“You swear too much,” my beloved frowns once again. “What other advantage does this language give me?!” I complain. “Croatian beats English only in swearing,” I add after some reflection. “Hey,” I brighten up a moment later, “that’s theory already!” My beloved is not impressed by my linguistic argument. “You swear too much, “ she repeats with conviction. “Ah,” I conclude, “what the fuck.” When it comes to swearing, Croatian beats English by a wide margin, indeed. “The price to pay,” I mumble as if to myself.

Addendum (August 18, 2016)

This argument holds not only for Croatian, it goes without saying. A wide variety of swears is the same across the Balkan peninsula, where Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian or BCS is spoken (“BCS,” January 11, 2012). Many of these swears revolve around your mother’s cunt, but quite a few of them have to do with your prick, too. And these two words are a joy to pronounce with gusto. Indeed, both pička and kurac sound outright juicy in BCS. By comparison, “cunt” and “prick” or “dick” sound kind of lame in English. Which only goes to show that it will be far from easy for me to stop swearing in my mother’s tongue. For all its glory, my elective tongue has its weak spots. When it comes to swearing, fuck English.