Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[penguinofhonor]

Whos culture?

Roma/Gypsy culture.

[Max White]

When did I say anything about the Romas?

[penguinofhonor]

When did I say anything about the Romas?

... Are you just being difficult here?

I mean, look at Wiktionary. It makes the Romani connection in the definition.

[Max White]

Synonyms... They are words with the same meaning, right? Let's look at that list...

knacker
Romani
Roma
Sinti
Romanichal
pavee
tinker
traveller
vagrant

Oh hey look, it is a synonym for exactly what I have been saying it is the entire time. Well I'm noting there is another entry, but this time with an uppercase, let's also read that, shall we!

Usage notes
The term Gypsy has contentious usage – it may have pejorative connotations and is an exonym (external name) based on the mistaken belief that the Romani people came from Egypt. Thus careful usage and most international organizations instead use Romani. Rom and Roma – narrowly speaking a subgroup – are also used as general terms, but can cause offense to (non-Romani) Romanians due to the confusion; Rrom and Rroma (trilled ‘r’) also find occasional use.
However, Gypsy is far better known than Romani, and is not commonly understood to be insulting by non-Romani – thus while it may cause offense, it is often not intended to cause offense. Further, some Romani organizations use Gypsy to refer to themselves.

So, looks like even the general public don't draw any connection between gypsy and Roma. While yes, I agree there are times when it would be offensive, for the most part that is not its use. Heck, some Roma have even started calling themselves that.

[ChairmanPoo]

At some point, you hit diminishing returns, where any further cuts are just going to cripple the economy more than you'll save in expenditures.

I think we all passed that barrier long ago. Three winners of the nobel prize of economics have been arguing this for some time. Thus I call BS on all these austerity measures that are being forced on Greece and elsewhere. They're more likely to do harm than good, particularily in the current economic climate.

[Vector]

Max:

Originally, Europeans thought that the Romani were from Egypt.  The word "Egyptian" became distorted into "Gypsies."  It does not refer to Travelers in general, it refers to the Romani people in particular.

[RedKing]

Poor bastards, what are the circumstances if a country defaults?

Nobody's quite sure.

First off, holders of Greek debt are out a shitton of money. These would be mainly the central banks of *other* European countries. Which then weakens them, which in the case of some countries like Portugal and Italy, could drive their credit rating down, causing their interest rates to spike, which potentially puts them into the same debt death spiral as Greece.

Secondly, if Greece decides to reissue the drachma...well, nobody's quite sure how that would work. As soon as they announced it, there would be a massive run on the banks in Greece, as everyone tries to grab their Euros, which are going to be worth a hell of a lot more than the drachma will. Inevitably, the banks probably don't have enough Euros on hand to produce everyone's deposits. So some people are going to get royally screwed whe their bank deposits get renumerated in drachma. And/or the Greek banks collapse because all of their money is gone.

If they default but stay in the Eurozone, then the Euro itself takes a major hit. If Greece defaults, it's actually far better for the rest of Europe if Greece leaves the Euro because that isolates their fiscal woes to their currency. The value of the Euro would actually jump somewhat, no longer burdened by the uncertainty of that Greek debt bomb. Which means that the EU might force Greece out of the Euro, to save the Euro. But again, there's no formal mechanism to do that or any orderly procedure for devolving back to national currency.

[G-Flex]

Synonyms... They are words with the same meaning, right? Let's look at that list...

knacker
Romani
Roma
Sinti
Romanichal
pavee
tinker
traveller
vagrant

Oh hey look, it is a synonym for exactly what I have been saying it is the entire time. Well I'm noting there is another entry, but this time with an uppercase, let's also read that, shall we!

Not exactly the same meaning, no. And again, you're trying to argue from dictionary definitions, which is rather poor for reasons I've already described.

So, looks like even the general public don't draw any connection between gypsy and Roma.

That's not what that quote said, and has been flatly contradicted by things we've said. Hell, even the thing you quoted calls its use "contentious", notes that it "may have pejorative connotations", that careful usage avoids the term, and that use of "gypsy" "may cause offense". Please also note that that entry is generally referring to "gypsy" as used to refer to the ethnic group, and causing potential offense when used as such, which is completely irrelevant, because here we're not talking about that, we're talking about the use of "gypsy" to mean things associated with the ethnic group, not the group themselves. Why do you keep having to bring up irrelevant crap like this?

So what do you think I was referring to in the original post? Do you think I was trying to say Vector is of a specific decent?

If you think that's what I am trying to say, then you haven't paid attention to a word I said.


I am going to ask you a very direct question here: Do you think, even in light of what's been said here regarding the term's usage and history, and current/past problems regarding prejudice against the romani/gypsy population throughout the anglophone world, and the fact that it is associated with the Romani people in probably most of the anglophone world (Europe, the US), that it is okay for you to refer to being a traveler/traveling worker as "being a gypsy" or to otherwise use the term "gypsy" to mean that? Do you seriously still think it would be okay for you to do that?

[Max White]

Max:

Originally, Europeans thought that the Romani were from Egypt.  The word "Egyptian" became distorted into "Gypsies."  It does not refer to Travelers in general, it refers to the Romani people in particular.

Every single dictionary and encyclopaedia link so far has said you are only half right, each giving more than one meaning for the word. Hey kids, a word with more than a single meaning, isn't that hard to wrap your head around?

I am going to ask you a very direct question here: Do you think, even in light of what's been said here regarding the term's usage and history, and current/past problems regarding prejudice against the romani/gypsy population throughout the anglophone world, and the fact that it is associated with the Romani people in probably most of the anglophone world (Europe, the US), that it is okay for you to refer to being a traveler/traveling worker as "being a gypsy" or to otherwise use the term "gypsy" to mean that? Do you seriously still think it would be okay for you to do that?

I have in the past when referring to people who like to travel, and never once been pulled up on it. Honestly, this is the first time anybody has ever said it can even cause offence.

[G-Flex]

Every single dictionary and encyclopaedia link so far has said you are only half right, each giving more than one meaning for the word. Hey kids, a word with more than a single meaning, isn't that hard to wrap your head around?

You have been told a very large number of times that the other meanings of the word come directly from its associations with the Romani people, and the stereotyping levied against them over centuries and which continues today. There is no way you are being anything other than intentionally obstinate here.

I am going to ask you a very direct question here: Do you think, even in light of what's been said here regarding the term's usage and history, and current/past problems regarding prejudice against the romani/gypsy population throughout the anglophone world, and the fact that it is associated with the Romani people in probably most of the anglophone world (Europe, the US), that it is okay for you to refer to being a traveler/traveling worker as "being a gypsy" or to otherwise use the term "gypsy" to mean that? Do you seriously still think it would be okay for you to do that?

I have in the past when referring to people who like to travel, and never once been pulled up on it. Honestly, this is the first time anybody has ever said it can even cause offence.

There are people who live in areas who use far worse racial slurs who don't get called out on it, because they're considered acceptable where they live. It really means little that people in your own, say, town, don't notice.

Also: Can you please answer the question? It only requires a boolean answer.

[Bauglir]

Just out of curiosity, how many pages have been spent trying to get Max to apologize?

I mean, I definitely see where he's coming from, in that I didn't realize until the last couple of years that there ever was bigotry directed toward the Romani, or (for that matter), that "gypsy" typically referred to an ethnic group rather than those living a particular lifestyle (which was simply one of travel, not of thievery; and while the gypsy fortuneteller trope is one I encountered, it was also never one that I ever considered could be offensive). While I'm at it, I'll also add that I'd never seen the word "gypped" written until fairly recently, and assumed it was spelled "jipped", and so never guessed at the etymology or that it might have any wider offensiveness than might be taken if somebody were to accuse a person of cheating them.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, it doesn't seem that farfetched to reach a point where you assume they're words without a larger history behind them, or where it doesn't occur that using them could lead somebody to conclude you're intending to demean. All that said, that doesn't make the suffering that has occurred any less real, nor does it mean the burden is always on the listener to guess at the correct meaning. An error committed through ignorance is still an error, and in the scope of this discussion we've clearly moved to a context where it's entirely reasonable that offense could be unintentionally caused through the careless use of a word, through expanding our potential audience to "every human with an internet connection". So yeah, I'm of the "Oh, that was a mistake, my bad, I guess I'll try to be a bit more sensitive in the future" persuasion.

Now, here's where my post diverges from the actual issue, to just discussing etiquette. I'm saying this because, if I don't, it's very likely that it'll come off as the standard "Don't rock the boat" reasoning for getting people to drop uncomfortable topics, and I want to be clear that the rest of this paragraph has nothing to do with the merits of what Max actually said, but only with how it's been reacted to. So, my question is, who actually was offended over the choice of words, there? Because it seems to me that becoming offended on behalf of the Romani who might hypothetically be offended is to overstep defending them, and start asserting that they should conform to your ideas of what they should find offensive. Now, that's not a general case for every possible use of the word; if somebody said, "Man, gypsies are all lying, thieving bastards", that's a very valid thing to object to without actually being the target, but when malice isn't even slightly implied (as here), the right thing to do as far as I can tell is just to mention that maybe a better choice of words would be good in the future, since you probably do want to say something, and then just move on.

And for the people who've popped in just to say things like, "Maybe you should accept that you said something stupid", you're making comments that are worse than the one you're opposing - you're actually aiming to harm (however moderately) through what you're saying. If you're not actually going to argue, and instead just want to fight, you should probably stop yourself before you click that Post button, because you're not helping. All you're doing is contributing to a psychological trap, in which your opponent associates your apparently unreasoned aggression with your side, and concludes on some level that your entire side must be equally illogical. For that matter, you're also giving good reason to come up with rationalizations to defend whatever you're opposing, where before it was almost certainly just a random choice with no weight behind it. I know that's not everyone who's been posting, so don't get me wrong. And given the magnitude of this shitstorm, I've only actually skimmed the conversation - this entire paragraph may, in fact, be aimed at nobody, and if so, I apologize, but it's an impression I've gotten.

[G-Flex]

I get offended at what I consider offensive behavior, even if it's not aimed at me. If the only people who call others out on offensive language or prejudicial behavior are the targets themselves, that leaves a lot of space for them to engage in it freely. I'm not going to feel bad for arguing about it just because I'm not a Romani person myself.

... To be fair, I also never expected it to get this far.

[RedKing]

Just out of curiosity, how many pages have been spent trying to get Max to apologize?

I mean, I definitely see where he's coming from, in that I didn't realize until the last couple of years that there ever was bigotry directed toward the Romani, or (for that matter), that "gypsy" typically referred to an ethnic group rather than those living a particular lifestyle (which was simply one of travel, not of thievery; and while the gypsy fortuneteller trope is one I encountered, it was also never one that I ever considered could be offensive). While I'm at it, I'll also add that I'd never seen the word "gypped" written until fairly recently, and assumed it was spelled "jipped", and so never guessed at the etymology or that it might have any wider offensiveness than might be taken if somebody were to accuse a person of cheating them.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, it doesn't seem that farfetched to reach a point where you assume they're words without a larger history behind them, or where it doesn't occur that using them could lead somebody to conclude you're intending to demean. All that said, that doesn't make the suffering that has occurred any less real, nor does it mean the burden is always on the listener to guess at the correct meaning. An error committed through ignorance is still an error, and in the scope of this discussion we've clearly moved to a context where it's entirely reasonable that offense could be unintentionally caused through the careless use of a word, through expanding our potential audience to "every human with an internet connection". So yeah, I'm of the "Oh, that was a mistake, my bad, I guess I'll try to be a bit more sensitive in the future" persuasion.

Now, here's where my post diverges from the actual issue, to just discussing etiquette. I'm saying this because, if I don't, it's very likely that it'll come off as the standard "Don't rock the boat" reasoning for getting people to drop uncomfortable topics, and I want to be clear that the rest of this paragraph has nothing to do with the merits of what Max actually said, but only with how it's been reacted to. So, my question is, who actually was offended over the choice of words, there? Because it seems to me that becoming offended on behalf of the Romani who might hypothetically be offended is to overstep defending them, and start asserting that they should conform to your ideas of what they should find offensive. Now, that's not a general case for every possible use of the word; if somebody said, "Man, gypsies are all lying, thieving bastards", that's a very valid thing to object to without actually being the target, but when malice isn't even slightly implied (as here), the right thing to do as far as I can tell is just to mention that maybe a better choice of words would be good in the future, since you probably do want to say something, and then just move on.

And for the people who've popped in just to say things like, "Maybe you should accept that you said something stupid", you're making comments that are worse than the one you're opposing - you're actually aiming to harm (however moderately) through what you're saying. If you're not actually going to argue, and instead just want to fight, you should probably stop yourself before you click that Post button, because you're not helping. All you're doing is contributing to a psychological trap, in which your opponent associates your apparently unreasoned aggression with your side, and concludes on some level that your entire side must be equally illogical. For that matter, you're also giving good reason to come up with rationalizations to defend whatever you're opposing, where before it was almost certainly just a random choice with no weight behind it. I know that's not everyone who's been posting, so don't get me wrong. And given the magnitude of this shitstorm, I've only actually skimmed the conversation - this entire paragraph may, in fact, be aimed at nobody, and if so, I apologize, but it's an impression I've gotten.

tl;dr

Summation:
Be nice, folks. We're all awesome here, and language is a messy thing.

[Tellemurius]

You know i wonder if a global debt pardon will ever happen. No one owes shit to anyone on a exact moment. Far-fetch? yes. Incredibly stupid? yes. Could it work? maybe.

[Pnx]

Max:

Originally, Europeans thought that the Romani were from Egypt.  The word "Egyptian" became distorted into "Gypsies."  It does not refer to Travelers in general, it refers to the Romani people in particular.

They also called them "Bohemians" since they came to Europe by way of Bohemia.