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Re: NEWS: MicroSoft's Spanish language problems

From:Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 18, 2002, 2:25
--- Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
> Barbara Barrett wrote: > > Barbara Babbles; > > Would "native American" also be used to describe > > the indigionous peoples > > of Central and South America?
PCwise, they're "Latinos". Amazing, innit? A black man moves here (to the US) from Senegal and is called "African-American". And actual "Native" American moves here from Ecuador and he's called "Latino". I didn't move from anywhere and they call me by a colour (white) my skin will never really attain.
> > I'd have thought > > that with such PC terms > > as "Afro-American" etc that "american" implied > > nationality.
Well, your first mistake was in thinking that PC and sensibility had anything to with one another. PC is a way for some politically oriented people to have power over others and the country via strange notions of race, victimisation, culture and other ways of dividing people. [rant alert] While I'm all for our collective freedom to express out cultural heritage, speak whatever languages we please and call ourselves what we like; an increasingly large part of me would like to totally illegalise the "[hyphen]American" suffix that get tacked on to far too many words. I'd also like to outlaw colour terms as generally applied to skin tones. If They really want a colourblind society They shouldn't obsess over it.
> In the case of "Native American", "American" refers > to the whole Western > Hemisphere.
Pedantically, yes. As far as I've been able to figure, the PC machine doesn't agree: "Native" ends at the US border (though, maybe includes Canada as well).
> If it referred to nationality, then I'd > be a "native > American", since I was born here. :-)
No, you'd be "white" (presumably). I've taken to referring to my own "race" as 'human' and national or cultural identity as 'American'. The rest of it's just gotten too stupid. Too stupid even for the usual American lunacy. Padraic. ===== beuyont alch geont la ciay la cina mangeiont alch geont y faues la lima; pe' ne m' molestyont que faciont doazque y facyont in rima. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! News - Today's headlines http://news.yahoo.com

Replies

Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>