Even Greener Pastures

I know. They do the same thing in Polish. I can't really get my head around it, never have, otherwise I'd give you an example. (sigh)

Sofia asked how it would sound to refer to Jewish people as 'Hebrews'.


If you referred to the entire race as 'Hebrews', I think it would sound old-fashioned and/or slightly racist; if you referred to an individual as 'a Hebrew', or a group of individuals as 'Hebrews', I think it would actually be wrong.  In modern usage, 'Hebrew' is a language, not a people.  If a student used 'Hebrew' in this way, their English teacher would correct them.

It would also probably confuse most people. The majority of anglophones living in their own countries are fairly ignorant about other cultures, and the average Brit on the street would probably not know what Hebrew was or necessarily associate it with Judaism.

Here's an example. Some years ago, I happened to be doing Jury Service. This gives you a cross section of society - twelve members of the British public between the ages of 18 and 70, all of sound mind and body.  Our jury room was on a corner of a street directly opposite a large imposing synagogue, and someone not local to the area asked what the building was. Despite the fact that the building was adorned with menorahs, stars of David and Hebrew lettering, not one person knew what it was.  The best suggestion anyone could come up with is 'I think it must be a mosque'.   

God Bless EGP.  33 interesting and well reasoned (even scholarly!) replies and no one answers the OP question!

"Chinamen", is definitely a pejorative here in the US.  Almost as bad as "Chink".  Hell, my autocorrect won't even let me type either one!  That quote from the Remains of the Day book also made it into the movie, and I remember hearing it said was a bit jarring, almost as bad as hearing the word 'nig-ger'.  It is interesting that Chinaman is a pejorative, but not Frenchman, Englishman, etc... Perhaps they were at one time.

Reading some of the responses make me realize that you Europeans are rank amateurs when it comes to ethnic insults.  Here in the U.S. we have tons of ethnic insults, I could type dozens without even thinking much.  WOP, dago, guinea (had those three thrown at me), spic, kraut, Jap, kike, hebe, rooskie, polack, mick, cheese eating surrender monkies, are just a few.  Plus we have a ton of commonly accepted attitudes we associate with various ethnicities.

Memorizing it all took up a large part of my childhood.

Not many German insults, I guess you guys are pretty well accepted over here.  "Heiney" is barely used, "Dutchman", is a old pejorative based on the German word deutsch and has nothing to do with Holland.  Dutchman is the only thing I can think of as close to "Chinamen".  Also, how English got "Germany" from "Deutschland" is beyond me.  "Dutchman" doesn't really work any more in the US, but "Kraut" is still supposed to sting.  If you hear it in the US, it is not coming from anyone friendly.  I think that word came from the perception that a lot of German cooking uses sour flavors.  Every German restaurant I have ever been in always has malt vinegar on the table, right next to the salt.

Of course the ethnic pejoratives in the US is certainly due to contact, especially here in NY where we still have a lot of immigrant communities.

Just like the Damn English, to take your country name from the Romans, and not from your own mouths :-)

I wonder how different European history would have been if the German tribes had succumbed to Rome.  Would romance languages on both sides of the Rhine have led to less conflict?  Caesar Augustus woke up one day to find out he had lost 3 full Legions in the Germania forests.  When the Romans returned to those forests they found appalling scenes of slaughter and even human sacrifice.  The "Barbarians" in Germania became the stuff of Roman nightmares.  Other Roman emperors made some inroads but by and large Germania stayed free. 

At least until the Huns and the Goths rode in.

Thanks for making me look up the Goths, Neal. I see they're considered eastern German tribes, probably having come from either modern day Sweden or Poland. Also, nobody knows why they started migrating, but I was taught it may have been due to yet other peoples/tribes putting them under pressure, because those, in turn, had started to move westwards - kind of a human avalanche. Of course, it may also have been because the Goths just liked moving around and going to war.
Anyway, it seems unlikely that expanding the Roman Empire north-eastwards would have made much of a difference in the long run, doesn't it?

Sounds like Essig, yes - the British version, to be exact. The one they pour over Fish 'n Chips. In Germany, fish is served with lemon slices. Everywhere. Even in the cheapest diner, that's what you'll get. And in all my life, I haven't seen bottles of vinegar being habitually put on tables here - except in a ménage, of course, these sets of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper you may get to dress your salad, and that's mostly in French, Spanish or Italian restaurants.
The only condiment bottles you may see in (basic) German eating places are ketchup and a completely unrecognizable version of Worcestershire sauce (former GDR only).

Oh, living in Northern California, I can tell you all about the words Chinamen and, excuse the expression, „Japs.“ They are both definitely derogatory. Japs has kind of fallen by the wayside and no one really says that anymore.
It`s very 1930s and 1940s sounding. Chinamen is different. It´s hung around as an epithet for a long time.

The West Coast always had a big Asian population and the Chinese immigrants in the 1860s helped build the railroad connecting east to west. The Chinese workers got paid half of what the whites were paid (and the blacks got half too). When they needed a dangerous job done, like to put nitro-glycerin in the mines to blow out a chuck of rock, they´d always say „Send one of the Chinamen in to do the job.“ Supposedly the idea was, horribly enough, if you lost one of them it was no big deal (shows you how terrible the US has been historically to those of non-European background).

In my mom´s town (where I`m still stuck) the town had about 50% Japanese, most of whom were American citizens and born here. Back in the 1930s it only had 1400 people (now over 100,000). She`s got an old school picture showing her with her class in about 1939. Half the class is white, the other half Japanese and a few Chinese. Around 1943, she`s in another school picture and it´s all white kids. No Japanese, not one, because  they all got sent off to the desert somewhere to internment camps. So, that cleaned out about half the town. It´s really terrible. And after the war they generally speaking didn`t return.

The few Chinese in town ran a laundry and a few restaurants. Mom my said if they were going out to dinner, my grandfather would ask, „So you wanna go to the Chinamen`s?“ My grandmother spoke the same way. But it was never on the derogatory scale like n*gger. On a derogatory scale of say 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 the worst, it was probably about a 7 or 8. But the N-word was always a 10.

Until my grandmother died 20 years ago (at 100) she used to always ask me to drive her to the store to shop. We had a Chinese family running one of the stores, and she would always say she wanted to go to the „Chinamen`s“ because their vegetables were better (even though the store had a real name). It´s kind of a joke now if I remind my mom of it and how they used to talk. By the 70s I think it was less derogatory. Very often the word was proceeded with „DAMN“ so that added emphasis to it. The word Jap completely disappeared from the language, as far as I can tell. No one says that anymore. But Japanese people were always liked much more in my town than the Chinese for some reason. I think my grandfather and grandmother just thought of them as hardworking good people, who were just different is all. But, to be called a „Chinamen“ always had a bit of a sting to it.

I don`t believe the term Kraut ever really had any negative associations with it, at least not here. No one really said it and it´s just an old word someone tried to make derogatory following WWI but it never really caught on.

But that is one thing about the US. More so earlier than now, the US always had derogatory names for all but a few groups of people. The only people who didn`t have any derogatory names associated with them were those of Colonial British, Irish, Scottish, or German descent (like my family). There were always little derogatory words people came up with for others, most of which came and went fast. I`m sure Neal has heard of the „Irish-Mick“, and many more like that.  A Mick didn`t last long as a derogatory name and is archiac now, and very few people ever accepted it as such even 100 years ago. I even heard Swedes described as „Square Heads“ once in the 70s, which was ridiculous. Only heard that one once. I always thought that was super-weird.

I would not use Chinamen now to describe anyone (I don`t want to sound like my grandmother and I really doubt she was even aware it was a derogatory term. She was just mimicking what she grew up with). Even someone from China I would just call Chinese. If they were American I would just call them American.

SHL-- unfortunately the U.S. has had derogatory terms for almost every ethnic group.   I was sure I had heard some for Irish but couldn´t remember it.  It was ¨mick.¨

This list of ethnic slurs shows what a propensity human beings (or at least English speakers) have to make up ethnic slurs.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs_by_ethnicity  You will see Chinaman is included on the list.

That´s a long list. Most I`ve never heard before. I did hear „Saupreiß“ once, that one rings a bell, other than the usual American ones. But, der Saupreiß is Bavarian is suppose for a Prussian. I doubt it gets much use anymore. Sounds pretty dated to me.

@Coligno, ah, it's hard to say if our palatalisation superpowers extend to some foreign sounds we have never used in Russian or quickly got rid of (as far as I know, the Greek tried to "teach" us how to pronounce the sound /θ/, but speakers of Slavic languages resisted their attempts with admirable stubbornness). However, I'm afraid you're underestimating "most English speakers": if it is indeed something like the /ð/ in thee, I think the difference must be obvious.

But what a wonderful examination of Irish numerals! I think I'll print it and hang it on the wall next to my first attempt to count pennies in Irish, so that I can look at it and take a deep breath whenever I feel like it's easier to use finger-counting than to actually say the number (pathetic, I know). The funniest thing is that we have the same "why don't we use a different set of numerals for counting people" attitude* (so any Russian speaker complaining about these numerals in Irish probably deserves being rebuked for laziness), but some other things are just... well, I'll just say that the "numeral" folder on my computer is named "Bloodcurdling horror". And you didn't even get to the best things:
1) that you have to use the singular article an (damn them articles! but at least you don't have indefinite articles in Irish...) before dhá which in this case becomes dá (surprise!), and
2) that you have to use plural adjectives with singular nouns for numbers 2-10 and of course after 3-10 (right?) adjectives should be lenited only when the noun ends in a slender consonant. "Enjoy your calculations, my dear comrade!"


*these numerals are optional, though: you can say either четверо (4 people) or четыре человека (4 people), or even четверо человек (4 people) - the latter is less common and some consider it a mistake, but anyway. Plus they are slightly gender-discriminative: четверо мужчин (4 men) sounds fine, and четверо женщин (4 women) sounds.. well, a bit awkward.