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#136
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Kaffir Lily is an offensive name
Ann wrote in
: Janet Baraclough.. expounded: The message from Ann contains these words: Salty Thumb expounded: bu ab! zl frperg pbqr unf orra oebxra! cyrnfr gryy zr gurpvn.arg vf gur phyvanel vafgvghgr bs nzrevpn, fb V jvyy abg unir gb fxvc gur pbhagel! Lbhe frperg vf fnsr jvgu zr! Abg jvgu zr gubhtu. Fraq cvrf, be V gnyx. Qeng! Fnygl, jr'ir orra bhggrq! qba'g jbeel, bapr fur trgf n gnfgr bs bar bs zl cvrf, fur'yy unir bgure guvatf gb jbeel nobhg :-) |
#137
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
On Wed, 7 Apr 2004 18:55:44 +0100, "Therefore" wrote:
In our village we have some muleatoes That anything like cameltoes? http://www.cameltoe.org/ |
#138
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
In article , "Martin"
wrote: SNIP Well said. My personal bugbear is the use of 'coloured' as an p.c. alternative to 'black'. Coloured is a blanket term for anyone who isn't white so its labelling someone by what they're not. If I was black I'd rather be called black than 'not white'. Yes, but ask yourself - have you ever actually met someone who is actually black? The term is a collective approximation for a range of people with skin colours which can vary from ivory through to very dark brown. Also "honky white trash" should be changed to "honky pink trash." -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
#139
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Kaffir Lily is an offensive name
The message
from Salty Thumb contains these words: V hetr lbh gb erpbafvqre. Boivbhfyl lbh ner abg snzvyvne jvgu zl sbbq cercnengvba fxvyyf, bgurejvfr lbh jbhyq abg or nfxvat zr gb fzhttyr jrncbaf bs zbhgu qrfgehpgvba bhg bs gur pbhagel. Unu, fb lbh'er gur crefba erfcbafvoyr sbe zl oebxra svyyvat :-( Janet |
#140
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
Yes but different
"Darren Garrison" wrote in message ... On Wed, 7 Apr 2004 18:55:44 +0100, "Therefore" wrote: In our village we have some muleatoes That anything like cameltoes? http://www.cameltoe.org/ |
#141
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Kaffir Lily is an offensive name
On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:50:13 GMT, Salty Thumb wrote:
l'ordinateur ne pige pas, ma andouille, mais il est très poli. comprenez-vous? mais non. Lisez: il y a 10 (oui 10) genres de personnes dans le monde, ceux qui comprennent numeration binaire et ceux qui ne comprennent pas. pigez-vous? Vous es un sac de merde. zut! peut-être l'ordinateur comprend. Ribbit! Aaaaand, the http://babelfish.altavista.com/ translation: the computer measuring rod not, my andouille, but it is very polished. do you include/understand? but not. Read: there are 10 (yes 10) kinds of people in the world, those which include/understand binary numeration and those which do not include/understand. do you pigez? You be a bag of shit. zut! perhaps the computer includes/understands. Ribbit! |
#142
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
The message
from "David Hill" contains these words: You really should keep this in mind when you start insulting people and calling them names etc as you so often do. Is it this "momentary feeling of superiority in knowing that they are insulting someone " that gives you such a kick? You so often exhibit a great knowledge of plants, and a great use of reference material in how you answer many questions raised here, then next minute you're like a 10 year old in the playground who cant get their own way and who dredges up all the insults and foul words they can think of to vent their pent up anger. So why not consider other peoples feelings and practice what you are preaching, and consider peoples feelings in future. The OP's been in my killfile for a long time so I don't see his posts. 'Kaffir' is a perfectly proper name for several indiginous tribes of South Africa (inc the Xhosa) and just because the word is abused by some as a blanket term of contempt for any black African it doesn't make 'Kaffir' an offensive word per se. It reflects on the misusers, not on the perceived target, just the same as other abusers of nationalities/communities/ethnic groups such as Jew, Arab, Bohemian, French (screwdriver), Dutch (courage) don't make the use of these nationalities offensive. It's the intent behind the use of a word which is important, not its political correctness to well-meaning fools. If a 'Kaffir lily' were the name for something obnoxious, I would agree that it was an offensive name. Since it isn't, I can only assume that the OP is trolling as usual. -- Rusty Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar. http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ |
#143
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
On Mon, 05 Apr 2004 23:17:23 GMT, "Cereus-validus" wrote:
It is amazing how such a topic reveals who are the bigoted racists among us and the clueless sycophants that empower them. A truly enlightened individual would have admitted that such racist plant names are offensive, vow never to use them again and enlighten other not to use them. So, I'm assuming that you insist that people not use the word "cretin" to describe an idiot because it is an insult to people from Crete, not use "vandal" to describe someone who damages property because it might offend descendants of the Vandal people? I can with one hundered percent honesty say that I have never in my life heard the word "kaffir" before I read it on this group in this thread. But you say that I am a racist and a bigot because I refuse to be offended by the word? http://www.bartleby.com/68/98/2298.html Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. ETYMOLOGICAL FALLACY This is the name of a much-practiced folly that insists that what a word “really means” is whatever it once meant long ago, perhaps even in another language. A classic example is the argument that the adjective dilapidated should be applied only to deteriorating structures made of stone, because its ultimate source was the Latin lapis, meaning “stone.” Actually, the Latin dilapidare meant “to throw away, to scatter, as if scattering stones,” and the infinitive lapidare meant “to throw stones.” And in any case dilapidated no longer has anything to do with stones in American English; today it means “broken down, fallen into decay or disrepair,” and it can be applied to any object, garment, or structure, whatever it is made of. http://www.clovisnews.com/trails/words_mean.html March 5, 2001 Words Mean Things And What They Don't. By Jesse Shieldlower CLOVIS -- It's official. The University of North Dakota will be featured on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" investigative sports-news program this Sunday. At issue is the Fighting Sioux nickname controversy. A few day ago State lawmakers in Idaho rejected a proposal to change place names that include the word "squaw," which some Native Americans believe to be an insult deriving from a vulgarism for female genitalia. Other states have faced similar challenges; in 1998, for example, Arizona rejected a proposal to rename that state's Squaw Peak, while Gov. Angus King of Maine signed a bill last year to ban the word from two dozen place names. Some dictionaries do label squaw as offensive, but that reflects its derogatory usage, not its derivation. In fact, linguists agree that the etymological meaning of the word, a borrowing from the Massachusett language, is simply "woman," with no insulting implications. The link to genitalia was promulgated, with no evidence, in a 1973 polemic, and circulated broadly after being mentioned in a 1992 episode of "Oprah." But for those trying to squelch the use of "squaw," it probably wouldn't matter if the word really did have a vulgar background. English has a variety of words that are used freely despite etymologies that might give users pause. The verb "gyp," for example, comes from "Gypsy," members of which people (who prefer to be known as Roma) were stereotyped as swindlers. "Poppycock," which seems like the sort of quaint expression a character in a Norman Rockwell painting might use, derives from a Dutch word meaning "soft excrement." The juvenile insult "dork" is from a slang term for the penis, as are the Yiddish-derived terms "schmuck" and "putz." The military "snafu" is an acronym often euphemized as "situation normal, all fouled up." In general, only when someone gets upset are these stealth offensive terms noticed. Thus the outrage in the 1998 New York Senate race when Alfonse M. D'Amato called his opponent, a Jew, a "putzhead." (The insulted party, Charles E. Schumer, won.) Conversely, words whose actual origins are truly inoffensive can get the cold shoulder if they sound like words that are viewed as offensive. The tendency to avoid such words has been described by the Yale linguist Larry Horn as a variant of Gresham's Law (bad money driving out good), in which an offensive word drives out an inoffensive word that sounds like it — verbal guilt by association. Thus in 1999 a Connecticut schoolteacher was reprimanded for employing the saying "When you `assume,' you make an `ass' of `u' and `me,' " though this "ass" is the word for "donkey," used for 500 years (including by Shakespeare and in the King James Bible) as an insulting term for a person, and unrelated to the identically spelled word for the buttocks. Most prominently, in 1999, a white mayoral aide in Washington was forced to resign after using the word "niggardly" — a Middle English-derived word for stingy — in a conversation with a black official who thought it was related to the racist term it sounds like. Some words also fall prey to what linguists refer to as the "etymological fallacy," the belief that a word's history has a strong bearing on how it is, or should be, used. Some purists criticize the use of "decimate" to mean "destroy" or "seriously harm," on the grounds that the only proper meaning is "to kill or destroy 1 in 10 of," a sense that has never been used apart from a direct reference to the ancient Roman custom from which it derives. These examples have very little to do with the way English is actually used. Most words change their meanings over time without bothering anyone, so we don't now care that "boy" originally meant "servant" (of either sex) or "nice" meant "ignorant, foolish" or that "prestige" meant "a deception." Sometimes even when the meaning of a word doesn't shift, its offensiveness can change dramatically. The words "Tory" and "Whig" entered the language as highly opprobrious slurs, but were later adopted by the parties to which they referred. More recently, we have seen a variety of disparaging terms adopted with pride, from "fag" and "dyke" by homosexuals, to "crone" and "hag" by members of some neo-pagan groups. Guidelines for words' usage are determined not by their history (real or imagined), but by someone who cares one way or the other having the power to convince an audience. Groups that have — or gain — political power can have an influence on what they are called. It's no coincidence that it was in 1967, with the civil rights movement growing, that the United States Board on Geographic Names changed "******" to "Negro" in 143 American place names. People continue to use "squaw" in place names because the concerns of Native Americans have not been taken as seriously (which is also why "Redskins" and "Braves" are still used as the names of professional sports teams), not because the word is or is not a vulgarism. "Gyp" is in wide use for the same reason, while the similar expression "to jew down" is widely shunned; the people of Wales haven't yet had much success arguing against the use of "welsh" meaning "renege," which in any case is etymologically unconnected to "Welsh." A word's "real meaning" according to its etymology may not match the "real meaning" of its context and usage. And in matters of taste, it is the usage — the way that we and the words we speak every day exist in the world — that is always the deciding factor. |
#144
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Kaffir Lily is an offensive name
In article , Janet Baraclough..
wrote: The message from zxcvbob contains these words: Janet Baraclough.. wrote: The message from Darren Garrison contains these words: I do not CARE if the word is offensive in some distant country in some way that is not meaningful in my own country. I don't CARE if the word "kaffir" is a slur against ethnic Bantus in South Africa, because I'm never going to go to South Africa and am most likely never going to meet a Bantu. This is an international newsgroup with contributors from other countries and many races. Janet But what is your point? No one here has said they were personally offended, only *vicariously* offended. My point is, that it would be polite for Darren to show a little care for the feelings of other posters than himself; even if they live somewhere else. For the record, I am offended by the use of racist slurs. Janet. "All Japanese people have buck teeth & say 'so sahwee'" is a racist slur. "All black people have smaller brains" is a racist slur. It doesn't take words like Gook or ****** to be slurs, & I side with Lenny Bruce on this issue entirely: You would EMPOWER words to do harm, then make the words taboo. I would rob the words of power. It MIGHT be just two reasonable approaches, but I suspect not; I think you're just wrong. You can make the personal decision to personally not use words, but when you decide that the speech of others is inherently bad because they don't share your desire to FURTHER EMPOWER words by making them taboo, well, we should all respect each others' choices I guess, but I do believe you do the greater harm spreading the power of words to do harm instead of undermining that power. Someone here said dyke is a bad word too -- it's not, it's a good word, it is the choice of many dykes to call ourselves dykes. So too it is the choice of many ******s to call themselves ******s, though at this stage many of those same ******s believe I as a ****ing yid shouldn't have the same choice. The issue may be complex, but what is certainly true is this: When words are made taboo their power to do harm is increased. Polite people are frequently the most racist on earth, but a vulgar mouth like Lenny Bruce's, that was liberating for all people. -paghat the ****ing **** of a ******-loving ratbitch hymie -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
#145
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
"Jaques d'Alltrades" wrote in message
... The message from "David Hill" contains these words: You really should keep this in mind when you start insulting people and calling them names etc as you so often do. Is it this "momentary feeling of superiority in knowing that they are insulting someone " that gives you such a kick? You so often exhibit a great knowledge of plants, and a great use of reference material in how you answer many questions raised here, then next minute you're like a 10 year old in the playground who cant get their own way and who dredges up all the insults and foul words they can think of to vent their pent up anger. So why not consider other peoples feelings and practice what you are preaching, and consider peoples feelings in future. The OP's been in my killfile for a long time so I don't see his posts. 'Kaffir' is a perfectly proper name for several indiginous tribes of South Africa (inc the Xhosa) and just because the word is abused by some as a blanket term of contempt for any black African it doesn't make 'Kaffir' an offensive word per se. It reflects on the misusers, not on the perceived target, just the same as other abusers of nationalities/communities/ethnic groups such as Jew, Arab, Bohemian, French (screwdriver), Dutch (courage) don't make the use of these nationalities offensive. It's the intent behind the use of a word which is important, not its political correctness to well-meaning fools. If a 'Kaffir lily' were the name for something obnoxious, I would agree that it was an offensive name. Since it isn't, I can only assume that the OP is trolling as usual. -- Rusty Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar. http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ Well said. My personal bugbear is the use of 'coloured' as an p.c. alternative to 'black'. Coloured is a blanket term for anyone who isn't white so its labelling someone by what they're not. If I was black I'd rather be called black than 'not white'. I guess black people generally feel the same which is why there are MOBO awards and not MOCO awards. And some people just go stupid. Do you remember the primary scholl which banned 'baa baa black sheep' as being racially offensive? -- Martin & Anna Sykes ( Remove x's when replying ) http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~sykesm |
#146
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Kaffir Lily is an offensive name
On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 13:59:23 GMT, "Cereus-validus"
wrote: I'm not surprised that you still are using the highly offensive racist name for the plants. Gosh stevie THATS so much worse than "BITCH SLAP" YOU PHONY ASS! |
#147
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
In article , Darren
Garrison wrote: So, I'm assuming that you insist that people not use the word "cretin" to describe an idiot because it is an insult to people from Crete, not use "vandal" to describe someone who damages property because it might offend descendants of the Vandal people? And "bugger" derives from the word from Bulgarian (it really does) :L -- Remover the rock from the email address |
#148
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Kaffir lily is an offensive name
In article , Martin Sykes
writes And some people just go stupid. Do you remember the primary scholl which banned 'baa baa black sheep' as being racially offensive? Some time ago, a customer laid into a local supermarket manager about the use of the term 'black pepper' !!!!!!!! When I lived in Jamaica in the late sixties, people of my skin colour were referred to as pigs. Or, more accurately, 'pork men'. But we didn't get all upset . . . we just accepted it. -- Jane Ransom in Lancaster. I won't respond to private emails that are on topic for urg but if you need to email me for any other reason, put ransoms at jandg dot demon dot co dot uk where you see |
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