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When I was studying my Language classes at the "instituto" (High School), I read in a text book by the famous L�zaro Carreter that most of these expressions in Spanish have a blasphemous origin. Most of the population of Spain was more catholic when they were invented, so nobody should care too much about them, since nowadays they've lost a lot of their meaning.
This is quite true especially for one of the expressions in this thread: "me cago en...", since nowadays, like Tony said, people sh** everywhere. According to L�zaro Carreter, the first two expressions where "me cago en la mar", to abbreviate the name of Mar�a (Mary, the mother of Jesus), and "me cago en la leche", referring to Mary's milk, so Jesus' nurture. From them, there all kind of variations, till the "mecachis", which is the closest thing I see in Spanish of the more spread phenomena in English that change taboo words into others without meaning (like "my God" to "my Gosh"). Another good example in Spanish is "jol�n", from "joder", but I cannot recall any others now, while I have always been amazed that there is almost always an equivalent in English to any blasphemous swear.
Finally, about the way Spaniards swear, I always like to recall an anecdote: some years ago I was in the Basque Country, and there were some children playing soccer, all of them young enough to speak in Basque... but all insults and swears, that were in Spanish. It was curious not to understand a word of everything they said but "gilipollas", "cabr�n",... and, of course "�joder!"
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