And in bed, do we get aroused in Catalan?

Barcelona"What the hell do you really want from me?" asks figure skater Shane Hollander to his rival and lover Ilya Rozanov in the popular series More than rivals. — I want you to suck my dick. — Go to hell. You're unbelievable. Suck my dick — he replies angrily, using euphemistic ethnic pronouns.More than rivals It's one of the trendy shows that has forced translator Alba Garcia Ventura to sharpen her skills, commissioned by the production company Dumilieu Media. The Movistar series (subtitled in Catalan) explores the sexual tension between two hockey players and, in doing so, portrays a linguistic tension present in erotic Catalan in film and television: the need to find genuine words for the constant... fuck, Dick and suck that don't sound repetitive, artificial, or comical.

"It's not that Catalan doesn't have its own lexicon for sexual or vulgar language—it does, and it's abundant—but rather that it's a register that hasn't been very normalized in contemporary audiovisual media. This means that many expressions, despite being correct and colloquially accepted, sound less common, and therefore the impact isn't exactly the same as in Spanish or English, where exposure to this type of language is much more constant," explains Garcia. The translator had to weigh up in each case whether to opt for literalness or creativity to convey the intention of the original: "The dilemma was between opting for a more genuine lexicon, which might sound less frequent on screen, or for vulgarisms that, despite having a clear influence from Spanish, seem more immediately natural to part of today's audience."

We have dirty words "It's a topic and it's a lie that we don't talk about parlar brut "In Catalan," confirms Roger Miras, who, along with Laura Boj and Xènia Hernández, all three linguists, hosts the podcast Cardemcat, which won a competition at the University of Barcelona in 2024. To demonstrate this, they have just published a lexicon about sex. Cardem en català (Rosa dels Vents), in which they offer thousands of resources for being both sloppy and normative. For example, they list up to 276 words to say penisand avoid cock"At first you might find it funny, but later you'll get used to saying it." gearbox"," Miras asserts. His goal is to eradicate the word. semen of ordinary language (cum(in English; lleterada, in Catalan). "A dust it's a clau or a sparrowhawk. For twinks (a gay tribe) I liked it a lot moixí And now that's what I use. I think it's simply a matter of using the words we already have, because there's a wide range," argues Xènia Hernández. It's the way for novelty to become habit, and habit to become normalized.

The problem is that the richness of Catalan sexual vocabulary is not widely used. To the general crisis in the use of Catalan is added the taboo surrounding sex and the lack of cultural production in Catalan compared to global languages. It's a vicious cycle: sexual content is consumed in film, pornography, and in the romance in Spanish and English, and, in the pursuit of verisimilitude, some fictional works reproduce this contaminated language. "Sexual slang in Catalan needs to be normalized. And public media, and culture in general, should be educational on this topic. We've normalized dubbing in Spanish but not in Catalan, and this is a matter of mindset. We live in a situation of diglossia and we have to be activists 24/7," says Miras.

It's been more than thirty years since the premiere on TV3 of Reservoir dogs by Quentin Tarantino and his dialogues with Cigales, eines and mecagumdeusBut it remains an unusual register in Catalan audiovisual media. "The most difficult expressions to translate have been the most colloquial and intimate ones," confirms the translator of More than rivals –In the sex scenes, they use direct and descriptive language, with a lot of vulgarisms, and the challenge was to find a Catalan equivalent that maintained that rawness without sounding artificial or overly formal. In some cases, I opted to keep terms like cock either fuckBecause they are colloquially accepted words, and in certain contexts, no other option conveyed the same forcefulness as the original. And I alternated it with expressions more typical of colloquial Catalan, such as fotre, card either fotre un clau".

Change language to fornicateLinguists at Cardemcat have encountered listeners who confess that, inexplicably, they switch languages ​​when having sex, even when speaking with other Catalan speakers. "Many young people switch languages ​​when talking about sex," explains Beti Badia, a psychologist and sexologist who provides therapy, counseling, and outreach on social media. "In psychology, it's called [a term used to describe a specific phenomenon or phenomenon]." code switchingIt gives you emotional distance if the topic makes you uncomfortable. But this also happens because, unfortunately, role models in the sexual sphere are often found in pornography, which is still one of the major sources of sexual education, and it's in Spanish or English. Obviously, Catalan has a lot of erotic potential, but young people sometimes struggle to translate it into real-life situations and use it. In the realm of sex and desire, we want to let go and not be politically correct. Because it's a language in resistance, due to institutional influence, Catalan is associated with what is considered proper, not with uninhibited expression. Historically, Catalan has been a more standardized than eroticized language,” says Badia. She contributes to normalizing sex in Catalan through the program Interior Affairs from the 3Cat youth channel @someva, and is optimistic: "There are new role models who are eroticizing Catalan."

"From a sexological point of view, no language is inherently more erotic than another," confirms Badia. There are surveys that suggest Italian has overtaken French as the global sexiest language; Brazilian Portuguese would come next. This, however, has to do "with cultural background, with how frequently the language is used in intimate contexts, with references, with the degree of social legitimacy a language has, with exoticism," she continues. "It's not that Catalan is less spicy, but rather that it's less frequently used in erotic contexts," she says. It's no coincidence that there are a single pornographic film in Catalan, And it's from 1999.

"It's a matter of expectations," notes translator Alba Garcia Ventura. "Viewers are used to hearing certain phrases in other languages ​​and automatically associate them with a sensual or provocative register. When these same scenes are translated into Catalan, the perception can change not so much because of the word itself as because of the lack of familiarity." Metaphors with vegetables, animals, and tools, if they aren't very common, can provoke more laughter than excitement. "For example, terms like titola either Tita They may sound less sensual than cock"Despite being equally colloquial, it's simply because we're not used to hearing them in this register. Ultimately, sensuality depends more on the context, the tone, and how the word is used than on the word itself. That's why, rather than expanding the range with new words or resorting to English, the challenge is to normalize and alternate the repertoire we already have," says the translator of More than rivals.