RM, whether the “Nova” incident ever happened is irrelevant. The situational analog is still valid. I’ll pick another: imagine a Japanese car company that decides to name it’s new American release “The Lemon.” Do you think that the AUDIENCE should bear the responsbility for the situation where the message the audience hears is different from the message the speaker intended to give? The market doesn’t think so, nor does the business community.
And then you mention the guy who got his job back after the “niggardly” situation.
I think either you misunderstand or I didn’t well explain my point. Let me try again:
I AGREE that it is a shame that words get misheard and misinterpreted.
I am GLAD when such a situation is corrected.
I WISH that there were no such miscommunications.
But the fact is that there ARE and there continue to be, and that the speaker bears some responsibility for doing his best to reduce the risks of being misunderstood.
In fact, I referred to speakers who don’t as jerks, or worse.
The point that snopes was trying to make is that the nova story is not like a non-english manufacturer using “lemon” as a car name, it’s like using “notable” as furniture name. English speakers wouldn’t misunderstand that to mean that the Notable dining room set came with “no table.”
Cadillac has a current model called the Eldorado Touring Coupe, a perfectly harmless name. However, some genius decided to adorn the trunk lid with a chrome emblem that says “ETC” Clever, eh?
No, in that case it’s the speaker’s fault, for not understanding the language in which they’re trying to communicate. My point, however, is that in the ‘misunderstanding’ category, it’s the listeners’ fault, for the same reason.
IIII
Who uses both “data” and “media” as plurals all the time.
Speaking of perfectly good terms that aren’t used…how 'bout those straw wrapped bottles of wine that you get in Italian Restaurants? Try ordering one of those by its actual name and it will be a…fiasco.
“Mongoliod” for Down’s syndrome was racist from the start. Not just after the “PCs” got ahold of it…
People with Downs syndrome don’t look even vaguely Asian.
Quote from above - “The Negroes are an African ethnic group, distinct from Negritos, Berbers, Ethiopians, etc.”
“Negritos”? must be from a Portuguese colony - never heard that one before. Although in Black Athena it is argued from ancient sources that place names like Niger may have come from that area’s inhabitants name for themselves, not from Latin. To wit - the word “niger” meaning black in Latin may not have had a meaning signifying a color, but a people in the language it came from. Interesting - unattested.
Back on topic. A phrase you can’t use:
“Grand Illusion” - people think it is a Styx album only, and if you’re lucky an old B&W movie… it was once a common phrase about any sort of great deception.
In Spanish - “de ambiente” meant having a certain air. It was used clandestinely as meaning “gay” and now has that double meaning commonly and you have to be carefull how you use it unless you are a duchess.
I believe the similarity is the epicanthic folds of the eyes.
My Webster’s II lists both definitions, with person of Mongolian ancestry (i.e. certain definitive traits) as the primary, of or like a Mongol as secondary, and having Down’s sydrome as the tertiary defs.
Personal anecdote - sometimes when my eye’s are puffy from sleep, I look vaguely “Mongoloid”.
A line from the recent Halloween episode of South Park, where a disk jockey, broadcasting live from a trashily decorated booth on a pier, asked the boys how the decorations looked…
That raises in my mind the question of whether the etymology should be allowed to fade, or whether that fading (and consequent coming into common use of offensive terms) should be fought. In my case, I learned (at about age 7) the alleged verb “to jew (down)” from a playground mate and used it exactly once, in my father’s hearing. It was immediately made clear to me what that meant, for I had had no clue that it wasn’t just a new word, and that it was unacceptable and that I was not ever to use it again. Today I would not argue that that usage should be acceptable “if only” everyone could forget that it was originally an anti-Semitic slur. I think that using gay to mean bad because of the homophobic connotation it engenders in a given hearer’s alleged mind is also unacceptable.
But that does still leave open the question of the acceptability of using a word’s original denotation as well as the question of foreign usage. “Bitch” is still common in the dog-breeding community, I’m sure. “Faggot” has it’s own acceptable meaning, as does “fag” in Britain. Et cetera.
…
Before I travel too far astray, I’d like to nominate “hopefully” as a perfectly good word that has been done a grievous wrong.
I think so, it should be fought. I don’t use the new slang gay for bad, and frown on anyone who does. The only time I would describe something as gay is if it strikes me as homosexual, and that’s not a pejorative, that’s just a descriptor. However, I have no say over how the average teenager uses that word.
Me, I wouldn’t support the first case of it developing.
Actually, I never was one to pick up on many racial slurs. Don’t know how I had such a protected environment, but many common slang racial terms were completely unknown to me until well after high school. And the ones I knew, I would never have used. In my case, that’s not necessarily from parental influence. My extended family is not shy about using some of that language (at least now that I’ve grown up), despite my letting them know it is not appreciated.
Boy, am I feeling out of touch. I’ve never seen a thread which left me feeling so bewildered.
Someone is complaining that the word “felch” doesn’t mean what it used to? What does it mean now? And what did it used to mean? I thought my dictionary was pretty good, but it skips straight from felafel to feldspar.
“Bitch-slap”? This is a common term? What’s it mean? Being slapped by a mean woman?
Eldorado Touring Coupe being abbreviated “ETC” on the trunk emblem? Did you think Cadillac intended a double-meaining with the Latin for “and so on”? Huh?
BTW, I think the most objectional thing I’ve seen written on a vehicle is on my buddy’s boat, an expensive, late-model MasterCraft. Near the rear of the boat, it says “Electronic Fuel Injected”. I wonder where he buys electronic fuel.
CurtC, “bitch-slap” is a fairly recent common slang term referring, IIRC, to the way a pimp slaps his ho’s. Or to the way “any” guy might slap a woman for whatever reason. It is a term to mean “put you in your place by slapping you down like a worthless woman”, or some similar phrasing. In other words, it denigrates all women as bitches and implies the proper way to control a woman is to slap her across the face. Of course usage has since spread to mean slapping (and maybe hitting?) a man who needs to be put in his place as well.
Yes, it has become a very popular term, showing up in music lyrics (IIRC, no references off-hand). Hang with teenagers for any length of time (especially ones imitating “urban” lingo and stylings) and you’ll hear it.
"I believe the similarity is the epicanthic folds of the eyes. "
True but straight black hair (while not unique to Asians) is a more definitive trait. I.e., you can’t be Asian and have blond hair like a Down’s syndrome child. Therefore I would stick by my idea that people with Down’s syndrome don’t look remotely Asian in anyway.
I contend it is racist based on the misconception that all Chinese and Japanese, Koreans, etc, have epicantal folds - all do not, although it is common.
I don’t know about that. There was a Simpson episode where a group of elementary school kids see one of their members kissing a girl and one says “You kissed a girl? That is so…gay.” And there’s no question as far as use of the word queer: anyone who objects to the use of that word to mean strange is just wrong (except, I suppose, in very unusual circumstances).
Although it has opposite meanings depending on sex. A female bitch is assertive, while a male bitch is submissive.
Words are arbitrarily defined, and so there is no “correct” meaning, only the commonly understood meaning. If a word is commonly understood to have a meaning other than the one you want to convey, then you should avoid that word. There are three main factors in dtermining “commonly understood”. The first is simply which meaning is most popular. The second is primacy; which meaning came first? And did one meaning cause another to arise? The third is convention; if a certain meaning is agreed upon, or given by some authority, that carries some weight. Each of these factors should be factored in one’s decision; none should be ignored.
It is rather subjective not only what each factor says about a certain rule, but which factor is most important. For instance, are Wiccan justified in getting upset by the common use of the word “witch”? Wiccans make an argument from primacy; “witch” referred to Wiccans before it referred to evil magic users. But since the evidence for that is, as far as I know, sketchy, and since it was so long ago, I say that the popular meaning is the proper one. Are Jews justified in getting upset at the display of a swastika (I suppose it’s a symbol, not a word, but the same rules apply)? Here, there is a much stronger case for primacy (it had a meaning to certain groups which precedes the swastika’s use by the Nazi party), but the strength of popular meaning, I believe, is again more important.
It’s a lot less than “sketchy”, it’s an outright lie.
A symbol means what is meant by the symbol. But you’d have to be pretty clueless living into today’s world not to know what the swastika de facto means. Still, it depends on the context. In a clearly Buddhist fresco, say, or Amerind silver piece, it would the Jew who would be clueless to take offense.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
The Ryan, did you read my post four posts above that one? I said:
JSexton said that wasn’t always true, sometimes the offensive word disappeared. Thus my comment that this offensive word is NOT disappearing.
Read the whole context.
I don’t think the origin of gay meaning bad has disappeared. I know kids are using it that way - kids do a lot of mean things. But it’s based on the notion that being gay is bad, so acting gay is bad, so if something seems gay, it seems bad.
And if any kids said that around me I’d give them a lecture.