Re: [OT] Ownership of words
Heh.
On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 10:38 PM, Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 08 January 2012 12:18:17 Tony van der Hoff wrote:
>> I'm sorry to learn about your affliction, Lisi, but if you tell people
>> you're allergic to nuts, I'm sure they wont confuse it with a dislike
>> for people with oddball ideas, although they may kill you.
>
> On the contrary, that is exactly what they do. Most people now think that "I
> am allergic to" means "I don't like".
I can see why you might have a problem with that. For what it's worth,
when I tell people I can't eat Japanese confections, in Japanese, no
matter whether I say I'm allergic to sugar or whether I just say I
decline, or whether I say, literally, that they cannot be eaten by me
because refined sugars make me sick, until I explain, twice or more,
the first reaction is to assume that I don't like the confection.
(When I could eat them, I really enjoyed them, including the sweet
beans and other things that Americans tend to think are odd. Pickled
plums always did cause a literal allergic reaction. Swelling throat,
clogged sinuses, the works. Yes, and refined sugars now often cause a
literal allergic reaction, too. Can also tie the muscles in my back
and neck in knots that take weeks to untangle.)
Then they ask if I have diabetes, which is not an unreasonable
interpretation, and I tell them, no, and things can get complicated
from there if they keep asking, because the medical community itself
has a lot of pre-conceptions about candida albicans, and they may have
heard some of those.
> I think it is unacceptable to use the words for a disability, any disabuility,
> lightly or derogatively. E.g., spastics can no longer be called spastics
> because the word has been so degraded by being used incorrectly.
It bothers my when people use "OMG" and otherwise invoke deity
inappropriately. And when they use the f-word as the default for
anything involving strong emotions.
Oh, and it bothers me when people call MSWindows, "Windows", too,
particularly since Bill and company deliberately ignored protocol and
deliberately and obstinately dragged that trademark out of the common
technical language to support their illusion of
monopoly/defato-standard before they actually had one, back in the
'80s.
We all have our crosses to bear.
> Lisi
(Although I have to wonder why this topic is okay, but some others are not.)
--
Joel Rees
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