Acts of beauty, words of ugliness....

After a (very very exciting and thrilling) experience tonight I got to wondering about one of the things (and there are many) about the English language, and western culture in general... and that is how our attitudes to love and sex are reflected by our language and media... for instance, horrific acts often have very complex latinate words... disembowel, exterminate, annihilate... whereas acts of love between two people, and the parts of the body involved are given names which are ugly sounding to the modern ear.... f**k, s**g, c**t... kiss isn't a bad word, but inject a lot of passion into it, and it becomes a snog, which is hardly the most lovely word.... but most of these words have a long and dignified history.... so why do we give nice experiences ugly names... well, strangely, I don't believe there is such a thing as an ugly word.... only words that our culture has taught us to think ugly.... look to the history of Britain... in 1066 England became a Norman French domain, as did Scotland and wales.... as one observer has pointed out, at that point animals got a dual nationality... inthe fields, where the peasants looked after them, they were English... cow, sheep, pig.... upon the table, eaten by the Norman lords, they were French..... beef, pork, mutton... but not necessarily in that order.... I think its the same with words.... just as we are led to believe that it is somehow "better" to speak with a south-eastern accent (the lingo of the area where the monarch lives...) so words of a decidedly Saxon or English origin are somehow seen as more "ordinary," simple or vulgar than their latinate and french-derived equivalent... therefore acts of violence, being the reserve of the nobility, have posh, high-faluting names.... whereas the baser acts performed by the peasants rolling in the reek remained English... and as English acts they were frowned upon as "base" and eventually, due to linguistic conditioning, the very words describing the acts became "ugly..." even now, it is deemed fine to show scenes of hatred and violence to children, biut not to show them acts of love between two humans.... sometimes even kissing scenes are thought "not suitable for children..." and this is all down to culture.... beating people up is posh and noble, but a good snog is base and common.... killing is a fine thing... but sex is disgusting.... and personally, I think that we could do with a change in this culture.... not an immediate one of course.. that would be disastrous and disturbing.... but we need to start bringing children up to believe that superheroes fighting each other, and cartoon cats being decapitated is disgusting, but that Marge and Homer having a good snog is something everyone should emulate.... we really do need more love... anyway, on that note I shall leave you, except to mention that despite my description of my ideal woman, it has been pointed out that most of the people on stage and screen whom I seem to fancy are blond.... which just goes to show.... my ideal woman knows who she is, and she's definitely not blonde.... but I digress.... until next time, those who would rather snog than disembowel, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!