Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Mofo

I’ve been wanting to teach my students more slang this week. But it can be a little awkward when you have to explain certain terms.

“Motherfucker is a very very bad word,” I said today. “Motherfucker means someone who is very unpleasant. Someone you don’t like.”

That was about the extent to which I would define this particular dirty word. Short and sweet.

This all came up after I showed my students a clip from the movie Predator. “Your one ugly motherfucker,” Arnold Schwarzenegger mutters upon seeing the alien’s face for the first time.

There’s a lot of swear words in American movies, and so I thought I mine as well explain what this one meant. (I’m not sure how the school would feel about this). But I noticed my students seemed a little shocked that I was taking the time to describe its meaning, rather than just skip the dirty word.

“So if you use this word, make sure you are very careful,” I said. “It’s a very very bad word,” I reiterated.

Normally, when teaching a new word to my student, I’ll ask the class to say the word out loud together, so as to refine their pronunciation.

But this time, I decided to skip doing that. Still, I could hear at least one student working on its pronunciation.

“Motherfucker,” he said to himself. “Motherfucker.”