New Ethnic Term

[James A. Landau]

>From an article by Joe Klein at slate.msn.com

Delcourt is the mayor of Lens, and this is a report of his being interviewed by Klein through an interpreter:

"I remind people that they have worked for years in the mines with the Moroccans," Delcourt says, not realizing that Algerians and Tunisians hate being called Moroccans. If a label is necessary, they would rather be called Arabs or beur (the latter a slang reverse play on the word Arab).



Also two, um, political terms, from the
same article, in an interview with "Jean-Claude Bois, the local Socialist candidate for the national assembly":

We discuss Jospin. "He scared a lot of people by talking too much about modernity," Bois says. "He had too idealistic a vision of the future."

Translation: "Modernity" is the French euphemism for the European Union.
<snip>
We can't take responsibility for everyone else's problems. We need to fortify Europe first."

Translation: "Europe" is the French euphemism for France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, and perhaps, grudgingly, the Iberian peninsula (and—they hope against hope—the United Kingdom).

      - James A. Landau