sexist language

Frederic Maffray maffray at porthos.rutgers.edu
Fri Nov 18 13:49:53 AEST 1988


In article <410 at babbage.acc.virginia.edu>, Alex Colvin writes:

Pierre Laforgue wrote:
#> Why don't you  use the latin  language, instead of decadent
#> ones as is the english ? ...
#> The french language is more subtil than english : ...

# From the folks that brought us that admirable word "Chauvinisme".

It's funny, this  newsgroup gets  cluttered every   month  by  yet
another (American) person  who starts again the  usual  discussion
about English beign the richest  language,  with the most nuances,
the most words, etc.  In a word "the best language in  the world."
This usually does not even elicit  accusations  of chauvinism. But
if  one person who  happens  to be   French does  just  the  same,
obviously with his tongue in cheek, he is immediately flamed.
[Reminds me of the case of the Dutch person who posted a month ago
and who got flamed by Americans for his spelling mistakes.]

Why don't you let  "French = chauvinistic"  on the same shelf with
"Jew = greedy",  "Black = dirty"  and "Hispanic = lazy"? (Assuming
of course that  you  do not subscribe to  these stereotypes in the
first place, which I may doubt.)

Fred



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