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 Tue Apr 01, 2008 13:31 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: | | I was served by an attractive stewardess. |
What's the problem there? In-flight service...
| Quote: | | I think the key to learning authentic English is awareness. |
What do you mean by "authentic English"? |
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Molly
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 13:46 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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I have the impression that in modern English the word 'stewardess' is being replaced by 'flight attendant', maybe that's not true and both terms are equally common?
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Torsten
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 14:01 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Torsten wrote: | | I have the impression that in modern English the word 'stewardess' is being replaced by 'flight attendant', maybe that's not true and both terms are equally common? |
"Flight attendant" arose in the 1970s or sometime around then when there was a big fad for creating gender-neutral terms for various professions. Usually those politically correct terms have more syllables and are awkward to use again and again in a conversation, so people still often say "stewardess" if the flight attendant is a woman, and they may say "steward" if he's a man. Politically correct terms have a tendency to change for no good reason every seven to ten years anyway, so many people -- even younger ones -- just stick with the old terms. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 14:12 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: | | "Flight attendant" arose in the 1970s or sometime around then when there was a big fad for creating gender-neutral terms for various professions. Usually those politically correct terms have more syllables and are awkward to use again and again in a conversation, so people still often say "stewardess" if the flight attendant is a woman, and they may say "steward" if he's a man. Politically correct terms have a tendency to change for no good reason every seven to ten years anyway, so many people -- even younger ones -- just stick with the old terms. |
I must be missing something here. Why are gender-neutral terms politically correct?
I can understand when they say that terms like, 'mankind', 'man-hours' etc are not politically correct. But when there's a word, 'stewardess', to describe a female flight attendant, why should one avoid it?
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Daemon99
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 14:23 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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I'm sure Jamie will give you an even more detailed answer to your question. In the meantime, I'd like to quote the following passage from Wikipedia: "By the end of the 1970s, the term stewardess had generally been replaced by the gender-neutral, and more wordy, alternative flight attendant. More recently the term cabin crew or cabin staff has begun to replace 'flight attendants,' in some parts of the world because of the term's recognition of their role as members of the crew. This, does not, however, suitably replace the older terms, being a collective noun rather than a singular one."
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Torsten
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 14:40 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Torsten wrote: | | I'm sure Jamie will give you an even more detailed answer to your question. In the meantime, I'd like to quote the following passage from Wikipedia: "By the end of the 1970s, the term stewardess had generally been replaced by the gender-neutral, and more wordy, alternative flight attendant. More recently the term cabin crew or cabin staff has begun to replace 'flight attendants,' in some parts of the world because of the term's recognition of their role as members of the crew. This, does not, however, suitably replace the older terms, being a collective noun rather than a singular one." |
A former student of mine was a flight attendant, but she called herself a stewardess. Or a coiffeur for men would always say he's a barber or hairdresser.
In Germany, salesmen/sales representatives call themselves key account managers these days. It's what happens to a word describing a person once people start using it in a derogative or deriding way.
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Ralf
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 14:46 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | Politically correct terms have a tendency to change for no good reason every seven to ten years anyway, so many people -- even younger ones -- just stick with the old terms. |
In America -- as far as I understand it -- people of a darker skin used to be (after they had been labeled Negroes) coloured, then black and now African American. Indians are Native Americans now. What do you call people of Asian descent?
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 15:46 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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It's not only women who cry for change, apparently:
Our sexist thinking has us rewriting the dictionary, causing neutering and confusion to the English language. Although there are feminine and masculine words reflecting the attributes of men and women, some feel slighted and cry for reform. Feminists demand the changing of countless negative connotations, and men want admission to gender-exclusive words and negative patriarchal thinking.
http://www.lec.iatp.org.ua/?url=ME-10.html&title=Newspaper
C'mon, boys, how can we girls/women include you? Give us your thoughts. |
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Molly
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 15:50 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Ralf wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | Politically correct terms have a tendency to change for no good reason every seven to ten years anyway, so many people -- even younger ones -- just stick with the old terms. |
In America -- as far as I understand it -- people of a darker skin used to be (after they had been labeled Negroes) coloured, then black and now African American. Indians are Native Americans now. What do you call people of Asian descent? |
Some African American black people still use "colored":
http://www.naacp.org/home/index.htm
And what should we call non-black people who come from Africa to live in America?
Indians are Native Americans now.
Weren't they always that?
Interesting?
| Quote: | Indian
applied to the native inhabitants of the Americas from at least 1553, on the mistaken notion that America was the eastern end of Asia. Red Indian, to distinguish them from inhabitants of India, is first attested 1831, but not commonly used in N.Amer. More than 500 modern phrases include Indian, most of them U.S. and most impugning honesty or intelligence, e.g. Indian giver, first attested 1765 in Indian gift:
"An Indian gift is a proverbial expression, signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected." [Thomas Hutchinson, "History of Massachusetts Bay," 1765]
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=indian&searchmode=none
Meaning "one who gives a gift and then asks for it back" first attested 1892. |
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Molly
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 15:56 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: | | This, does not, however, suitably replace the older terms, being a collective noun rather than a singular one." |
"Cabin attendant" does. |
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Molly
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 15:58 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| It often amazes me how in-fashion it is to be against, so called, gender-neutral terms. |
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Molly
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 16:46 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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If Native Americans can also be called Indians, then what are Indians (people from India) called? 
If you said, "He's an Indian", who would you be referring to?
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Daemon99
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 17:55 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Quote: | If Native Americans can also be called Indians, then what are Indians (people from India) called? Laughing
If you said, "He's an Indian", who would you be referring to? |
Most people would assume you are talking about someone from India, but if they're not sure they would ask you to clarify.
The term Native American has been around for a while now, and it's the term that I find is used the most.
| Quote: | | In America -- as far as I understand it -- people of a darker skin used to be (after they had been labeled Negroes) coloured, then black and now African American. Indians are Native Americans now. What do you call people of Asian descent? |
Actually the term "African American" is not used that much anymore, most people have gone back to using the term "black".
People of Asian descent are called "Asian American" or just "Asian". |
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Openenglish
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| Tue Apr 01, 2008 18:02 pm What mistakes do people in your country think are correct? |
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| Ralf wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | Politically correct terms have a tendency to change for no good reason every seven to ten years anyway, so many people -- even younger ones -- just stick with the old terms. |
In America -- as far as I understand it -- people of a darker skin used to be (after they had been labeled Negroes) coloured, then black and now African American. Indians are Native Americans now. What do you call people of Asian descent? |
First they were called "colored", then "negroes", then "Negroes", then "black", then "Black" (in some publications), and now "African-American", which is too long and doesn't apply to actual Africans, so people, both black and white, still say "black" instead but feel guilty about it. The point of political correctness is to make people feel guilty anyway, so it achieved its goal, even though it didn't change people's minute-to-minute speech too much.
American Indians came to be called "Native American", which I don't like to use, because I was born in America and am also therefore a native American. (I think calling only American Indians "native" is as ignorant as saying, "Send the n****rs back to Africa," even though they didn't even come from Africa, were born in America and belong to their home continent.) If they called them "indigenous people", as they do in Canada, I'd be perfectly okay with that. The US Commerce Department did a study about what people prefer to be called, and they found that the largest cohort of so-called "Native Americans" prefers the term "American Indian", even though the media press the other term on the rest of us. Often you'll see tribal spokespeople call their people "Indians".
Asians have always been called Asians, as far as I know. They don't do anything to make people hate them, so they don't have to keep changing to another term as the previous one becomes derogatory. |
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Jamie (K)
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