Irredeemably bad language

Here’s a brief list of words and phrases used by Spanish-speaking sexists to praise men to the skies and to remind women that their place is in the gutter. I haven’t yet encountered a language so permeated by hate that I couldn’t contemplate using it (with the possible exception of Visual Basic). Ludwig Kabanow was, however, convinced about German:

This kind of confusion is still common in parts of Spain where the revolting trinity of blood, soil and language still has a hold, but, although there’s not much of a tradition, it is of course possible to hold liberal convictions and express them in Basque. This morning I read bits of Antony Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945 (). One of the strange, strange novelties for me was it was the survivors of the French and Scandinavian SS divisions who fought their way to the heart of Mr Kabanow’s home town, Berlin, to defend the empire to the last, while the leadership headed the other way and the Wehrmacht jeered.

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Comments

1. languagehat.com sez:
   16 May 2004 at 4:10 PM RENOUNCING ONE’S LANGUAGE.
   Ludwig Kabanow from Berlin was so upset by a visit to a concentration camp near Gdansk, Poland, that he threw away his passport and said he did not want to speak German again. This story comes to us courtesy of…

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