The thing is, the concept of “Indians” or “Native Americans”, to refer to people descended from people who lived here before Columbus, is a European construct. The various tribes and empires who lived in the Americas before Columbus didn’t have a term that meant “people who live in the Americas”, because they didn’t need to.
You have to be aware that there’s another continent out there before you need a name for the particular continent you live on.
And when Indians came in contact with Europeans, they didn’t have the idea that there were two types of people–Indians in one category, Europeans in another. Rather, Europeans were just one more type of people. Sure, they spoke different languages and dressed funny and had funny technology, but so did every other group that wasn’t your group.
You expect language usage to be logical and unambiguous? That’s your problem, right there. That’s like expecting golfers to follow the rules of basketball.
Welcome to the SDMB. If you post an opinion in a debate forum, and someone responds, they are neither jumping on you nor disrespecting your right to hold an opinion. Instead, they are responding to you.
Well, I would like to argue with your implied premise. Namely, conversation doesn’t generally work like your purposely ambiguous example. That is, people understand the ambiguities in their language and thus work around them in conversation.
And yet, oddly enough, Charles C. Mann in Appendix A of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus argues for the term Indian. He did a lot of field work around the hemisphere and says that every native person he met used “Indian” rather than “Native American.” He goes on to quote Russell Means, an early leader of AIM:
Okay, your arguments have convinced me that “Native Americans” is pointlessly ambiguous and clearly coined by people who have trouble counting past ten with their shoes on. So, what term should we use instead, particularly given that “Indian” is even more ambiguous?
So, you accuse other people of getting worked up. But then you throw around words like stupid and use the roll eyes. But, way to completely miss the point of my statement.
You’re not king of the language, so you don’t get to arbitrarily decide who is a cretin for using what. I can just as easily say that only a cretin would use the term “Native American” to refer to someone other than an American Indian. That’s not an argument, that’s just you throwing around insults. If you can’t comprehend that there are multiple phrases in English that contain ambiguity, that’s not our problem, that’s yours.
Quite likely? Again, more made up stuff. At this point, you need to provide polling data or survey data to back these statements up, or you should just admit that you’re making stuff up.
This is Bernieyeball’s second try at this. Many here are addressing a slightly larger question (the overall usefulness and accuracy of “Native American”) than what he actually asked (about that term’s incorporation of “American,” which wasn’t a pre-Columbian word).
Before the European “discovery,” there was no concept, for anyone, of a collective body including all the human populations indigenous to the American continents, but distinct from all human populations elsewhere. Therefore the only possible terms are retrofits. If you speak English, it makes sense to use an English retrofit term. “Indian” was the first such, but is obviously more susceptible to misunderstanding in most contexts.
If the speaker was concerned about the possibility of misunderstanding, he could say “Dave is an American by birth.” Ian’s “emigration” implies he has relocated permanently, and may become a citizen. But given the parallel presentation of the two, I would say it’s easy to comprehend as a statement on each man’s personal origins and relationship to the United States, not his ancestry.
So, you believe that someone needs to be ‘worked up’ to recognise the concept of ‘stupidity’? That’s an idea I haven’t heard before.
And, really, I can’t see anything wrong with rolling your eyes at someone who says of an example you’re made up to illustrate a point about possible ambiguity: "You give an example of a short sentence with purposely ambiguous context ". Yes, obviously. There would be no point in giving an example that was not ambiguous in context. :rolleyes: I can’t understand why you are having so much trouble with that.
Could I respectfully suggest that you try and understand the difference between stating an opinion and asserting that you are ‘king of language’?
Well, you could, but as you would be suggesting that people were cretins for using two words in their normal English sense I don’t think you’d get much traction.
Really?
So, in your view, saying that you don’t believe anyone would do something because it would be stupid constitutes an insult? Another new concept; although I suppose it helps to explain ‘May cause drowsiness’ warnings on bottles of sleeping tablets.
Ah, the ‘everyone else does it so it’s OK to do it’, argument. Not one that goes down well with everybody.
Sometimes you need to poll people to decide something - e.g Do you believe that GWB was an idiot?
Sometimes you can just use deductive logic and no poll is necessary.
Ask yourself these questions:
Why would anyone who had not heard that the expression ‘Native Americans’ have any reason to assume it meant anything other than the equivalent of ‘Native <anything else>’?
Is everyone who is likely to read English, particularly those for whom it is not their first language aware of this irregular usage?
Well, if you’re going to continue to fling insults (which indicates that you can’t back up your argument) then I’d say the stupid person is the one who can’t comprehend a word with a clear definition, such as Native American.
Yes, when you give your arbitrary ambiguous examples, they’re peachy. When anybody else gives an ambiguous example, there’s some mysterious logic in your head that makes them cretins. Talk about a statement needing rolleyes.
Oh, please, there’s nothing respectful about what you’re doing here. You’re throwing a tantrum because nobody wants to play along with your pedantic word games.
I’ve gotten plenty of traction here. You’re the one who’s not coming off well in this thread. You’re flailing around makes it clear you have no argument.
Ah, yes. Even more insults. The fact that you have to resort to insults (even though you initial threw a tantrum over the tone of other people’s posts) just shows that you have no argument.
This makes no sense. Language is inherently about what “everyone does.” If you can’t grasp that basic concept, then you have no business trying to lecture people about language.
So, you’re not planning to back up your attempted factual statements? You know, there’s a whole group of people who study language as their career. You could check them to see if what you’re saying is true. But instead, you’ve just decided to pretend that what you think is reality. Have fun, but I doubt many people are going to take your viewpoint, since you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
That’s why we have these things called dictionaries. To make people aware of potentially irregular or idiomatic usages (although the term “Native American” is neither idiomatic or irregular). But apparently, you’ve never heard of a dictionary. So, you think you’re limited understanding of the English language applies to everyone.
Or, to sum up, you’re entire argument is: I’m going to make up stuff and people who don’t agree with me are stupid cretins. Big deal. It’s not a persuasive argument, but have fun trying to convince yourself that it is.
Firstly, there is no insult in the piece you quoted.
Secondly, ‘Native American’ is not a word, it is a phrase and it has two meanings. One is clear by using the normal rules of English semantics on the constituent words. The other requires that you are aware of the irregular meaning when you use ‘American’ rather than any other nationality.
Except that isn’t what I said. You are again conflating ‘only a cretin would do <x>’ with ‘you are a cretin’. The two are in no way equivalent.
I’m far from throwing a tantrum. I just have an opinion to which I’m perfectly entitled. I fully accept that others have a different opinion. You are the one who is working herself up into a furore because you disagree with my opinion. I’m merely defending the logic upon which my opinion is based.
So, you are claiming that other people agree that ‘it would be stupid if A did B’ is the same as saying ‘you’re stupid’? I think you may be misunderstanding what others have been saying.
Where was the insult? All I’m saying is that I don’t think two phrases are equivalent and you are somehow getting that that is an insult.
You seem to be suffering very severe confusion here. Yes, language comes about because ‘everyone’ tends to understand the same thing from the same collection and ordering of words. That is in no way the same thing as saying because the language contains ambiguities it’s intelligent to deliberately introduce even more.
There is no reason to ‘check with people who do something as a career’ when simple logic will suffice. Do you go and check with a mathematician every time you want to know what 2+2 equals? Do you consult a dietitian before every meal?
ROFLMAO.
How can you say that “Native American” is not irregular when it means something quite different to “native <anything else>”?
And, please explain why anyone who had never heard of the expression “Native American” (as meaning something different to “Native <anything else>” would know that they need to look in a dictionary to find that they may need to treat the phrase differently.
That is a complete misrepresentation of any argument I’ve made.
Originally I simply said that I didn’t think deliberately choosing a nomenclature that already meant something quite different was the brightest of things to do. I still don’t but it isn’t a particularly big deal.
The only reason that it might look like a big deal is that you’ve been banging away criticising any arguments I make (with such gems as stating that an example I made up to demonstrate possible ambiguity is deliberately ambiguous, or conflating “it would be stupid to do X” with “you are stupid”). Thus I feel a natural desire to defend the arguments I’ve made even though the underlying proposition is not of any great importance.
B&S, there is no evidence of anything even remotely approaching a tantrum in my post above.
All I have done is to calmly highlight the errors in your assertions and reasoning.
I notice that you are very loath to actually argue points, instead preferring to assert that things are insults or ‘made up’ without ever addressing the underlying arguments. Either that or you argue by diktat - for example, stating that “Native American” is not an irregular construction without ever explaining how that can possibly be the case when it means something different to “Native <anything else>”.
Again, this is not a particularly big deal - it has only been made to appear that way by your continued insistence that my opinion has absolutely no validity and only yours can be considered ‘correct’.
On the other hand, I’m perfectly prepared to accept that my opinion is not the only one that exists and may well be a minority one. I merely defend the logic upon which that opinion is based.
Please. You haven’t actually responded to any of the arguments presented to you in this thread. All you’ve done is hand-wave the arguments away. You’ve also hypocritically applied one standard to yourself (you’re ambiguous constructions are great) while trying to apply another standard to others (others ambiguous constructions are used by cretins). You’ve also made up stuff, and when you’re called on it, you claim you’re using “logic.” Logic doesn’t consist of making stuff up. If you want to claim an etymology for a word, then provide proof. There’s no reason to take you seriously at all. And now, I’ve got work to do, so I’m really done. This is a pointless argument with someone who thinks that just because something exists in his head, it must be true.
I would have to say that the above looks somewhat like an unfocused rant to me.
To try and calm things down a little, I’d like to ask you to justify three things that you have come up with. If you would like to do the same I would be happy to oblige.
Why do you think it is valid to complain that someone has used a ‘purposely ambiguous context’ when they are attempting to demonstrate possible ambiguity.
Why do you conflate saying ‘only a cretin would do <x>’ with calling someone a cretin when no evidence of anyone doing that thing has been presented or even suggested?
How can you claim that “Native American” is not irregular when it means something different, mutatis mutandis, to “Native <anything else>”?
Try and answer those questions calmly and accurately without resorting to vague accusations about insults and making things up and I will do the same for any questions you might care to pose.
The next post that continues the bickering over who should be able to say what or whether or not another poster is “worked up” will receive a Warning for hijacking the thread.
Address the specific issue of the OP, or take it to the BBQ Pit.
It may not be a good argument in other contexts, but it is how language works. If enough people use a word to mean something, it does mean that. It doesn’t matter if that meaning is illogical.
Good luck with that. Ask the Academie Francaise just how successful a campaign to change language usage can be. They’ve been trying, without too much success, to get rid of English loan-words in French.
