I wouldn’t say it is “plain wrong,” because although the construction is not strictly equivalent it’s similar enough. The main point is that there’s nothing about the construction of the word that would mark it as offensive.
We’ve had a pretty long and fairly combative ATMB thread where I argued that by making “Paki” off limits, you’re giving undue importance to racist pigs who used this word as a slur. Paki is the natural dimunitive form of Pakistani, like Brit or Aussie. As long as people aren’t using it to offend, we should make every attempt to allow it back into common parlance, instead of shushing people who use it unknowingly. In this, AK84, who is from Pakistan, and I were largely in agreement.
Yeah, analyzing why slurs are offensive just based on morphemes or whatever is often a dead end. It’s not like the slur for black people is darkfucker and for middle eastern people is mideastwhore where it’s kind of obvious it’s meant to be bad because curse words are right there in the name. Hell, even many offensive words are ultimately innocuous. Some slurs are obviously offensive like “sand nigger”, but those ultimately derive from another slur (in this case “nigger”) which really just leaves the problem of analyzing it one step removed.
Words tend to be offensive because they are, usually for historical reasons and very occasionally it’s just a silly dyphemism/euphemism treadmill. Analyzing it and saying “it’s obviously not offensive because it’s like this!” really gets you nowhere.
Yeah, I did. His usage of “Pakistanian” was about as idiotic as if I went to some other and called myself “Americanese”.
FTR that would be Phillip Marlowe, not Sam Spade…whose name I hope is not offensive. 
Heh, good catch. Sorry bout that. Yep, Marlowe.:smack:
I understand. Those gumshoes all look alike to me.
Compounded by the fact that I’m reading/rereading Dashiell Hammett’s works as well.
Huh? Since when does “Asiatic” particularly imply Chinese? Is that a Hawaiian thing? And is it that specific word, or also “Asian”?
It doesn’t seem to be offensive in Ireland but then there are vanishingly few Japanese-Irish people. There was a famous character around Dublin’s Trinity College who died a few years ago and he went by the name “Matt The Jap”. Near my house there are signs for “Jap Motors”. I imagine it is considered gauche these days to use as people get a bit more global minded but I don’t think it’s (here) in the same league as paki, nigger, chink etc.
Well, I have never even heard the slur “paki” until this thread.
I had also never heard of “jap” being used as a verb the way Colibri describes it. I’m 40 years old for those keeping score at home.
Anyway, another thing that hasn’t been stressed enough in answering the OP is the dehumanization loaded into the slur “jap”. For example, have you heard about the church bombings in Pakistan that killed 71 people? Here is how some reacted:
The article goes on to point out that there have been 858 terrorist attacks in Pakistan this year. While the guy I quoted has a point in a way, well we can’t take it too literally, now, can we? But you’ll hear more of it the more this goes on. Now consider that the IJA killed many orders of magnitude more people than the Pakistani terrorists, so give some thought to just how loaded with bad intentions the slur “jap” might have once become.
The “natural diminutive” form that I have seen being used openly is “Pak.”
[QUOTE=48Willys;16683862
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This, My uncle is a statistic of the Bataan Death March. My aunts and uncles who lost their brother will not soon forget, nor will their kids. My brother and my sisters will not forget this atrocity in our life times.
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As far as Jap being a slur, you bet it is. However, I find that many of my “Japanese American” friends, as well as some Japanese folks I know, do not find Jap offensive. In fact they often use it themselves.
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I often wonder if some folks just enjoy being offended. Sometimes I think that these folks go looking to find something to be offended at. “Japanese Americans” and all. Get a grip folks.[/QUOTE]
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2 of my best friends were in Jap POW camps in ww2. They told me quite clearly all the atrocities they suffered from rank and file ordinary jap soldiers. My cousin was killed by the japs in Burma. Those are not fond memories.
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That said, I always thought jap was a good abreviation, shorter, easier to write, easier to spell, less of a mouthful than japanese or japaneseamerican.
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I agree. I also think lots of people enjoy changing the meaning of words: bad=good, gay=happy, hot and cool can be the same,
Please do not use Jap. It is offensive. You don’t get to choose what’s offensive to people, even if you don’t like those people.
These are your examples of “changing” meanings? Are you like 92 years old?
Thats an intersting article - makes me wonder about me 
I’ve noted here a few times, my grandfather was a Dutch soldier, captured by the Japanese and survived working the Thai-Bruma Railway. My grandmother, mother and uncle were also POW’s in civillian camps in Indonesia (I know some of the details about what they experienced but it was never really talked about when I was growing up).
Post-war they came to Australia, started a chicken farm and never looked back.
My mother has never had many good things to say about the Japanese (even refusing to visit Japan when my dad went there for a conference) while my grandfather seemed to have moved on, refusing to condemn an entire group of people for the actions of individuals.
Growing up in Australia in the 1970’s the term ‘Jap’ was pretty common, I’m sure I slip up occasion but I do try my absolute damndest not to use it now.
But Japanese people claim that they can call people “gaijin” and it’s not an insult because only Japanese can tell you what a Japanese word means. So you’d tell them to go fuck themselves right?
I don’t know what you’re talking about (not familiar with that term).
I’d tell who to go fuck themselves? Why?
In the US Jap is an offensive term. Just because a person has bitter memories of what the Japenese did to your family doesn’t mean you get to decide that Jap is not an offensive slur. Choose to use it- be prepared for people to think you are using a racist term. You don’t get to decide to reclaim it and tell the Japanese people to get over it.
I think you’ll find that most people agree that Japanese society has a problem with racism and xenophobia. Is that what you’re getting at?
Hows about I give you full permission to insult back any individual who first insults you.