picture of it before they all got taken down.

I also frequently hear Danish teenagers cursing at each other in English, but that's to be expected of the little drinking-cases-of beer-on-trains, pants-tucked-into-socks hooligans, really.

To be honest, I expected to have way more to put on here than I actually did. The two things I wanted to say probably weren't worth a whole entry ...