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Terms for ’foreigner’ - good and bad | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| limey75 Senior Member United Kingdom germanic.eu/ Joined 4401 days ago 119 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Norwegian, Old English | Message 17 of 30 11 November 2012 at 8:34am | IP Logged | ||
From Old English wealh [] m (wéales/wéalas) foreigner, stranger, slave; Briton, Welshman; shameless person 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| limey75 Senior Member United Kingdom germanic.eu/ Joined 4401 days ago 119 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Norwegian, Old English | Message 18 of 30 11 November 2012 at 8:38am | IP Logged | ||
Is it also possible to use der Fremde? (stranger, foreigner, alien) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| evol Triglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 4332 days ago 28 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French, German, Spanish | Message 19 of 30 17 January 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Although this is a rather old thread, as I come around, I would like to point out that in Cantonese, the word "鬼", when referring to foreigners, has more to do with appearance than nature or personality, historically speaking. In this sense, "ghost" might be the more correct translation as compared to "devil". It's true that nowadays addressing foreigners (especially White guys) as 鬼佬 is neutral; it is especially true in the case of the younger generations as well as educated, open-minded adults. Nonetheless, "外國人 foreigners" is the only term used in writings and formal settings. In usage, we the younger native Cantonese speakers (I'm 19) are comfortable with both addresses, though 鬼佬 seems more natural and dear to me personally as I use it more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Richard Burton Newbie Spain Joined 4334 days ago 34 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* | Message 20 of 30 17 January 2013 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Hey, I'd like to contribute to this. You are mostly right. I've heard before that ELE students are told is pejorative but I think they are being mislead, this is what is in my linguistic consciousness as a native; maybe some other informant would tell otherwise, but if you force them to imagine situations with different nationalities you will see in the end they agree. "Guiri" is NOT any foreigner: only European, or White (also from US, Australia, whereever), and, for some reason and surprisingly, Japanese. I think is a mixture of the look, which has to be different but still White, and certainly sandals, shorts, sun glasses, etc, help, and then the activity engaged, typically tourists, students or retirees. That's why Japanese are guiris too, because normally are tourists. You dont hear "the guiris have opened another shop in this street" for the Chinese. So is both look and activity. For example a Polish girl who is a student, qualify well as guiri. However, if she works as say a hotel maid, I dont think the manager would say "i ve hired a guiri this year, simply I ve hired a Polish or an immmigrant". French would be guiris too but somewhat less. Italian only if in a group of different foreigners, isolated no because too similar. Argentineans even less. Thinking about it, I would say is neutral or positive, rarely derogatory. Morrocans, Africans, Latinamericans, Colombians drug-traficing, Romanians squating houses are not normally refered to as guiris as far as I remember, unless the word has changed connotations lately. The only way not true guiris can be called guiris is when you have a big gathering of different foreigners, such as a language school or a queue out of a police station to get documents. Isolated Morrocans, Africans, Bolivians, etc will not be called guiris I think. Football hooligans will do too. Edited by Richard Burton on 18 January 2013 at 2:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4860 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 30 15 April 2013 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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RG said everything, Brazilians tend to generalize everybody and call everyone gringo, alemão, japa, turco or something like that.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4904 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 22 of 30 29 May 2013 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Guiri is basically like what some beach towns in the US call Shoobies. aka annoying
tourists. I love to complain about guiris to Spaniards and it takes them a second to stop me and say 'pero tu estas un guiri tu mismo!'. As far as I'm concerned I'm no guiri as I don't do any of the things guiris do - wear safari gear in the old part of town, get sunburnt, scream and point at the menu in English/german... Where I live now in South Carolina, yankee is used to refer to northerners in a slightly derogatory way, and I've been called it many times. The funny thing is is that my family in Ohio has always called people from the Northeast 'yankees' as a mild jab b/c they see us as a fly-over cow state, so I guess it's perspective. I love this one: on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, anyone who wasn't born on the islands is referred to as a 'dingbatter'! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4340 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 23 of 30 29 May 2013 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Being a foreigner in Sweden, it's like this here:
- As soon as you move here, you are not a "foreigner" but a "Swede" (or new Swede). I was told this a few times, but once when I said something about being American I was literally told "No, you're a Swede now" even though I had only been living in Sweden for like three months at that point (and I don't speak Swedish fluently even now, one year later). People actually assume that "if you have a social security number (which is much more than that in Sweden - you need it for library cards, making appointments, picking up medicine, etc.), you're a citizen" and that you get automatic citizenship as soon as you marry a Swede. And that you 100% get all the rights as a Swede has just because you live here, ex. everyone thinks I could vote or get paid money to go to school just like a normal Swede does. - Even talking about immigrants is bad. Even if you're not saying bad things. You're hardly supposed to acknowledge that immigrants exist and are different from you because "no we're all the same!" and "we can't discriminate!" and "it's not that they're different from us and meaner or more prone to crime, they're just having a bad day or feeling sick, that's all!". That being said, the word for foreign or foreigner just literally means "outside-land" and "outside-landic" (in Swedish, and Icelandic too). However you can easily notice that in Icelandic they write and say "foreign" constantly, and it doesn't actually show up so much when in Swedish. For example, the Swedish newspaper won't talk about what ethnicity someone is or if they are foreign or not in an article, because that would be racist, so you have to read between the lines most of the time. In America it's practically the only thing you get to know about the person. As for insults for foreigners... well, my wife shouted "you hamburgers!" to her computer screen when she was mad at some dumb Americans the other day, and regularly joke-insults me and just says stuff like "you little American" and "you dumb-skull". I think that's a sign there is no real bad word in Swedish. I think it's not the word itself, but the feeling people have in the country towards foreigners. For example, in Iceland I was treated badly as a foreigner, and they really don't like foreigners (in a way that's too long to explain here but isn't as simple as "insulting them every time they see one"). Here in Sweden I am treated extremely well. Iceland is a much more closed society, and you're keenly aware when you're not in the group. They use almost the exact same word (útlendur Icelandic, utländsk Swedish) and it means the same thing, but being called an "out-lander" in Icelandic feels a lot more hurtful... (Regarding "yankee" - coming from the North-West of America, I always found that word to be very offensive but I never imagined it meant only Northerners, I always thought it referred to Americans as a whole. To be honest, the only word I can remember that I've found more offensive is "Americ**t/Amerikunt" and that's probably because it actually contains a swear word. I don't like America, so it has nothing to do with patriotism, but I wonder why I feel so strongly about "yankee" to begin with considering you almost never hear it...) So the Nordics have a lot of words for other people that, basically in my opinion, haven't changed much since they haven't felt as much pressure (until recently) to be more politically correct and so on. But their languages are more simple - like the talk about Norwegian earlier in the thread, there really aren't so many ways you can reword "foreigner" in a language with so few words to begin with (and Scandinavian is very much "add building-block words to make new words"). People are also rather matter-of-fact themselves, "white person, black person, in-lander, out-lander, makes perfect sense to me, simple and descriptive! If I want to insult them I'll just call them a hell-devil-foreigner just like I'd insult anything else!" Edited by kaptengröt on 29 May 2013 at 8:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5969 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 30 29 May 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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This one is a regional USA term, specific to The New Jersey shore, where I lived until recently. If you don't live there, you are a "Benny." No connection, by the way, with the famous polyglot of that name!
This article explains the term: Bennies The local newspaper had a feature with a photo of someone at the beach, and you had to guess if the person was a Benny or Not a Benny. Some cars had bumper stickers with a message "Benny go home!" so if the Irish Polyglot ever visits the area, he should be told about this first! It's not very friendly or welcoming. I never had a problem with Bennies. And most people don't. it's OK to be one and not always derogatory. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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