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Book Review: Uglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit — Untranslatable insults, put-downs and curses from a

by Benjamin LeongUglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit falls unashamedly into the category of Books To Be Read On The Toilet, to fit behind the loo paper next to Crap Towns and Where’s Wally. Dr Robert Vanderplank has sifted through over forty languages in the hunt to find the planet’s most colourful insults, and compiled the best ones for our enjoyment. From the delightful “You’ll eat a turd before I will” of Ancient Greece to Japanese children’s favourite “Your mother’s navel is an outie!”, one is astounded at the extraordinarily diverse and expressive ways in which the various peoples of the world have found to insult one another.

Blasphemy is taken to the limit with the Catalan curse “I shit on God, on the cross, on the carpenter who made it and the son of a whore who planted the pine”, while the Igbo communties of West Africa opt for the amusingly specific “May you die of uncontrollable running stomach”. What insults and curses tell us about a culture is undoubtedly a wide ranging and fascinating question, but one which Vanderplank does not answer in sufficient depth. The most interesting bits of the book are where the author gives analysis of the culture behind a language’s insults. Who could fail to be captivated by the knowledge that in the topsy-turvy world of Italian politics, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was frequently derided as ‘Premier Pinochio’ for his lies and outsized nose? Or that in Spain, while the equivalents of ‘cunt’ and ‘fuck’ are not particularly offensive, a mere joke about someone’s mother might spark off a brawl? Unfortunately these sections are all too brief. The dictionary-style entries which make up most of the book can too often be mundane. Learning how to say ‘bastard’ and ‘fuck’ in other languages may have been fun in Year 9, but it fails to excite now. We also get the sensation of an academic uncomfortable about writing in an informal, chatty style. When Vanderplank quotes NWA’s ‘Fuck Tha Police’, for example, it is impossible not to feel a twinge of embarrassment. It’s like your tutor turning up in Converse and skinny jeans. However, despite these drawbacks, it will provide a pleasant diversion for those spare five minutes and will equip you with an arsenal for insulting your mates in new and ingenious ways.

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