Hello. With a prospective of non-native English speaker, I believe that, political correctness aside, a name which does not involve a cultural reference for the related function to be understood is a welcome change since it reduces, if marginally, for users the possibility of misunderstanding the proper usage. As for the further implications of the colours black and white, I guess it would be difficult to find a definitive answer as to why any culture might choose to associate them with a positive or negative connotation. Human reactions to light and darkness come to mind as a possibility, but who can tell for sure. I also agree that this kind of debate has little in the way of thresholds for when to begin and when to stop. Software may be written by someone belonging to a specific culture but its users quite often might not be. If a choice of wording in a configuration parameter awakens painful memories or touches upon a taboo subject in a small remote village of 50 people, is that inherently less significant than if it were to impact on hundred thousand or a million people? And what about 1 single person? Do we choose a specific culture or a minimum number of people as a threshold? Does any member of a hypothetical target group share the same view or opinion on the matter? It's a bit too big for my head, but I welcome a more descriptive change in the naming on "technical" (or semantical?) grounds.
Cheers, Fulvio Scapin Il giorno sab 6 giu 2020 alle ore 20:27 Phil Stracchino <ph...@caerllewys.net> ha scritto: > > On 2020-06-06 13:27, yuv wrote: > > On Sat, 2020-06-06 at 19:12 +0200, Jaroslaw Rafa wrote: > >> Black color is culturally associated with the devil (and also death), > >> and white with an angel (innocence, etc.) > > > > in your culture. have you tried checking other cultures? > > Exactly. In Japanese culture, blue is associated with purity and > innocence, and white with death and funerals, as I recall. > > > >> Let's not get crazy. > > > That is the golden watchword here. The trouble with trying to > politically cleanse language is, where do you stop? > > It is instructive here to consider the case of, for instance, > chairman/chairperson. We were all exhorted to abandon words like > chairman, mailman, on the grounds that they are male-centric and > indicative of the patriarchy. > > Unfortunately, when you study the historical etymology of the words, > that is not the case. Long ago, the language that became English used > to have three words for a person: one meaning an explicitly male > person, one meaning an explicitly female person, and one meaning a > person of unspecified gender. > > "Man", if we're going to talk historical etymology, is the word for *a > person of unspecified gender*. The word for a specifically male person > does not exist in the English language any more. It was lost a thousand > years ago. > > > Sure, yes, let's do our best not to use clearly racially or culturally > divisive or offensive terms. But to abandon perfectly neutral terms > because a discriminatory connotation *can be retconned onto them* is to > throw the baby out with the bathwater. Where does it end? > > > There *is no basic human right not to be offended*. Seriously. There > isn't. And you CANNOT eliminate all usages from speech that might > offend someone, because there are people who appear to evaluate their > self-worth in terms of how many things they are offended by today, and > they are endlessly inventive in confecting offense in language that > developed with no discriminatory intent whatever, because the more > offended they are, *obviously* the better a person they are. And to > make matters worse, some of these people will complain about words whose > meaning they don't understand because it sounds similar to a bad word > and they don't know the difference. Tried using the word 'niggardly' > lately? People hear the word and *just assume that it must be racially > offensive*. > > The rule that you cannot say anything that might possibly offend > someone, somewhere ends only one place: Nobody is allowed to say > anything, because *anything* you say *might* offend *someone*. > > Are we going to tell the Black Watch they need to find a new name? > Devise a new term for the color of paper? Prohibit selling cars painted > the color that is neutral in hue but darker than grey? > > That way lies madness. Sometimes a cigar is just a freakin' cigar. > > > > For the political debate... it's the twitterization of language. White > > is RGB(255,255,255) and Black is RGB(0,0,0). > > > "The twitterization of language." I like that phrase, and am hereby > adopting it. :) > > > -- > Phil Stracchino > Babylon Communications > ph...@caerllewys.net > p...@co.ordinate.org > Landline: +1.603.293.8485 > Mobile: +1.603.998.6958
