A Question About Offensive Language

Guess that's why African black IQs are in the gutter. Middle Easterners aren't much better.

 

No word is offensive in and of itself. it is the use of the word that makes the offense.

For instance consider the most flexible "offensive" word in the English language F@@@. It can be used to insult, it can be used to praise, it can be used to express a range of contradictory emotions and intent depending on the context of its use.

 

If someone is offended or not offended by the use of a word based on who said it, then context, not the word itself, is the source of the offense.

 

The first person I knew who was killed in Vietnam was my cousin's best friend. It was in 1966.

There were 28 from my home town who were killed in Vietnam. 24 of them I went to high school with at one time or another (64 -6 I personally knew half of them and six were close friends that I grew up with.

One thing interesting, 1/2 of those who were killed in action (KIA) during the Vietnam War were killed with in the first 90 days being "in-country."

I still stand fast that you can't train and prepare a soldier or Marine for combat in just six months. Also teenagers shouldn't be sent into combat.

Before they changed the law in the mid 60's the first who were drafted were those in their mid 20's. That's why Dick Cheney was never drafted, he was to young to be drafted and when they changed the policy he was to old to get drafted.

The Army War College studies shows who makes the best infantrymen. A male between the ages of 26 - 28 who has two years of college under his belt. They actually broke it down by race and ethnicity. Before the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 the vast majority of Americans ethnicity came from warrior nations. With the changing demographics in America today it has become a national security issue.

I remember when I was in boot camp at MCRDSD and my sister wrote me a letter listing who all just got drafted. It seems that anyone from my high school who graduated in 67 and 68 who weren't registered full time in college got drafted.

Never went surfing in the Nam. A few of us visited China Beach to check out the Navy nurses who were off limits to the enlisted men because they are commission officers. Checked out the China Beach Surf Club but all they had were long boards and by that time I had already transition to shorter boards and compared to southern California the waves sucked at China Beach.

 

Tagging this re Early Viet Nam War.

Thanks @APACHERAT .

 

Couldn't agree more: context is everything when it comes to understanding the meaning behind words.

But I disagree about the most "flexible" word in our language. I think that honor goes to the magical & elastic word: Shyte.

As in, what trump's full of. Or, what trump has for brains. Or, what I think trump should eat. Or, what trump doesn't have together: his...

 

Words without any context are just sounds. Context is what give language meaning. I can come up with a hypothetical situation where someone learning English learns that the n-word means dark skinned people. That person, not knowing the historical context and use of the word, has no sense of the word being offensive to others. What does this accomplish? It's still offensive to a large number of people who would presumably let the english language learner know and probably convince that person to stop using the word by teaching it's context.

The point is language and words don't exist without some context. You also can't change the past. Some day words we use will change in meaning or take on new meanings. You can't force that to happen as far as I am aware.

 

Before liberal political correctness was forced upon us by some white beard scratching liberals in the early 1970's, many of the words and phrases were not considered derogatory or even racist.

The phrase "**** you" is actually a German military slang going back to the early 1700's. It wasn't a fighting phrase but some German soldier was ordered to clean out the horse stables and while picking up a shovel and walking towards the stables he would say "**** you."

During WW ll U.S. Marines coined the phrase "Semper Fi Mac." It has exactly the same meaning as "**** you."

Your Marine buddy ask "Hey Joe, can I get a cigarette from you" ?
"Sure"and while handing him the cigarette "Semper Fi Mac."
They weren't fighting words.

How many have told their best friends "**** you" ?

Around 1970 the PC left changed the meaning of the old Marine Corps slang word "gook" saying it was a derogatory word and racist.

The word "gook" was coined by U.S. Marines during the early 1800's during the Barbary Pirate Wars in North Africa. There were no orientals in North Africa in the early 1800's. "Gook" is any person, thing or place that is strange, different and not American. Maybe the Marines saw a camel for the first time and called the camel a gook. The phrase would be used off and on for over 170 years by both U.S. Marines and American soldiers until some PC liberal would decide that it was a derogatory term referring to Orientals. During the American - Mexican War U.S. Marines referred to Mexicans as gooks. The phrase fell out of use until used during the Banana Wars where there were no Orientals and the U.S. Army picked up on the phrase from U.S. Marines during the Philippine Insurrection.

The phrase would not be used after the end of the Banana Wars in 1934 until WW ll. when U.S. Marines and soldiers would use the phrase "gook" from 1942 and 43 referring to the jungles in the Southwest Pacific. As the war moved into the Central Pacific the phrase fell out use until the Vietnam War. I served with a couple of ANGLICO Marines who were attached with the Australian soldiers in Vietnam and they called Australian soldiers gooks, because their combat tactics were different than the American tactics. The Aussies had it right.

In 1956 my father bought a VW bug off of an Air Force officer who had it shipped over from Germany. I remember the first time he brought out his tool box to work on the VW. Then I heard my father yell calling the VW a "Gook." Every nut and bolt was metric not SAE. How many Americans during the 50's and 60's even owned any metric tools ?

But in the early 1970's some white beard scratching PC liberal who never served in uniform decided that the word gook was a derogatory and racist word and any one who uses the word is a racist.

 

So you're ok with the "good" ones.

Gee I've never heard THAT before

 

I'm OK with all of them that aren't active criminals..
What I am very much not OK with is the way the left has enslaved them with their lies, trickery, and brainwash propaganda..

 

The idea that a "PC Liberal" changed the definition of a word is absurd. No single person or even small group decides the meaning of a word. Language is much more complex than that.

You are also wrong on at least two accounts. I can't find any evidence either way regarding "semper fi mac", but let me know if you have any evidence.

Gook:
Mencken reported the earliest use of the word gook: he wrote that U.S. Marines occupying Nicaragua in 1912 took to calling the natives gooks and that it had previously been a term for Filipinos.[13] He further mentions that the natives of Costa Rica are sometimes called goo-goos.[14] The first written use was in 1920 and mentions that the Marines occupying Haiti used the term to refer to Haitians.[15] U.S. occupation troops in South Korea after World War II called the Koreans "gooks".[16] After the return of U.S. troops to the Korean Peninsula, so prevalent was the use of the word gook during the first months of the Korean War that U.S. General Douglas MacArthur banned its use, for fear that Asians would become alienated to the United Nations Command because of the insult.[2][17][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gook

F-word:
Instances of **** before the fifteenth century are rare. Despite it commonly being classed as one of the Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, Jesse Sheidlower (author of an entire book on ****, and past editor of the OED so he knows what he’s talking about) suspects that it came into English in the fifteenth century from something like Low German, Frisian or Dutch. While ‘****’ existed in English before then it was never used to mean rogering, instead it typically meant ‘to strike’ (which was, way-back-when, related to the word that became **** because it’s a kind of hitting…). Anything that appears earlier is most likely to be the use of **** to mean ‘to strike’.
https://solongasitswords.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/on-the-origin-of-****/

Words meanings do change, but that happens when society changes them. It's not some conspiracy theory to make you feel bad. If someone thinks something you are doing or saying is offensive maybe you should just respect their feelings rather than trying to cast blame on some invisible conspiratorial group of "liberals".

 

Do you think that people might be more open to your ideas and opinions if you didn't claim they have been "enslaved them with their lies, trickery, and brainwash propaganda"?

If I said that about white Americans and their relationship with conservative organizations would it endear you to listening to my ideas?

 

Just stating the facts of reality..
Black societies in America have been decimated by the left no question..
Who pushes the violent propaganda? Who pushes the degeneracy? Who teaches them that all of their problems are someone else's fault leading to violence, then gives them just enough free stuff to keep the flock alive telling them they need help because they can't do it on their own?
The left 100%..

 

July 4th.

US Civil War.

WW1

WW2

Mexican-American War

Vietnam War.

Gulf War

Iraq Invasion

Afghanistan Invasion

 

This is an interesting thread. And there are some unexpected turns within the responses. I hope my comment isn't too long, and that it doesn't take this thread off track. The context in which a word is used should always be considered when trying to determine if the word was meant to be offensive or not. But what happens when just the sound of a word sends people running around with their hair on fire.

This is an aspect of placing restrictions on language that I find highly troubling. That is, the way the Political Correctness Police take words away from us. In effect, they give themselves the right to entirely remake our vocabulary. They mark the words THEY dislike as out of bounds (not to be used by anyone). This has turned into something of a nightmare. Maybe their original intent was to do some good. But what they have accomplished, in many cases, is to give the words they hate, much greater power than the words originally had.

And when people try to discuss this topic (racially charged, or acceptable vs. unacceptable words), a conversation can quickly start sounding ridiculous as people trip over themselves trying not to offend anyone. They usually search wildly for euphemisms, no matter how silly, that they can use in place of yet another dreaded "bad word".

Most people just want to be free to use their own language. Or, maybe it’s simply human nature to want what we do not have. Put something off limits and some people will do everything possible to get hold of that “forbidden” item.

Just think of the “N” word. People have made such a big deal out of it, that the word now has huge power in some peoples’ minds. It’s understandably offensive to black people. But sometimes the overly dramatic display of offence taken, just seems incredibly inflated. Especially in view of the fact that blacks use the word freely among themselves. So it just seems idiotic that they think they can take the word away from the rest of the population, while they remain free to use it as much as they choose.

A partial list of the effects of this dictatorial PC control of words is:

1) To give forbidden words a ton of power they didn’t originally have.

2) To unfairly dictate who can or cannot use the words. If one group can use it, all groups should be able to use it. And if someone is going to dictate which words are “unacceptable” for use, who should that someone be?

3) It seems to make some people so afraid of words, that they seem to go out of their way to find more words to be offended by.

4) The overly excessive and self-righteous nature of PC serves to make the whole exercise just seem plain silly and foolish.

Here's an example of the negative unintended consequences that can result:

A man was fired for using the word: *****rdly. It just means: stingy. Yet, because of it’s sound, some people want this word taken out of use. Wouldn’t it be better to educate the “offended” parties so they can understand the meaning of such words? In this case, the word is extremely old, having been used for many centuries. Are we to change our entire vocabulary to satisfy the most sensitive, and in some cases, the least educated, people among us?

Here’s a snip from an article about the unfair firing of this man (and the link follows):

Washington, DC’s black Mayor, Anthony Williams, gladly accepted the resignation of his white staff member, David Howard, because Mr. Howard uttered the word ‘*****rdly’ in a private staff meeting.

Webster’s Tenth Edition defines the word ‘*****rdly’ to “grudgingly mean about spending or granting”. The Barnhard Dictionary of Etymology traces the origins of ‘*****rdly’ to the 1300’s, and to the words ‘nig’ and ‘ignon’, meaning “miser” in Middle English. No where in any of these references is any mention of racial connotations associated with the word ‘*****rdly’.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm
====

So, the man had used the word properly; the word means: stingy. But he was fired out of blind ignorance and fake outrage. Now, in cases like this we’ve moved to a much more restrictive area, in terms of words we are allowed to use. In the article cited, it wasn’t the context in which the word was used that was considered wrong. It was NOT the definition of the word. It was worse than that, it was the mere sound of the word that some people took as offensive. Now we can be offended by sounds? How about grunts, laughs, burps, or farts?

The definition of the word was entirely ignored (if they even knew the definition). In this case, the context in which the word was used was not even considered. How many words are we willing to throw away in the service of ignorance?

 

They clearly aren't utilising their access to education to its best advantage. That's a choice, not biology.

FTR, in some places, Africans are ahead of the whites academically. Where I live, that is the case. And these are kids who arrived here without being able to speak the language, in some instances. So much for racial IQ profiling.

Edited to add: Pakistanis and Egyptians are some of the best doctors in the world. Try again.

 

Re: Semper Fi Mac:

Don't you know any Marines who served during WW ll ?

It's all here -> https://books.google.com/books?id=T...v=onepage&q="semper fi mac", **** you&f=false

Re: Gook

The first known published use of the word "gook" was in 1912.

Visit the Washington Navy Yard and you can see in old ship logs from the Barbary Pirates Wars or later on during the Mexican - America War where the word "gook" was entered into the logs and or reports.

Go to a good research library where they would have a copy of Joseph Walker's personal journal. Joseph Walker is a famous fur trapper, trail blazer, Indian fighter who fought alongside U.S. Marines and blue jackets in California during the Mexican - American War.

In 1846 Joseph Walker was present when Capt. Archibald Gillespie (U.S. Marine) was reporting to Commodore Robert Stockton (U.S. Navy) in San Diego when Capt. Gillespie reported "We killed some gooks last night."

Joseph Walker not knowing what a gook was confronted Capt. Gillespie and asked "What's a gook" ?

Gillespie responded with "Mexicans." Then Gillespie went on further to explain that the word gook is a Marine Corps word for any thing that's strange or is not American.

Joseph Walker entered all of this in his journal in 1846.
Can also be found in "Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker" -> https://www.amazon.com/Westering-Man-Life-Joseph-Walker/dp/0806119349

You have way to many people who never served especially liberals trying to interpret military slang and are clueless and usually get it wrong.

For example, "O Dark-30."
It's a Vietnam War slang word. It doesn't mean when it's at night time or 1900 hrs. or 2200 hrs.

"O Dark-30" is any time between 2400 hrs. to just before dawn because it's when Charley preferred to fight and it's when you could be expected to be attacked.

 

Dear me, remind me not to accept too many prescriptions from Pakistani or Egyptian doctors; might get them mixed up with their chicken tikka masala recipes:

https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

UK: 100

Pakistan: 84

Egypt: 81

 

I agree. When I was a lad in the 50's, All kinds of words were used that had a distinctly different social conotation. What is "socially" offensive today was rather common place back in the day.

I can be called any racial or ethnic slur without effect. Today many would call that "white mans privilege". I call it - I don't give a crap.

 

from your link (its emphasis)

 

OOOOH I smell a debate on the relative scatalogical merits of sex and excrement!

 

Or, a debate on the relative scatological merits of sex and scat. Lol...

 

Thanks for all the info. I enjoyed learning further about those words/phrases. I admit I don't personally know any WW2 vets I'll admit. My grandfathers on both sides were, but they both passed away 5-10 years back.

My take is that if something I do is offensive and it's not important for me to do or say that thing, why not change? At least in situations where you know you might hurt someone. It's not that important for me to swear or use language that could be offensive