Off-topic or not?

Question

Well, I didn't expect my very first question ever on this site to hit the Hot Network questions and in the meantime, I know that the concept of an unspeakable term is foreign to German culture and that is why I accepted the answer rather quickly.

However, I disagree with the opinion-based close reason the question now has, because I've been contacted through IM by various friends on the SE network with a bit more background, and I've been shown German law is quite clear: For educational and historical purposes, any speech is allowed ¹ so I would definitely not call that opinion-based.

And thanks again for everyone giving balanced answers: learning a language is learning more than just a language: It's also learning about the culture!

:-)

_{Note ¹: Which does not mean you should go skipping down the street singing the words in section 3.2.2. Parolen und Grußformen of the law, because that is indeed, Verboten and rightly so as it serves no purpose whatsoever.}

Answer 1

Just voted to re-open that question as it never was "primarily opinion based". That's because what's considered rude or what words should be avoided depends indeed a lot on:

• who you're talking to (e.g., buddies after a few beers, parents, random strangers, your boss)

• the role of the person saying it: politician in Bundestag, company representative, protester at a demo, musician at a rock concert

• the context (as mentioned in some answers): Führer vs Bergführer vs Anführer

And all of the above points can be explained and sourced and referenced. That's then pretty much the opposite of primarily (&personal) opinion based.

If these points spell out "personal opinion" in any given variant of that question to a reader, I would have welcomed the effort to somehow steer the poster into the direction wanted here: Opinions are not off-topic, as long as they are presented as and explained at a certain layer of aggregation and abstraction.

To quote user_unknown from chat:

I'm pretty speechless, how many people think, that not analyzing and describing the language is way to go, but to perform education for the readers. "Don't say this, don't say that."

This was not "What do you think of Seehofer?" but I think it should be read as "What do Germans think of Seehofer's use of language? Are there any surveys or other analytic research into that matter?"

If someone feels offended by this kind of language, why is that so, what are the primary reasons given for that if you asked those offended by it?

Posting just your own opinion might be just a worthless grin of a Sphinx. But collecting, describing, analysing lots of opinions, their prerequisites and consequences etc, that should be science.

One personal opinion I do have about this question just surfaced into my mind: the close-voting and comment behaviour on this site could be greatly improved.

Answer 2

The question was:

Are there any words in German that are never to be used in polite conversation?

I voted to close this question because when you ask 10 people for a list of words that you shouldn't use in polite conversations, you will get 10 very different lists.

I wouldn't put any word on this lists. You can use all words you know when there is a context for it. You can have a very polite conversation with your bosses wife about the word "ficken" (to fuck) when you talk about etymology, and want to tell that ficken, einfügen (to insert) and Fuge (gap) developed from the same root, and that there even was a famous family of bankers from Augsburg in 15^th and 16^th century named Fugger who's name also is related to this word. You can have similar conversation also using other words like scheißen (to shit), which is related to scheiden (separate, divorce), scheitern (to fail, to founder) and even gescheit (clever), you also can talk about the change of the acceptance of the word Neger (previous: negro, now: nigger) within the last century.

Also this text here is a perfect example for a polite conversation where you can use all those words.

But other people might disagree. They might say, you never should use ficken, scheißen, Neger or some other words when talking with your bosses wife.

If you ask 10 different people, you will even get 10 different definitions of what a "polite conversation" might be.

This is exactly what I understand as "primarily opinion-based".

A quote from the description of this closing reason:

... answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

Answer 3

I voted to close that question as "primary opinion based" because what's considered rude or what words should be avoided IMHO depend a lot on:

• who you're talking to (e.g., buddies after a few beers, parents, random strangers, your boss)

• the role of the person saying it: politician in Bundestag, company representative, protester at a demo, musician at a rock concert

• the context (as mentioned in some answers): Führer vs Bergführer vs Anführer

That said, you could argue that the answer would be "no, there are no forbidden words in German", but while technically correct, I'd consider that an oversimplification. Even in the items above people would draw the lines differently: compare Nahles vs Merkel for politicians, your father may have a higher disregard for the word "Scheiße" than mine, and so on.

That all spells "personal opinion" to me, especially in the original question, which was "how offensive are [these words]?"

Answer 4

It is good you brought the issue up. Your question caused a lot of heated discussions and a lot of traffic too, which is goot for the site.

Still, people believe that your question is not a good fit for German Language SE. They closed your question as primarily opinion based with the argument that any list of words would individually differ, and can not be concise.

Nevertheless you received a good answer that refrained from listing such words. This answer shows that to answer your question a list of swear words is not needed. Any such list would not only be opinion based but more so always incomplete. We could never finish it. That is what we defined in our too broad close reason.

If you could narrow down your question to remove all possibly opinion-based concerns and to refrain from asking for a list of such words I am pretty confident that the community will eventually be able to reopen it.