Re: Hressa-Hlab (was: Re: Martian conlangs?)

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> > (Remember, the phrase "politically correct" started out as a leftist
> > joke.)
>
> It did?
It began as a humorous critique by moderate leftists of doctrinaire
Marxists, who were implicitly accused of having two standards of truth,
the ordinary one and the what-is-good-for-the-Party one.  The Stalinist
phrase "objective enemy" for anybody with too much money, however
supportive of the Revolution, is the kind of thing we had in mind.
See also George Orwell's _1984_, where the ruling party calls its ideology
"Ingsoc" (English Socialism) because it is utterly opposed to any kind
of socialism.

> I find it most commonly used against leftists, particularly of
> culturally radical flavour, so it appears they tasting their own medicine then.
That has come to be the case, yes.

> (Asuming that "culturally radical" means in English what I think it means;
> hostility to traditional social norms combined with the belief that culutural
> diversity is inherently beneficial.)
It's not a phrase I would naturally produce, but I certainly understood it
immediately.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_