Based on my online research and other comments, the word oriental is only considered offensive and dated when referring to a person. Otherwise it is still in use today as in oriental food dishes, oriental lilies etc. And yes, I was simply separating the orient from the occident world.
Oriental derives from sunrise and, the antonym, occident is falling or sunset which are timeless terms.
As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
well, they arent gonna take “Oriental” away from the North American Lily Society because it is a technical name for a group of lilies. That group is separate and distinct from “Asiatic” lilies.Originally Posted by razz
I guess we could just start calling them Ching Chong's...
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-wa...nt-ching-chong
After all this, I was talking to a friend whose DH had worked in Japan. I asked him for the simple everyday terms for greeting and thanking and he stated them simply and easily. I went online and found them even including the way to sound them out so I can copy them into my iPhone and have them handy. OK, now I am all set and have a sense of direction for practicing.
It has been an interesting discussion. I still love the term Orient with the sense of mystic and magical adventure. Nothing negative in my view at all.
Do you have the google translate app on your phone? You can point the camera at text and it will translate it instantly. In Paris last summer I found it incredibly helpful for reading the little signs in museums that weren't in English.
It seems easy enough just to call people what they want to be called, without throwing a tantrum about it.
But majority-splaining to minorities why their opinions and feelings are wrong is so much fun.
A friend had something similar to this in Korea. It was very helpful when reading the directions on the washing machine - lol.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer." Mahatma Gandhi
Be nice whenever possible. It's always possible. HH Dalai Lama
In a world where you can be anything - be kind. Unknown
I am old, and have been through numerous preferred language changes for people with African origins who reside in the United States.
Negroes—> Blacks —>Afro Americans—>African Americans—>?
For those who admonish us oppressors for being peevish at these seeming small changes in language preference because what is it to you, anyway? keep in mind that real people do real work with real consequences based on what can seem like the whim of the moment.
I remember when we were commanded by the Library of
Congress to use the subject heading “ African Americans “ in library cataloging, a change from “Afro Americans.” That was a change from the imprecise “Negroes. “
http://www.loc.gov/cds/notices/notafro.html
You can imagine the disruption of efficency in a library when the same thing had two or three different names, and when our goal in cataloging was to save the time of the user by picking one term to describe all instances of that thing. In the days before computer manipulation of data, these changes led to chaos. Even after decent systems to replace outdated data came into being, only parts of these elaborate records were updated by a computer. I also remember early in my career sitting with piles of catalog cards and white-out to update terms like this. Stupid work, for sure. (Oddly, I didnt mind it.)
There are still controlled vocabulary headings in library records all over the country for outdated terms “Negroes” and “Afro Americans” because the technology,know how, and will do not exist to change them.
All of that said, it is important to be respectful of minority groups. I think reasonable people can agree on what is an obvious disrespectful term, but it is the terms that are emerging to be disrespectul that we can argue about as well as the vehemence with which “I am right” “No, *I* am right! And you are a Philistine!” is argued.
I cant wrap my head around ”illegal immigrant” as being a disrespectiful term that trumps the factual accuracy. I CAN understand, however, that the “illegal” part is a minor issue in the eyes of many, and I suppose I can see that reasonable people do not wish to place emphasis on that illegal status. So here we are with “undocumented worker.” Sigh.
In my first job at a library near the Mexican border I was horrified to find catalog cards with the heading “Wetbacks.” That was in 1980. Some untrained doobie had substituted her own preferred language for the Library of Congress standard term. That was one of those instances of me sitting at a desk with white out and a handful of catalog cards, changing the offensive term. Probably the correct LC term back then was “Illegal immigrant” but I dont rememberfor sure, I just know that it was not “Wetback.”
Not that anyone cares about more i formation, haha, but our changing language provides much fodder for discussion and most importantly, for academic papers that propel the author into tenure -land! One such work is here:
http://eprints.rclis.org/8831/1/ethnicgroups.pdf
Last edited by iris lilies; 8-20-18 at 12:36pm.
I don't know... I never hear food referred to as oriental food.
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