We Kiwis are known for shooting it straight, but quite often we’ll do it with some colourful language.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed by a Kiwi who’s been living overseas. @Dan_Kuroko took to Reddit to ask: “Is it just me thinking this or do Kiwis swear A LOT?”
“I've been living overseas for a number of years now (probably close to 10, mostly around Asia and the US), and it's only since I started visiting more often that I've noticed how much Kiwis swear,” Dan wrote.
“For example, when we're describing something, we always have to say f***ing in front of it - "that's f***ing cool, that was f***ing wild, f***ing hell.”
He followed up his post wondering whether he’s imagining things, and while I’ve never really thought about it, he might be f***ing right, ya know.
Turns out, we’re all pretty aware of it, with one commenter writing: “Yes we do, I tailor my sentences accordingly to who's in the room though, but yeah, I do use them a lot during the day.”
"I profusely swear and I'm usually completely oblivious to it,” another said. “Fkn is my word for umm."
“Shit, I f****ing love peppering my sentences with spicy words when I'm with my good c****s,” a third proudly embraced it.
For some, swearing adds a bit of flavour. “Swearing is the delicious hokey pokey in the bland vanilla ice cream of modern language,” one person said.
Another agreed: "At this point, they're not really swear words anymore but more of a sentence enhancer."
“Sometimes they're not even enhancers, just stand-ins for regular words,” added a third. “Like ‘shit’ will often just mean ‘stuff’, like ‘Put your shit over there’ or ‘Did you remember to get the shit to make dip while you were out?’”
A fourth made a point of questioning: “Is it that New Zealanders swear a lot, or that Americans don’t swear very much? 🤔”
“They’re just words, why bother getting upset by it?” Another asked.
Will we stop? Probably not… but hey, we love a self-aware bunch, and we’re bloody owning it.
