I based my statement that I was upsetting people by the fact that my postings were not well received.
What I'm doing is disagreeing with you. I don't have to get all upset to disagree with someone. I'm not quite Allyson, but it's no big. I wish people wouldn't disagree with me, because why? But I'm mostly past letting it spoil my dinner.
All I had was the vague uneasiness about atttacking a word just because it's similar to another word.
That wasn't what I was doing.
It's funny, I never minded Yank. However, when I would see signs like "Yankee fuera" painted on walls near the base in Spain, it would peeve me a little. That said, I was never treated with anything less than politeness by my landlords and the vast majority of businesses and just plain people. There were a few businesses that discriminated against Americans (eg. bars that placed cover charges on Americans, but not on Spaniards) and I chose to boycott them. In general, if I was in a town that wasn't that close to the base, I didn't run into any problems other than any other tourist of any nationality. For some reason, in communities close to the base, American sailors are looked at as "wealthy." In comparison to the local population, we probably were. But I still didn't like getting ripped off.
I wouldn't go there with wop.
You bet your ass you wouldn't. Nor guinea, dago, ginzo, guido and goombah. My father still gets the racial slurs, and I get them, from friends and acquaintances who think it's "cute." It's demeaning, yet I'm being uber-sensitive when I ask them to cease and desist.
I might joke with an Irish person about being a mick - I wouldn't go there with wop.
I gotta say...I would probably get pretty pissy with someone who made a joke like that with me.
Nor guinea, dago, ginzo, guido and goombah.
Goombah? I thought they were those guys in
Super Mario Brothers.
Goombah? I thought they were those guys in Super Mario Brothers.
They are. "Goombah" is the bastardization of the word
compare,
which means a close friend. Second-generation Italian-Americans who only knew certain words and phrases of Italian, as well as lacking the accent to pronounce them properly, invented their own pronunciation which transformed them into wholly Italian-American words. "Rigot'" for
ricotta,
and "fungool" for
vafunculo
are just two examples. Italians have no clue what is being said when their relatives from the States use these words.
Edited to fix formatting.
Goombah? I thought they were those guys in Super Mario Brothers.
They are.
Oh, der.
smacks forehead
I was, of course, talking about
Super-fucking-Mario Brothers.
"Goombah" is the bastardization of the word compare, which means a close friend.
Huh. Do Italians make it a habit of jumping on the heads of their close friends? That's not very genial.
Do Italians make it a habit of jumping on the heads of their close friends?
Only on special occasions. Like when they don't have fireballs.
I was, of course, talking about Super-fucking-Mario Brothers.
See?
Compare
is a word that is used for very special relationships. It should not be describing the lowest level of fiends in a video game. Especially when Goombah carries additional negative connotations.
It's odd where lines get drawn amongst the familiar.
During a particularly stressful time before an event a few years ago, Maya and I got a little heated at each other.
Maya said, "You're just being a bitch because I married a Black man."
I said, "Sluts like you muddy the race."
And we fell apart laughing at the stupidity of the entire argument.
I don't presume that I could have that exchange with anyone else.
I don't presume that I can touch ita's hair, though I love her and she knows I mean no harm, for example. There's a boundary. Maya says to me, "YOU can go there." Someone else can't. There's the understood.
It's an interesting thing.