How Transparent Language Handles Teaching Language Learners Everything They Need to Know. And We Mean Everything.

Profanity.  It’s a fact of everyday life, the preferred method of self-expression amongst teenagers, and the secret longing of most foreign language students. Almost as soon as the basics of numbers and greetings are learned, like clockwork, learners start to ask the age-old question: “How do I say [insert expletive] in [insert foreign language]?”

For companies in the business of teaching language, this is a difficult topic. While a certain degree of profanity is certainly valuable (imagine being a non-native English speaker just trying to navigate an average conversation amongst English-speaking friends), it’s typically not a topic to which teachers or parents want students exposed.  Yet they certainly will be should they travel to a foreign country and attempt to speak the language in a native setting, and it’s undoubtedly part of the larger step from basic language learning to idiomatic language expression. For those ultimately responsible, the question is inevitably one of boundaries: how does a language company whose job it is to equip learners with all the tools they need to master a language not teach usage of terms as prevalent as curse words? For us, it’s all part of what it really means to know a language.

Transparent Language believes in teaching real-world language. As a leading provider of language-learning solutions for the government, military, education, library, and consumer markets, we believes that the purpose of learning a language is to actually use that language, and in order to be able to use language in a real, natural context, there are certain categories that are beneficial to know, regardless of their sensitivity.

In line with this belief, Transparent Language strives to move beyond the basic materials covered in textbooks by providing learners with a plethora of supplemental learning materials, in addition to our online language courses and live language instruction. Language and culture blogs, authored by a team of native speakers, educators, and other language learners, provide a platform in which more controversial or sensitive topics can be discussed.

For example, in a recent blog post on the Transparent Swedish blog, one of the contributors tackled the subject of profanity in the post “Swedish Swear Words.” In addition to sharing common Swedish expletives, the author discussed the important cultural differences associated with using profanity in America versus that in Sweden.  While the “F-word” is one of the most notorious swear words in the United States, in Sweden, the term is literally child’s play (FYI: the four worst swear words in Sweden all have ties to religion).  A reader corroborated the post with this observation:

“Yup, we had quite the lively discussion about this last summer when I was in Sweden!  We (a group of both Americans and Swedes)were talking about how disconcerting it was for us as Americans to hear a song using the word F*** while walking around in a local grocery store, and how shocking it was to hear 10 year olds using the same word…”

 In addition to language and culture blogs, Transparent Language has also worked to build and foster an online social community of over 2 million friends, fans, and followers across both Facebook and Twitter. By supporting Facebook pages for over 30 languages, Transparent Language makes it possible for learners and language experts to come together and share language outside of the confines of a typical classroom.

Granted, there are some more graphic and vulgar topics we simply won’t teach you, but we do believe that if instructors avoid the topic altogether, important cultural information of this kind is lost to the language learner.  So if you’re curious to know an appropriate expletive for when you slammed your fingers in a door, chances are, someone in a Transparent Language community will be able to help you.