Mother of mine

Most languages about which I know anything seem to take their swearwords from two main areas of the human experience, the religious or the sexual and lavatorial. 

Depending on the language, one is regarded as less acceptable than the other. In French, for instance, the word ‘merde’ has become so mild that it can be used by the most proper of proper ladies from districts of Paris perceived as the best (which, as in most cities, means the most expensive). And yet the word literally refers to a malodorous substance we generally try to consign to sewers, and the equivalent term in English is regarded as definitely vulgar.

On the other hand, the French generally avoid terms related to the religious experience. I’ve heard ‘Bon Dieu’, literally ‘Good God’, but ‘hell’ or ‘Jesus’, for instance, simply aren’t used as they are in English.

Funnily enough, French Canadians do have some choice swearwords related to the faith, though they seem to be associated more with the ritual than with key figures of their religion. ‘Hostie’ is a communion wafer, and ‘tabernacle’ is, well, a tabernacle. Maybe feeling so easy with blasphemy is an effect of rubbing shoulders with the English for so long, or maybe it merely reflects the separate development of a colonial settlement long separated from the mother country.

The Spanish seem to be closer to the English in their swearing than to the French. Blasphemy is mild, the rest stronger and to be avoided. ‘Joder’ refers to an act that multiplies the human race, and ‘jodido’ means that this act has been inflicted on the speaker, though without generating much pleasure.

The word is one that rings around the courts where we play badminton. It may be that sport brings out the stronger terms in swearing and, of course, badminton is an exasperating game, especially on missing an easy shot. The player may be correctly placed to play the shot, has the racket well positioned, knows exactly what stroke to play, and then somehow screws it up. Well, joder!

In a calmer environment, where the general feeling is that the proprieties need to be more fully respected, swearers will tend to use something more blasphemous. The Spanish, like the French Canadians, have ‘hostias’, again a reference to those inoffensive little wafers. But the one I like the most is ‘madre mía’.

Literally that means ‘my mother’. But it isn’t in fact referring to the speaker’s biological mother. Rather, it’s an appeal to a far more universal mother, the one who gave birth to Jesus, the virgin Mary. Still, to a mere foreigner like me, it sounds like an appeal to an earthly mother.

This became particularly relevant when we had a Spanish group around to lunch. It was a highly successful event, as one of our guests pointed out: in his view, “a lunch that lasts from 2:00 till 9:00 and still feels short has to have been a success”. 

Aftermath of the seven-hour lunch
Please note the fruit salad. Yes, we’re health conscious

That friend and his wife came out to our place outside Valencia, from the city itself, by metro. Our local station is splendidly picturesque, since it’s right in the middle of the woods; at night the arrival of the brightly lit train into the patch of softer light formed by the station, surrounded by the dark pines, is a sight to behold. Especially as, in their case, we cut it a little fine to get to their train home. We ended having to pelt down uneven paths and run across the tracks as the train bore down on us. That’s especially exciting since it doesn’t stop at the station unless you flag it down. So it was literally bearing us down until we waved frantically.

Our local, rather special, metro station

A seven-hour lunch tends to attract a fair amount of lubrication, and we certainly emptied more bottles than is our wont. My Spanish is still far from adequate, but I’m glad to say that I can now pick up certain nuances of tone. So when one of our guests, the friend I quoted before, reacted to my leaving the table to fetch yet another bottle of wine by saying “oh, no, don’t open another bottle”, I was able to interpret the tone in which he said it correctly. He had no intention of preventing me fetching the next bottle.

Even more amusing, however, was the guest on the other side of me. She was unusual among Spaniards in being soft spoken and even relatively quiet. I hope this won’t offend any of my Spanish friends, but I think most would agree that ‘soft spoken’ and ‘quiet’ are not terms frequently applied to their compatriots.

However, quiet though she was, there was one expression she kept repeating. We’d open another bottle of wine. “Madre mía,” she’d say. We’d top up her glass. “Madre mía”. We switched to something a little stronger. “Madre mía.”

These repeated appeals to the mother amused me. Not just because the refrain was quite funny itself. But above all because her own mother was sitting next to her, another of our guests. 

But that was only amusing to someone like me. As an outsider who doesn’t use the expression himself, I’m not instinctively attuned to what it really means. I still respond to it as meaning what it literally says.

“Mother of mine” she seemed to be saying. With her mother next to her. That’s the kind of oddity I treasure.

It only added to my enjoyment of our lunch.