Since this is supposedly the right place to say it

[MudInYerEye]

My friend Yojiro does not like being called a Jap but oddly is not offended by Nip.
He regularly refers to me as Honky tho I prefer Cracker.
I am not making this up.

 

[Twitch]

Is the Chevy Vette a negative contraction of Chevrolet Corvette too? We shorten everything including the phrase "politically correct" to "PC." The two friends I have had of Japanese descent both used the word "Jap" referring to their people. One shared my interest in aircraft and WW2 combat and referred to how the "Japs did this of that during the war." In the 1980s A friend who came from Japan and worked for the US office of a Japanese tobacco company referred to his countrymen as Japs like "Us Japs smoke a lot."

We were called "Amis" short for Americans by WW 2 Germans. Germans aren't today offended by the WW 2 tern "Jerry" any more than British are by "Tommy" or "Brit." Slavs is short for slavic. It is derogatory? Poles for Polish.

What about Saudis down from Saudi Arabians? Is Canuck a bad word for Canadians? Are Australians insulted with the term Aussie? WW 2 vets use the term Itals (eye-tals) for Italians- bad? Why did Mexican golfer Lee Trevino bill himself as Super Mex if it was derogatory? Was reb short for rebel an insult to all Southerners 150 years ago or now? How about the American Indian use of the term Blue Coat to describe cavalarymen, or white eyes?

When we were in Vietnam discussing the Viet Cong we used the word Charlie in the singluar sense and never the plural. Is Charlie derogarory? If you knew the true meaning you'd know it also is a shortening of a term. Viet Cong or VC...ok in the military phonetic alphabet A stands for Alpha, B stands for Bravo and C stands for Charlie. VC for Viet Cong happens to translate out to Victor Charlie. Anything sinister about that?

Since it is now PC to call inhabitants of the Asian continent Asians instead of Orientals it doesn't make the older term invalid since it was used for like 1000 years! Orient is a word form derivitive in many languages for East- the direction. Since olden times it was known that China and other places where Mongoloid race peoples lived was East of just about everywhere else it became known as the Orient and people of the Mongoloid races were know as Orientals.

It ain't the words it's who is using them and in what tone and context.:cool2:

 

[Marc Chevalier]

How are you feeling, Twitch? We've been sending our best wishes your way.

 

[BellyTank]

...Poles for Polish.

Actually, people from Poland ARE correctly referred to as 'Poles' in English.

However, in Denmark, Poles are called Polaks (Polakker actually),
so the seemingly vulgar American expression is not so...

B
T

 

[Marc Chevalier]

In any case, "jap" really means "Jewish American princess."

 

[nightandthecity]

any more than British are by "Tommy" or "Brit." QUOTE]

actually....

Some Britons do sometimes find "Brit" offensive...this might surprise you, but the reason is simple: the term was first used by the IRA at the height of "the troubles" in the 1970s. Like many similar ethnic labels it is now widely used by the target group themselves, but a lot of Brits still don't like it when a non-Brit uses it.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

:clap

 

[MudInYerEye]

My friend Randall once drunkenly beat an Englishman senseless on Avenue B after being called a "Yank". Randall is from Arkansas and thought that the poor chap had called him a Yankee.

 

[shamus]

For those who read the dictionary...

from the American Heritage dictionary...

http://www.bartleby.com/61/64/J0016400.html

From the Meriam Websters...

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/jap

 

[MudInYerEye]

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=worrywart

 

[jamespowers]

Even more to the point:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=inveigle

 

[Marc Chevalier]

The funny thing is, all three of you are right. But it's better to worry about these things than to pretend they don't exist. Jonathan Swift was being a worrywart when he published "A Modest Proposal." Churchill was being a worrywart when he made his "Iron Curtain" speech. Martin Luther King was being a worrywart when he wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I'm a fan of worrywarts.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Since we seem to have hit the dictionaries, here's the grandaddy of them all, the Oxford English dictionary:

Japsb., colloquial abbreviation of JAPANESE.
c 1880 (remembered in colloquial use in London.) 1890Lit. World 11 July 23 The fearlessness of death, which makes a jap submit to the loss of his own life rather than to permit the death of a father go unavenged. 1893Athenaeum 20 May 639/3 Directly a good demand arises for a book, the Japs print for themselves. 1896Westm. Gaz 3 Nov. 6/3 Fifty years ago it was only a few gadeners ... who grew chrysanthamums, and ... only about twelve distinct varieties of 'Japs were to be found.


That last entry is interesting because it has an apostrophe before the Japs reference, suggesting that this was acceptable abbreviation at work. But, what was acceptable back in 1896, or in 1942 when we were being encouraged and taught (propagandised?) to hate these people, is not always acceptable today.

bk

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Good points.

 

[Twitch]

Chevalier- I'm feeling good. Thank's for asking. I'll be much better when I get rid of this danged catheder and urine bag!:cheers1:

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Glad to hear it!

 

[MudInYerEye]

The funny thing is, all three of you are right. But it's better to worry about these things than to pretend they don't exist. Jonathan Swift was being a worrywart when he published "A Modest Proposal." Churchill was being a worrywart when he made his "Iron Curtain" speech. Martin Luther King was being a worrywart when he wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." I'm a fan of worrywarts.

I find it ironic that you invoke the names of these particular historical figures in the name of your worries concerning the scant useage of the word "Jap" on this site in defense of a nation that has more officially sanctioned racism and apartheid than Saudi Arabia.
Excuse the run-on.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I kind of like the run-on; it has a catchy rhythm.

My intention wasn't to defend the nation of Japan. Generally, the actions of nations (or rather, governments) aren't very defensible. What I did intend was to defend individuals of the Asian race who were born in Japan, or are of Japanese ancestry. I was particularly thinking of Japanese-Americans who were interned here during WWII. Most of them didn't deserve it. (On the other hand, they might have been worse off had they been left at the mercy of the mob, instead of being "cordoned off." I guess we'll never know.)

 

[MudInYerEye]

Ah. My mistake.
My grandfather Arthur lives in an area of San Francisco which has long hosted a large Japanese population. When the relocation of Japanese-Americans began many of my grandfather's neighbors left family valuables with him for safe-keeping. More than a few of the people being relocated were veterans of WWI, or had children serving in the US military. Eventually my grandfather left for the army. When Arthur returned after the war his Japanese-Americans neighbors gradually came back for their plants, jewels, and heirlooms. A very large marble statue of the buddha still remains unclaimed in his foyer.

 

[jamespowers]

Ah. My mistake.
My grandfather Arthur lives in an area of San Francisco which has long hosted a large Japanese population. When the relocation of Japanese-Americans began many of my grandfather's neighbors left family valuables with him for safe-keeping. More than a few of the people being relocated were veterans of WWI, or had children serving in the US military. Eventually my grandfather left for the army. When Arthur returned after the war his Japanese-Americans neighbors gradually came back for their plants, jewels, and heirlooms. A very large marble statue of the buddha still remains unclaimed in his foyer.

Yours is just one story in an enumeration of them. I know several hundred Japanese that did the same thing with trusted neighbors. In the local case here, Mr. Nakashima entrusted his property and business (nursery) to his friend and neighbor. He sold all of it to him for a dollar with the specification that when he returned from the camp He would give him the dollar back and receive all of his property back. Four years later he came back and gave him his dollar back. His life returned to the way it was four years previous.
This is not to say that many more had no one to turn to and just lost their property and livlihoods They did have a choice to move to the interior of the country though. The government was worried about those on both coasts.
Don't forget that many Germans got the same treatment. It was not just the people who didn't look like us. Professor Milton Metfessel at USC disappeared and his students wondered where he went. He had been either "moved" or deported.
I could go on with another Italian example but lets just say that many people were affected by WWII. All three of these groups might have been actually protected from the public by moving them though. I have a few examples where they did not move them soon enough. They disappeared all the same.

Regards to all,

J