I’ve lived in Lake Geneva, Madison, and Boulder. I know two, um make that now, 3 black people in town. One is my physician. Another is 1st-chair cellist in our symphony orchestra. The new third is the new pharmacist.
Inner-city craziness and urban blight just isn’t part of the profile.
Oh wait, I know another semi-black person. Co-worker, so programmer. Father is a (white) Belgian diplomat. Mother is a black lady from the Congo IIRC. I imagine he counts if Obama does.
And he’s actually a friend who’s been over to my house plenty of times. You can see how much I think about race by the fact that I even forgot to count him.
My son went to the creationist's kid's birthday party yesterday. I had been joking that we should get him a book about dinosaurs, but someone actually did!
This is not limited to English, by the way. Ever wondered where Sasha comes from? That's a Slavic diminutive of Alexander (an even more obscure one is Shura). Speaking about Russian specifically, Grusha is the diminutive of Agrippina; Kostya of Konstantin; Misha of Mikhail; Nadya of Nadeshda; Kolya of Nikolai; Ksyusha of Ksenia; Masha of Maria or Marianne; Lyowa of Leo; Dasha of Darya; Zhenya of Evgeni; Pasha or Pavlik of Pavel; Senya of Arseni; Seryozha of Sergei; Asya or Nastya of Anastasia; Volodya of Vladimir; etc. — RegDwighтJan 14 '11 at 9:58
It's kind of hard to explain to Americans because while you do have diminutives, which not all languages do, you actually are perfectly comfortable with officially naming your children Dick and Bill.
It seems weird to me. All the Dicks and Bills in my family, of which there are many are all really Richard and William, but nobody ever calls them that except when really torqued off.
Yeah but once a "diminuitive" has been around enough it becomes a first-class name all on its own. Like any other word, going through its "non-standard-but-everyone-uses-it" phase
And to top it off, even Tatyana and Antonina, the full names, are not really considered full by the law, or in terms of politeness. That's what the complete names with patronymicals are there for.
"How do you spell Katherine?" "It depends on the person." "No, I mean, how do you spell your name?" "K. I. T." "No, your given name." "K. I. T." "It's not short for Katherine? Or Kathleen?" punches other person in face "No. It's not."
So your official address would be Tatyana Alexeyevna, or Antonina Nikitichna, then the semi-official Tatyana or Antonina, the casual, between close friends, Tanya and Tonya, and then there are countless diminutives still of those ones, which are used to either mock and bully or as terms of endearment.
@RegDwighт I honestly never understood the social rules for using — or not using — the full patronymic in your culture. I feel like there are norms there of which I am ignorant.
@KitFox that's how a mother might address her child, or a grandmother her grandchild, or a close friend a close friend, or a drunkard a fellow drunkard.
Well, there is, of course, a literal translation for both Sir and Madam, but try using those and you will look like you just escaped from the 17th century, or from a booby hatch, or are about to be put in one.
When you don't know a person's name, the polite form of address is the plural second-person pronoun. Kind of like the German Sie or the Spanish Usted, which of course are not second-person plural.
@KitFox Sounds good to me, we'll gladly accept them if they're well-written questions :) I'll post the link in our mod chat room as well though. Another thing: we've wondered if it might be a good idea to have a join EL&U/ELL mod chat room for situations just like these, since the sites are related.
@KitFox I'm not sure, I know when waiwai made our room he had to specifically invite us so we could see it. I guess all mods could be cross-invited to the two rooms? Not sure.
Haha, okay sounds good! I know something came up last week that we wanted to discuss with you guys (ended up just talking to waiwai I think) and then now this, so it might be a good idea.