Assorted Comments

Erik Hoover grinchy at GRINCHY.COM
Tue May 22 19:20:04 UTC 2007


 From news reports, the slums all seem to be in the major cities of
Central and South America now.

Erik

On May 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Assorted Comments
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>
> Amen, Larry. BTW, thinking about an old friend, what ever happened to
> "slum"? [There''s a pun. "Thinking About an Old Friend" is the title
> of a Texas blues.]
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 5/21/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Assorted Comments
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>> At 3:10 PM -0700 5/21/07, James A. Landau wrote:
>>>
>>> I remember reading a report Jack London wrote about the 1906 San
>>> Francisco earthquake in which
>>> he used "ghetto" to mean segregated housing for people of a social
>>> class---I don't think
>>> he meant blacks, my vague recollection is Irish workmen. Nowadays,
>>> except in figurative
>>> or historical contexts, "ghetto" exclusively means a type of
>>> African-American community.
>>> It would be interesting to track down how the change in connatation
>>> reflects changes in
>>> politics and public perception.
>>
>> The earlier reference, and perhaps still the salient one then, would
>> have been for restricted districts for Jews, such as the eponymous
>> ones in Italy.
>>
>> LH
>>
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