|
 |
Nationalities | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5527 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 9 of 20 16 November 2009 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Perhaps that is due partly to the tone...
I think that here, as elsewhere, it is not really the word itself that is the problem, rather the way it's used. Just like Negro ought to be more acceptable, judging from modern PC standards, than Black, it isn't. While Negro means exactly the same thing, it is less direct since it is not English, sort of like calling a blind person 'visually impaired' or a cripple 'handicapped'. It means the same, but the meaning is obscured behind a layer of foreign or learned words. So the reason that Negro is considered unacceptable (as is Black nowadays, as I understand it) has nothing to do with its meaning, it is connected with the way the majority viewed and treated negroes when that word was still used. In that way, even African-American or any other invention can become "derogatory" and "offensive". It is funny and a bit scary that people are so used to playing the offense game that they just assume that any established name for any group of non-Europeans must be derogatory. If indian, negro and lapp are offensive, then surely eskimo must be too, right? I met a Chinaman in Russia who was very upset when hearing that China was called Kina [Shee-nah] in Swedish, since you can clearly hear that it is derived from Qin (or Jin). Not that he explained why that would be offensive. On the other hand, he had nothing against the English name, even though I pointed out that 'China' has the same etymology, it's just that its pronunciation obsures that fact. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6774 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 20 16 November 2009 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
My Dad used to work in a government office, and every few years, the official policy on what to call minorities
(everything from Indians to disabled people) is re-written. Why? Because the new terms introduced during the last policy re-write are now considered "derogatory", so they have to introduce new euphemisms. It's a cycle that is repeated endlessly. People with diminished mental capacity were originally mentally retarded. Then they were mentally disabled. Then they were mentally challenged. Then they were "differently-abled" or some nonsense. All these words mean the same thing. The only offence, the only prejudice, is in the mind of the speaker himself, who must keep inventing new words to hide his own shame. On a similar note, I read somewhere that the original Proto-Germanic word for "bear" is lost because the Germanic tribes deified bears and felt it was derogatory to use the word "bear", so instead they'd use an indirect term, a euphemism, to refer to bears. Then, over time, the euphemism would become the actual word for bear, and they'd have to invent another euphemism. "Bruin" (brown one) is an example of one of these euphemisms. Edited by Captain Haddock on 16 November 2009 at 12:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5527 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 11 of 20 16 November 2009 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is a very interesting topic. It's a shame of course that some words have been lost, but it's an interesting phenomenon when the names of dangerous animals become taboo. Bear in Russian (medved' = honey-knower) was one of the first words I was able to analyze in that language. Just like in those days we were afraid to say out loud the names of potential perils like wolf and bear, we now shrink from words for diseases or death itself ('depart', 'pass on', 'decease'...). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6209 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 12 of 20 16 November 2009 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm wondering where you got this information about California. I have lived all my life in California, and like I said before, I have only heard this from non-native speakers. I don't remember seeing it in movies either. But maybe it's just something I have been overlooking! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 20 16 November 2009 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I tend to say "Spaniard", "Chinese person" and "Briton". It looks inconsistent, but then again this is English :-/ Most of your choices would work but if I were in your shoes, I'd avoid "Chinaman" and "Britisher" (the former because of its negative connotation (IMHO undeserved) and the latter because it seems as casual to me as calling Britons "Brits". I cringed when I once heard a newscaster say: "X soldiers were killed today in Iraq including a Brit." *blech*) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 20 16 November 2009 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hungarian has something similar with certain animals. A stag is called "szarvas" meaning "horned (one), animal with horn(s)" and a wolf is called "farkas" meaning "tailed (one), animal with tail". A bear is called "medve" (a borrowing from a Slavonic language) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6665 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 15 of 20 16 November 2009 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
It's been a long time since I heard anyone refer to anyone else as a Spaniard. For that reason, it just sounds old fashioned but not necessarily disrespectful. It's correct, but somehow sounds funny. Maybe this is because we have so few demonyms that end in -ard, and none of them seem particularly common. In fact, I can't come up with any others at the moment, no matter how hard I try.
I would get around it by saying something such as "Hector is Spanish" or "Elena is from Spain." If I'm compelled to use a noun, I'd say "Enrique is a Spanish man." I wouldn't say "*Hector is a Spanish" because that prompts the question "a Spanish what?" The word "Chinaman" may sound pejorative to some people, so I'd avoid it. It also sounds really dated. A Chinaman somehow sounds more exotic than a Chinese person, and I've never heard anybody referred to as a Chinawoman. As a result, I'd say "Steve is a Chinese man" or "Lisa is Chinese." Somehow "Englishman" and "Englishwoman" don't seem so odd or dated. The same goes for Irishman, Frenchman, Scotsman and Welshman. I have heard the word "Briton" used to refer to people from Great Britain, but it's far less common than more specific words such as Englishman and Scotsman. I grew up at a time when it was far more common to refer to a woman who practiced law as a "lady lawyer." Today such a woman is referred to as a lawyer; it seems odd to many speakers of English to bring up her gender unless there is a specific question. For that reason, gender-specific words such as Irishman and Frenchwoman may eventually be replaced, and it's probably too early to tell what will replace them. For that matter, what do you call a person from Switzerland? I've never heard anybody referred to as a Swiss, a Swissman or a Swisswoman. We would just say "Kurt is from Switzerland" or "Marie is Swiss" or "Marco is a Swiss person." It would probably be a simple and elegant solution if we could simply use the adjectives as gender-free nouns and say that "Marie is a French" or "Jan is a Dutch" or "Hiroshi is a Japanese," but I don't see that coming to pass in the near future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 20 16 November 2009 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hey, SamD, I'm just living up to my title as an "old fart" by using "Spaniard". ;-) You are correct, though about there being an old or even archaic air about the word because nowadays you most often hear "Spaniard" when talking about the Spanish Armada or Spanish colonization of South America.
I've occasionally used "Swiss" as a demonym, but I'm more likely to use the constructions that you mentioned (e.g. "Marie is Swiss")
English handling of nationality terms is definitely tricky, since a few nationalities have nouns with gender distinctions (-man/-woman: Englishman, Frenchwoman), others don't (German, Pole), while others don't even get a noun and share the form that can be an adjective (e.g. Hungarian, Iranian). Still others have doublets (e.g. Slovenian vs. Slovene). I suspect that these inconsistencies have arisen because of the way the words entered English or by which analogy came to be applied to the term. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
