the world

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 4, 2004, at 8:16 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: the world
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> --------
>
> In a message dated  Wed, 29 Sep 2004 15:38:58 -0400l  Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> quotes and writes:
>
>>> Among adherents of several (generally conservative, in my
>>> observation)
>>> religions, the phrase "the world" is often used to mean something
>>> like
>>> "those who aren't part of our particular belief system", with a
> connotation
>>> of "those sinners over there".
>>>
>>  cf. also "gentile", or "goy"
>
> Both "Gentile" (from Latin gens) and Hebrew "goyim" mean "the nations",
> apparently short for "the nations of the earth" or "the [other]
> nations of the
> earth."
>
> (The word "goyim" appears a couple of times in the Jewish liturgy.  It
> still
> strartles me to hear "goyim" suddenly appear in the middle of a
> prayer.)
>
> I baffled a military-history-buff friend by translating
> "Volkerschlact" as
> "the slaughter of the Gentiles."
>
> In college I had a Mormon room-mate.  We never could decide which of
> us was
> the Gentile.
>
> The term for a non-Christian is different: "heathen", apparently
> originally
> meaning "one who lives out in the heath".  Muslims are straightforward:
> "unbeliever".
>
>       - James A. Landau
>

By the time that I was in the sixth grade, we knew that Muslims were
"infidels," to the extent that "infidel" was used as a schoolyard
taunt. this was at the colored-Catholic grade school in Marshall, TX,
where we were taught by black nuns of the Order of the Holy Family.

-Wilson Gray