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Regarding Caucasian, why would you get annoyed? Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings. One of the wonderful things about natural language

by jnbiche 13y ago

Regarding Caucasian, why would you get annoyed? Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings. One of the wonderful things about natural language is our ability to distinguish among different word meanings based on context. Anyone who insists upon only a single meaning for each word will have a considerably poorer vocabulary because of it. Furthermore, if you're going to rule out all words with spurious etymologies, I suspect you're going to have to eliminate quite a lot of words from your vocabulary. For example, stop using "turkey" to refer to the bird eaten in certain parts of the world.

lake99 13y ago
> Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings. You seem to greatly overestimate our ability to distinguish among different word meanings based on context. The meanings are not all appropriate when they conflict. I first discovered this conflicting meaning of "Caucasian" when discussing something with a Polish friend. Unlike me, he did not default to the popular American meaning of "Caucasian". That led to us misunderstanding each other for a few minutes. "Indian" has caused me enough headaches online. I'll reiterate: not everyone defaults to popular American (mis-)usages. Leave aside the matter of popular usage for the time being. Do you also think that if population geneticists were to use all these conflicting meanings, it would cause them no problems at all? I hope my explanation also disabuses you of the notions that I'm "[insisting] upon only a single meaning for each word" or trying to "rule out all words with spurious etymologies". Don't worry about me having a considerably poorer vocabulary; I do extremely well on most tests. When I write, people may have trouble understanding my point, but it's never been because I used to wrong words. Addendum: if it were to turn out that I have used the wrong words, I'd learn, and correct myself.

by jnbiche 13y ago

lake99 13y ago

> Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings. You seem to greatly overestimate our ability to distinguish among different word meanings based on context. The meanings are not all appropriate when they conflict. I first discovered this conflicting meaning of "Caucasian" when discussing something with a Polish friend. Unlike me, he did not default to the popular American meaning of "Caucasian". That led to us misunderstanding each other for a few minutes. "Indian" has caused me enough headaches online. I'll reiterate: not everyone defaults to popular American (mis-)usages. Leave aside the matter of popular usage for the time being. Do you also think that if population geneticists were to use all these conflicting meanings, it would cause them no problems at all? I hope my explanation also disabuses you of the notions that I'm "[insisting] upon only a single meaning for each word" or trying to "rule out all words with spurious etymologies". Don't worry about me having a considerably poorer vocabulary; I do extremely well on most tests. When I write, people may have trouble understanding my point, but it's never been because I used to wrong words. Addendum: if it were to turn out that I have used the wrong words, I'd learn, and correct myself.