Re: Spanish education

> Date:         Tue, 12 Mar 2002 15:08:42 -0800
> From: Bob Greenwade <bob.greenwade@...>
>
> At 12:31 PM 3/12/02 +0100, Antonio WARD wrote:
> >1) The word used in Venezuela (where I come from) for a "baseball cap" and
> >the word venezuelans use for "shell" are considered vulgarities in Argentina
> >and they designate the vagina.
> >
> >2) The same things happens with with the word Venezuelans use for "jacket"
> >which means "vagina" (in slang) in Mexico.
>
>     As others have pointed out, the same phenomenon happens in English
> (and, no doubt, many other languages as well).  I'd like to share one
> particular anecdote from many years ago.
You don't need transatlantic differences for that, it's enough with
those between British English as taught in Danish schools in the
seventies and spoken in Hammersmith (London) a few laters. I found out
that asking for a rubber in a stationery shop was not the done thing
any more, the word wanted was eraser. I'm sure the two elderly ladies
were about to call the police on me, until I found the things myself.
I was 16 then --- I didn't actually discover until a few years later
that rubber is also an English slang term for condom.

I think that's an example of taboo replacement: Rubbers, originally
made from leather, were quite peacefully known as rubbers for over 400
years, while the word was applied to the new substance used for them,
and then to similar substances like latex --- but when the name now
has been transferred to an object with sexual uses, it can no longer
be used for something that goes in every child's pencil case.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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