The numbers so far say otherwise. And he'll be strong in the right places. Barring some accident, he has the edge. The downside is he's Biden.

Serves to emphasize the way the different variants/words are used. And the evidence suggests the divergence will continue.

making generalisations about all inhabitants of the British Isles, as if they were monolithic. I acknowledge that those islands are one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world. I was aware that Scottish, Irish and some regional dialects of England (West Country perhaps. Certainly not Cockney or RP though) are rhotic — andrewk

You basically just called me British. I demand an apology too. :grin:

Banned @George K for being banned member @sunknight. Seeing as this is a returning banned member, I'll leave this as an announcement and reclose.

No, it only has by region.

(Of course, that's searches rather than frequency in online text.)

Interesting. "Nigga" wins out online.



https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=nigga,nigger

Odd spike around 2014.

I get the point. I was being facetious there.

there are 13+ million members on reddit philosophy — I like sushi

We are currently doubling our membership year by year so at our current rate of growth, by 2050, we will have surpassed Reddit and by 2100, we should have more members than there are atoms in the universe.

I just typed in 'philosophy' in the search bar in Reddit btw and about half the conversations were about something called a 'Philosophy purity cleanser'. So, that's Reddit. That's not us.

What's your point? Reddit users have short attention spans and bad memories? Relevance to Shoutbox suggestion?

Cheers. :up:

You should put the shoutbox back on the front page, for instance. Pond syndrome will keep you from listening to what I'm trying to tell you though. Oh well. — frank

We had a whole thread on that, and a poll too as far as I remember, and listened to both sides with the way we have it now coming out on top.

I only do wishy-washy leftist liberal. I'd probably invite Obama or some other useless prick like that.

:scream:

I think it might be worth a pop. All it takes is a few emails.

We all know the economy is humming along nicely and Trump will get re-elected. — Benkei

A corporate Dem like Biden could win. All he needs is Pennsylvania and Florida. Bernie could potentially win too but it'd be harder.

Oh, I don't mean about quality content. Quality is OK in my view. I mean things like attracting guest speakers or getting more articles up or whatever.

If we set the bar higher, we wouldn't attract as many good members. But we've got the bar set high enough that we keep people who make high quality posts, even if we end up posting in cliques. — fdrake

There may be a case for a "Suggestions for improvement" thread though. Kind of a Kaizen for the community. We're limited in what we can do with the software and with modding but we could be exploring other avenues for improvement in a more systematic way.

I'm just not buying despite Baden's assurance I'm overlooking a logical basis for disparate treatment. — Hanover

As long as you don't read or respond to any of the actual argument by linguists that there is a case for considering usage as fundamentally different (and therefore a logical basis for disparate treatment of such usage) you're on solid ground here. :up:

Everyone pretty much is. You're probably Anglo and Saxon or maybe Scotch and Irish. — Hanover

Judging by the levels of fried Mars Bar in his bloodstream, we can be confident @S is 100% pure Scottish highlander.

It comes down to full context. Here on the forum, for example, we're writing so we can use scare quotes to make mention absolutely clear. Harder to do that in speaking. But I've been persuaded at least that there are more instances where mention and even use should be insisted on than I would have thought.

(If you do want to actually respond to the substance my posts, I'll respond to you in kind later when I have time. That's fair in my bizarre world.).

No, you obviously don't need a translator. And handwaving everything I said away just so you can say what you want to say is going to result in quid pro quo from me.

:cheer: No wait. Ah, whatever. :cheer:

Here's a simple point (already quoted) to respond to:

"Well, we argue that there is an emerging class of words that function as pronouns (remember elementary school English class? A pronoun is a word that stands in for another noun or noun-phrase) in some varieties of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), that are built out of the grammatical reanalysis of phrases including the n- word. Well, sort of the n- word because there's excellent evidence that there are actually at least two n-words, and that some speakers of AAVE differentiate between them and use them in different contexts."

One piece of evidence:

"In fact, we argue that in this dialect, it is now human and male by default, but not always (an example of the not always: "I adopted a cat and I love that nigga like a person"). It is also not inherently specified for race, like nigger and other epithets are. In fact, race is often added to it, so the authors may be referred to in our neighborhoods as "that white nigga" and "the black nigga who was with him." Others include "asian nigga," and even "African nigga.""

So, the standard English slur word "nigger" is specified for race. The AAVE version, it's argued, isn't. One difference amongst many identified.

We're not talking about translation as far as I'm concerned. The question doesn't primarily concern how to translate one word into another, it concerns whether or not there are enough differences between the way the variants of the word in question behave to justify considering those variants as two different words. For that, you need linguistic analysis of the sort in the article, which you originally refused to acknowledge even existed and now are just refusing to mention or respond to. And I'm weird... Do you at least accept that different syntactical rules for each variant (aggregated through statistical data on usage and analysis of said data) suggest something relevant wrt the question of definitions here? And what do you think that is? If not, what's your basis for denying its relevance?

Fine. Apparently I need to say it again: in many cases, the black usage is the same as the historic white usage. It's very clearly the same word. — frank

See my edit above:

(I'm not even saying it's beyond debate that they're different words, only that it's a linguistic issue and can only be sorted out by looking at how they behave not by how people think they behave.) — Baden

At this point, I think we can agree to disagree. It's not the main focus of the discussion for sure.

Get the popcorn — jamalrob

Not a hope. I'm going to be nice and then disappear and do some actual work so I can pay the rent this month. :strong:

How does any of that support your claim? — frank

I'm supporting the linguistic argument that they're different words, which is what the above focuses on too in presenting syntactic disparities of usage evident of a shifting of word class. I'm not arguing against your personal experience of using the word.

(I'm not even saying it's beyond debate that they're different words, only that it's a linguistic issue and can only be sorted out by looking at how they behave not by how people think they behave.)

I'm telling you: the way blacks use the word is in many cases exactly the same way whites once used it. If you were thinking that blacks always drop the r at the end, you're wrong. So zero in on that fact and look again at the argument you're trying to counter: that since blacks use it, whites should be able to use it.

The argument you presented is a ridiculous solution to the white quest to use it anyway. That quest needs no solution. It's just a handful of white people being laughable. If they aren't actually trying to get a laugh, they're just stupid. — frank

My hope is that understanding some of the linguistic facts might help clear up some of the confusion and help white people stop being stupid about it. But, yes, maybe that is a forlorn hope.

Never got the attraction of Reddit. Always thought it was shit.

The same holds true if you came down here (and please don't) and decided you wanted to speak like a southerner. They'd take it as an attempt to show them how stupid you thought they were. — Hanover

:zip:

Look back at that article. It is itself merely opinion. If I missed where there is any academic weight at all to that article, could you point it out? — frank

So this, just to give a small sample:

"What's the evidence for pronoun status?

a nigga and my nigga are phonologically reduced. That is, there is a clear difference in pronunciation between the pronoun forms and the terms meaning "a person" and "my friend." To this end, we tend to use anigga and manigga, pronounced /ənɪgə/ and /mənɪgə/ (we leave the original spacing when quoting tweets, though).
No other words can intervene while still retaining the first person meaning. "A friendly nigga said hello" does not mean "I said hello," whereas "anigga said hello" can. The first means that some friendly guy said hello, but it wasn't the speaker.
anigga binds anaphors. No, that's not some kind of Greek fetish; Anaphors are words like "myself" "himself," "herself," etc. Binding in this case refers to which anaphors show up with the word. anigga patterns with the first person words, whereas imposters do not. For almost everyone "daddy is going to buy myself an ice cream" is either ungrammatical or sounds like daddy got lost in the middle of his sentence. anigga, on the other hand, is often used with myself, as in "anigga proud of myself."
Other pronouns refer back to anigga. That is, "you read all a nigga's tweets but you still don't know me."
Verbs are conjugated first person, not third person, with anigga. This is totally ungrammatical with imposters, and totally normal for actual pronouns. Example:
"Finna make myself dinner. a nigga haven't eaten all day." Compare that to "Daddy haven't eaten all day; he's going to make myself dinner." Really, really, abysmally bad.

anigga can be used in certain conditions that imposters - like "a brotha" - cannot. For instance, you can say "anigga arrived," with first person meaning, but the only interpretation available for "a brotha arrived" is third person. It's for this reason that we cannot simply substitute the much-less-likely-to-offend "a brotha" in our discussion of these terms.

That's basically it. In every conceivable grammatical test, anigga patterns with actual pronouns and not with imposters."

in your world is equivalent to this:

Lol. Its the same word, Baden. — frank

And that is evidence not only that it's a different word but that it's becoming a different word class. I also linked to the full pdf study too. So, you're not even being serious.

I'm mixed-race. — frank

It doesn't matter what race either of us is or isn't. I'm Irish but that doesn't make me right about any particular claim I make about Ireland or Irish English etc. And it's a linguistic issue by definition.

The n-word is a slurring of negro. It just meant black. It was succeeded by "colored," which was succeeded by "black," which was supposed to be succeeded by "African American," but that one had too many syllables. — frank

Again, if this is all you have, you have nothing. Sorry.

Says he 10,000 posts later. :lol:

ironically irreverent. — jamalrob

Predictably provocative more like. But yes, it's right that racism and not the use and/or mention of particular words is what the guidelines focus on. So, you've made a good case for some further exceptions where insisting on allowing use and/or mention could be preferable.

I think that distinction should be easier to spot for Americans than for other British speakers, because most varieties of American English are 'rhotic', meaning they pronounce terminal 'r's, whereas British and Australian English do not, instead pronouncing the ends of words ending in 'er' as 'ah' or 'uh'. So that distinction is lost on we Poms and Aussies. — andrewk

Yes, hadn't thought of that.

I don't know whether AAVE is rhotic. I have a feeling it may not be — andrewk

Mostly it's not. My dialect, Irish English, is as it happens.

Lol. It's the same word, Baden. — frank

Shrug. Bare assertion. For evidence that it's not, see the article. Respond if you can.

But it might be important to insist on it sometimes. I insist on being able to do it here, for example. — jamalrob

That's a fair point. I wouldn't personally if I were PMed not to, but I wouldn't want mention of it against the rules here either.

You're focusing on the falsity of one potential objection, which I don't disagree with. But it can also be a matter of etiquette where the objection lies. So, what is worth pursuing? It's worth pointing out that mention is not racist, but insisting on mention because it's not racist misses some nuance here.

It's the same word. — frank

Says you. Most linguists would say no. And the way we decide whether words are the same is by analysing them linguistically, how they behave with other words and so on. It's not just a matter of opinion. Otherwise we get nowhere.

I agree with all of that except, I think, for the last line, which is what this is all about I guess. — jamalrob

Well, I don't know of a scenario apart from the one I just gave where it would be a battle worth pursuing to insist on mention though I don't think there should be punishment for mention either. Give me something to chew on.

An obvious exception to the above btw would be in a strictly scientific context, such as a study or article like the one mentioned, where you have to spell out exactly what you're discussing for reasons of precision and accuracy. And I don't know of any controversy over the word being used in that way.