What I'm not seeing anybody mentioning is how hard that kind of stuff make it to speak English for non-native speakers.
Coming from French, it's already weird enough that you're allowed to say "n word" or "s word" but not the actual words, as if it was some loophole. That's just not done in French, at least in Quebec. In Quebec, you say the word, you don't or for swear words people use a slightly transformed version of the swear word (like saying shout instead of shit or Oh my gosh instead of Oh my god), but mentioning the word indirectly just isn't a thing.
You're considered evil if you refer to a non-binary person by he or she... but in French there is literally no polite non-gendered pronoun. Our "they" is also gendered. The result is you're seen as mean for thinking in French and just translating as you go. You basically have to think in English to be politically correct, which is pretty hard to do.
Or even the fact that in English black people can say the n word but not white people.
Or the fact you can call Australians Aussies and New-Zealanders kiwis, but calling Japanese people Japs is super racist. I haven't ever seen seen something like that in French so it gets really confusing.
I feel like keeping track of all these intricate rules is basically harder than learning English itself and by adding even more, they're accentuating a class divide between native and non-native speakers.
> ...they're accentuating a class divide between native and non-native speakers.
Possibly even a class divide amongst native speakers: those with the time to ponder and research acceptable terminology and those without. I suspect the typical rejoinder there is something along the lines of "Well, society should be made more equal to prevent those without", conveniently ignoring the near geologic time it will take to get there.
Coming from French, it's already weird enough that you're allowed to say "n word" or "s word" but not the actual words, as if it was some loophole. That's just not done in French, at least in Quebec. In Quebec, you say the word, you don't or for swear words people use a slightly transformed version of the swear word (like saying shout instead of shit or Oh my gosh instead of Oh my god), but mentioning the word indirectly just isn't a thing.
You're considered evil if you refer to a non-binary person by he or she... but in French there is literally no polite non-gendered pronoun. Our "they" is also gendered. The result is you're seen as mean for thinking in French and just translating as you go. You basically have to think in English to be politically correct, which is pretty hard to do.
Or even the fact that in English black people can say the n word but not white people. Or the fact you can call Australians Aussies and New-Zealanders kiwis, but calling Japanese people Japs is super racist. I haven't ever seen seen something like that in French so it gets really confusing.
I feel like keeping track of all these intricate rules is basically harder than learning English itself and by adding even more, they're accentuating a class divide between native and non-native speakers.