Jewish

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/4/2011 10:56 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
>There are some people who think--for whatever reason--that "Jew" is an
>insult (kind of like "homosexual" has become a cold formality and thus an
>insult--and thus preference for "gay"), but Jewish is ok. This does not
>answer the question why they don't see that it's not a noun.

I'm not surprised when many country (ethnicity?) nouns are used -- in
headlines at least -- as adjectives when there are perfectly good
adjectives available -- "Turkey army invades Kurd region".

>But it does
>explain why someone might use it as an alternative where another might say
>"Jew". Ironically, this usage might be most common among social
>antisemites--a hypercorrection, of sorts. So Wilson may be right--it's an
>odd euphemism for "Jew", but one that actually serves an a red flag.
>
>Another pointer is the fact that "Jewish" parallels "British", "American",
>etc., in perfectly ordinary expressions--"He's Jewish", and the like.

Well, not quite -- "American" has a plural that's different.  But
that doesn't change Victor's point -- some -ish words (British,
English, French, etc.) are both nouns and adjectives.

Joel

>It's
>only a small step to extrapolate from there. And if you already think that
>saying "Jew" is somehow wrong, what better excuse do you need?

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