The Pakistani authority's blacklist of banned words on SMS is inadvertently teaching Pakistanis more swear words that they ever knew. Biatch we understand but what's the problem with Nimbu sharbat?

By Shivam Vij

You cannot SMS ullu chod in Pakistan anymore. Nor can you SMS monkey crotch if you had any reason to do so.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has banned 1,795 expletives on SMS, ordering telecom companies to filter out SMS-es containing these offending words with effect from 21 November 2011. The letter includes a list of 1,109 English words, more pornographic terms than expletives, and another 586 Urdu words which are more colourful sexual expletives of the standard South Asian kind rather than the plain garden variety pornography.

A letter from the PTA, dated 14 November and signed by its Director General (Services), Muhammed Talib Doger invokes the "Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009" to pass the order.

The Pakistani Twitterverse was on fire last night as the two lists make for hilarious reading. The English list begins with A.S.S. and ends with yellowman. Some words sound harmless (crap and crappy), others bizarre (Jesus Christ, flatulence, murder, monkey crotch). Many are commonly used obscene words ("FUCK YOU") and care has been taken to account for alternative spellings (biatch, muthafucka). While many spelling variations of 'masturbation' are on it, the correct spelling is not. Most words seem to be designed to prevent 'sexting' or sending sexually explicit texts (sexy, lick me, do me, S&M, lotion and porn). The list comes down on anal sex as much as vaginal sex. But it isn’t just sex. By banning drunken they perhaps hope to reduce alcoholism.

The Express Tribune points out, "While much of the list contains expletives, a number of words to be banned include medical terms, terms used by particular minority groups, common words from the English language and rap group, Wu Tang Clan." The 'medical terms' include athelete's foot, breast, intercourse, condom and period. The 'daily use' terms include hole, hostage and harder. Words like gay and homosexual don't surprise but it's curious why wuutang raised the censor’s hackles.

In fact, thanks to this helpful compendium many Pakistanis are finding their expletive vocabulary enhanced. @UroojZia asked what bumblefuck and ladyboog meant.

@Zakoota said the lists should be required reading in schools to give children the vocabulary to describe politicians and cricketers. With the amount of phrases that include the word "BUTT", @KhaLeak wondered if Aijaz Butt was banned as well.

The Urdu list has standard gaalis also popular in north India, but many of them may not be familiar to Indians (such as "dani mani fudi chus"). Some are unfamiliar even to Pakistanis. @FurhanHussain said the presence of Punjabi gaalis in the Urdu list amounted to cheating, but others noted that there is no list of Sindhi and Punjabi language expletives, a grievous omission given that the Punjabi language is particularly full of colourful expletives.

"Padosi ki aulaad" doesn’t sound very obscene. There are some 15 spelling and gender variations of 'kanjar', a popular Pakistani expletive meaning dancing girls, often also used to describe cross-dressing or men dancing like women. Some of the Urdu ones are quite creative. There are four variations of "Chipkali ke gaand ke pasine" and some are inexplicable ("Nimbu sharbat", "carrom board") and some are zoologically bizarre ("ullu chod" or owl fucker). Some are rather vanilla everyday terms like "Buckwaas" (nonsense) and "Bewakoof" (foolish).

There were so many oddball terms in there at first people though it was a spoof. However, Shahzad Ahmad, an internet rights activist who tweets as @bytesforall, said he confirmed with a source at the PTA that the list was real. The Express Tribune story referred to above has been updated to quote a PTA spokesperson who denied knowledge of any letter and said that the PTA "does not take such decisions and only passes on the instructions to licensees once a decision is taken by a ministerial committee." The PTA, which is also in the news for directing ISPs to block access to 1,71,261 pornographic sites, is said to have convened a meeting this morning to discuss the uproar.

It’s unclear how telecom companies who cannot even filter out commercial spam will be able to handle this new morality burden. But Pakistanis, used to growing online censorship administered by the PTA, took little time to come up with the obvious workaround to the SMS censorship. The offending words are numbered on the blacklist. Many including @SamadK came up with the idea, "Now instead of typing the whole gaali you just need to send the number. Thank you PTA for making is even lazier."

Many have already started testing it: @KhanDanish tweeted "I hope Imran Farhat 143 doesn't do 471 in Friday's match. #Urdu."

The Urdu list is here and the English list here.