farmer & peasant (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

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Maybe it was more socially acceptable to be a peasant during and after the cultural revolution than it is now?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Paul Frank
> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 11:14 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: farmer & peasant
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: farmer & peasant
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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 -------------
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> > 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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