From Melissa Chen, who wrote about this issue on her Facebook page, we learn that Colorado State University has put the familiar phrase “Long time, no see” (meaning, “I haven’t seen you for a while”) onto a list of offensive “non inclusive” phrases (click on screenshot to go to the article). But below that you can read the original piece, by CSU student Katrina Leibee, who writes at the CSU student newspaper The Rocky Mountain Collegian (the piece has a disclaimer by the paper that it doesn’t represent the stand of the editorial board).
The original report:
Leibee reports that words like “freshman” is sexist and should be replaced by “first-years”. I have no problem with that, because I can see how women would take offense at the repeated use of “man” to imply “people,” as with “mankind.” Likewise, the phrase “you guys” seems a bit sexist; would anybody not see this if it were replaced with the phrase, “you girls” directed at everyone?
I try not to use such phrases myself. But Leibee also reports more innocuous phrases that have been swept up in the Pecksniff Net:
After getting involved in residential leadership, I was told not to use the word “dorms,” and replace it with “residence halls.” Apparently, dorm refers to only a place where one sleeps, and residence hall refers to a place where we sleep, eat, study and participate in social activities.
A countless amount of words and phrases have been marked with a big, red X and defined as non-inclusive. It has gotten to the point where students should carry around a dictionary of words they cannot say.
In a meeting with Zahra Al-Saloom, the director of Diversity and Inclusion at Associated Students of Colorado State University, she showed me an entire packet of words and phrases that were deemed non-inclusive. One of these phrases was “long time, no see,” which is viewed as derogatory towards those of Asian descent.
Al-Saloom believes inclusive language is important at CSU.
Melissa, a Singaporean who speaks Mandarin, informed her Facebook friends that the “long time no see” phrase is not (as Wikipedia implies) derived from mocking Chinese or Pidgin speakers using broken English. The phrase is a literal translation of the Mandarin. It’s not like the phrase often used to mock the Chinese who ran laundries in America, “No tickee, no washee.”
As Melissa pointed out:
There must be a great deal of projection going on if you find “long time no see” racist to Asians.
It’s literally a direct translation of Mandarin syntax (好久不见) and has become a common turn of phrase.
Two other Mandarin speakers piped in:
“好 can also translate as ‘very’ so it would be ‘very long time, no see’ as well.”
and
“It’s more like “Good (好) Long-Time (久) No (不) See (见) , but that’s a negligible difference.”
It’s curious that that phrase, whose origins really are unknown, doesn’t seem to be objectionable to any Chinese people, just as Kimono Day at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts wasn’t objectionable to many Japanese, some of whom demonstrated in its favor. And I doubt that more than 0.01% of people who use the “long time no see” phrase even know that its origins may be a direct translation from the Chinese.
All too often it’s those who aren’t ethnically “qualified” to judge the degree of offense produced by a phrase—like Zahra Al-Saloom—who make these lists. But just to be sure that Ms. Al-Saloom isn’t Chinese and has a Middle Eastern name, here’s her photo from her Linked In profile, which has mysteriously disappeared:
The word “woman” must also be avoided, of course, because of its second syllable. I guess the politically correct version is Womxn, although the correct pronunciation is still under discussion. Needless to say, new forms will also be needed for such words as “helmsman”, “doorman”, and the “Manx” cat.
True, but what about (TM) Mandarin itself?
And menstruation and menopause. Oh, dear. That expression, “Oh, dear” must be hurtful to those who are dear to no one.
And “history” should be replaced with “peepstory.”
So no Manischewitz at Seder next year? 🙂
“The spelling of “woman” in English has progressed over the past millennium from wīfmann[2] to wīmmann to wumman, and finally, the modern spelling woman.[3] In Old English, wīfmann meant “female human”, whereas wēr meant “male human”. Mann or monn had a gender-neutral meaning of “human”, corresponding to Modern English “person” or “someone”” (or so says Wikipedia, anyway)
Could there be an etymological connection between “women” and “womb”?
“It is a popular misconception[5] that the term “woman” is etymologically connected to “womb”. “Womb” is actually from the Old English word wambe meaning “stomach” (modern German retains the colloquial term “Wampe” from Middle High German for “potbelly”).[6][7]” (Wikipedia, again.)
Of course the Isle of Man (to which Manx refers) will have to be eliminated. The residents could move to nearby Wales. Ireland should be avoided because – it should be obvious to everyone – the residents of the Land of Ire are perpetually enraged.
BTW – there’s also the Manx Shearwater.
For some reason, I have always thought that “long time, no see” was an American Indian stereotype.
Yes, that was my thought also. If they wanted a phrase to insult Asians, they should have gone with “Love you long time”. LOL
I think you meant “Ruv you Wrong time”
Oxford Dictionaries reckons that the phrase “long time no see” is in fact of Native American origin !
They also note that it is of offensive origin !
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/18/9-words-with-offensive-origins/
Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary entry itself doesn’t completely believe the Native American origin, other than perhaps as making fun of nonstandard English from a non-native speaker. They claim for the origin (everything within square brackets is from oed.com accessed on November 14, 9:30PM UTC)
[Apparently < Chinese Pidgin English, after Chinese hǎojiǔ bú jiàn ( < hǎojĭu long (time), lit. ‘good long (time)’ + bù not, no + jiàn to see, meet) and (with a different word for ‘not’) hǎojĭu méi jiàn .
A North American Indian origin is unlikely, as isolating constructions of this kind do not normally occur in the agglutinating languages of North America; quot. 1894 appears to reflect indiscriminate attribution of a nonstandard expression to a non-native speaker of English.]
Most of the people I mix with are Chinese (all immigrants with Chinese or Cantonese as their mother tongues) and have from time to time greeted me in English with ‘Long time, no see,’ and I greeted them with ‘Hao jiu, bu jian.’ It all seems quite innocuous.
Oops. For some reason, WEIT (or WordPress)occasionally confuses me with my wife. That post by Pui Wah was really by Kiwi Dave.
Thanks, Kemosabe.
Ha ha ha!
I’m surprised the Ninja Turtles are still around. I guess the pecksniffs just haven’t found out about them yet.
I once saw an amusing greetings card which had the caption “The Lone Ranger, long since retired, makes an unpleasant discovery”.
The picture showed a fat bewhiskered old man, sitting in an overstuffed armchair by a bookcase with a book open in his hands. Hanging on pegs on the wall behind him were a white Stetson, a black mask and a pair of holstered six-guns. The spine of the book said “Indian Dictionary”, and a thought-bubble above the man’s head said “Ah, here it is. ‘Kemosabe’: Apache word for a horse’s rear end. What the heck?!”.
From blog. Oxforddictionaries .com
Long time, no see: Another phrase imitative of the syntax of pidgin English, long time no see was originally meant as a humorous interpretation of a Native American greeting, used after a prolonged separation. The current earliest citation recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) comes from W.F. Drannan’s book Thirty-one Years on Plains (1901): ‘When we rode up to him [sc. an American Indian] he said: ‘Good mornin. Long time no see you’.
I suppose that if one uses a word or phrase from French or Latin, one is demeaning the French or the citizens of the Roman Empire. Caveat emptor, s’il vous plait!
Reminds me of a cartoon of someone berating Caesar by saying, “Salad! that’s all you’re going to be remembered as!”
Of course the line, “my salad days” always made me laugh in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
The termites’ tummies are rumbling
This is seems like madness but I guess “long time no see” could cause genuine offence to some people – especially if preceded by a loud “Hilloo dair!” with jazz hands.
I think the evidence that it comes from Mandarin Chinese (or a Native American’s broken English as Oxford Dictionaries implies), is extremely weak.
It reminds me of the patterns I would perceive when I was learning a foreign language that seemed to make sense given a small sample of words, but which turned out to just be coincidences upon examining more words.
It also reminds me of people who assume a white person with big hair must be emulating an afro and thus racist, because they’re ignorant of the many ways hair has been worn in the decades before they were born – in the very lifetimes of the adults that they’re self-righteously “calling out”…
I never even thought about this phrase. I wonder if “chop chop” is bad too. I have no idea where that comes from. Or my favourite, “heads down, bums up!”.
I’ve always assumed that “heads down, bums up!” was Australian as it captures both their irreverent sense of humor and their “down under” geography.
The pidgin English song “Happy Talk” was omitted from the 2001 HBO remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein “South Pacific” on the grounds that it was racist.
But there are ways of staging it that rescue it quite well as noted in this New York Times editorial
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04fri4.html
“I left the theater thinking that it was wrong to assume that dead white men had nothing useful to say about race. Cringe if you want to at the stereotypes and Orientalism, but the team that gave 1950s America several primers on Asia and the Pacific doesn’t have a lot to apologize for. ”
Here’s a marvelous modern rendition of it.
https://youtu.be/YrG5TJgCsgM
‘Émile: I have eight daughters, with four women.
Nellie: That’s interesting.
Émile: One woman was Polynesian.
Nellie: One was WHAT?’
Well, golly gosh, just suppose one of them had been Melanesian. 🙁 Melanesians are way, way blacker than Polynesians. And given that ‘South Pacific’ was set in Melanesia – the Solomons or Vanuatu, probably – not what I’d call the ‘South Pacific’ at all, that title has always confused me – Emile was being quite choosy not to have hooked up with one of the local frizzy-haired Melanesians.
But then Bloody Mary in that video doesn’t look remotely north Vietnamese to me (she looks like American black), though Liat could at a stretch look half-Viet half-Melanesian (with the Melanesian predominating). But her hand movements looked like a Tahitian or Cook Islands slow dance to me (which is not to say that it couldn’t be Melanesian, I guess).
My main impression is that the writers or producers were a bit – confused.
So it niggles me. I don’t care about cultural appropriation but I care a little 1about authenticity.
cr
(Just an aside, to check what Bloody Mary should have looked like I googled ‘Tonkinese girls’ – and got a page full of cats. So I tried ‘Tonkin people’ and got a page of Phoebe Tonkin, whoever she is.)
Years ago I was standing near three women on a Los Angeles street corner, all of us waiting for a green light.
The women were debating about which club or restaurant they would be going to that evening.
Finally, one of them told the others, “Anywhere you guys want to do is OK with me.”
Nowadays, perhaps somebody else within earshot would “hunt down” the offender and “hang [her] for [her] crimes” (per Warren Zevon). And receive a medal for doing so from others similarly inclined
Seriously. Everybody but those looking to be offended accepts the phrase “you guys” as meaning “all of you.” We cannot continue divorcing words and phrases from context and history just to find new things to be offended about.
I and, as far as I can tell, everyone I’ve ever known has used that phrase, and nobody has ever even thought to consider it offensive. Nor “mankind,” nor “freshman,” etc.
When I first heard “guys” from a group of gals, I felt a brief pang of outrage at their appropriation of what was clearly a men’s word. I’m over it now. LOL
You might think you’re over it, but you’re just repressing your trauma. You need to see a counselor immediately. Your mental health depends on it.
One of my female staff, back in the day when I was running a small organisation, did complain to me about my use of “guys” to address the group collectively in team meanings. “Okay, guys, we need to do such and such this week…” or whatever. Even if I thought it was silly, there was no point in offending my own staff whom I relied on to get stuff done for me, so I immediately stopped saying it. This was over 20 years ago, so it’s a longstanding issue for some people, not something new.
That said, I do think “guys” is now pretty much generic as an informal way to talk to a group (and was even then in the mid-1990s), and I do hear many women address each other, or mixed-sex groups, in that way. So, on balance I think it’s fine, but in the unlikely event that I ever again found myself in a managerial position I’d probably still personally avoid using it in a work setting.
I believe that “you guys” is well on its way to having no gender. I hear groups of women use it to refer to themselves all the time. Hardly anyone says “gals” any more. Right, gals?
If we can all agree that “guys” has no gender, then we remove the burden of having to determine the sex mixture of the group entirely. We can avoid the difficult “guys and gals” or “people” for mixed groups. We’ll have to ignore the gender pronoun aficionados but I’m happy to do that.
What do SJW Spanish speakers do? If there’s one “guy” amongst one hundred “gals” the convention is that they should say “amigos” instead of “amigas”? Of course, “guys and gals” is so binary…!
The “X” factor seems to have taken over Spanish language gender designations, at least with the SJWs here in the states, so we have “Latinx”. Would it be then “amigx” or something like that? How far will this insanity go?
And this Latinx, at least as I’ve heard it from native and non-native speakers alike, is pronounced as “Latin ex,” not with the stress on the “i” as if it were Latíno and Latína, so to me, Latin x sounds very strange, i.e., it doesn’t sound Latin — it ain’t culturally correct to me.
Somehow, I doubt that this will catch on in the greater Spanish speaking world.
I had just assumed it was pronounced “la-TEEN-ex,” since that would obviously make the most sense. Then again, I’m 99% sure that the people who came up with it and spread it were probably a bunch of people who don’t speak español.
That is an ageist comment
How about, “Hey, you gynecologists!”?
I think “you guys” is pretty close to generic; I’ve overheard women use it to refer to other women in the aggregate.
The only equivalent I can think of is “guys and gals.” Now, “gals” sounds kinda old-fashioned to me, like something people from my parents’ generation might’ve said. I will write “gals” or “gal” on rare occasion, in instances where I’m referring to women or a particular woman, and would use “guys” or “guy” were I referring to men or a man — or, more often, in the conjunctive phrase “guys and gals” (particularly since the alternative, “guys and girls,” does seem sexist to me). But I rarely actually say “gal” out loud because it sounds corny to my ear.
Come to think of it, most of the time when I write it, it’s because I’m aiming for a bit of a corny or old-fashioned sound.
I say “you guys” all the time to refer to all genders. I am also trying to get “yous” brought into the mainstream English vernacular.
In that case, yous guys should move to Brooklyn.
Yes but it’s considered proletariat in Brooklyn. I’m trying to get it to cross all classes.
“Yous” is only acceptable if you live in Chicago.
In Pittsburghese, “yins” (or “yuns”) is the accepted second-person plural.
You beat me too it as I was typing.
In the Appalachian South, it is “you’uns.”
(A Pennsylvania native told me that some refer to certain parts of the state as “Pennsyltucky.” I.e., a hybrid with Kentucky.)
Also, I heard a restaurant hostess once say in my East Tennessee hometown, “Git your’unes waters ready.” (Sounds exactly like, “urines-is.”) In other words, everyone fill your glasses with water and ice for the “rush” soon to come.
Also in the Youngstown of my youth.
Practically western Pa, anyway. 🙂
What are yinz talking about?
Whaddayou, some kinda jagoff? 🙂
I have been pushing “y’all”, and I think I am making some headway.
I find I hear “you guys” used all the time by women (my sister, her friends,s my wife and friends, female co-workers, examples from tv shows…). And used, as Diana says, for all genders.
I’d say I hear it at least as often from women as from men.
Yes, ‘guys’ has long since become gender-neutral, even for groups entirely composed of girls. (And ‘girl’ has long since come to include adult women i.e. it’s become age-neutral. That may be British usage, I can’t speak for American).
cr
NONONO! The simpler explanation is that they have internalized the misogyny imposed by the patriarchy that permeates the west.
Yes! Your are certainly correct! Last time I internalized some misogyny I was sick for a week.
Well, it is toxic.
A retired professor friend here at Portland State University told me she was sent to sensitivity training for inadvertently using the phrase “Okie dokie.” This was probably 10+ years ago.
Oh my. I think if that happened to me, I’d resign out of annoyance. I understand why a professor wouldn’t though.
Was she teaching Grapes of Wrath in an American Lit class?
Is it better or worse if you add “Artichokey” to the end?
Worse, I’m guessing, since the California Central Coast where so many Oklahoma migrant farmers wound up during the Dust Bowl –Steinbeck country — is home to the Artichoke Center of the World. 🙂
What is the bloody problem with “Okie-Dokie”? That has been my best conceivable sunny, chipper, optimistic reply to some chip-on-the-shoulder yahoo nimrod Philistine whom I’ve tried to placate, for the sake of keeping the bloody peace, during family and other get-togethers during the holiday season.
“[F]rom her Linked In profile, which has mysteriously disappeared”? Long time no see, hopefully?
If anyone has a problem with “long time, no see” it oughta be the blind, shouldn’t it?
Vision challenged, I think you mean.
I didn’t realize until adult age that being blind doesn’t neccessarily mean you can’t see anything at all. Now I know that being “blind” is on a spectrum and you can actually see blurry shapes and colors and still be considered blind.
So I think visually impaired is a better word and a more informative and less ambigious term.
Unless, of course, you actually do mean blind.
This is (yet another?) case where the technical usage and the common usage diverge.
cr
Many say “legally blind” when they want to say that they don’t see well enough to drive but still have partial vision. As usual, meaning depends on context.
Agreed that it’s all in the context.
cr
When I read the headline, I tried to think of ways the phrase could be offensive before continuing. That was the only one I could muster. The real reason ended up being far more foolish.
That’s cultural appropriation from those who require corrective lenses.
I’ve never heard ‘freshman’ used in the UK; ‘fresher’ is ubitiquous, and the OED dates it back to 1882. I suspect it’s an example of the Oxford ‘-er’, and wasn’t designed to be gender neutral at all, but works well, without resorting to the boring ‘first-year’. It seems a good solution for the USA.
My (female) Canadian cousins were using “you guys” to mean girls as well as boys back in the late 70s.
And of course ‘dorm’ means somewhere you sleep. Not that I can see there’s anything exclusive or inclusive about it; it’s just the meaning, and derivation.
“Long time no see” seems fine to me; I’ve never heard any accent put on for it, or any implication about anyone it’s said by or to, and this is the first time I’ve heard about the derivation from Mandarin.
In my (sorry) freshman year at college, my residence hall (dorm) should have been named after Puccini’s tenor aria in “Turandot,” “Nessun Dorma.” Which is to say, no one could count on getting a good night’s sleep there, what with all the late adolescence wild-child Philistine caterwauling and ululating that took place at all hours.
I think that residence hall cloistered quietude and tranquility, and proximity to class (in addition to knowing why one is attending college in the first place), ought to be top priorities in determining what college one should attend. That’s what I would seriously look at were I to do it over. A pox on all this campus noise! Not all Ivy League Ph.D.’s can find a position or tenure in the Ivy League. Seems one take the influence of ones “Har-vard-ness” to any university across “the fruited plain.”
I’ve never seen it either, and it was one of the famous sayings I’ve heard since childhood and always wondered where it was from.
I had always assumed some character in some 1960s-early 1980s character had used it in a movie or TV show I’d never seen.
Oh no, I have to change my last name!?!
Sorry, Jenny Hoffperson. All privileged people need to make sacrifices.
I remember decades ago, when the ‘person’ thing first reared its ugly head, a British car mag referring to the founder of Lotus as ‘Colin Personperson’.
cr
(*Chapman, for the automotively non-literate 😉
Shouldn’t that be ‘perchild’?
Ohmigods, you’re right. ‘Person’ includes a sneaky reference to the male gender.
The influence of surreptitious maleness is pervasive. It’s a minefield.
cr
Excellent 😀 But you should have used Graham Chapman. Graham Chapman is best Chapman.
She’ll have to change it to purwoman. Assuming “Jenny” is female. I suppose it’s sexist to assume that, just as it’s sexist to assume a William or Jonathan is a male.
So…when does the first “gender-neutral, all-inclusive” book of baby names appear? We could name babies after minerals which are non-living, non-sexed objects.
“Hi Rocky!”
“Hi Saltpeter! Long time no see.”
I’ll take offense with “A countless amount of words and phrases”. 🙂
Why not just “Countless words and phrases”?
And surely ‘number’ not ‘amount’.
The phrase
“That’s mighty white of you”
is no longer acceptable to say as a thank you to someone who has done you a nice favor or given you a complement.
Now, that one’s a bit hard to defend on race-neutral grounds, OG, gotta say.
I concur. I always thought that was a stupid phrase anyway. Sort of invites a cynical reflection on what being ‘white’ means. ‘Stuck up, bigoted, privileged, racially superior snob’ is what immediately comes to mind in the context of anyone who would use that as a term of approbation.
I hasten to add that I don’t think all white people are like that.
cr
Mighty white of you to add that last paragraph, ii. 🙂
That’s the problem with celebrity – it makes everything about you ‘visible’. Disappearing tweets, memberships and posts is far more difficult than the Ministry of Truth would have you believe.
The Epicureans had a motto which translates as “Live Unknown!”. Perhaps they were on to something?
It’s cool mottoes like “live unknown” that made the Epicureans famous. 🙂
The problem with doing as Epicurus recommended here is that then the people who run things can just screw you over without consulting you. Political activity at least gives one a chance at getting justice. (Even if small.)
Those who worry overmuch about microaggressions may become nonplussed when they eventually encounter a macro-aggression.
That is funny, I could guess that it was Mandarin! As coincidence would have it I read this the other day:
“When a language seems especially telegraphic, usually another factor has come into play: Enough adults learned it at a certain stage in its history that, given the difficulty of learning a new language after childhood, it became a kind of stripped-down “schoolroom” version of itself.”
“By contrast, only a few languages have been taken up as vehicles of empire and imposed on millions of unsuspecting and underqualified adults. Long-dominant Mandarin, then, is less “busy” than Cantonese and Taiwanese, which have been imposed on fewer people. English came out the way it did because Vikings, who in the first millennium forged something of an empire of their own in northern and western Europe, imposed themselves on the Old English of the people they invaded and, as it were, mowed it. German, meanwhile, stayed “normal.””
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/complex-languages/489389/
If I were Australian, I would call Zahra a cunt but since I’m not, I can’t without being guilty of cultural appropriation of that quintessentially Australian term of endearment. 🙂