Re: Fruitcakes was Re: Kentum/satem

Joe scripsit:

> How can 'breeder' be an insult?  I'd take that as a Compliment.
For the same reason "polack" is an insult when applied to Poles,
despite its obvious derivation from the Polish self-adjective
(or substitute "Chinaman" despite it being a straight translation of
zhongguo ren or han ren); because most of the people who use it, intend to
insult the person so called.

A close variant of this process accounts for the semantic variance
between Sp sombrero 'hat' and the borrowed Eng sombrero 'stereotypical
Mexican hat'.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_