[erlang-questions] erlang-questions Digest, Vol 360, Issue 5

[Roman Galeev]

> how offensive this particular word is to people who speak American
English.

There are offensive words in Russian, and they even form a sublanguage
named 'mat'. But you can't find something like this http://coonlabs.com/
<https://mltrk.io/link/http%3A%2F%2Fcoonlabs.com%2F/GEcpm9pL4x4ePNgwJw0H>
with any of such words, this is simply not possible.

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 6:22 PM, Onorio Catenacci <Catenacci@REDACTED>
wrote:

> A few thoughts:
>
> 1.) As a native speaker of American English, trust me the word "coon" is
> extremely offensive.  I'm not trying to be hyperbolic but it's my
> impression that to African-Americans this word is almost as offensive as
> the N word is. I'm not a SJW and I'm not politically correct. I simply
> don't have any good reason to likely offend people when a less offensive
> term (like "Racoon") is easily available to use.  If you don't speak
> American English natively, trust me this is not a case of someone being
> hypersensitive.  It's a very offensive word.
>
> 2.) It looks like Valery simply decide to build Rebar3/Hex/Mix etc. with
> Python.  That's perfectly fine.  I'm not seeing anything much on there
> other than "we decided to rebuild rebar3 with python" and "we're going to
> build packages to work with our new build system" but it doesn't look as if
> they have yet.
>
> 3.) I also agree with Fred and others who say that all this discussion on
> the subtleties of political correctness and freedom of expression will get
> lost outside of this mailing list.  All this would do is give a black eye
> to the Erlang community and convince people who don't know any better than
> some segment of developers who use Erlang are racists.  Fair or not that's
> what will happen. Of course who ever said life is fair?
>
> I wish I had a better grasp of the native language of some folks on this
> list so I could express how offensive this particular word is to people who
> speak American English.  Maybe if I said to Valery I were going to build a
> library named " КГБ" that might give some idea of how loaded with
> negative meaning the word "Coon" is in English. The fact that lots of
> Russian folks might find that particular phrase offensive--well they need
> to stop being so sensitive right?
>
> If you want to continue with this library, please simply change the name
> to "Racoon." This is not about offending or not offending anyone.  Its
> about giving people the wrong impression by picking a name with a negative
> meaning in American English. Or if you insist on using "Coon" then use the
> word in whatever your native language is for "Racoon".
>
> I'll put it this way: I wouldn't name a library "Bitch".  Yes, it refers
> to a female dog.  But it's more commonly used as an offensive way to
> describe a female that one doesn't like.
>
> I also wouldn't name a library "Ass". That word can refer to a donkey but
> it's so overwhelmingly identified with a pejorative slang term that native
> speakers wouldn't think "donkey"--they'd think the other thing.
>
> --
> Onorio Catenacci
>
> http://onor.io
> http://www.google.com/+OnorioCatenacci
>
>
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>
>


-- 
With best regards,
     Roman Galeev,
     +420 702 817 968
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