If I encounter an American who uses words like “darn” or “gosh” I strongly suspect that I’m speaking with a person from a Protestant background, and I do the best I can to minimize our interactions.

I'm not American but I love the self-censoring on television before the 2010s. So many funny ways to avoid saying "fuck"

The answer is yes - if you're in a place in the US where people might believe that the devil is real or that hell actually exists or that the Rapture will happen or that the hand of god is connected to the forearm of god.

If I count as an American for the purposes of this question despite not growing up in the USA, I'd say yes. I was raised to say "darn" or "dang" or "heck" instead of "damn" and "hell", and I'm still caught a bit off guard when I see these words used in things like anime subtitles because I'm still used to thinking of these as naughty no-no words that you're not supposed to say on television — at one point as a kid I didn't even like talking about dams, but the grown-ups around me assured me that it was OK to say "dam" in that situation. I think that might be part of why I generally prefer to say "damned" instead of just "damn". I also generally capitalize "Hell" even though others don't, just because Hell is supposed to be a specific location.

Though curse words do come in tiers or gradations, and "damn" and "hell" to me have always been in a lower tier of vulgarity than "fuck" and "shit" and "oge 'e boo".

The whole concept of cursing is outdated in the US I think, it's not even unusual to hear these things in the workplace. There's a handful of words we don't use out of respect for others, racial and gendered slurs mainly, but nobody under 50 cares about the rest.

basically depends on how Christian the offended person is

When I was choosing my MySpace profile song back in 2006, as an innocent Christian, I was hanging out with a crush. They asked what song I wanted, and I said "Make Darn Sure" because to my ears at the time, "damn" would damn you to hell.

Luckily, a few years later I left the small town and made damn sure I wouldn't let a religion determine what could or couldn't be enjoyed.

"God damn" or "goddamn" or "goddamnit" are all considered not just curse words but depending on the person and how religious they are or how religious they were raised they're top tier "no no" words. Taking the Lord's name in vain is in the Ten Commandments and all that. You can include exclamation of "Jesus Christ!" or obviously variations of "Jesus Fucking Christ!" just "Jesus!" "God!" in that list too. Adding fucking is particularly bad. Just exclaiming the names in frustration or anger or whatever is enough for a face slap in a lot of religious families when I was growing up. I was never slapped, but my grandparents used to pretty openly tell my parents that my brother and I were definitely going to Hell because we said "God, Mom! Leave me alone!" too much or whatever.

"Hell" and "damn" are both curse words but on the very low end. A lot of the Christians who would cover their mouths if someone said "goddamnit!" around them would be ok with a "damnit!" or just a "get the hell out of here!" although it should still be reserved for only situations of anger, surprise, etc. and you should still feel bad. Also still generally forbidden for children to say them outside of the context of speaking about Hell the place or God damning someone (Biblical loopholes. Jesus understands the space and how important it is!)

I don't know about US, but the equivalent for "god damn" (jumalauta) and "hell" (helvetti) are considered strong cursewords in Finnish.

Also "Satan" (Saatana) and "Perkele" which likely comes from an old pagan god Perkwunos, are very strong curse words

Most curse words related to anatomy are less severe, with exception of maybe vittu (cunt, used similarly to fuck), and kyrpä (dick).

Yes and no. It depends on how conservative the people you’re around are. I’ve found heavily religious people get the most upset when you use those words but outside of that they’re used so often that they’re almost the same as saying, “stupid”.

I remember it being a big deal when the Ninja turtles said “Damn” repeatedly in the first movie. Nowadays most kids wouldn’t be phased because their favorite YouTubers say way worse all the time.

My brown parents didn't want me saying it in school since you would get in trouble for it as a kid (elementary school). But really that goes away once you reach high school and university since correcting the now [young] adult students in person as if they were a child is weird so people who get offended by those phrases will just avoid you/dislike you privately.

In the 90's through the early 2000's they were. It feels like today they've become common parlance. I know tv shows today can say shit, bastard, stuff like that without censorship I think?

Mostly just for squares. Hell is fair game, damn is something you want to refrain from when kids are nearby, and the god in goddamn is censored on radio music.

Oh, absolutely. You just need to distinguish cursing from swearing. Cursing is directly tied to blasphemy, such as "God damn you". Swearing is all coarse, crude, impolite language that typically includes cursing. So yeah, it's more about how down you are with blasphemous language -- how religious you are, the people around you, etc. In America, that's usually pretty high, and it's more about accommodating the sensitivity of the people around you than anything else

Cursing culture changes state to state and even county to county. Larger cities are cursing constantly, so much so that they basically lose their meaning, smaller towns are cursing a lot too but they tend to hold it back for more emphasis.

The exception to this is Appalachia where every other word is crude but you're doing a bit the whole time

Do British people really foam at the mouth when you call them bastard?

No.

Yup.

Yes in pearl-clutching circles, and being religiously brainwormed as the US is that's quite a few. Even ass is going too far.

Some people think it's offense just to say, "God" in exasperation

Hell is real, in America

Yes