Things I learned recently

I've known people who look up every new word they learn in the dictionary but I've learned mostly by context, only really looking things up when someone asked me what something means as part of their homework or whatever. When I was learning to read my mother was pretty busy (I have nine brothers and sisters, although seven of them are younger than I am) and didn't have time to tell me what every word meant. So I would try and figure them out on my own and I did a pretty good job, although often I'll find my pronunciation sucks.

Several years ago I looked up the meaning of the word bohunk, an insult I particularly liked because it's fun to say and is rarely used, and was astonished to see it was a specific ethnic insult aimed at Hungarians. Now I don't mind friendly insults, for instance I had a friend who used to call me a blatant bonehead when I made a mistake, but calling someone names based on ethniticy or religion, etc. is off limits.

So imagine my shock when I found out that "gypped" is to gypsies as "jewed" is to Jewish people, and apparently "welsh" is to the Welsh. Yikes.

A few months ago Chris and I were talking about the Dutch have it pretty bad in popular culture. Dutch treat isn't much of a treat, Dutch courage is false courage and Dutch uncle, well I've actually forgotten what that means but you get the point.

The thing that worries me the most about these sorts of discoveries is how easy it is to hurt someone without any intent whatsoever. Hopefully the hurt person would point out the insult and then I could apologize but I think in general most people wouldn't say anything but would store it away in the "things I don't like about you file." And I think we all know what happens when that file gets full.

And on a lighter note: