English questions

[Kuchigakatai]

...See also "motherfucker",

This word is usually still seen as quite obscene, however.

Of course it is. I'm just saying people don't seem to have the etymological meaning in mind when using it seriously, as transparent as it is.

[on the r-word] Or perhaps it never stopped being one? The amelioration clearly didn't spread through all of society, and I think quite a few people of my generation and earlier will likely be offended by it.

Possibly true.

Recall which is most likely to have been used with its actual ableist meaning in living memory. It has been used as a fairly severe term of abuse for children with learning difficulties, or who were simply awkward but reasonably intelligent, within the past 20-30 years,

Maybe. The interesting thing is, I'm not familiar with any such usage, or story I've heard, or example, until very very recently (say, after 2017 or so, and typically from exactly the type of people who spend a lot of time on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit). It might be one of those weird society large bubble effects, with large number of people somehow not knowing of the others' usage, like the one that came up months ago between some UK speakers here when I asked about the pronunciation of a certain word (some two or three Brits here, in their late 20s or early 30s I think, said they said the word one way, and were totally unaware of the other way, but two young Brits who're 18 and 20 elsewhere told me exactly the opposite, and were unaware of the ZBB Brits' pronunciation! I think my question about the vowel of "one"...??).

We do not have to keep those that are somehow harmful.

Good luck getting the human population to do that though; such attempts have a great historical track of failing. Jesus talked about not taking pharisees and hard rules too seriously, about the blessings of the meek and peacemakers, about helping strangers even if they're from an enemy group, about helping people as rejected and avoided as the lepers, beggars, and that most evil species the tax collectors (heh), but I can't say the roughly 1500 years of established widely-practised Christianity in Western Europe made much of it. That said, I'm happy to see the pointless and regretable discrimination of the Cagots in France is over (largely via the Cagots reasonably refusing to identify as a group... after the French revolutionaries finally tried to eliminate their document traceability).

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Maybe. The interesting thing is, I'm not familiar with any such usage, or story I've heard, or example, until very very recently (say, after 2017 or so, and typically from exactly the type of people who spend a lot of time on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit). It might be one of those weird society large bubble effects, with large number of people somehow not knowing of the others' usage, like the one that came up months ago between some UK speakers here when I asked about the pronunciation of a certain word (some two or three Brits here, in their late 20s or early 30s I think, said they said the word one way, and were totally unaware of the other way, but two young Brits who're 18 and 20 elsewhere told me exactly the opposite, and were unaware of the ZBB Brits' pronunciation! I think my question about the vowel of "one"...??).

Possibly. Around the early 2000s, it was still used quite abusively (in my experience) as I've described. It certainly happened within my (age 32) living memory; consequently, those who happen to spend lots of time on those sites strike me as reasonable for objecting to the word. They probably had similar experiences hearing it used abusively, or know somebody who did.

We do not have to keep those that are somehow harmful.

Good luck getting the human population to do that though; such attempts have a great historical track of failing. Jesus talked about not taking pharisees and hard rules too seriously, about the blessings of the meek and peacemakers, about helping strangers even if they're from an enemy group, about helping people as rejected and avoided as the lepers, beggars, and that most evil species the tax collectors (heh), but I can't say the roughly 1500 years of established widely-practised Christianity in Western Europe made much of it. That said, I'm happy to see the pointless and regretable discrimination of the Cagots in France is over (largely via the Cagots reasonably refusing to identify as a group... after the French revolutionaries finally tried to eliminate their document traceability).

And, even though the hostilities aren't gone, legalised segregation has also been ended in the Untied States for a few decades now. That people are difficult does not mean we should not try. You are welcome to your cynicism, of course, but "this is hard" does not mean "you should not try anyway" or "the points those fighting for some difficult thing are invalid".

[quinterbeck]

Curiously, these English speakers online aren't doing that for "dumb" and "idiot", which they happily use all the time, even though these insults also have ableist origins.

You say that, but I have seen leftist disability advocates claiming that words like 'dumb', 'lame', 'insane', and 'crazy' are ableist due to their historical usage and that we shouldn't use them at all because they draw negative allusions to disabled and neurodivergent people. They seem to be a small minority but they do hold such beliefs.

[linguistcat]

Curiously, these English speakers online aren't doing that for "dumb" and "idiot", which they happily use all the time, even though these insults also have ableist origins.

You say that, but I have seen leftist disability advocates claiming that words like 'dumb', 'lame', 'insane', and 'crazy' are ableist due to their historical usage and that we shouldn't use them at all because they draw negative allusions to disabled and neurodivergent people. They seem to be a small minority but they do hold such beliefs.

I've found that any time I've had the thought "No one really believes X, or at least don't take it to the logical extreme" there absolutely are people like that.

On top of that, there are people who argue that we should avoid calling PEOPLE "stupid", "insane", "lame" and the like, but calling situations or some other non-human or non-sapient referents these things is fine because it constitutes as a complete break from the original use (and they expect that people would have a hard time completely eradicating these uses from their vocabularies).

[Raphael]

How would you explain the difference between "stupid" and "silly"? After all my time reading and listening to English language texts and dialogues, by now I think I've got a pretty good "instinctive" understanding of the difference, but I'm not sure how I would put it into words. I'd say "silly" is more used to describe "trivial" stuff, while "stupid" is more used to describe "profound" lack of knowledge or understanding, but I wonder if there's a better way to put it.

[Linguoboy]

Also “silly” is more commonly used of behaviour while “stupid” is more often treated as an innate characteristic. That is, I would freely use “silly” to describe someone who is “acting silly” but I’d be less likely to call someone “stupid” who is just “playing dumb”.

I don’t really think of “silly” as a personality trait. If I wanted to characterise someone as habitually “not serious”, I’d call them “lighthearted” or “goofy” rather than “silly”.

“Silly” is also a word I strongly associate with children. They use it often and adults often use it when talking to children, but adults don’t use it that much when talking to other adults (and when they do, it’s more often to describe abstracts—“ideas” or situations—rather than people). Children will even use it as a noun, e.g. “You’re a silly” or “You’re a silly-silly”.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

Completely different question: in US English, there are generally four terms used for students in the four years of a four-year educational institution, such as high school or college: "Freshman" for first year students, "Sophomore" for second year students, "Junior" for third year students, and "Senior" for fourth year students. But my impression is that in some parts of the USA, high school has only three grades (10-12). How is the freshman/sophomore/junior/senior model used in those schools?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I had to look this up. My instinct would be that the tenth would become Freshman, and the word Sophomore drop out entirely (probably because it is a word used almost nowhere else, and "Freshman"-"Junior"-"Senior" makes a somewhat sensible-sounding hierarchy on its own), but apparently, for the rare 10-12 schools that do exist (from what I can find, this is now very rare), they simply use the words in the same way, with a "sophomore"-"junior"-"senior" progression (this from somebody who attended school in the 1960s that answered the same question elsewhere on the Internet), when such was still, I believe, widely normative.

[ratammer]

Interesting, considering that "sophomore" means "second" in other senses, like a band's second album. Then again, school years quite often don't match the literal meaning of the terms any more - take the UK's "Sixth Form", which now follows Year 11...

[Linguoboy]

FWIW, I’ve never heard of a school like this. Anyone I know who finished high school in three years left early for some reason (such as early admission to college).

Speaking of college, I find it amusing that some folks find the use of these terms for 9th-12th grades a bit pretentious (much like having “graduations” from kindergarten) since they originated in universities, but my university didn’t even use them. You were just “first years”, “second years”, etc. on to “nth years” for those students who had been around so long everyone had forgotten when they started.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

FWIW, I’ve never heard of a school like this. Anyone I know who finished high school in three years left early for some reason (such as early admission to college).

It used to be (I think before either of us had to think about it) that elementary was 1-6, junior high was 7-9, and high school itself was 10-12.

Speaking of college, I find it amusing that some folks find the use of these terms for 9th-12th grades a bit pretentious (much like having “graduations” from kindergarten) since they originated in universities, but my university didn’t even use them. You were just “first years”, “second years”, etc. on to “nth years” for those students who had been around so long everyone had forgotten when they started.

I actually find the terms a bit... juvenile, I guess... and so rarely actually use them myself.

[Raphael]

Thank you, interesting! Does that mean that these days, junior high/middle school has only two grades?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Thank you, interesting! Does that mean that these days, junior high/middle school has only two grades?

It's usually now 6-7-8.

[Travis B.]

Thank you, interesting! Does that mean that these days, junior high/middle school has only two grades?

It's usually now 6-7-8.

In some cases, such as my daughter's school district, they have divided things up so there is "intermediate school" in grades 5-6 and "middle school" in grades 7-8. Note that in her case this is a new thing - they just started it, rather than the traditional 6-8 arrangement, last school year.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It sounds like it might be a potentially reasonable arrangement.

[linguistcat]

Thank you, interesting! Does that mean that these days, junior high/middle school has only two grades?

It's usually now 6-7-8.

In some cases, such as my daughter's school district, they have divided things up so there is "intermediate school" in grades 5-6 and "middle school" in grades 7-8. Note that in her case this is a new thing - they just started it, rather than the traditional 6-8 arrangement, last school year.

Also when I was going to school, there was a difference between a middle school (2 years, usually 7th and 8th grades) and a junior high (3 years, usually 7th, 8th and 9th but sometimes 6th, 7th and 8th).

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone! A school that covers only two years strikes me as kinda weird.

[Linguoboy]

Thank you, everyone! A school that covers only two years strikes me as kinda weird.

I think it makes sense in large school districts. Like if your high school serves 1000 students, your junior high would serve about 500. I've attended more than one school with a student body a fraction that size.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Thank you, everyone! A school that covers only two years strikes me as kinda weird.

I think it makes sense in large school districts. Like if your high school serves 1000 students, your junior high would serve about 500. I've attended more than one school with a student body a fraction that size.

The county where I grew up had one public high school (two middle schools) until something like 2005 (I graduated 2006, yes, I'm old), and an enormous student body. I think breaking that up into smaller units would've been very nice. There were two or three private religious schools that did the whole K-12 thing, too, but I wouldn't trust them.

[Linguoboy]

The county where I grew up had one public high school (two middle schools) until something like 2005 (I graduated 2006, yes, I'm old), and an enormous student body. I think breaking that up into smaller units would've been very nice. There were two or three private religious schools that did the whole K-12 thing, too, but I wouldn't trust them.

With the exception of kindergarten, I went to nothing but private religious schools until I came to college. (My university was private and technically religiously-affiliated, but not so as anyone would notice. Some wag termed it "A Baptist university where Jewish professors teach atheist students Thomas Aquinas." That's not quite as true as it once was, but it's not wholly off the mark either.) My high school was a college prep which included a junior high (grades 7-8). Not everyone went all six years but a substantial number of students (at least 40% of my graduating class of 147) did.