Am 2010-07-28 um 01:10 schrieb Marcin Borkowski:
BTW, I know of at least two derogatory terms concerning my nation: "Polak" (which is exactly what a Polish man is called in Polish) is considered rude in the US, and "polnische Wirtchaft" is very derogatory in German. I have to admit that I am not extremely happy because of these terms, but it's not a real problem for me.
While I know "Polacken" as a derogatory word for Polish (or other Eastern European) people, I never encountered "polnische Wirtschaft". Similar cuss words are "Itzig" for Jews (originally just a form of Isaak), "Molukker" for any black people (originally Dutch Indonesians), similar "Kaffer" (originally used as a rather neutral name for Xhosa in the German colonies, but meaning "unbeliever" in Arabian and "farmer" in Yiddish), "Kanake" for arbitrary Southern foreigners (originally Polynesian "human" and a positive name of German sailors for their Polynesian colleagues) etc. Of course there are a lot of prejudices against several groups that lead to derogatory words, in German e.g. türken ("turk") = to counterfeit (probably based on a chess playing machine fraud) (herum)zigeunern ("gipsy (around)") = to leisurely wander, also sexually Schwulitäten ("homosexualities") = difficulties spanisch ("spanish") = dubious ("das kommt mir spanisch vor" = that is/ sounds dubious) Schotten... ("scottish") = cheap (e.g. "Schottenpreise" = Scottish prices) More on our gender topic is herrlich ("lordlike") = great dämlich ("ladylike") = stupid Or some words that changed their meaning over the centuries: Weib = shrew/broad (used to mean just "woman", while "Frau" meant "lady") So, as several other posters already said: It's not the words who are to blame, but the speakers and their mind sets... Grüßlinge vom Südsee! Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)