My better half is American and she said when she first came to the UK it wasn’t the swearing that surprised here but the way friends take the piss and call each other names without trying to offend.
This. Even without the ribald p!ss taking. About 7 or 8 yrs ago we had a senior US colleague over to deliver a couple of days training. IIRC I think she was somewhere around / not much below VP level, and most of the audience were fairly senior. For the first day I think she was really troubled / didn’t understand what the hell was going on. As she got her bearings she made reference that the language (normal banter, not swearing) really was a barrier – took her a while to work out that what we were saying wasn’t anger, or disgust, or hostility – but just British joshing around, which she had taken literally.
And that word summed up a trip to N Carolina a few years ago. They really do tend to take things literally 🙄