It is interesting to note that almost all of the swear words, with the exception of maybe "damn!" and a very few more, in English come from Old English (Anglisc). They have maintained their status over more than a thousand years while much more of the language has changed. The old word for "air" - a very common thing - only lives on in the expression "aloft" describing something in the "loft" or air.
I have a friend in Namibia who visited me. He was born to Dutch parents in Spain and speaks many languages. His preference for chatting with me was German! For him - I love this! - it is the more erudite language (my mother tongue and I love German as well). He does indeed speak Afrikaans and he often travels to South Africa, but he finds German even more sophisticated.
Therefore, I believe that Esperanto will remain a rather "polite" language and I fully agree with others in this forum. This is def not a bad thing at all. We have the prefix "fi-" and the suffix "-aĉ-" to express badness. And we have "damne!" and "fek!" or even "fifek!". And we are gaining onomatopoeia (uff! what a word to spell in English - almost a swear word in and of itself, hehe)
So we are fine.
I did once hear that there was a female prostitute in Paris who used Esperanto to attract customers and I think many of us have used Esperanto to whisper sweet nothings in a lover's ear - if you haven't then try it or imagine it. And then we have the Libro de Amo, a collection of rather risque poetry and in one novel I read the word "midzuminado" and split a gut. We are doing just fine!

The important point here is surely, that one should not make exaggerated claims about the domains in which Esperanto is currently suitable.

It isn't just that there is little variation in register (as the linguists call it) in Esperanto, or that there aren't really taboo words or expressions in Esperanto in the same way that these exist in national languages.

One thing that everybody knows about Esperanto is that there isn't a country where Esperanto is used for daily life in all its multitudinous facets.

As soon as we start saying that you can do in Esperanto everything you can do in a national language we expose the language to easy criticism.

Oh yeah, says the critic, then please show me a tenancy agreement or a commercial contract or an international treaty in Esperanto that has been tested in a court of law.

Or what, challenges the critic, is the Esperanto for dago, wop or chink, and how do I call someone an upperclass twit, or a scrounger and a layabout.

Or, quote me a memorable effective advertising slogan for a product in your beloved Esperanto.

Our claims for Esperanto should be commensurate with, or at least emphasise, what can actually be achieved in Esperanto, which is largely polite face to face discourse between persons that do not share a language.

This is actually what happens when English (the much vaunted international language) is used in similar circumstances. The difference is that the conversation proceeds in Esperanto much more smoothly and with greater fluency and less misunderstanding than it would in English.

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