h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey, glad to see this here. It is so informative, it needs to be a sticky for hootooers.

I just clicked on your link to forbidden words and got a nasty shock.

There is a word on that list which is considered by whatever fool made that list (and if you are lurking, you are one, so don't quibble)...

That word is considered racially offensive by aforesaid fool.

That word is simply the word, IN Yiddish, for a Jew. In other words, if I were speaking Yiddish - which I can, and do - I would be using that word to describe another person.

This word would not only NOT be offensive, it would be correct.

Banning this word is offensive because it implies - no, comes right out and says - that calling a person something he actually is, is offensive....because what he is, is offensive.

Er, somebody put that better, let me see if I can find it:

Nope, can't find that comic's name. He pointed out that, as a Jew, he was offended by people calling him 'Jewish'.

But I stumbled upon a language purist back in 1866:

http://books.google.com/books?id=8_0RAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=Hebrew+persuasion&source=bl&ots=yKqL7oktYp&sig=23x1znIhLuVVI7cZ1y3y6Gx2hyc&hl=en&ei=PGGxSbTMAYrGtgfM8L3CBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

This is hilarious. This gentleman could get a job as a mod.

Sorry, I found this only now.

Thanks for rereading and commenting. It will take me a while to read through the article you posted the link to, but it is fascinating, thank you for that.

From what I've seen so far, I think it would be safe to say that I'm of female persuasion.

Really, the author makes his point extremely well.

Doesn't he, though?

I thought it was worth noting that, in one's attempt to avoid offence, it is possible to create a new source of offence.

It certainly is. And I would never have thought the word you are referring to was offensive anyway. I'm sure if I had for some reason used it, it would have taken me hours to find out.

Me, too. In Yiddish - at least, back in the 19th Century - it was the word used, prefaced by 'Reb', or 'Mister', to address a strange man who obviously belonged to your group.

This is silly, and goes back to the problem that people don't want to face: They think that what another person is, is in itself offensive.

Elektra and I have just been discussing this, and came up with an example:

Suppose we all decided that it was tragically awful to be German.

And then referred to our German friends as 'of the Teutonic persuasion'...

Which was almost what Mala suggested in her response to my latest AWW rant on Brecht...

In Germany, calling somebody a nazi is offensive. Because what nazis were, was offensive.

In the US the term is used jocularly. There was the tv comic Seinfeld's nemesis, the chef known as the 'soup nazi'. Stupid right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh calls Hilary Clinton a 'feminazi'. We can even call a friend a 'fashion nazi', a 'schedulae nazi', a 'library nazi', whatever...

Since I spend much more of my time talking to Germans online than to English speakers, I never use this expression, just I never say that doing something tacky is 'gay'.

More self-censorship, but in a good cause, that of not hurting my friends' feelings.

And did I run this post through Preview? You bet your sweet bippy I did...

No cats with striped tails were injured in the sending of this post...

'Teutonic persuasion. Soup nazi'.

The way you use it, it sounds funny.

Who was it that said about Americans and Brits that they are separated by their common language?

I can't remember. It might have been George Bernard Shaw. He was always going on about language.

For instance, he wanted spelling reform to go along with his proposal to reform everything else about people he didn't approve of.

Bossy Irishman.

He pointed out that 'ghoti' spells 'fish'.

gh as in 'rough'
o as in 'women'
ti as in 'gumption'

If we are honest, it's just as logical to write ghoti for fish, as it is to - oh, choose a word, there are so many. Plough, for instance. I mean, compare the pronunciation of (r)ough and (pl)ough.

Plough, rough, cough, enough, though, through, bough, dough, hough (which is a real word, just antiquated), lough, sough (ditto), tough, and my favourite, slough, which I can NEVER remember how to pronounce.

The awful thing is, I know how this happened. I am not proud of this - none of us is, it just happened...but the explanation is so tedious, and it was a long time ago, and we just need to, well, you know, get over it and forget and forgive, and really, just learn to live with...

...the awful spelling.

And the burden of history, alas.

You're right, English is such an eclectic mix of languages, no wonder it is so confusing to foreigners.

True, true.

But fun, all the same.