Thread: Words...

On the internet, words are your entire face. They are "you". The words you choose, and the way you use them, present your entire identity.

So, I have a question...why make yourself ugly? Isn't it better all around to present your best face to the internet?

Recently, a lot of people have been throwing around words that in their most innocent interpretation are simply lazy, and in their less innocent, are bigoted and hateful.

Sure, it's long, but "Pakistani" is not so difficult to spell. Two "a"s, two "i"s, not so much trouble. Not nearly as confusing as "Antidisestablishmentarianism." Not even as tricky as "Coccyx", a word that got me kicked out of the final round of the regional spelling bee in 5th grade, and a word I will remember to my grave because of it.

And "Japanese" is a word you probably use all the time! Why shorten it? You can leave out the "Schoolgirl" part, that's fine...

The thing is, the negative bit might not be what you mean, but it's what lots of people see. Sure, you can say it's not your problem if people see unintended negativity, but you're the one who looks ugly...when all it would take is a couple more keystrokes to clear up (unless, of course, it's not so innocent. In which case all the keystrokes in the world will do no good).

All I'm saying is, a little care with words will make who you are, and what you want to say, much clearer and much cleaner to others.

That's all I'm saying...

Primer Lesson

Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling--
Look out how you use proud words.


Carl Sandburg


From; Slabs of the Sunburnt West by Carl Sandburg (1922)

+1 on everything you said Jim.

Most of this, I would say, is due largely to an increasing global(at least western) inclination toward laziness. While other individual factors also certainly come into play.. be they environmental, educational, cultural etc inherent laziness is, in my opinion, by far the biggest one.

WAYTA?
..........

Originally Posted by OLD_SCHOOL

Is this thread a gripe about abbreviations? If so, abbreviations and the laziness of shortening words, really only come into full swing after the introduction of text messaging and the limit of how many characters a person could use in one text message before having to pay for a second. It kind of became an accepted way of writing, and so now people tend to do it all the time.

IMO internet (forum) talk and real (person to person) talk are very different. Emotions, tones, body language, facial expressions, and so on, are all absent in internet talk, so it is very easy to misunderstand what is being said. Ideally we ought try and think what it is the person is trying to convey when it's in text form, rather than worrying about the words used.

No, it's not about abbreviations. It's about people using words that have meaning far beyond what they might intend.

And if we don't worry about the words people use, and try to understand what we think they WANT to say, then we are engaging in mind reading...I'm not too good at that. All we have are words. Anything else is pure conjecture, and more often than not it fails.

Originally Posted by JimR

On the internet, words are your entire face. They are "you". The words you choose, and the way you use them, present your entire identity.

So, I have a question...why make yourself ugly? Isn't it better all around to present your best face to the internet?

Recently, a lot of people have been throwing around words that in their most innocent interpretation are simply lazy, and in their less innocent, are bigoted and hateful.

Sure, it's long, but "Pakistani" is not so difficult to spell. Two "a"s, two "i"s, not so much trouble. Not nearly as confusing as "Antidisestablishmentarianism." Not even as tricky as "Coccyx", a word that got me kicked out of the final round of the regional spelling bee in 5th grade, and a word I will remember to my grave because of it.

And "Japanese" is a word you probably use all the time! Why shorten it? You can leave out the "Schoolgirl" part, that's fine...

The thing is, the negative bit might not be what you mean, but it's what lots of people see. Sure, you can say it's not your problem if people see unintended negativity, but you're the one who looks ugly...when all it would take is a couple more keystrokes to clear up (unless, of course, it's not so innocent. In which case all the keystrokes in the world will do no good).

All I'm saying is, a little care with words will make who you are, and what you want to say, much clearer and much cleaner to others.

That's all I'm saying...

......Yep!

Jim If you would allow me to add to your comment that makes so much sense. An intelligent person will adapt to their environment not demand that the environment adapts to him.
Mike

I agree with what you're saying here though, for my own inability to take subtle hints, are you implying that shortening an ethnicity, though it maybe an indicator of laziness, is derogatory in some way?

Thanks,

Ogie

paki and jap are sometimes considered to be offensive slang

I defer to lincoln (one should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it)

Some History...

Paki:

The abbreviation Paki acquired offensive connotations in the 1960s when used by British tabloids to refer to subjects of former colony states in a derogatory and racist manner. In modern British usage "Paki" is typically used in a derogatory way as a label for all South Asians, including Indians, Afghans and Bangladeshis. To a lesser extent, the term has been applied as a racial slur towards Arabs and other Middle Eastern-looking groups who may resemble South Asians. During the 60's many emigrants were also dubbed as "black" to further segregrate them from the white community. Some would say such a division still exists in parts of England.

In recent times there has been a trend by second and third-generation British Pakistanis to reclaim the word. The word has been turned into a keepsake for the young British Pakistani community that is not acceptable for someone outside the community to say it, including Indians and Bangladeshis.

Jap:
Jap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History and etymology
Newspaper headlines announcing Japanese surrender in World War II.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Jap" as an abbreviation for "Japanese" was in colloquial use in London around 1880.[3] An example of benign usage was the previous naming of Boondocks Road in Jefferson County, Texas, originally named "Jap Road" when it was built in 1905 to honor a popular local rice farmer from Japan.[4]

Later popularized during World War II to describe those of Japanese descent, "Jap" was then commonly used in newspaper headlines to refer to the Japanese and Imperial Japan. "Jap" became a derogatory term during the war, more so than "Nip".[2] Some in the United States Marine Corps also tried to combine the word "Japs" with "Apes" to create a new description, "Japes", for the Japanese. However, this neologism never became popular.[2] Veteran and author Paul Fussell explains the usefulness of the word during the war for creating effective propaganda by saying that "Japs" "was a brisk monosyllable handy for slogans like 'Rap the Jap' or 'Let's Blast the Jap Clean Off the Map'".[2]

In the United States and Canada, the term is now considered derogatory; Webster's Dictionary notes it is "usually disparaging".[5] In the United Kingdom it is considered derogatory, and the Oxford dictionary defines it as offensive.[6]

In 2003, the Japanese deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Yoshiyuki Motomurea, protested the North Korean ambassador's use of the term in retaliation for a Japanese diplomat's use of the term "North Korea" instead of the official name, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".[7] In Texas, under pressure from civil rights groups, Jefferson County commissioners in 2004 decided to drop the name "Jap Road" from a 4.3-mile road near the city of Beaumont. Also in adjacent Orange County, "Jap Lane" has also been targeted by civil rights groups.[8] The road was originally named for the contributions of Kichimatsu Kishi and the farming colony he founded. And in Arizona, the state department of transportation renamed "Jap Road" near Topock, Arizona to "Bonzai Slough Road" to note the presence of Japanese agricultural workers and family-owned farms along the Colorado River there in the early 20th century.[citation nee