askchapo

22845 readers

209 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net

replaceable@hexbear.net

VILenin@hexbear.net

EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net

SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net

ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net

khizuo@hexbear.net

Sulvor@hexbear.net

Derogatory terms for Usonians in your native languages? (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago by Erika3sis@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With the Norwegian government recently deciding to massively increase the US military presence in this country, I just really want to have some derogatory way of referring to Usonians in the Norwegian language. The problem is that I cannot find any good word for this: existing words fall short; foreign words I'm familiar with either don't translate well, or don't sound good when loaned, or aren't easily understood; and I'm having a hard time coming up with a brand new word to fill this gap myself.

I'm hoping that by asking here that I might be able to find some inspiration, or perhaps even be enlightened about a Norwegian-language term that I didn't know before.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah, situational context, and just as importantly gestures and gesticulation and intonation, right? Alas, if it were possible in These Material Conditions, I would absolutely try joining that VRchat community for Toki Pona that I've heard about... Or for that matter, some sort of in-person Toki Pona group might be preferable in some ways.

That said my TP is very poor, and I am certainly less diligent and far on the path than you, so getting confused was really just because of that rather than the sentences themselves necessarily being ambiguous.

we have to figure out whether "ilo toki" means computer, phone, chat program, etc in a text box with zero context

In a sense it's kind of like acronyms or initialisms, isn't it? The number of possible two-word combinations in Toki Pona and the number of possible one-to-three letter initialisms using the English alphabet are pretty close.