Re: What to call American Indians

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

> John Flynn wrote:
>
>> Richard R. Hershberger wrote:
>>
>>> I was born and raised in California. Being a "native Californian" was
>>> considered by some to be a point of pride. (I was not among those, as
>>> it always struck me as a pretty silly thing to be proud of, but that is
>>> a different discussion.) My problem with "native American" meaning the
>>> descendants of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the western hemisphere
>>> is that it is silly: 'native' refers to birth, not ancestry.
>>
>> As a native speaker of English, I agree.
>
> Lots of native speakers are nearly illiterate.

What has literacy got to do with the matter? There are and have been
thousands of languages that have never had a writing system. To that
sentence of yours, I'm going to have to resort to a "So what?"
response.

> Whether you agree or not (as a native speaker) is hardly a logical
> argument that something is correct.

In the use of a language, the native speaker *is* the yardstick. Who
else is there for assessing aspects of how a language is used than the
language users themselves? Try again, but first, actually attempt to
incorporate something that bears at least a passing similarity to the
truth about language.

> In this case, it just makes you both appear to be uneducated...
>
> There is a difference between "native American" and "Native
> American". Moreover, it isn't controversial, other than among
> the uneducated or among people who have a racist agenda they want
> to hide. When people make comments like the above, trust that it
> starts ringing all sorts of bells that bring attention you really
> don't want to draw to yourself.

I recall it was who made a reference to, I think, my missing a "Whoosh"
earlier, yes?

<sigh>

Okay, clue time...

The discussion was about the use of "native". The current weirdo in
the group decided that "native" implies "savagery". Richard
Hershberger replied to that and offered another use of "native". And
so did I. In linguistics, the use of "native speaker" is such a
standard term that it goes by without *any* comment. It doesn't have
even the slightest trace of negativity and is, in a lot of instances,
used in the exact opposite way, to label a bunch of people for whom
their natural 'instincts' about the language they use should be the
ones that any descriptive account of a language ought to capture and
for whom grammaticality judgments should be taken as the standard to
work to.

I suggest you drop the "I'm the victim" stance and actually find out
what other people might be talking about before jumping in.

--
johnF
"[...] but it has been renamed 'universal grammar,' usually capitalized and
abbreviated to 'UG' to make sure that nobody misses the deep significance
of the concept." -- _The Talking Ape_, Robbins Burling
.

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