farmer & peasant

[Paul Frank]

For what it's worth, it's my subjective and completely unscientific
impression that in English-language sinological literature (which I've
spent 30 years reading), the Chinese word nonming (农民) almost always
used to be translated as "peasant" and in recent years has
increasingly been translated as "farmers". Nowadays, English-language
newspapers are much more likely to speak of "Chinese farmers" than of
"Chinese peasants." Up to the 1980s, they were much more likely to
speak of "Chinese peasants." Why Chinese peasants became farmers is
anybody's guess, though I suppose the rise of rural incomes has
something to do with it.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
German, French, Italian > English
Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch



On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: farmer & peasant
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 7/21/2010 04:32 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>As for "farmer" as an insult, there is a perfectly good "peasant" that
>>is used either a denomination of something rustic (e.g., peasant bread)
>>or is, in fact, an insult. AFAIK, there has always been a semantic
>>distinction between "farmer" and "peasant".
>
> If you were English, you were a farmer; if you were French, you were
> a peasant. Â (According to the free and independent English.)
>
> Joel
>
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