Nigger vs. Colored, et al.

[paul johnson]

I'm 76 and both my mother and father's family used 'nigger well into the
50's.  But they were products of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods.  Dago,
wop guinea, sheeny kike, polack mick paddy, bohunk. wooden shoe and on
and on, were not pejoratives to them they were just adjectives,
including compliments, as in "one smart_____"
"That___can really run"  They seemed to take no offense if somebody used
the terms on them.  It was the tone of the semtence, not the content.

On 3/2/2011 10:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> I thought all disciplines were like that.
>
> But back to the point.  What I can tell you from personal investigation is
> that the large number of eighteenth-century escaped-slave notices reprinted
> in the 4 vols. of Lathan A. Windley's _Runaway Slave Advertisements_ _all_
> use the word "negro" and eschew "nigger."
>
> Slave-trade advertisements similarly use "negro" - I'm tempted to say
> exclusively.
>
> In fact, well into the 19th C., the "n-word" appears almost exclusively in
> colloquial contexts. My feeling is that the Abolition debate tended to bring
> out more heated language in the South.
>
> So whatever even slave-holding whites may have been *saying* in the 18th and
> early 19th C., they seem to have regarded as the n-word as too crude or
> low-class for formal use.
>
> This may have contributed to the misapprehension that "nigger" is simply
> a contemptuous "mispronunciation" of "Negro."  See HDAS.
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC,
> 71700<lynne.hunter at navy.mil>  wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700"
>>               <lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL>
>> Subject:      Nigger vs. Colored, et al.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> `A propos of "Negro/Negro, black/Black," can anybody tell me when
>> "nigger" began to be avoided in polite company in various parts of the
>> US (or the British Isles)? Any info about the circumstances under which
>> that term came to be replaced by "colored" or "negro"?
>>
>> Droll (I thought) observation from a student's paper: "...linguistics:
>> the discipline that never apologizes for itself."
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Lynne Hunter
>>
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>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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--


He was squashed like a knock-kneed cockroach

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