Virginia Warren

I walk into the living room where my daughter, Miriam (6.5) and her friend Yancey (f/7.5) are playing Just Dance 4. I am delivering pancakes. I overhear Miriam say:
"This is One Direction. You can tell they're kind of gay because of the glitter."
I say "Honey, do you know what 'gay' means?" I wait a few seconds, then I say "It's risky to use words if you don't know what they mean. Then you might not know what you said."

Seems wordy. I felt smug after I said that, which made me suspect myself. What would you have said? Should I have kept my mouth shut? Should I have extra-kept my mouth shut because she was not talking to me?

Virginia

Sandra Dodd

-=-"This is One Direction. You can tell they're kind of gay because of the glitter."-=-

She did say "kind of" and she is six. :-)

I would've left it, not because she wasn't talking to you, but because it was just a little offhand comment.  Unless you want to explain homosexuality to someone else's seven-year-old, it might be better to let the comment slide by.

Sandra

Karen

>>>> I say "Honey, do you know what 'gay' means?" I wait a few seconds, then I say "It's risky to use words if you don't know what they mean. Then you might not know what you said."

Seems wordy. I felt smug after I said that, which made me suspect myself. What would you have said? <<<<<

Whenever Ethan uses a word or phrase that I believe might offend others if he were to use it in public, I share some information with him. Not necessarily in the moment though. Not in front of friends.

The information I share is what the word means, and how it could offend someone. So, take shit for example. I remember telling him it was a curse word for taking a poo, and that some people don't like cursing. I suggested he consider who he's talking to before he uses it.

>>>>>"It's risky to use words if you don't know what they mean. Then you might not know what you said."<<<<<

I sometimes use words I don't know the meaning to because I like the sound of them. My husband will look at me all confused, and give me the meaning of the word. That man is a walking dictionary. :-) Usually they aren't derogatory words that I'm using, but still they are words used incorrectly or pronounced incorrectly. I love it when someone helps me without judging me.

Sandra Dodd

-=-So, take shit for example. I remember telling him it was a curse word for taking a poo, and that some people don't like cursing-=-

It's vulgar, but it's not a curse.
A curse is "I hope you burn in hell."  Or other short-for wishes for harm to befall a person:  "Eat shit and die" is a curse.  F*** you is likely short for a longer more detailed harm-wish from long years ago, whittled down to the nastiest bit.

And "By god" is an oath.  That's another form of "bad word."


That's the closet of a larger room on bad words (linked at the bottom of that).  I collected the info on the first page for a workshop I was asked to do at an HSC event in California.  The teens who requested it came for a while and left before it was over.  Maybe it was more like a dare than a real request. :-)

Sandra

Schuyler

I've heard that the word f*** is used with negative connotation because it was an Anglo-Saxon word in a Norman world. The wikipedia page on it argues against that statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck Doesn't even mention it as a possibility. 

I love the first written record of f***, maybe because Ely wasn't far from my old home. 

"Flen, flyys and freris"

The usually accepted first known occurrence is in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century.[6] The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris (= "Fleas, flies, and friars"). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Removing the substitution cipher (here, replacing each letter by the next letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then) on the phrase "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" yields non sunt in coeli, quia fvccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely".[7] The phrase was coded likely because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[6] it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. (The stem of fvccant is an English word used as Latin: English medieval Latin has many examples of writers using English words when they did not know the Latin word: "workmannus" is an example.) (In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for "woman.")

From: Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, 22 September 2013, 11:43
Subject: Re: [AlwaysLearning] Re: Word Swords: "Gay", Eavesdropping



-=-So, take shit for example. I remember telling him it was a curse word for taking a poo, and that some people don't like cursing-=-

It's vulgar, but it's not a curse.
A curse is "I hope you burn in hell."  Or other short-for wishes for harm to befall a person:  "Eat shit and die" is a curse.  F*** you is likely short for a longer more detailed harm-wish from long years ago, whittled down to the nastiest bit.

And "By god" is an oath.  That's another form of "bad word."


That's the closet of a larger room on bad words (linked at the bottom of that).  I collected the info on the first page for a workshop I was asked to do at an HSC event in California.  The teens who requested it came for a while and left before it was over.  Maybe it was more like a dare than a real request. :-)

Sandra