There was a thread a few months ago sort of along these lines...
Are there swear words in Irish...yes there are. But they are not what you might be thinking.
Traditionally, Ireland would like people to believe that instead of the use of vulgar swearing...it is the Irish custom to come up with creative expressions. No offense, but given the amount of swearing found in the everyday English of Ireland, it is hard to believe that there was no swearing in Irish as well.
The problem is one of vocabulary. The vulgar words we use in English, which I will assume is your language of use given you wrote to us in it...don't have the exact same meanings in Irish. To swear in Irish, you have to think in Irish. One of the most quoted phrases in Irish is "Póg mo thóin," which means "Kiss my a**." The reason this is so popular is because it is one of the rare cases where there is a one to one translation.
However, having said that, with the interest in Irish growing these days...we can think the youth of the world for updating and adding to our list of words we should not be using...the trick is to find out what words are being used and where. The Irish versions of English, Scottish, and Welsh swear words are being used more and more in contempory works.
Thre is a site out there called the the Insult Monger:
www.insultmonger.com If you go to the swearsaurus and then click on the Irish portion, there are some swear words there...but you have to be careful because they are rather stretched versions of the word. For instance, it looks like someone looked up the word for vagina (faighin) and assumed it was also the more vulgar version c***. Well, yes you can look at it that way, but this is actually the medical/technical term for it. When I was in Galway I saw the word "cont" being used. And then I ran into again in Dublin. And it wasn't just the accent playing on the English word because I learned that the plural for this word is "contaí." Which I don't think is correct spelling...
