farmer & peasant

[Joel S. Berson]

At 7/21/2010 12:14 PM, Paul Frank wrote:
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>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.

My guess -- Surely as people became more
sensitive to the negative associations of
"peasant".  (This apparently took a long time to
learn:  it was a derogatory term applied to the
French peasantry by the English in the 18th century.)

Joel

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