What do you call it?

Remove all ads!

I was just wondering (thanks to Stephen Fry) what you call people from various countries and what is correct or, at least, non-offensive.
Americans get called Yanks, Native Americans get called Red Indians, Chinese ger called Chinks...so what is correct for you?

 

I just call everybody wankers. Simple, and efficient.

 

Wow, I didn't realise you'd ever been to England!

 

I thought it was an Irish expression. Then again, if it originated in NI, establishing whom it belongs to will undoubtedly cause a flame war and result in moving the thread to ALS.

Myself, I try to address people's nationalities in their own languages (sometimes using obsolete names for the countries to get even more pretentious ) - will not do it if not absolutely sure of the pronunciation, though.

 

What's the correct way to refer to Polish people? Because I'm guessing 'damn immigrants' isn't right

 

To tell you the truth, I have been wondering myself. I believe 'Pole' is the most neutral and not frightfully formal. 'They took our jobs' should be fine, too...

 

What's Polish for Polish?

 

In genus femininum it's 'Polka', genus masculinum - 'Polak'. However, since the anglicized homonym for the latter, 'polack' is a derogatory term, the original word should not be used to avoid confusion.

I hesitated to bring this up before, but 'tis probably the only ethnic slur that makes me go berserk. Not because of the negative connotations (I have heard many stories about Polish immigrants and seen some of their behaviours myself, saying 'I was not impressed' would be an euphemism), but because of the fact that a word describing our national identity had been turned into a derogatory term... due to behaviour of some who decided to seek employment overseas. Then again... I am not that touchy, and saying 'invasion' in front of me is not risky at all!

 

Cool, does this mean we can call you Dotty as well?

 

Tehehehehe! It does seem that the name is taken.

 

I just thought of myself as English til i moved to Northern Ireland, now apparently because I'm not catholic I'm British. If i was catholic I'd be irish, despite living in exactly the same place. Very confusing. As to what people from Poland are called, we just call them polish

 

Canadians = Canucks

 

Philippines... Filipino/Filipina or Pilipino/Pilipina or Pinoy/Pinay.

Filipino/Filipina are the formal way of addressing us. The term Filipino is also used to refer to our language. An alternative term for our language is "Tagalog".

Pilipino and Pilipina are local spellings.

Pinoy and pinay are more casual terms and are acceptable if not spelled with a capital first letter.

 

Wow! That's a lot to remember. Would anyone get offended if you used one of the wrong words? Like pinoy instead of Filipino (if you got the context confused)?

 

A mate of mine refers to Americans as Septics.

 

That's fabulous! Rob refers to America as The Colon-ies

 

Not really. Perhaps some of those hard@ss politicians might... it's really hard to understand them anyway. But I doubt most Filipinos would be offended as we are proud to call ourselves Pinoys (male) or Pinays (female). But they might be surprise (in a good way) that you know to call them that.

 

How about if you mistakenly said Pinoy when refering to a woman?

 

These terms are not exactly rigid. Filipino, Pilipino and Pinoy may be used to refer to males or both genders. Some may correct you to use the "a"-word to refer to the female gender but it's not really something like calling a man "miss" or a woman "mister".

 

Is it not Polska?