"Nigga" untrademarkable?

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:08 PM -0500 3/17/06, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>>About thirty years ago, a friend of mine told me that she didn't care to be
>>referred to as a "Jew" or to hear other people referred to that way. She
>>preferred "Jewish."
>
>"In fact, I'm not really a _Jew_.  Just Jew-_ish_.  Not the whole hog, you
>know."
>        Jonathan Miller, _Beyond the Fringe_ (1960)
>
Yup, we've worked this territory before; cf.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0102D&L=ADS-L&P=R1042&I=-3

But one additional point worth bringing up is that even though it's
true that some Jews object to being called "a Jew" and others object
to "X is Jewish" when used as an obvious circumlocution (or
quasi-euphemism) for "X is a Jew", these questions mostly arise for
the specific and especially singular use.  Nobody, as far as I know,
objects to "There are X million Jews in the U.S." (as opposed to "X
million Jewish people") or "Jews do not accept the divinity of
Christ".  (Well, some might find that offensive as a fact, but not
for the terminology.)  Similiarly for "gay" as a substantive (rather
than an anodyne adjective):

So, are you a gay?   (pretty offensive; cf. "So, are you gay?")
There was a gay elected to the town council (still offensive, maybe less so?)
There are three gays on the committee (maybe a bit less offensive)
The issue of gays in the military will not go away.  (pretty inoffensive)

(Judgments are mine; YMMV.)

As Alice mentioned, "Israelite" is interesting euphemism--I first
heard it when I was 18 and in France on my junior year abroad and was
also befuddled.  I had been asked by an elderly lady (i.e. someone of
my current age) "Êtes-vous israëlite?", and thinking she was asking
me if I were Israeli responded "Non, je suis américain".  Later I
realized that "israëlite" was in fact a euphemism for "juif", and I
*should* have said "Non, madame, je suis juif".  Ah, those lost mots
d'escalier...

larry

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org