How is use of the n-word viewed around the world? I’m talking in a friendly type of sense, in a “What’s up friends” sort of style. Is it acceptable or is the word off-limits globally to anyone not African-American?
Globally, black people are not “African Americans”. Not even in Canada.
I think, though, that is genereally recognized that any English word carries the connotations that it as in the English-speaking country in which it is widely used. So the N-word, anywhere, would carry its American connotations, and be recognized as such. I just spent three weeks in Africa, and I never heard the n-word.
Let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Germany adapted the word early, I don’t know exactly when, but I sure know that the Nazis used it. So today it’s just as taboo in civilized conversation as in the U.S. I’m sure that the colloquial, non-derogatory usage in hip hop/urban circles is also a thing here, but I know too little about that scene to really confirm it. So all very similar to the word’s status in America.
Spanish has its own words for black people, maybe there’s some rappers that use niga but if they do it’s as an influence of American rap. I haven’t heard it, but I only listen to Spanish rap about once a year so I’m not a good reference. I’d expect it more from Caribbeans than from, say, a Chilean or a Spaniard.
We do sometimes run into stupid issues with the adjectives negro (black, male) and negra (black, female) when interacting with non-Spanish-speaking foreigners, but for us they’re not offensive.
In Panama at least, the terms moreno/a are preferred (and in fact perfectly OK). It is my understanding that negro/a are regarded as somewhat crude when applied to people and are to be avoided, but the softened forms negrito/a are OK. The term chombo is often regarded as offensive.
The French equivalent to nigger is nègre, and it’s equally offensive, but very outdated, and as a result, it’s very rarely used as an insult (I know it happens, though), and AFAIK, never in a friendly context (French Blacks won’t call each other “nègre”). So, it’s not nearly as much of a big deal as nigger is in the USA.
Basically, it sounds mostly like a word that a racist would have used 60 years ago.
It’s also used in an history of arts context : Picasso was influenced by the “art nègre” (Nigger art), Aimé Césaire was an eulogist of “Négritude” (“niggerness”), things like that, but it’s a relatively obscure use. It also means “ghostwriter”. Those uses of the word are perfectly legitimate.
There are two places called Nigg in Scotland, one very near me and one up north of Inverness. Technically someone from either place would correctly be called a Nigger. But we don’t. The Gaelic original is apparently Naeg so maybe there’s a more polite construction but I’ve yet to hear it.
I (born in the 70’s) have never heard an Australian person use the word. My in-laws (born in the 40’s) have. And you read it in letters from the 19th century. But we have different bad words, which I have heard.
Whether this applies in other states I don’t know - I’ve never lived anywhere north of Melbourne
It’s as complete a no-no in the UK (apart from those people who make a point of dismissing any such objections as “political correctness gone mad”, and even many of them recognise bad manners).
But it’s interesting (for the purpose of this discussion) that there was a hooha in football when a South American player (already unpopular for his general aggressiveness) got into a disagreement with a black player on the opposing team and was up on disciplinary charges because of racist language, and he argued that calling the other player “negrito” wasn’t racist. He lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Suárez_racial_abuse_incident
Another Brit here. “Fringe-anecdotal”, I suppose – but a late uncle of mine comes to mind. His political and social views were essentially liberal (and “in deed”, he was one of the least racist people I’ve ever known); but he was in many ways conservative with a small c, and had no time for what he saw as “political-correctness bullshit”. He was a painter; and as such, he staunchly defended the designation “N-word brown”, for a certain shade of dark brown. He insisted that the expression was nothing to do with black people or contempt for them: it was just a vivid and apposite description of a particular shade of a particular colour. (I don’t think he ever came across the relatively recent US furore’s concerning “niggard / niggardly” – by then, he had either died, or was in his dotage – if he had been aware of this stuff, I’m sure he would have found the objections to the words ridiculous, and would have gone out of his way to use them as much as possible.)
It may be worth mentioning that he was born in 1918; so for the large majority of his life, the matter concerned would not have been an issue – likely hard for him to 100% adjust / agree, when it became one.
I was watching The Walking Dead yesterday, nigger came up, and I checked how they’d translated it: as negrata. That’s a word you wouldn’t normally call a black dude unless you’re really close friends, but at least for my dialect it’s because it’s got connotations of “scary”, either because he’s big or because of attitude. Nobody would describe Denzel Washington as a negrata, but I’ve heard the corrupt cop he plays in Training Day described as one.
Re. negrito as racist and as it’s often the case in Spanish it’s all in the tone, which in Suárez’ case I’m guessing was Definitely Not Polite. Use a different tone and it’s descriptive; use yet another and it’s a term of endearment.
Northern Ireland here, I’ve never heard the N word used outside of television but then we have a very small minority of black people here. I did have a black colleague who was born and grew up here who stated she never had a problem with anyone’s attitudes, the worst she experienced was being called names at school but as she said if she wasn’t black she would just have been taunted about something else because that’s what children do. Of course what’s important over here is your religion as an ethnic identifier rather than the colour of your skin, although with the increase in immigration there has also been an increase in intolerance, though thats more often directed at Polish people and Eastern Europeans as they’re the most common immigrants.
On a sidenote the phrase ‘black bastards’ is a common term of insult towards the police here and sometimes Protestants in general (back in the day the force was 90% Protestant). There is a possibly apocryphal story of a resident of West Belfast shouting it loudly as a British Army patrol went past, she stopped to clarify to a black member of the unit, “Oh sorry dear, that’s not meant at you, I’m talking about that bloody peeler over there!”
China. Even those who speak English very fluently have either never heard the word or have no idea how serious its meaning is.
Which seems like a pretty irrelevant data point, but it was also an opportunity to say this: The most common word in modern, colloquial chinese sounds a lot like “nigger”.
I wonder how many misunderstandings this may cause.
(If anyone’s interested in the details:
那个, “na-ge”, means “that one”. Textbooks will tell you it’s pronounced such that it rhymes with “dagger”. But IME, it more typically rhymes with “digger”.
The reason it’s possibly the most common word, is that it’s frequently used as a filler. So the Chinese equivalent of “Erm, you know, like…” might be saying something that sounds like the N-word three times)
My parents were born before WW1, and certainly the word hadn’t yet become completely taboo - we had a black cat who, at least for the first few years I remember of the 1950s was referred to by that name, and “that colour” would appear in the newspapers from time to time. The change really started to get under way after the Notting Hill riots in 1958; a radio presenter famous for careless slips and rather too many opinions got into trouble for misreading the title of a programme about an African river called The Land of the Niger, and there was a huge row over an MP who used the word deliberately:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Nabarro#Style
I got in trouble in elementary school for correcting my teacher when she kept calling Nelson Mandela the first “African-American” president of South Africa. :smack: I told her he was just African and she said that was terrible and I “shouldn’t say such things”. :rolleyes:
From the article on Suarez’s case, the problem was that he was making reference to the other players race/skin color at all. It would have been just as bad if he had just called him “black.”
Negrito is also used as the name for small-statured, dark-skinned ethnic groups in southeast Asia.
Yeah but that could have been a problem in the interpretation; some people think that any mention of somebody’s race, nationality or ancestry, is racist. Sometimes there is even a problem with mentioning certain types of food. See: my idiot roommate in grad school telling me that I shouldn’t refer to people as Chinese, they’re Asian-Americans, when I’d mentioned “two Koreans” (from South Korea) and then “and twelve Chinese” (from the People’s Republic of China).
I don’t know, in Cuban music, for instance, the use of “negrito/a” in the lyrics is pretty common. Sometimes even used affectionately (“mi negrito/a”). And I understand other latino-american countries will also use the word in a non-offensive context.
Not to defend Suarez. He does bite chunks off people every once in a while. Just saying.
Ah, yes, old Nabarro. While thinking him a most deplorable individual, I admit to harbouring a tiny bit of sneaking fondness for him – for the way he flamboyantly played the “outspoken reactionary bigot” role to the hilt; he added a bit of colour to life – feel that he was rather like an earlier-generation Jeremy Clarkson. Also, I’m a railway enthusiast: he did a good deal to help the work of the preserved Severn Valley Railway in his consituency (while also, one gathers, planning to “stitch them up” to a certain extent, for his own financial gain). We Brits tend to have a weakness for colourful rogues.