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The beauty of the English language always comes from picking the word with the perfect connotation. At the most articulate, you have speakers like Christopher
by bravura 4y ago
The beauty of the English language always comes from picking the word with the perfect connotation.
At the most articulate, you have speakers like Christopher Hitchens: “It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
But sometimes the strongest turns-of-phrase in English can be the simplest. We were recently chatting about the Portuguese "Cansas-me a beleza". In English, if you said to someone: "You tire my beauty" with perfect delivery it would be withering.
- permo-w 4y agothat Hitchens quote is nice, but typically for him, and fittingly for the context, it’s more of an attempt to be contrary and interesting than it is to be correct. racists are accused of discriminating by race. he obviously knew this, and it’s still an interesting point, but to be annoyed by it is to be annoyed by correct usage of English
- bravura 4y agoThe word play here is one of nuanced diction here. Namely the secondary meaning of the word: Meaning 2: recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. "discrimination between right and wrong" 2a) the ability to judge what is of high quality; good judgement or taste. "those who could afford to buy showed little taste or discrimination" I.e. the true ability to distinguish things, not simply sorting objects by color.
- permo-w 4y agothis was my basic understanding of the quote. it's still correct to accuse a racist of discrimination