Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 05:27:11PM +0200, Matija Šuklje napisał(a): > With the so called Roma people, the problem is even bigger, since to my > knowledge Roma are just one of the tribes. So by having to call _all_ gypsies > Roma, you are effectively putting one tribe in front of the others and > denying > the existence of the others.
We have the same issue in Polish. Until now I didn't know that the "Romowie" vs "Cyganie" (in Polish) has also this kind of problem. This particular example is even more interesting because of a few Polish words, originating from the word "Cyganie", like "cyganeria" (which means roughly "a group of artists, living (usually together) in a leisurely way"), or "ocyganić", which means "to cheat" (this one is rather old-fashioned"). I guess that maybe we (and groups like Gypsies) have just to live with that - even if we try to eliminate such words, another ones will emerge. For instance: I think that "gay" was first introduced by the LGBT lobby as a "positive" term, which now (at least in Polish) is beginning to be derogatory. Here, this works in exactly the opposite direction: it is not the language which shapes our thinking, but our attitudes which shape our language. In the "Gypsy case", instead of introducing a new word (Romowie), I would rather try to discourage using "ocyganić" in the sense of "cheating". BTW, I know of at least two derogatory terms concerning my nation: "Polak" (which is exactly what a Polish man is called in Polish) is considered rude in the US, and "polnische Wirtchaft" is very derogatory in German. I have to admit that I am not extremely happy because of these terms, but it's not a real problem for me. Regards -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl) Emacs: Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift. ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
