Swearing can be one hard habit to break. In some families, it’s common and OK. Saying a bad word might happen every day. But in others, it’s totally taboo. Using language that’s considered rude can result in serious punishment, like getting one’s mouth washed out with soap.
And what about swearing around children? Should you try not to have a potty mouth around kids, or are they going to learn it at school anyway? Most parents at least try to follow etiquette when young people are present. Some people find that just being around children causes them to stop cussing, but others really have to concentrate.
Find out how Marni feels about using bad language around her child and Lily’s ideas about one way the problem can be handled.
Marni: I was just walking down the street. And there was this woman just letting out the f-bombs. Just letting them fly. She just had the worst potty mouth! You know, now that I’m a parent, I am really trying not to swear around my child. It is just bad news. I feel like it’s totally not OK. There needs to be more etiquette around swearing.
Lily: It’s odd to me that it’s kind of taboo in our culture to curse around kids. I heard swear words at my elementary school among the kids. It was just part of the slang. It was actually kind of exciting when someone said a bad word. You know what I mean?
Marni: Oh my goodness, but you would get them in trouble. That’s what happened to me. Whenever I said a bad word, I would just be so afraid that my mom would wash my mouth out with soap, because that was the punishment I would get if I ever said a bad word. And I think we just need to have some more decorum, be better spoken. Bad words should not be socially accepted.
Lily: Let’s concentrate on vocabulary instead of slang. How about that? Instead of outlawing swear words, try augmenting your vocabulary.
Marni: All right, I will work on that, and I will also make my goal of not swearing.
Lily: Right on.
Marni was shocked to hear a woman swearing loudly in public. Now that she’s a mom, Marni’s trying to stop swearing around her child. She thinks that using bad language is not OK, and she wishes more people would stop.
Lily’s surprised that swearing is such a big deal. She heard bad words all the time when she was growing up… in fact, it was kind of exciting when a friend was brave enough to use one. It doesn’t sound like Lily’s into the idea of outlawing swearing, but she is in favor of everyone learning more vocabulary. To Lily, if we knew more words to express ourselves, we might swear a lot less.
Do you agree? Would people swear less if they knew more vocabulary? Or is Marni right, and we should just concentrate on using more polite language?
Past Progressive Tense
Marni tells Lily that she “was just walking down the street” when she heard a woman swearing. Marni uses past progressive tense.
The past progressive tense (also sometimes called “past continuous”) is formed by using was/were + main verb + ing, as in, “We were eating dinner when the phone rang.”
We use the past progressive tense to talk about actions that were already in progress when another action took place in the past. (At the moment the phone rang, we were already in the process of eating dinner.)
It’s also common to use this tense to talk about two on-going actions that were happening simultaneously in the past, as in, “While Axl Rose was finishing his new album, his fans were waiting anxiously for it to come out.”
Finally, we can also use this tense to talk about actions in the past that took place over time, as in, “I couldn’t sleep last night because dogs were barking the whole night.” Or in Marni’s case, she overheard the swearing woman while she was walking down the street.
Which is correct, “They were washing the dishes when it started to snow,” or, “They are washing the dishes when it started to snow”?