A couple of fucks

I have been teaching English to Spanish speakers (and others) for a good few years, plus having a couple years of language study behind me too.  It's pretty clear that not every sound is easy or even doable once you get settled in a certain set of phonemes.  It's also clear that people like to borrow words from other languages; it gives them an air of worldliness, education, sophistication.  Right now, English is the language that gives that worldliness, being the common speech of business and science.  It's also the main language of pop music, especially with a more American accent.  Speaking of American English, Hollywood churns out a huge number of series and movies every year, many of them even produced with an eye to the foreign market as much as or more than domestic.  (When I say "Hollywood", I really mean the whole industry.  It's not just those California studios anymore).

One set of vocabulary that doesn't transfer itself very is profanity.  The main reason, to my thinking, is the emotional impact that swear words have on native speakers.  It's not only the language, it's also the culture - a variety of reactions can be seen to the same words in different countries when we are working with "big" languages like English or Spanish.  Still, the great number of media influence leaves English swear words in a position of attractiveness, so they do crop up, especially in language with a close relationship to English, like the rest of the Germanic family.  It never seemed to me that Spanish speakers could quite get their mouths around "fuck", though, not like Germans can.  First there's the vowel /ə/, which Spanish speakers can in fact produce, but it's not one of their meaningful sounds.  Then, the final consonant sound doesn't work well for them either.  Spanish speakers, particularly in Spain, don't care to end their words with plosives.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was watching Don't Fall Asleep, Motherfucker, a horror short on the Screamfest Youtube channel.  The short was made in Puerto Rico, in Spanish, but a couple of f-bombs pop out at the beginning:

fucking lógica
fucking noche

I guess it's less /ə/ than /ɔ/ but it still felt as natural and right for the line as in any Tarantino film.  Better maybe, because of the careful measuring out of fucks.  They were also "fucking", not just "fuck", so the voiceless velar plosive isn't such a problem.  Despite the rounding of the vowel, they were better attempts than most peninsular Spanish, which ends up being a much more nasal /'fɑk in/.

Anyway, I'm rather pleasantly surprised that a harsh Anglo-Saxon swear can blend right into a soft Latin American Spanish.  I suppose the fact that it's Puerto Rico makes the most sense.