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I've also noticed that in places where curse words are meant to be harsh, English words are used, for example when a bully calls Liesel a "whore." Is this word supposed to have more impact because it's in English? Are the German curse words supposed to sound funny to an English speaking audience because we don't know what they mean? It seems very ironic to me that a mother is cursing so much at her child in a book whose main theme is the impact of words.Īre there any fluent German speakers who could shed some light on this? Does Rosa come off as more abusive to a native German speaker? What if these words were replaced with an appropriate English translation (b***h)? I feel as though the author wants me to believe she's really lovable deep down, but it's hard for me to believe while she's cursing at her own child and beating her with a spoon. I've looked around a little on the internet and some people seem to say these German words are very harsh, yet others have said that they're sometimes used jokingly. My question is, are these words that a mother in Germany would commonly be using for her own daughter or her husband? Would these words be used by children? Are these words equivalent to the English b***h and b*****d, or maybe not as bad? I understand that saumensch = female pig and saukerl = male pig. There are a lot of curse words in The Book Thief, and I've been thinking a lot particularly about the name Rosa uses for Liesel, Saumensch.