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Re: Unamerican

From:AcadonBot <acadon@...>
Date:Saturday, May 6, 2000, 4:14
----- Original Message -----
From: "nicole perrin" <nicole.eap@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: Unamerican


> AcadonBot wrote: > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Christophe Grandsire" <Christophe.Grandsire@...> > > To: <CONLANG@...> > > Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 12:55 AM > > Subject: Re: Unamerican > > > > > There is no idea of "un-French" in French (*infrançais is juste > > > meaningless). <clip> > > > > It's my impression that this word (unAmerican) is generally > > misunderstood outside the US context. (Not that it has much > > consistent use within.) > > > > The compounding involved (un- + nationality) does not IMO > > define the word, and does not mean that there should be similarly > > formed words elsewhere. <snip> > > I think it's important to realize here that *people* are rarely (at > least in my experience) referred to as unamerican. In the above > example, it would be relatively common to say that the KKK was > unamerican, but less common to say that a particular person in the KKK > was unamerican (probably because that would imply that s/he was a > foreigner). The most common example, of course, of unamerican-ness, is > communism, coming from the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Even > in the name of that committee, *activities* are what are considered > unamerican, not people. Perhaps that's where the misunderstanding that > foreigners seem to have comes from, the fact that we use the term to > apply to things and they assume it to apply to people? Nicole
Yes, good point. It is not very likely, IMO, to be applied to a person as to "activities" or to groups dedicated to activities or attitudes.