Enes Kanter of the Knicks wants to make it clear that he no longer swears — in any language. But back when he did, at the start of his N.B.A. career in 2011, he swore exclusively in Turkish. He went his entire first season without referees calling him on it.

“They had no idea what I was saying,” he said.

But as his career progressed, he found that his growing proficiency in English cost him. He has since collected 15 technical fouls, some of them for voicing his displeasure at officials.

“I should’ve stuck with Turkish,” he said.

There may be no greater sign of the N.B.A.’s global growth than the fact that so many of the league’s players have multilingual potty mouths. Players swear in Spanish, Serbian, Portuguese and more — sometimes at themselves, sometimes at opponents and most pointedly at referees, who have the increasingly difficult job of deciphering whether foreign words are filthy.

“I knew some words,” said Jesse Thompson, a retired N.B.A. referee who now works with basketball officials in Asia.