When my brother and I were little I remember hearing mom say, "Ekuso!" when she'd made a mistake or hurt herself. I asked her then what it meant and she gave some vague answer that translated to shucks.
(This is a photo of her that they printed in the paper where she worked to advertise Ajinomoto.)
Well... this was a long time ago and I actually haven't heard her use that word anymore.
With the rise of Internet, I was curious and looked up that mysterious word several years ago.
Imagine my surprise to discover that kuso means shit. It's a swear word! My dignified mother was saying, "Shit!"
What the heck!
Sooooo.... on the way to her Monday Adult Day Care, I asked her what Ekuso meant just to see if she'd fess up to having used it. 🙄
She said she didn't know.
Uh hunh.... 😏
"You used to say it when we were little," I persisted.
"No, I didn't." she answered.
"Well, I looked it up on the Internet," I told her. "I know it means shit."
Silence...
"It's not Ekuso. It's Eii kuso." she finally answered.
Riiiighhhtt...
I looked it up again. Turns out kuso means shit. So I don't exactly know what the deal is between the E or the Ei.
Whatever the case, I even found the definition on Wikipedia. Tsk. Such a bad word!
I told mom I was going to write a blog post about this and she burst out laughing.
Your mother is so cute!!
ReplyDeleteThat’s cute — from beginning to end.
ReplyDelete🤣That is just so funny! We are all only human after all.
ReplyDeleteShe still looks very much the same. And that is a word I never thought she would say! :-)
ReplyDeleteHow cute :-)
ReplyDeleteYour mom is beautiful. It's interesting that the expletive is used in other cultures. My granddaughters think damn, crap, stupid are bad words! Is the substitute word for an expletive just as bad?
ReplyDeleteYou have very good granddaughters, Mona. :-)
DeleteHa ha -- swearing always sounds better in a different language!
ReplyDeleteI can now say that word in four languages! I'm becoming a multilingual cusser!
ReplyDeletehahaha
ReplyDeleteI bet she had good reason to swear when she was younger - raising children is tough work! She's a marvel though!
ReplyDeleteShe was and still is so pretty. That face couldn't possible swear. How funny that she finally fessed up but no longer says it. Guess you quit giving her reasons to use it:)
ReplyDeleteLin says how funny I don't remember my mom swearing either but I was a perfect only child...lol!
ReplyDeleteyour mom even makes shit sound cute!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a Harry Potter spell 💩
ReplyDeleteShe makes great blog posts!
ReplyDeleteThis is really fun! What a fun family!
ReplyDeleteOne can't imagine their mother cursing.
ReplyDeleteYour mom is adorable! My dad grew up in a mining town and knew lots of swear words in numerous languages--mostly Eastern European ones. He would never teach me any in Croatian! Mom only knew insults in Italian; she still describes some people as having "faces of horse."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad she's laughing. That means you are not in trouble.
ReplyDeleteMy mom call brother kuso bozu. It was a term of endearment. I learned swearing from samurai shows. Chikuso? Caption said damn. I told my mom umai and she was upset --learned it from Soko Ga Shiritai. She said only men use that term. Oops. In her later years, if she was super super mad she would literally spit out the word shit. But no swearing in our house growing up.
ReplyDeleteOops it's me BB above
DeleteThis is so hilarious. I did kind of figure it was you, BB. :-) I asked mom about 'chikuso' and she said it's 'chikusho' and not a nice word to call anybody. (Hey! I looked up the meaning online and it translated to 'shit.' What the heck!)
DeleteI think lots of Hawaii people use umai. Mom says it's a term men use. Women are supposed to say oishi. I think I wrote long ago where I worked for an all male Japanese travel agency in Waikiki. The guys were leaving for lunch and said, "Meshi o kui ni iku yo." When someone came in and asked where they were, I said, "Meshi of kui ni ikimashita." I remember the guy looking aghast at me. So I called mom and asked what I said wrong. There was silence on the line and then she said that was very bad. She said only bar girls talked that way because I was using the male language structure instead of a female. I was supposed to say, "Gohan o tabeni ikimashita." OK... so I guess I didn't work there the following summer of my college years.
This is so sweet! My mom had no go to swear words. My dad's was hell's bells!
ReplyDeleteThis language lesson is cute. Your Mom's photo is just beautiful, and she has kept that look in her older years. I hated taking French in school because I couldn't figure out why inanimate objects had to be male or female. The Le and La were confusing to me. Sounds like cussing is supposed to be declared for men or women. Maybe if your Mom cussed more in her later years, in any language, you would know when she hurt herself sooner than later.
ReplyDeleteSupposedly one naughty word exists because there wasn't enough population increase at one time in another country, so the King encouraged it with "Fornication Upon Command of the King." Probably worked for the census. I learned from a dear Korean era Army Air Corp veteran than the common word for a mix up or mistake of being a SNAFU, is military short for "Situation Normal, All F***** Up, because some parts of the military were always messed up.
Mom's Japanese cussing sounds nicer.
My Mom used Hell's Bells sometimes. My Dad would just say nothing and shake his head in disgust.
Linda in Kansas
Art served in the Air Force for 6 years so he knew what SNAFU meant. There's also FIGMO which he told me before was F It Got My Orders. I've heard Hell's Bells before. I think it's awfully cute. Your dad is cute too. Art had some kind of look which the kids somehow knew meant he was disgusted or angry. (I remember the kids saying..."See, Dad is mad." And yet, he didn't say anything.) I was surprised that the F word has been around for a long time.
DeleteAdorable post about your mom swearing and your figuring it out many years later! 🤗
ReplyDeleteAwww... Hi Carole. Thank you for checking in. I always love hearing from my dear teacher buddy.
DeleteThose are the kinds of things that come out when everybody has aged many years.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny!
ReplyDeleteI think she's great!
ReplyDelete