Assorted Comments

[Jonathan Lighter]

A "slum" originally seems to have been synonymous with an iniquitous "den," but it eventually broadened to include an entire neighborhood: "That whole area is a slum."

  Of course, "slums" would work too.  The original sense is incredibly rare nowadays - at least in print.

  JL

Sarah Lang <slang at UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
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[Off-topic comment out of the way: This is perhaps a ignorant
question--perhaps the info is listed elsewhere--but what are the
demographics of the contributors to this listserv?]

Clearly, yes, ghetto has a very particular cultural history. But
currently, within NA, unless contextualized, it no longer defaults to
"(Jewish)" ghetto."

As for slum, personally I would say "dive" or "den." It I were going
to talk about "the slums" I may say that the area was "sketch(y)." If
I wanted to refer to projects or row-housing, I would use those
particular terms.

I would still use it as a verb though.

S.


On May 22, 2007, at 1:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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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 wrote:
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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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