nakamuram opened this issue on May 21, 2003 ยท 81 posts
praxis22 posted Thu, 22 May 2003 at 12:34 PM
I remember looking for a dictionary in Romania once, took me bloody ages. Why couldn't I find one? Apparently, I was looking in the wrong book shops... Turns out there are two kinds of book shops in Romania, those that sell books in Romanian, and those that sell books in Hungarian. I got shouted at a lot when I asked why I couldn't find the book I wanted, made no sense to me, but it seems to work for them. The "ethnic Hungarians" had the best internet cafe's anyway :) My point? Racism/tribalism/ethnocetricity is endemic, it's part of what it is to be human. I'm an "insel apfen", a "roast beef", "Northen Scum" Actually that's a lie, to my eternal shame, I was born in London. Still, at least I'm not a "Lager drinker" :) It's only insulting if you want to be insulted, in which case changing the name changes nothing, because that's just language, it's the "intent" that's import. Right? I stick by my original comment "Arse!" :) later jb