Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Bimbo

180 views
Skip to first unread message

Joachim Pense

unread,
Aug 30, 2010, 4:32:35 PM8/30/10
to
In English, a bimbo is a dumb blonde. In German, Bimbo is a patronizing
pejorative term for black men.

Is there anything known about a connection between these two terms?

f'up2 sci.lang

Joachim Pense

unread,
Aug 30, 2010, 6:03:55 PM8/30/10
to

Am 30.08.2010 22:32, schrieb Joachim Pense:
> In English, a bimbo is a dumb blonde. In German, Bimbo is a patronizing

I forgot to mention, a female one.

Ian Jackson

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 5:09:03 AM8/31/10
to
In message <i5h9sb$s4h$00$1...@news.t-online.com>, Joachim Pense
<sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes

>
>
>Am 30.08.2010 22:32, schrieb Joachim Pense:
>> In English, a bimbo is a dumb blonde. In German, Bimbo is a patronizing
>
>I forgot to mention, a female one.
>
Even in English, a male should be a "blond".

>> pejorative term for black men.
>>
>> Is there anything known about a connection between these two terms?
>>
>> f'up2 sci.lang

Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English
"Sambo"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo
Maybe the German version is more politically correct!

However,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbo says that
"The first usage of the term Bimbo in English was for an unintelligent
male".

It also says:
German Usage
In Germany during the 19th and 20th century, the word "Bimbo" had the
dual meaning as racist term for a person of African descent. The word in
relation to its original meaning, however, is rarely used. Although
sometimes the word "Bimbo" is used, associated but separate phrases,
such as "dumme Blondine" (= "dumb blonde"), are more common instead.
--
Ian

Andy

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 5:56:04 AM8/31/10
to
In message <a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk>, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote
[]

The Oxford English Dictionary has three different bimbos: a type of
punch made with rum; a "buy in management buy out" (a type of financial
engineering); and the one under discussion here. Our bimbo' is:

- a contemptuous term applied to men, first used (in writing) in 1919
and not found after 1947

- a woman, especially a prostitute, first used in 1929 and not found
after 1952

- a young woman, sexually attractive but of limited intelligence;
although first used in 1927 this is in the category of "draft additions"
despite being "now the usual meaning".

The word is flagged as "american slang" with an origin possibly related
to the Italian 'Bambino'.
--
Andy Taylor [Editor, Austrian Philatelic Society].
Visit <URL:http://www.austrianphilately.com>

Ian Jackson

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 8:33:23 AM8/31/10
to
In message <DwW3UvF0...@kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk>, Andy
<an...@kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk> writes

>In message <a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk>, Ian Jackson
><ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote
>[]
>
>The Oxford English Dictionary has three different bimbos: a type of
>punch made with rum; a "buy in management buy out" (a type of financial
>engineering); and the one under discussion here. Our bimbo' is:
>
>- a contemptuous term applied to men, first used (in writing) in 1919
>and not found after 1947
>
>- a woman, especially a prostitute, first used in 1929 and not found
>after 1952
>
>- a young woman, sexually attractive but of limited intelligence;
>although first used in 1927 this is in the category of "draft
>additions" despite being "now the usual meaning".
>
>The word is flagged as "american slang" with an origin possibly related
>to the Italian 'Bambino'.

Ah yes, I remember it well (from the 1950s):
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/bimbo.htm
--
Ian

GFH

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 8:52:28 AM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 5:09 am, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <i5h9sb$s4h$0...@news.t-online.com>, Joachim Pense
> <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes

>
> >Am 30.08.2010 22:32, schrieb Joachim Pense:
> >> In English, a bimbo is a dumb blonde. In German, Bimbo is a patronizing
>
> >I forgot to mention, a female one.
>
> Even in English, a male should be a "blond".

True, both as an adjective and as a noun. Can anyone
think of another adjective which retains its gender
identification in English?

GFH

the Omrud

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 8:56:43 AM8/31/10
to

Né/Née.

--
David

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 8:59:34 AM8/31/10
to

Brunet.

Ian Jackson

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 9:04:33 AM8/31/10
to
In message
<c92fbbf1-5b30-46b6...@t2g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>, GFH
<geo...@ankerstein.org> writes
Is "blond(e) ever really a noun?

Anyway, there's "divorcé and divorcée". [Even my spellchecker recognises
both!] I'm sure that there are many others. But again, is this a noun or
an adjective?
--
Ian

Ian Jackson

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 9:08:56 AM8/31/10
to
In message <U_6fo.5841$c_6....@newsfe30.ams2>, the Omrud
<usenet...@gmail.com> writes
True, but isn't really a past participle? I suppose it's similar to
"divorcé/divorcée".
--
Ian

the Omrud

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 9:13:11 AM8/31/10
to

Yes. I wasn't reading the rubric properly.

--
David

Evan Kirshenbaum

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:07:51 PM8/31/10
to
Ian Jackson <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> writes:

>>Ian Jackson <ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> Even in English, a male should be a "blond".
>>
>>True, both as an adjective and as a noun. Can anyone think of
>>another adjective which retains its gender identification in
>>English?
>>
> Is "blond(e) ever really a noun?

I think so. It patterns with both "redhead" and "red-haired",

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |When correctly viewed,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | Everything is lewd.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |I could tell you things
| about Peter Pan,
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |and the Wizard of Oz--
(650)857-7572 | there's a dirty old man!
| Tom Lehrer
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


GFH

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:15:10 PM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 9:04 am, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <c92fbbf1-5b30-46b6-a0f5-67504c068...@t2g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>, GFH
> <geor...@ankerstein.org> writes

Noun.

GFH

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:28:49 PM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 9:04 am, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <c92fbbf1-5b30-46b6-a0f5-67504c068...@t2g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>, GFH
> <geor...@ankerstein.org> writes

>
>
>
> >On Aug 31, 5:09 am, Ian Jackson
> ><ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> In message <i5h9sb$s4h$0...@news.t-online.com>, Joachim Pense
> >> <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes
>
> >> >Am 30.08.2010 22:32, schrieb Joachim Pense:
> >> >> In English, a bimbo is a dumb blonde. In German, Bimbo is a patronizing
>
> >> >I forgot to mention, a female one.
>
> >> Even in English, a male should be a "blond".
>
> >True, both as an adjective and as a noun.  Can anyone
> >think of another adjective which retains its gender
> >identification in English?
>
> Is "blond(e) ever really a noun?

If you doubt it, you must really be a dumb blond.

Christopher Ingham

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:29:12 PM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 8:52 am, GFH <geor...@ankerstein.org> wrote:
Actor/actress. Words that have the -ess suffix seem to be becoming
obsolete, though.

Christopher Ingham

Andy

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:21:28 PM8/31/10
to
In message <EMGQhUJo7PfMFwi$@g3ohx.demon.co.uk>, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote

The accents are scarcely ever found in what I read now-a-days.

Stephen Hust

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 1:55:49 PM8/31/10
to
GFH <geo...@ankerstein.org> wrote:

[blond/blonde]

> Can anyone think of another adjective which retains its gender
> identification in English?

Brunet/brunette, a word seldom applied to males.

About 80 years ago, H. W. Fowler wrote:

| *blond(e).* The /-e/ should be dropped; the practice now usual
| is to retain it when the word is used either as noun or as
| adjective of a woman & drop it otherwise (/the blonde girl/;
| /she is a blonde/; /she has a blond complexion/; /the blond
| races/); but this is by no means universal, & the doubt between
| /blond women/ & /blonde women/ (with /blondes women/ in the
| background) at once shows its absurdity.
|
(Modern English Usage, Oxford, 2002 (1926).)

About 7 years ago, Bryan A. Garner wrote:

| *blond; blonde. A. As an Adjective.* In French, the /-e/ is a
| feminine tag, the spelling without the /-e/ being the masculine.
| This distinction has generally carried over to BrE, so that
| /blonde/ more often refers to women and /blond/ more often
| refers to men. In AmE, though, /blond/ is preferred in all
| senses [...]
|
(Garner's Modern American Usage, Oxford, 2003.)

--
Steve

My e-mail address works as is.

Ian Jackson

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 2:51:38 PM8/31/10
to
In message
<166cfddd-58bd-4d05...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com>,
Christopher Ingham <christop...@comcast.net> writes
Yes, there must dozens of words which have masculine and feminine
versions, but many have very obvious different endings and
pronunciations.
Masseur - Masseuse and similar (reasonably common)

Much rarer are words like
Director - Directrix (although my spellchecker prefers 'Directress')
Even Editor - Editrix!
Most of these sound a bit silly and pretentious.

"Actress" seems to have got a bad press lately. This is possibly due to
countless jokes about the actress and the (arch)bishop (although these
have probably existed since the 1800s), but more likely because (in
certain situations) some "actresses" have been 'chorus girls', 'strip
tease' artists etc. These days many ladies in the acting profession
prefer the sexual equal term "actor"
--
Ian

D. Stussy

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 3:39:04 PM8/31/10
to
"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...
> ...

> Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English
> "Sambo"?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo
> Maybe the German version is more politically correct!

Definently NOT. Sambos are colored people and are never naturally blonde.
Although the origin appears to describe an Asian Indian, it has been
applied to those of African descent in the U.S. as well.


Christopher Ingham

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 3:39:08 PM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 2:51 pm, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <166cfddd-58bd-4d05-82ce-688b7e2c2...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com>,
> Christopher Ingham <christophering...@comcast.net> writes
I made an incorrect reply, as you asked for examples of gender-
specific_adjectives_besides blond/blonde. Other than his/her, I can't
think of any. I think that even the use of final -e in the adjectival
blond is very rare, if not obsolete.

Christopher Ingham

James Silverton

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 3:40:07 PM8/31/10
to

Yes, a "divorcee" could be male or female these days but the noun most
often refers to a woman. The OED only lists "divorcee" tho' its
citations use the acute accent and both male and female nouns.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Paul Schmitz-Josten

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 3:40:29 PM8/31/10
to
Ian Jackson in <M1CCvpB6...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk>:

>Masseur - Masseuse and similar (reasonably common)

Beware of a very embarrassing false friend in German:
The female form of (medical) Masseur is Masseurin,
a Masseuse has names like Chantal or Natasha, does "relaxing massages"
through the night, by hand or oral, from 100 € up for whatever (short) time
it takes. IOW: red light district treatment only!

Ciao,

Paul

Joachim Pense

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 3:54:55 PM8/31/10
to

IIRC the word "Masseurin" was introduced only in the early seventies,
when the massage parlors started appearing and offering that sort of
services you describe. Before that, the word for the female medical
Masseur was "Masseurin".

Joachim

Skitt

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 4:10:30 PM8/31/10
to
"Christopher Ingham" wrote:

> I made an incorrect reply, as you asked for examples of gender-
> specific_adjectives_besides blond/blonde. Other than his/her, I can't
> think of any. I think that even the use of final -e in the adjectival
> blond is very rare, if not obsolete.

Here's the usage note from Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.

The spelling blonde is still widely used for the noun that
specifies a woman or girl with fair hair: The blonde with the
baby in her arms is my anthropology professor. Some people
object to this as an unnecessary distinction, preferring blond
for all persons: My sister is thinking of becoming a blond for
a while. As an adjective, the word is more usually spelled blond
in reference to either sex (an energetic blond girl; two blond
sons), although the form blonde is occasionally still used of
a female: the blonde model and her escort. The spelling blond
is almost always used for the adjective describing hair,
complexion, etc.: His daughter has blond hair and hazel eyes.
--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://come.to/skitt

Hatunen

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 4:15:04 PM8/31/10
to

Probably from a misunderstanding of who "little black Sambo" was;
while Brits might use "black" to refer to native of the Indian
subcontinent, in the USA it has only meant Negroes. This is
historic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29

There was a chain of restaurants in the USA called "Sambo's", a
portmanteau word from the names of the founders. As Wikipedia
says, they became associatated with the story of "Little Black
Sambo"

Somehow, the politically correct took exception to the name as
derogatory of African-Americans even though the Sambo's
restaurants I had patronized all had clearly Indian motifs, with
a small boy in a turban being followed by a tiger. And tigers are
clearly not endemic to Africa. Ihad the book when I was a child
and the protagianist was clearly an Indian.

The chain has disappeared now; the three restaurants in Tucson
were hangouts for the late ninght crowds here.


--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Skitt

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 4:18:56 PM8/31/10
to
"Joachim Pense" wrote:
> schrieb Paul Schmitz-Josten:
>> Ian Jackson wrote:

>>> Masseur - Masseuse and similar (reasonably common)
>>
>> Beware of a very embarrassing false friend in German:
>> The female form of (medical) Masseur is Masseurin,
>> a Masseuse has names like Chantal or Natasha, does "relaxing
>> massages"
>> through the night, by hand or oral, from 100 € up for whatever
>> (short) time
>> it takes. IOW: red light district treatment only!
>
> IIRC the word "Masseurin" was introduced only in the early seventies,
> when the massage parlors started appearing and offering that sort of
> services you describe. Before that, the word for the female medical
> Masseur was "Masseurin".

Hmm. Your paragraph did not have a happy ending.

Joachim Pense

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 4:39:28 PM8/31/10
to

Rats! Of course I meant to write that the word had been "Masseuse".

>
> Joachim

DKleinecke

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 8:26:12 PM8/31/10
to
On Aug 31, 1:15 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:

> There was a chain of restaurants in the USA called "Sambo's", a
> portmanteau word from the names of the founders. As Wikipedia
> says, they became associatated with the story of "Little Black
> Sambo"
>
> Somehow, the politically correct took exception to the name as
> derogatory of African-Americans even though the Sambo's
> restaurants I had patronized all had clearly Indian motifs, with
> a small boy in a turban being followed by a tiger. And tigers are
> clearly not endemic to Africa. Ihad the book when I was a child
> and the protagianist was clearly an Indian.
>
> The chain has disappeared now; the three restaurants in Tucson
> were hangouts for the late ninght crowds here.
>

The chain was forced out of existence by the authorities. I forget
(or
more likely never knew) the details but something about their
franchising methods was declared illegal.

The last time I looked (not very recently) the original Sambo's in
Santa Barbara was still in business and still using the Indian theme.

annily

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 9:02:29 PM8/31/10
to

I'd never seen that spelling. Also, when checking OED, I see "brunette"
can also refer to dark complexion. I have only ever heard it applied to
dark hair.

--
Long-time resident of Adelaide, South Australia,
which probably influences my opinions.

Peter Moylan

unread,
Aug 31, 2010, 11:25:53 PM8/31/10
to
Christopher Ingham wrote:

> I think that even the use of final -e in the adjectival
> blond is very rare, if not obsolete.

In AmE, perhaps. In Australian we use "blonde" for both sexes.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

D. Stussy

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 2:48:52 AM9/1/10
to
"Hatunen" <hat...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:s4oq769549vdaj7u2...@4ax.com...

> On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:39:04 -0700, "D. Stussy"
> <spam+ne...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:
> >"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...
> >> ...
> >> Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English
> >> "Sambo"?
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo
> >> Maybe the German version is more politically correct!
> >
> >Definently NOT. Sambos are colored people and are never naturally
blonde.
> >Although the origin appears to describe an Asian Indian, it has been
> >applied to those of African descent in the U.S. as well.
>
> Probably from a misunderstanding of who "little black Sambo" was;
> while Brits might use "black" to refer to native of the Indian
> subcontinent, in the USA it has only meant Negroes. This is
> historic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29

I don't see a misunderstanding here. I see it as describing a person by a
particular shade of skin color. The origin of the person is detached from
modern usage. Certain mulattos have skin color indistinguishable from
those of Asian Indians.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 8:14:55 AM9/1/10
to
On Sep 1, 2:48 am, "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org>
wrote:
> "Hatunen" <hatu...@cox.net> wrote in message

>
> news:s4oq769549vdaj7u2...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:39:04 -0700, "D. Stussy"
> > <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:
> > >"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message

> > >news:a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...
> > >> ...
> > >> Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English
> > >> "Sambo"?
> > >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo
> > >> Maybe the German version is more politically correct!
>
> > >Definently NOT.  Sambos are colored people and are never naturally
> blonde.
> > >Although the origin appears to describe an Asian Indian, it has been
> > >applied to those of African descent in the U.S. as well.
>
> > Probably from a misunderstanding of who "little black Sambo" was;
> > while Brits might use "black" to refer to native of the Indian
> > subcontinent, in the USA it has only meant Negroes. This is
> > historic:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29
>
> I don't see a misunderstanding here.  I see it as describing a person by a
> particular shade of skin color.  The origin of the person is detached from
> modern usage.  Certain mulattos have skin color indistinguishable from
> those of Asian Indians.

? Of course it's a misunderstanding. "Black" is never used in the US
for 'South Asian', but only for African American, in a usage going
back some fifty years now. And the original illustrations conform to
stereotypical depictions of "pickaninnies" (Fr. "golliwogs" -- Debussy
was not writing about tadpoles, as I had always thought), turbans and
tigers notwithstanding.

(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 4:11:14 PM9/1/10
to
On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:48:52 -0700, "D. Stussy"
<spam+ne...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:

>"Hatunen" <hat...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:s4oq769549vdaj7u2...@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:39:04 -0700, "D. Stussy"
>> <spam+ne...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:
>> >"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>> >news:a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...
>> >> ...
>> >> Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English
>> >> "Sambo"?
>> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo
>> >> Maybe the German version is more politically correct!
>> >
>> >Definently NOT. Sambos are colored people and are never naturally
>blonde.
>> >Although the origin appears to describe an Asian Indian, it has been
>> >applied to those of African descent in the U.S. as well.
>>
>> Probably from a misunderstanding of who "little black Sambo" was;
>> while Brits might use "black" to refer to native of the Indian
>> subcontinent, in the USA it has only meant Negroes. This is
>> historic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29
>
>I don't see a misunderstanding here. I see it as describing a person by a
>particular shade of skin color. The origin of the person is detached from
>modern usage. Certain mulattos have skin color indistinguishable from
>those of Asian Indians.

Americans a century or more ago wouldn't have considered just the
color of the skin. "Black" meant, um, Negro. Mulattos would have
still been considered "black" and negro (although they were also
thought of as yellow, as in "The Yellow Rose of Texas"). The "one
drop of blood" rule applied in the American South, and even a
person who could "pass" would be considred black or Negro once
found out; this is one of the plot lines in the musical
"Showboat," and, presumably, in Edna Ferber's novel of the same
name: one of hte white leads has fallen in love with teh
fair-skinned but legally Negro Julie, and is told he cannot marry
her. He prinking some blood from a Negro and swallowing it,
thereby giving himself teh requisite one drop of negro blood.

Written in the 1920s, the book was pretty daring in its day and
the Broadway show based on it, which opened in December 1927, was
even more daring since such serious themes weren't generally seen
on Broadway.

Today it has it's own controversial aspects, the first word heard
after the overture being "niggers" (if presented with the
original libretto), the opening number being "Old Man River".

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 4:13:24 PM9/1/10
to
On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)

The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
speaking American for many, many years.

R H Draney

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 5:14:17 PM9/1/10
to
Hatunen filted:

>
>On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
><gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>
>The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>speaking American for many, many years.

It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

Skitt

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 5:19:27 PM9/1/10
to
"R H Draney" wrote:
> Hatunen filted:
>> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:

>>> (And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>> Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>
>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>> speaking American for many, many years.
>
> It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r

Not really. My Filipina wife says she's Asian -- well, mostly.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 5:45:50 PM9/1/10
to
On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
> >Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>
> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
> speaking American for many, many years.

When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?

Anyway in the 60s we learned of a different collection called
"Southeast Asians," but the Vietnamese became too familiar to be
lumped into such exotica.

Adam Funk

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 8:33:56 PM9/1/10
to


"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." (Ambrose Bierce)


--
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of
the American public. [Mencken]

Evan Kirshenbaum

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 8:52:18 PM9/1/10
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:

> On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> >(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>> >Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>
>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>> speaking American for many, many years.
>
> When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?

Largely when folk go to Thai or Burmese restaurants. (The former are
common around here. The latter less so, but they exist.)

> Anyway in the 60s we learned of a different collection called
> "Southeast Asians," but the Vietnamese became too familiar to be
> lumped into such exotica.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A little government and a little luck
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |are necessary in life, but only a
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fool trusts either of them.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 9:18:25 PM9/1/10
to

Actually, Partridge has Sambo = "a Negro" from the 18th century, and
not specifically American.

Ross Clark

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 9:53:10 PM9/1/10
to
On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net>
wrote:

Polynesian, I think...

Adam Funk

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 9:55:55 PM9/1/10
to
On 2010-09-02, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:
>
>> On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>
>>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> >(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>> >Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>>
>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>
>> When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?
>
> Largely when folk go to Thai or Burmese restaurants. (The former are
> common around here. The latter less so, but they exist.)

I can't recall ever seeing a Burmese restaurant. What's the food
like?


--
It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by
first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste
of the nation. (David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA, 1939; in Stoll 1995)

Evan Kirshenbaum

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 10:51:56 PM9/1/10
to
Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> writes:

> On 2010-09-02, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>>
>>>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> >(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>>> >Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>>>
>>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>>
>>> When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?
>>
>> Largely when folk go to Thai or Burmese restaurants. (The former
>> are common around here. The latter less so, but they exist.)
>
> I can't recall ever seeing a Burmese restaurant. What's the food
> like?

Here's the "Overview of Burmese Cuisine" from the Green Elephant in
Palo Alto:

http://greenelephantgourmet.com/mall/c106/s26117/overview.asp

I've only been there once, and I'm not bringing anything in particular
to mind.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It is a popular delusion that the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |government wastes vast amounts of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |money through inefficiency and sloth.
|Enormous effort and elaborate
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |planning are required to waste this
(650)857-7572 |much money
| P.J. O'Rourke
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


Odysseus

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 10:59:03 PM9/1/10
to
In article
<b002391c-e4cf-4e9f...@y11g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

[Little Black Sambo]

> [...] "Black" is never used in the US for 'South Asian', but only for

> African American, in a usage going back some fifty years now. And the
> original illustrations conform to stereotypical depictions of
> "pickaninnies"

Agreed, AFAICR.



> (Fr. "golliwogs" -- Debussy was not writing about tadpoles, as I had
> always thought),

Those were always "polliwogs" in my hearing. To me the caricature blacks
were indeed "golliwogs" (which I never thought to be anything other than
English), while "pickaninnies" were most often Native children, usually
accompanied by "squaws".

> turbans and tigers notwithstanding.

Not to mention ghee.

--
Odysseus

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 11:15:58 PM9/1/10
to

What's your point? (a) Partridge is English, and (b) Sambo isn't
American, being known only from that scurrilous book. (c) Doesn't that
suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
from? She certainly used the racial stereotypes in the illustrations,
regardless of where she placed her tale.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 11:18:23 PM9/1/10
to
On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> In article
> <b002391c-e4cf-4e9f-a6bf-e1d940978...@y11g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,

>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> [Little Black Sambo]
>
> > [...] "Black" is never used in the US for 'South Asian', but only for
> > African American, in a usage going back some fifty years now. And the
> > original illustrations conform to stereotypical depictions of
> > "pickaninnies"
>
> Agreed, AFAICR.
>
> > (Fr. "golliwogs" -- Debussy was not writing about tadpoles, as I had
> > always thought),
>
> Those were always "polliwogs" in my hearing. To me the caricature blacks
> were indeed "golliwogs" (which I never thought to be anything other than
> English),

Debussy's piece is titled "Golliwog's Cakewalk" in French.

> while "pickaninnies" were most often Native children, usually
> accompanied by "squaws".
>
> > turbans and tigers notwithstanding.
>
> Not to mention ghee.

What does "Native" mean to you? To me it might indicate Native
American, but pickaninnies certainly weren't American Indians!

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 1, 2010, 11:45:02 PM9/1/10
to
On Sep 2, 9:45 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> > <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > >(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
> > >Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>
> > The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
> > speaking American for many, many years.
>
> When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?

When they live in the folk's neighbourhood, I guess.
We tend to use "Asian" in the US rather than the UK sense hereabouts,
and I'd definitely include Thai and Burmese people in the category.

Ross Clark

Frank ess

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 12:51:20 AM9/2/10
to

Hatunen wrote:
> On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Hatunen filted:
>>>
>>> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>> <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> (And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>>> Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South
>>>> Asians.)
>>>
>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>
>> It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>
> Polynesian, I think...

"Pacific Islanders" have a festival bayside.

--
Frank ess

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 1:09:27 AM9/2/10
to

Hatunen suggested, and you emphatically agreed, that there had been a
"misunderstanding". I was becoming confused about who was supposed to
have misunderstood, and when, and what was the nature of that
misunderstanding.

(a) Partridge is English

I feel duty-bound to point out that he was a New Zealander by birth.

, and (b) Sambo isn't
> American, being known only from that scurrilous book.

(i) scurrilous?

(ii) You mean the term has never been used by Americans, or only after
they read the book?

(c) Doesn't that
> suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
> from?

No, it doesn't. Bannerman lived in Madras for 32 years. Her book is
very clearly set in India. Wikipedia even offers an Indian origin for
the name [citation needed].
And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
"black".
Nevertheless, the names used (Mumbo and Jumbo for his parents, Mingo,
Quasha and Quibba the protagonists of her other books) seem more
African than Indian, despite the various Indian-specific details of
locale.

>She certainly used the racial stereotypes in the illustrations,
> regardless of where she placed her tale.

I think that's what offended most people. Later illustrators from the
1940s on got rid of the ugly "golliwog" faces. (I'm sure my mother
would never have had it in the house with those pictures.) There's
nothing much wrong with the story itself.

Some interesting discussion here:

http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/picaninny/

So we come back to the "misunderstanding".

If I read Hatunen's suggestion correctly, it was that Americans
applied the word to African-Americans through a misreading of
Bannerman's book as being about Africans in Africa. This misreading
would have been encouraged by the African-style names given to the
characters and the illustrations with a type of racial caricature
familiarly applied to Africans.
But we know that "Sambo" as a term for Africans begins two centuries
before Bannerman's book. So even if the book was misunderstood in the
above way, this was not the origin of the derogatory racial epithet.

Ross Clark

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 1:13:45 AM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 1:53 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net>

> wrote:
>
> >Hatunen filted:
>
> >>On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
> >><gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >>>(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
> >>>Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>
> >>The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
> >>speaking American for many, many years.
>
> >It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>
> Polynesian, I think...
>
> --
>    ************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatu...@cox.net) *************

>    *       Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow         *
>    * My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Please! This _is_ sci.lang! Austronesian, OK, Polynesian, no.
Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
"Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.

R H Draney

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 1:15:07 AM9/2/10
to
Adam Funk filted:

>
>On 2010-09-02, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Sep 1, 4:13 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>>
>>> When do they ever enter the folk consciousness?
>>
>> Largely when folk go to Thai or Burmese restaurants. (The former are
>> common around here. The latter less so, but they exist.)
>
>I can't recall ever seeing a Burmese restaurant. What's the food
>like?

All the descriptions fit in six short lines, and the last line is always the
same....r

Odysseus

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 1:23:09 AM9/2/10
to
In article
<b9b12d4c-b676-47e6...@f25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

> On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> > In article
> > <b002391c-e4cf-4e9f-a6bf-e1d940978...@y11g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> >  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > [Little Black Sambo]
> >
> > > [...] "Black" is never used in the US for 'South Asian', but only for
> > > African American, in a usage going back some fifty years now. And the
> > > original illustrations conform to stereotypical depictions of
> > > "pickaninnies"
> >
> > Agreed, AFAICR.
> >
> > > (Fr. "golliwogs" -- Debussy was not writing about tadpoles, as I had
> > > always thought),
> >
> > Those were always "polliwogs" in my hearing. To me the caricature blacks
> > were indeed "golliwogs" (which I never thought to be anything other than
> > English),
>
> Debussy's piece is titled "Golliwog's Cakewalk" in French.

Just as the suite it's from is titled "Children's Corner" in French?

> > while "pickaninnies" were most often Native children, usually
> > accompanied by "squaws".
> >
> > > turbans and tigers notwithstanding.
> >
> > Not to mention ghee.
>
> What does "Native" mean to you? To me it might indicate Native
> American, but pickaninnies certainly weren't American Indians!

I did mean American Indians, for whom the fashionable term in these
parts is "First Nations", but the adjectives "Native" and "Aboriginal"
remain fairly current. Reconsidering, however, I believe the word I was
thinking of above was "papoose".

--
Odysseus

D. Stussy

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 2:10:53 AM9/2/10
to
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:738b45bc-06d3-4571...@b4g2000pra.googlegroups.com...

--------
All the time when I was younger, before the term "Pacific Islander" became
common.


benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 2:15:24 AM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 6:10 pm, "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org>
wrote:
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message

So "Pacific Islander" now excludes Filipinos? And where are you
reporting from?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:21:50 AM9/2/10
to

See the review article in the New Yorker when several versions were
reprinted some years ago. (I stopped subscribing early in the Tina
years, so that's how long ago it was.)

> (ii) You mean the term has never been used by Americans, or only after
> they read the book?

You have reason to believe the term was found in America before the
book?

>  (c) Doesn't that
>
> > suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
> > from?
>
> No, it doesn't. Bannerman lived in Madras for 32 years. Her book is
> very clearly set in India. Wikipedia even offers an Indian origin for
> the name [citation needed].
> And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
> "black".

Yet she was unaware that Negroes came from Africa? She _used the
stereotypes of former slaves to illustrate a book that had nothing to
do with former slaves_. Or were "golliwog" illustrations _also_ used
to stereotype Dravidians in England? (There are no grounds for
positing a Dravidian community in the US at which they could have been
aimed.)

> Nevertheless, the names used (Mumbo and Jumbo for his parents, Mingo,
> Quasha and Quibba the protagonists of her other books) seem more
> African than Indian, despite the various Indian-specific details of
> locale.
>
> >She certainly used the racial stereotypes in the illustrations,
> > regardless of where she placed her tale.
>
> I think that's what offended most people. Later illustrators from the
> 1940s on got rid of the ugly "golliwog" faces. (I'm sure my mother
> would never have had it in the house with those pictures.) There's
> nothing much wrong with the story itself.
>
> Some interesting discussion here:
>
> http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/picaninny/
>
> So we come back to the "misunderstanding".
>
> If I read Hatunen's suggestion correctly, it was that Americans
> applied the word to African-Americans through a misreading of
> Bannerman's book as being about Africans in Africa. This misreading
> would have been encouraged by the African-style names given to the
> characters and the illustrations with a type of racial caricature
> familiarly applied to Africans.

Which would be the two most salient things about the book.

We also don't read Uncle Remus any more, and somehow *Song of the
South* seems to be the only Disney movie that hasn't been rereleased
in my lifetime.

> But we know that "Sambo" as a term for Africans begins two centuries
> before Bannerman's book. So even if the book was misunderstood in the
> above way, this was not the origin of the derogatory racial epithet.

Even if it wasn't, it was the cause for its popularity.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:24:41 AM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 1:23 am, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> In article
> <b9b12d4c-b676-47e6-a3f7-fd535951d...@f25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,

Ah. You're talking about Canada.

(The first time I encountered the term "First Nations" was in the
famed anthropology museum at UBC in 1994. It was particularly risible
in that context, because the local Natives were at the very least
Second Nations, the Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier
inhabitants a few millennia ago.)

John Atkinson

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 9:57:18 AM9/2/10
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 2, 1:23 am, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
[...]

>> I did mean American Indians, for whom the fashionable term in these
>> parts is "First Nations", but the adjectives "Native" and "Aboriginal"
>> remain fairly current. Reconsidering, however, I believe the word I was
>> thinking of above was "papoose".
>
> Ah. You're talking about Canada.
>
> (The first time I encountered the term "First Nations" was in the
> famed anthropology museum at UBC in 1994. It was particularly risible
> in that context, because the local Natives were at the very least
> Second Nations, the Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier
> inhabitants a few millennia ago.)

UBC's in Vancouver, isn't it? That's Halkomelem and Squamish country
(Salishan, not Athabaskan).

The nearest Athabaskan speakers would be the speakers of Carrier and
Chilcotin in central BC. If it's these you're referring to, is there in
fact any decent evidence that they actually came from somewhere else and
displaced earlier groups speaking non-Athabaskan languages thereabouts a
few millennia ago?

John.

D. Stussy

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 3:05:36 PM9/2/10
to
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:2bc46682-5bfc-460d...@l25g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

---------
You obviously can't read. "Pacific Islander," today, INCLUDES filipinos.
I am from the U.S.A.

You also don't seem to understand cross-posted articles.


Christopher Ingham

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 3:28:17 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 3:05 pm, "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org>
The Japanese are Pacific islanders, too, technically, but neither
they nor Filipinos are described in the U.S. as Pacific Islanders, a
term which the_Shorter Oxford English dictionary_, 5th ed., defines as
"natives or inhabitants of any of the islands in the South Pacific,
esp. aboriginal natives of Polynesia."

Christopher Ingham
>
> You also don't seem to understand cross-posted articles.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Prai Jei

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 4:28:34 PM9/2/10
to
Ian Jackson set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

> Even in English, a male should be a "blond".

I was blond when I was a kid [1], but being an exceptionally intelligent kid
I was no bimbo. Instead, in those days Bimbo was the title of a comic aimed
at *very* young kids.


[1] http://alt-usage-english.org/AUE_gallery/paul_townsend.html
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly

Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply

D. Stussy

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 5:06:12 PM9/2/10
to
"Christopher Ingham" <christop...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:af9ef0af-a1c6-4392...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...

---------------
You expect the Brits to define the usage by Americans?

The Phillipines is a group of islands off the shore of Asia and in the
Pacific Ocean. So why wouldn't they be included? The people are also
genetically diverse from the mainland asian population as well, but also
part of the genetic pool common to the other islands.


Peter Duncanson (BrE)

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 5:21:09 PM9/2/10
to
On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 14:06:12 -0700, "D. Stussy"
<spam+ne...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:


> The Japanese are Pacific islanders, too, technically, but neither
>they nor Filipinos are described in the U.S. as Pacific Islanders, a
>term which the_Shorter Oxford English dictionary_, 5th ed., defines as
>"natives or inhabitants of any of the islands in the South Pacific,
>esp. aboriginal natives of Polynesia."
>
>---------------
>You expect the Brits to define the usage by Americans?
>

The OED is an international enterprise. It has people in the USA and
Canada to deal with North American word usages notably the
Editor-at-large (North America): Jesse Sheidlower.
http://dictionary.oed.com/about/staff.html

Contributions are welcomed from anyone, anywhere.
http://dictionary.oed.com/readers/

>The Phillipines is a group of islands off the shore of Asia and in the
>Pacific Ocean. So why wouldn't they be included? The people are also
>genetically diverse from the mainland asian population as well, but also
>part of the genetic pool common to the other islands.
>

If you think the OED entry is incorrect tell the OED via the link above.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 5:31:53 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 3, 7:05 am, "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org>

I can read just fine, thanks. Your mentions of the phrase did NOT make
clear just who it included.
But thank you for making it clear. Now perhaps you could be a little
more specific about where in the USA you live?

>
> You also don't seem to understand cross-posted articles.

What on earth has cross-posting got to do with my understanding of
your posts?

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 6:58:12 PM9/2/10
to

Rather than me searching for an undated issue of the New Yorker,
perhaps you could clarify the sense of "scurrilous" you intended to
apply here: (i) grossly or indecently abusive; (ii) given to or
expressed with low humour; or (iii) other.

>
> > (ii) You mean the term has never been used by Americans, or only after
> > they read the book?
>
> You have reason to believe the term was found in America before the
> book?

Well, yes, and the excellent ProQuest provides plenty of examples.
Just a couple here from the Chicago Daily Tribune:

Aug 6, 1857: A NECESSARY INQUIRY. -- "Sambo, spose dere is six
chickens in a coop and the man sell three, how many is dere left?"....
[so on to end of joke]

Dec 21, 1857: "Now look-ee yer, Sambo, Jim mout be an honest nigger,
and then agin he moutent, but if I was a chicken, and knowed dat he
was about de yard, I tell yer what, I'd roost high, I would."

[Here, as most commonly, "Sambo" is a proper name, used for a generic
African-American, as in jokes, or one whose name is not known, or as
representative of the whole class.]

Dec 2, 1858: The Cottonocracy love niggers with unqualified
devotion....But Sambo digging around cotton plants in Carolina,
putting freight in their ships, deposits in their banks, and customers
inside their doors, is a very different animal from Sambo rampant....
[Letter from New York correspondent on "The Douglas Intrigue"]

Plenty more, but you may want to change your conditions so I'll wait
and see.

> >  (c) Doesn't that
>
> > > suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
> > > from?
>
> > No, it doesn't. Bannerman lived in Madras for 32 years. Her book is
> > very clearly set in India. Wikipedia even offers an Indian origin for
> > the name [citation needed].
> > And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
> > "black".
>
> Yet she was unaware that Negroes came from Africa?

Of course not.

She _used the
> stereotypes of former slaves to illustrate a book that had nothing to
> do with former slaves_. Or were "golliwog" illustrations _also_ used
> to stereotype Dravidians in England? (There are no grounds for
> positing a Dravidian community in the US at which they could have been
> aimed.)

Racial caricatures were extremely common right through the 19th
century, and by no means restricted to former-slaves-in-the-USA. You
can find Maori and Australian Aborigines portrayed in similar ways,
not to mention the caricatures of Jews, Irish and other ethnicities in
Europe. Whether Bannerman's illustrations were inspired by African-
American caricatures is a question I will happily leave to art
historians.

I doubt it. In fact the existence of the term was probably one reason
for the backlash against the book in America.

Ross Clark

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:00:32 PM9/2/10
to

Is it held in Daly City?

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:02:26 PM9/2/10
to
On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:13:45 -0700 (PDT), "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>On Sep 2, 1:53 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>> On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Hatunen filted:
>>
>> >>On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> >><gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> >>>(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>> >>>Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>
>> >>The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>> >>speaking American for many, many years.
>>
>> >It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>>
>> Polynesian, I think...

>Please! This _is_ sci.lang! Austronesian,

No it's not; it's alt.usage.english.

>OK, Polynesian, no.
>Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
>"Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.

Then you ought to look up the origins of the Poynesians and the
Filipinos.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:09:31 PM9/2/10
to

Odd. I've only ever heard the word "pickaniny" (a corrupted
Portuguese word) used in conection with Negro children.

On the other hand, I've never heard the word "golliwog" used as
an American term for "Negro".

N.B. I use the word "Negro" only because is is the least
ambiguous term, cross-cultually speaking, that I can think of.

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:15:39 PM9/2/10
to
On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:09:27 -0700 (PDT), "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
<benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
>"black".

The blackest-skinned person I ever knew was an engineering
colleague who was a Dravidian from India.

>Nevertheless, the names used (Mumbo and Jumbo for his parents, Mingo,
>Quasha and Quibba the protagonists of her other books) seem more
>African than Indian, despite the various Indian-specific details of
>locale.
>
>>She certainly used the racial stereotypes in the illustrations,
>> regardless of where she placed her tale.
>
>I think that's what offended most people. Later illustrators from the
>1940s on got rid of the ugly "golliwog" faces. (I'm sure my mother
>would never have had it in the house with those pictures.) There's
>nothing much wrong with the story itself.
>
>Some interesting discussion here:
>
>http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/picaninny/
>
>So we come back to the "misunderstanding".
>
>If I read Hatunen's suggestion correctly, it was that Americans
>applied the word to African-Americans through a misreading of
>Bannerman's book as being about Africans in Africa. This misreading
>would have been encouraged by the African-style names given to the
>characters and the illustrations with a type of racial caricature
>familiarly applied to Africans.

>But we know that "Sambo" as a term for Africans begins two centuries
>before Bannerman's book. So even if the book was misunderstood in the
>above way, this was not the origin of the derogatory racial epithet.

My point was that Americans seeing the word "Sambo" applied to
the character in the book would assume that it meant the
character was "Negro" (see disclaimer elsewhere).

Hatunen

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:17:32 PM9/2/10
to
On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 04:21:50 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>You have reason to believe the term was found in America before the
>book?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_%28racial_term%29

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:34:14 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 3:28 pm, Christopher Ingham <christophering...@comcast.net>
wrote:

Hawaiians are certainly Pacific Islanders, and they're certainly not
from the South Pacific. Ditto Micronesians.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:50:50 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 6:58 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> On Sep 2, 11:21 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Sep 2, 1:09 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > > On Sep 2, 3:15 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > On Sep 1, 9:18 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > > > > On Sep 2, 12:14 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > > On Sep 1, 2:48 am, "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org>
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > > "Hatunen" <hatu...@cox.net> wrote in message
> > > > > > >news:s4oq769549vdaj7u2...@4ax.com...
> > > > > > > > On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:39:04 -0700, "D. Stussy"
> > > > > > > > <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:
> > > > > > > > >"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> > > > > > > > >news:a$nn9oKva...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...

> > > > > > > > >> Is it possible that the German "Bimbo" is equivalent to the English

I didn't have time this morning to fire up The Complete New Yorker.
It's either Joan Acocella, 30 Nov 98, or Adam Gopnik, 18 Nov 96 (both
holiday roundups of children's books), or 28 Sep 81, an anonymous
review of a book about the book. (i), (ii), and (iii) will all do.

> > > (ii) You mean the term has never been used by Americans, or only after
> > > they read the book?
>
> > You have reason to believe the term was found in America before the
> > book?
>
> Well, yes, and the excellent ProQuest provides plenty of examples.
> Just a couple here from the Chicago Daily Tribune:
>
> Aug 6, 1857: A NECESSARY INQUIRY. -- "Sambo, spose dere is six
> chickens in a coop and the man sell three, how many is dere left?"....
> [so on to end of joke]
>
> Dec 21, 1857: "Now look-ee yer, Sambo, Jim mout be an honest nigger,
> and then agin he moutent, but if I was a chicken, and knowed dat he
> was about de yard, I tell yer what, I'd roost high, I would."
>
> [Here, as most commonly, "Sambo" is a proper name, used for a generic
> African-American, as in jokes, or one whose name is not known, or as
> representative of the whole class.]
>
> Dec 2, 1858: The Cottonocracy love niggers with unqualified
> devotion....But Sambo digging around cotton plants in Carolina,
> putting freight in their ships, deposits in their banks, and customers
> inside their doors, is a very different animal from Sambo rampant....
> [Letter from New York correspondent on "The Douglas Intrigue"]
>
> Plenty more, but you may want to change your conditions so I'll wait
> and see.

Now give the inclusive dates of such usage. And are they confined to
Chicagoland?

> > >  (c) Doesn't that
>
> > > > suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
> > > > from?
>
> > > No, it doesn't. Bannerman lived in Madras for 32 years. Her book is
> > > very clearly set in India. Wikipedia even offers an Indian origin for
> > > the name [citation needed].
> > > And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
> > > "black".
>
> > Yet she was unaware that Negroes came from Africa?
>
> Of course not.
>
>  She _used the
>
> > stereotypes of former slaves to illustrate a book that had nothing to
> > do with former slaves_. Or were "golliwog" illustrations _also_ used
> > to stereotype Dravidians in England? (There are no grounds for
> > positing a Dravidian community in the US at which they could have been
> > aimed.)
>
> Racial caricatures were extremely common right through the 19th
> century, and by no means restricted to former-slaves-in-the-USA. You
> can find Maori and Australian Aborigines portrayed in similar ways,

Maoris and Abos were depicted with the very same features as American
blacks?

> not to mention the caricatures of Jews, Irish and other ethnicities in
> Europe. Whether Bannerman's illustrations were inspired by African-
> American caricatures is a question I will happily leave to art
> historians.

Jews, Irish, and "others" were certainly not depicted with the same
caricatures as Africans.

When did such backlash set in?

I had a copy when I ws little, and my mother certainly wouldn't
tolerate racial stereotyping. (Her office at City College was fully
integrated at the time she started there in 1957 when I started
school.)

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:55:43 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 9:57 am, John Atkinson <johna...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Sep 2, 1:23 am, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> >>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>> On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> [...]
> >> I did mean American Indians, for whom the fashionable term in these
> >> parts is "First Nations", but the adjectives "Native" and "Aboriginal"
> >> remain fairly current. Reconsidering, however, I believe the word I was
> >> thinking of above was "papoose".
>
> > Ah. You're talking about Canada.
>
> > (The first time I encountered the term "First Nations" was in the
> > famed anthropology museum at UBC in 1994. It was particularly risible
> > in that context, because the local Natives were at the very least
> > Second Nations, the Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier
> > inhabitants a few millennia ago.)
>
> UBC's in Vancouver, isn't it?  That's Halkomelem and Squamish country
> (Salishan, not Athabaskan).

The UBC's famed anthropology museum is not restricted to the Natives
of the immediate area.

Much of Boas's work was done on Vancouver Island, just a bit north and
west of Vancouver. (Of course most of his stuff ended up in NYC, but
that's more an indication of the state of anthropology in Canada at
the time. BTW Boas was trained in the 1880s by Horatio Hale, who was
the ethnologist on the US Exploring Expedition of 1841-42, whose
collections were the nucleus of the Smithsonian's holdings, and who
was trained by Albert Gallatin, who was an associate of Thomas
Jefferson. Hale produced valuable grammars of languages both of the
Pacific and of the Northwest Coast.)

> The nearest Athabaskan speakers would be the speakers of Carrier and
> Chilcotin in central BC.  If it's these you're referring to, is there in
> fact any decent evidence that they actually came from somewhere else and
> displaced earlier groups speaking non-Athabaskan languages thereabouts a
> few millennia ago?

Wouldn't all those claims of Cavalli-Sforza have _some_ legitimacy?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 7:56:42 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 2, 8:09 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:59:03 GMT, Odysseus
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >[Little Black Sambo]
>
> >> [...] "Black" is never used in the US for 'South Asian', but only for
> >> African American, in a usage going back some fifty years now. And the
> >> original illustrations conform to stereotypical depictions of
> >> "pickaninnies"
>
> >Agreed, AFAICR.
>
> >> (Fr. "golliwogs" -- Debussy was not writing about tadpoles, as I had
> >> always thought),
>
> >Those were always "polliwogs" in my hearing. To me the caricature blacks
> >were indeed "golliwogs" (which I never thought to be anything other than
> >English), while "pickaninnies" were most often Native children, usually
> >accompanied by "squaws".
>
> Odd. I've only ever heard the word "pickaniny" (a corrupted
> Portuguese word) used in conection with Negro children.
>
> On the other hand, I've never heard the word "golliwog" used as
> an American term for "Negro".
>
> N.B. I use the word "Negro" only because is is the least
> ambiguous term, cross-cultually speaking, that I can think of.

He corrected "pickaninny" to a remembrance of "papoose."

Apteryx

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:10:43 PM9/2/10
to
Hatunen wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:13:45 -0700 (PDT), "benl...@ihug.co.nz"
> <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 2, 1:53 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>> On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hatunen filted:
>>>>> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>>> (And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
>>>>>> Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>>>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>>> It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>>> Polynesian, I think...
>
>> Please! This _is_ sci.lang! Austronesian,
>
> No it's not; it's alt.usage.english.
>
>> OK, Polynesian, no.
>> Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
>> "Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.
>
> Then you ought to look up the origins of the Poynesians and the
> Filipinos.

It wouldn't help. You might with equal justification call Filipinos
Madagascans as Polynesians. All 3 are of Austronesian origin.

Apteryx

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:23:51 PM9/2/10
to

Just for the record: Are you now prepared to admit that you were wrong
in stating that the usage was unknown in America prior to the
publication of "Little Black Sambo"?

My search was limited to pre-1890, just to make sure they preceded the
date of LBS. The earliest American newspapers in the database are from
the 1850s, so those were from the earliest search results. After a
while I got tired and stopped reading them, but they are continuous
through that period.

And are they confined to
> Chicagoland?

No. E.g. the Los Angeles Times, Jun 3, 1883, under the title "That
Settled It", prints a humorous anecdote (credited to "Wall Street
News"). It begins "A negro entered a store in a village in
Alabama...". The negro is subsequently referred to as "Sambo", but
interestingly speaks more or less standard English, as contrasted with
the outrageous German dialect of the storekeeper.

Washington Post, Dec 14, 1881:

The President in announcing his Stalwart Cabinet goes on the principal
[sic] of the Ethiope who informed his master that his horse "Tom" had
run away. "Likewise Bill," continued the philosophic darkey. "And Jim,
too," said Sambo observing tht his master still retained his senses.
"You black devil," cried the old man, "why didn't you tell me all at
once?" "Fore God, Massa," responded Sambo, "I's fraid you couldn't
stood it." "Fore God," President Arthur seems to be afraid the country
cannot stand it.

> > > >  (c) Doesn't that
>
> > > > > suggest that the author herself was confused about where Negroes came
> > > > > from?
>
> > > > No, it doesn't. Bannerman lived in Madras for 32 years. Her book is
> > > > very clearly set in India. Wikipedia even offers an Indian origin for
> > > > the name [citation needed].
> > > > And some South Indian people are very dark skinned -- hence the term
> > > > "black".
>
> > > Yet she was unaware that Negroes came from Africa?
>
> > Of course not.
>
> >  She _used the
>
> > > stereotypes of former slaves to illustrate a book that had nothing to
> > > do with former slaves_. Or were "golliwog" illustrations _also_ used
> > > to stereotype Dravidians in England? (There are no grounds for
> > > positing a Dravidian community in the US at which they could have been
> > > aimed.)
>
> > Racial caricatures were extremely common right through the 19th
> > century, and by no means restricted to former-slaves-in-the-USA. You
> > can find Maori and Australian Aborigines portrayed in similar ways,
>
> Maoris and Abos

Please refrain from using offensive racial terms.

were depicted with the very same features as American
> blacks?

I said "similar". I would not want to pose as an expert and declare
them identical.

> > not to mention the caricatures of Jews, Irish and other ethnicities in
> > Europe. Whether Bannerman's illustrations were inspired by African-
> > American caricatures is a question I will happily leave to art
> > historians.
>
> Jews, Irish, and "others" were certainly not depicted with the same
> caricatures as Africans.

Read again what I said.

One of the Wiki articles mentions Langston Hughes, in 1932, as perhaps
the first person to make public objections.

> I had a copy when I ws little, and my mother certainly wouldn't
> tolerate racial stereotyping.

So did I, and neither would mine. I'm quite sure the edition we had
did not feature the original illustrations.

Ross Clark

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:30:37 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 3, 12:02 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:13:45 -0700 (PDT), "benli...@ihug.co.nz"

>
>
>
> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> >On Sep 2, 1:53 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> On 1 Sep 2010 14:14:17 -0700, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >Hatunen filted:
>
> >> >>On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 05:14:55 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> >><gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >> >>>(And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East Asians --
> >> >>>Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to South Asians.)
>
> >> >>The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
> >> >>speaking American for many, many years.
>
> >> >It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>
> >> Polynesian, I think...
> >Please! This _is_ sci.lang! Austronesian,
>
> No it's not; it's alt.usage.english.

Well it's sci.lang too. Or don't you understand cross-posting?

>
> >OK, Polynesian, no.
> >Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
> >"Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.
>
> Then you ought to look up the origins of the Poynesians and the
> Filipinos.

Actually I know quite a bit about the subject. And it does not make
the Filipinos Polynesians. Any more than their linguistic kinship
makes the English Swedes.

But I didn't really want to argue that point. I am honestly interested
to know whether there is a usage somewhere in the USA which classifies
Filipinos as "Polynesians" or as "Pacific Islanders".

Ross Clark

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:32:22 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 3, 12:15 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 22:09:27 -0700 (PDT), "benli...@ihug.co.nz"

Yes, I think you're right about that. Sorry I did not understand your
comments on first reading.

Ross Clark

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:35:40 PM9/2/10
to
On Sep 3, 11:55 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sep 2, 9:57 am, John Atkinson <johna...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > On Sep 2, 1:23 am, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> > >>  "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > >>> On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
> > [...]
> > >> I did mean American Indians, for whom the fashionable term in these
> > >> parts is "First Nations", but the adjectives "Native" and "Aboriginal"
> > >> remain fairly current. Reconsidering, however, I believe the word I was
> > >> thinking of above was "papoose".
>
> > > Ah. You're talking about Canada.
>
> > > (The first time I encountered the term "First Nations" was in the
> > > famed anthropology museum at UBC in 1994. It was particularly risible
> > > in that context, because the local Natives were at the very least
> > > Second Nations, the Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier
> > > inhabitants a few millennia ago.)
>
> > UBC's in Vancouver, isn't it?  That's Halkomelem and Squamish country
> > (Salishan, not Athabaskan).
>
> The UBC's famed anthropology museum is not restricted to the Natives
> of the immediate area.

But what else would you have meant by "the local Natives" above? Were
we meant to read this as "at least some of the Natives within a 1000-
km radius"?

Ross Clark

Robert Bannister

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:48:41 PM9/2/10
to

Not a term I use for anyone, but if you include Filipinos, do you also
include Japanese and Aleuts? The term seems much to vague to have any
use unless you restrict it to islands that are *in* the Pacific rather
than including those that are on the fringes.

--

Rob Bannister

Robert Bannister

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 8:56:42 PM9/2/10
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> We also don't read Uncle Remus any more, and somehow *Song of the
> South* seems to be the only Disney movie that hasn't been rereleased
> in my lifetime.

Heavens. I was six years old when I saw that. I caught myself whistling
"Zippa dee doo dah" the other day.
--

Rob Bannister

Patok

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 10:16:05 PM9/2/10
to
Hatunen wrote:
> "benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> Please! This _is_ sci.lang!

>
> No it's not; it's alt.usage.english.

I hate to rain on the parade, but you're both wrong. This is
alt.usage.german. <eg>

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
--
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

CDB

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 5:52:26 PM9/2/10
to
>> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>> "D. Stussy" <spam+newsgro...@bde-arc.ampr.org> wrote:
>>> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>> R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>>>> Hatunen filted:
>>>>>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> (And, for that matter, "Asian" in the US refers to East
>>>>>>> Asians -- Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese -- and not to
>>>>>>> South Asians.)
>>
>>>>>> The Thai and Burmese would be Asians to me, and I've been
>>>>>> speaking American for many, many years.
>>
>>>>> It does get a little fuzzy if you ask us about Filipinos....r
>>
>>>> Polynesian, I think...
>>
>>> Please! This _is_ sci.lang! Austronesian, OK, Polynesian, no.
>>> Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
>>> "Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.
>>
>>> --------
>>> All the time when I was younger, before the term "Pacific
>>> Islander" became common.
>>
>> So "Pacific Islander" now excludes Filipinos? And where are you
>> reporting from?
>> ---------
>> You obviously can't read. "Pacific Islander," today, INCLUDES
>> filipinos. I am from the U.S.A.
>
> I can read just fine, thanks. Your mentions of the phrase did NOT
> make clear just who it included.
> But thank you for making it clear. Now perhaps you could be a little
> more specific about where in the USA you live?
>
<Sibyl> He's from California.

>>
>> You also don't seem to understand cross-posted articles.
>
> What on earth has cross-posting got to do with my understanding of
> your posts?
>
<upthread> "Please! This _is_ sci.lang! " He's under the impression
that you post from one of the other two groups in the header.


Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 11:28:27 PM9/2/10
to

Actually, it's a museum for all of Canada.

Is it your claim that there are no Second Nations peoples within 600
miles of Vancouver?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 11:30:38 PM9/2/10
to

That song has certainly survived. It was shown on the Mickey Mouse
Club (presumably more than once). I sure would like to know the
context.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 11:32:35 PM9/2/10
to

There's generally a check-box for API, Asian or Pacific Islander. The
2010 Census form may have been more detailed.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 11:34:22 PM9/2/10
to

Now that I have learned of this archaic usage, I know that the book
was even more scurrilous than I had imagined. It was not only cartoon
racism but linguistic racism as well.

Christopher Ingham

unread,
Sep 2, 2010, 11:58:32 PM9/2/10
to
> from the South Pacific. Ditto Micronesians.- Hide quoted text -
>
Um, OED is more than a little imprecise here. So let me try another
definition:

Pacific Islanders are the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the
latter term conventionally meaning only the islands of the Pacific
Ocean contained in the regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia,
and Australasia, except for Australia.

"Pacific Islands" is used synonomously with the most restricted sense
of "Oceania." Oceania in its widest and least common sense denotes all
the islands between Asia and the Americas. More commonly it excludes
Japan, the Ryuku, Bonin-Volcano, Kuril, and Aleutian islands, and
isolated islands such as Juan Fernández off the South American coast.
The most common usage further excludes Indonesia, the Philippines, and
Taiwan, the reason being that the peoples and cultures of those areas
are more closely related historically to Asia. Further refinements are
often made depending on the purposes of studies, etc.

The northernmost latitude of Oceania is 23° N, while the southernmost
is 27° S, which puts the latitudinal midpoint at 2° S. Perhaps this
southern bias is what OED meant by South Pacific?:-/

Christopher Ingham

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 12:08:29 AM9/3/10
to

That might be a quote from its Mission Statement or something.
Otherwise what does it mean? The total collection contains artefacts
from many parts of the world, though it happens to be most famous for
the cultures of coastal B.C.

> Is it your claim that there are no Second Nations peoples within 600
> miles of Vancouver?

Of course not. It was just a round figure. I made no claim about
Second Nations (which seems to be your own coinage).
What I asked was how we could interpret your statement:

"the local Natives were at the very least Second Nations, the
Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier inhabitants a few
millennia ago."

In particular, "the local Natives" would seem to be hard to interpret
other than as "the Natives of Vancouver and its immediate environs",
who, as John has pointed out, are speakers of Salishan languages. On
this interpretation, your statement would be false.

If you wanted to broaden the sense of "local" to include some
Athapascans, you would have to go maybe 250 km (150 miles) straight
north from the UBC MoA, where you might find some speakers of
Tsilhqot'in (Chilcotin). Of course in expanding "local" to this range
you would have also encountered lots more Salishan speakers, as well
as representatives of two other language families, Wakashan and
Chemakuan (although the latter was not spoken in Canada). So your
statement would now be potentially true for only a small part of
"local".

That's assuming you had some evidence of the displacement you referred
to.

Anyhow, I think English semantics is loose enough to accomodate more
than one "first", as in "The first places to give women the vote were
Sweden, Corsica and New Jersey." (I don't wish to argue about the
historical facts here -- see Wikipedia "Timeline of women's
suffrage".)

Ross Clark

Evan Kirshenbaum

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 12:08:46 AM9/3/10
to

I think the question is whether your definite "the local Natives" can
reasonably be presumed to refer to them (and only them). Had you said
"some of the local Natives", I don't think anybody would be
questioning it.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Never attempt to teach a pig to
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |sing; it wastes your time and
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |annoys the pig.
| Robert Heinlein
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


Joachim Pense

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 12:27:05 AM9/3/10
to

Am 03.09.2010 04:16, schrieb Patok:
> Hatunen wrote:
>> "benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> Please! This _is_ sci.lang!
>>
>> No it's not; it's alt.usage.english.
>
> I hate to rain on the parade, but you're both wrong. This is
> alt.usage.german. <eg>
>

Someone ignored the followup to sci.lang, which I had given in my OP.

Joachim

Reinhold {Rey} Aman

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 1:58:25 AM9/3/10
to
Petey Daniels wrote:


> "benl...@ihug.co.nz" (Ross Clark) wrote:
>> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
[...]

> Now that I have learned of this archaic usage, I know that the
> book was even more scurrilous than I had imagined. It was not only
> cartoon racism but linguistic racism as well.
>
Speaking of linguistic racism:

Petey wrote nonchalantly:
>>> Maoris and Abos

Ross advised:


>> Please refrain from using offensive racial terms.

(Ross's advice ignored by ignorant weasel Petey.)

Petey, Petey, how could *you* of all people -- being <sci.lang>'s most
hysterically & pathologically über-sensitive anti-racist (see, e.g.,
above) -- employ that insensitive, racist, scurrilous term "Abos"?

Obviously you are ignorant of the well-known fact that "Abo" is
offensive, racist slang used as a disparaging, scurrilous term for an
Australian Aborigine. "Abo" is the Australian equivalent of U.S. "Nigger."

You're welcome.

--
~~~ Reinhold {Rey} Aman ~~~
"El hombre es tantas veces hombre cuanto
es el número de lenguas que ha aprendido".
-- Carlos I (Rey de España)

benl...@ihug.co.nz

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 2:07:28 AM9/3/10
to

IIRC "Zip..." (and the other songs) are sung by characters in the
animated versions of the tales, which can easily be shown on their
own. It is the framing happy-darkies live action sequences which are
hardest for modern audiences to stomach, so that if the whole film is
screened now (I'm pretty sure I caught it on TV a few years ago) it
would be with caution and apologies. But I'll say it again in this
case: there's nothing wrong with the stories.

Ross Clark

Evan Kirshenbaum

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 2:16:06 AM9/3/10
to
Reinhold {Rey} Aman <am...@sonic.net> writes:

> Petey Daniels wrote:
>
>> "benl...@ihug.co.nz" (Ross Clark) wrote:
>>> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
> [...]
>> Now that I have learned of this archaic usage, I know that the book
>> was even more scurrilous than I had imagined. It was not only
>> cartoon racism but linguistic racism as well.
>>
> Speaking of linguistic racism:
>
> Petey wrote nonchalantly:
>>>> Maoris and Abos
>
> Ross advised:
>>> Please refrain from using offensive racial terms.
>
> (Ross's advice ignored by ignorant weasel Petey.)
>
> Petey, Petey, how could *you* of all people -- being <sci.lang>'s
> most hysterically & pathologically über-sensitive anti-racist (see,
> e.g., above) -- employ that insensitive, racist, scurrilous term
> "Abos"?
>
> Obviously you are ignorant of the well-known fact that "Abo" is
> offensive, racist slang used as a disparaging, scurrilous term for
> an Australian Aborigine. "Abo" is the Australian equivalent of
> U.S. "Nigger."

Moreover, I have it on good authority that

It's customary, and polite, to use the forms of proper names that
the people whose names they are prefer.

I would be quite surprised to find that those to which he referred
consider "Abo" to be the preferred out-group name for them.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |barbarian and thinks that the
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |customs of his tribe and island are
|the laws of nature.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |
(650)857-7572 | George Bernard Shaw

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


John Atkinson

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 4:43:21 AM9/3/10
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 2, 8:30 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>> On Sep 3, 12:02 pm, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>> "benli...@ihug.co.nz" >>> <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
[...]

>>>> Seriously though, have you heard people calling Filipinos
>>>> "Polynesians"? I would find that quite interesting.

>>> Then you ought to look up the origins of the Poynesians and the
>>> Filipinos.

>> Actually I know quite a bit about the subject. And it does not make
>> the Filipinos Polynesians. Any more than their linguistic kinship
>> makes the English Swedes.
>>
>> But I didn't really want to argue that point. I am honestly interested
>> to know whether there is a usage somewhere in the USA which classifies
>> Filipinos as "Polynesians" or as "Pacific Islanders".
>
> There's generally a check-box for API,
> Asian or Pacific Islander.

Filipinos would certainly have no hesitation in ticking that box I
should think, since it doesn't require them to specify which they are
(one or the other or both).

John Atkinson

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 6:20:01 AM9/3/10
to
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sep 2, 9:57 am, John Atkinson <johna...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Sep 2, 1:23 am, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
>>>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>> On Sep 1, 10:59 pm, Odysseus <odysseus1479...@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> I did mean American Indians, for whom the fashionable term in these
>>>> parts is "First Nations", but the adjectives "Native" and "Aboriginal"
>>>> remain fairly current. Reconsidering, however, I believe the word I was
>>>> thinking of above was "papoose".
>>> Ah. You're talking about Canada.
>>> (The first time I encountered the term "First Nations" was in the
>>> famed anthropology museum at UBC in 1994. It was particularly risible
>>> in that context, because the local Natives were at the very least
>>> Second Nations, the Athapascan-speakers having displaced the earlier
>>> inhabitants a few millennia ago.)

>> UBC's in Vancouver, isn't it? That's Halkomelem and Squamish country
>> (Salishan, not Athabaskan).
>
> The UBC's famed anthropology museum is not restricted to the Natives
> of the immediate area.

Of course not. But you referred to "the local Natives", not "some of
the more distant groups represented in the Museum".


>
> Much of Boas's work was done on Vancouver Island, just a bit north and
> west of Vancouver.

... where various Coast Salish languages were spoken, as well as
Kwakiutl and Nootka. The southernmost North Athabaskan language on the
coast was Tsetsaut I think, way up on the border with Alaska. It was
indeed documented by Boas (working with the last three fluent speakers,
in 1894). The northernmost Athabaskan language belonging (arguably) to
the Pacific Coast family was in southern Washington Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie).

> (Of course most of his stuff ended up in NYC, but
> that's more an indication of the state of anthropology in Canada at
> the time. BTW Boas was trained in the 1880s by Horatio Hale, who was
> the ethnologist on the US Exploring Expedition of 1841-42, whose
> collections were the nucleus of the Smithsonian's holdings, and who
> was trained by Albert Gallatin, who was an associate of Thomas
> Jefferson. Hale produced valuable grammars of languages both of the
> Pacific and of the Northwest Coast.)
>
>> The nearest Athabaskan speakers would be the speakers of Carrier and
>> Chilcotin in central BC. If it's these you're referring to, is there in
>> fact any decent evidence that they actually came from somewhere else and
>> displaced earlier groups speaking non-Athabaskan languages thereabouts a
>> few millennia ago?
>
> Wouldn't all those claims of Cavalli-Sforza have _some_ legitimacy?

Who knows? I don't, that's for sure, which is why I was asking.

I just had a bit of a reread of C-F's big 1994 book, and I see (of
course) that he's all for the three-migration theory, based on
Greenberg's linguistic analysis. I recollect odds and ends of later
work by the geneticists and others which (they claimed) supported this
model too. But all that's a long way further back than "a few
millennia", and anyway C-S lumps all "Canadian Na-Dene" together in his
charts and tables.

Linguistically, the centre of gravity of Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit is the
Alaskan panhandle; and there's Ket too to be taken into account somehow.

Archaeologically, that NW Coast culture has been around there more or
less unchanged for a good many millennia. What languages were spoken
there away back then is anyone's guess, of course.

But as far as "decent" proof is concerned, I don't know of any that
conclusively shows, or even suggests, that proto-Athabaskan wasn't
located inland, in central BC, in what's now Carrier country. Though on
the balance of probabilities for what they're worth, it's not its most
likely homeland.

Has anyone done any work on proto-A vocab, like the games IEists play in
an effort to localise the PIE homeland and culture?

John.


Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 7:21:01 AM9/3/10
to
On Sep 3, 1:58 am, Reinhold {Rey} Aman <a...@sonic.net> wrote:
> Petey Daniels wrote:

> > "benli...@ihug.co.nz" (Ross Clark) wrote:
> >> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
> [...]
> > Now that I have learned of this archaic usage, I know that the
> > book was even more scurrilous than I had imagined. It was not only
> > cartoon racism but linguistic racism as well.
>
> Speaking of linguistic racism:
>
> Petey wrote nonchalantly:
>
> >>> Maoris and Abos
>
> Ross advised:
>
> >> Please refrain from using offensive racial terms.
>
> (Ross's advice ignored by ignorant weasel Petey.)

Rindhole lies again.

I have not used the term again.

> Petey, Petey, how could *you* of all people -- being <sci.lang>'s most
> hysterically & pathologically über-sensitive anti-racist (see, e.g.,
> above) -- employ that insensitive, racist, scurrilous term "Abos"?
>
> Obviously you are ignorant of the well-known fact that "Abo" is
> offensive, racist slang used as a disparaging, scurrilous term for an
> Australian Aborigine. "Abo" is the Australian equivalent of  U.S. "Nigger."

Unaware of the topic of the thread?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 7:21:43 AM9/3/10
to
On Sep 3, 2:16 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> Reinhold {Rey} Aman <a...@sonic.net> writes:
> > Petey Daniels wrote:

Unaware of the topic of the thread?

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 7:23:44 AM9/3/10
to

I didn't know there are animated portions. The song was sung by a
black man in farmer (or sharecropper) togs, looking a lot like "Oh,
What a Beautiful Morning" from *Oklahoma*.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 7:27:19 AM9/3/10
to

The only natives of Vancouver these days seem to be refugees from Hong
Kong.

From 3000+ miles away, the "locality" of Vancouver is a bit bigger
than "immediate environs."

> If you wanted to broaden the sense of "local" to include some
> Athapascans, you would have to go maybe 250 km (150 miles) straight
> north from the UBC MoA, where you might find some speakers of
> Tsilhqot'in (Chilcotin). Of course in expanding "local" to this range
> you would have also encountered lots more Salishan speakers, as well
> as representatives of two other language families, Wakashan and
> Chemakuan (although the latter was not spoken in Canada). So your
> statement would now be potentially true for only a small part of
> "local".
>
> That's assuming you had some evidence of the displacement you referred
> to.

I asked you whether you want to accuse Cavalli-Sforza of lying, as
well.

Peter T. Daniels

unread,
Sep 3, 2010, 7:27:48 AM9/3/10
to
On Sep 3, 12:08 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:

Oh, you'd have found a way.

It is loading more messages.
0 new messages