From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61701
Date: 2008-11-17
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
>> > >
>> > ============
>> >
>> > No, it's not untenable.
>> > This word was never intended as offensive.
>> > This word does not have any racist content in French.
>> >
>> > A.
>>
>> It has offensive overtones in English, the language of this
>> list.
>>
>> ****GK: Not to me it hasn't. But this is an interesting
>> issue. I've always wondered how the various components
>> of "political correctness" get started. Could it
>> be as simple as this? Somebody somewhere puts forth his or
>> her little idea with emphatic certainty. Others yield
>> ("Gee I didn't realize...") and another item
>> is added to the new decalogue... In my old Webster's of
>> 1949 there is not a hint of "Hamitic" being
>> objectionable. (p. 373: HAMITIC: "Of or pertaining to
>> the Hamites, or the family of languages (HAMITIC languages)
>> including ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and various modern
>> languages. See LANGUAGE,Table. ----n. Any of the Hamitic
>> languages." Any idea as to when and where (after 1949)
>> "Hamitic" acquired "offensive overtones"
>> and which authority sanctioned this?****
>
> Hamitic refers to Ham, the son of Noah who was cursed. African-American
> were often referred to by racists as "Children of Ham", especially in the
> Bible Belt -a term which has become more marginalized in recent years. But
> the idea of referring to a group by an accursed individual is not a smart
> thing in any case
>
===========
We cannot change the lexical items of linguistics
every time some dumb idiot invents a new junk theory
because he or she misread the Bible from A to Z.
This amounts to giving the most idiots the power to control what the most
enlightened people want to say.
I disagree.
And to be frank, I don't care a **** about the Bible.
Chamito-Semitic is __now__ unconnected with the Bible.
It's just a scientific word.
It does not have to justify what it stands for.
Arnaud