> Gary -- when I lived in Mexico, the polite term to use for indigenous
> peoples of Mexico was "indigena" -- indigenous. This was especially
> important when I was there in the 1970s since "indio" was also used to
> mean stubborn or stupid -- I heard people saying to others "no seas
> indio" basically to mean "don't be a jerk."
>
> Roberta Astroff
Roberta -- on this side of the Atlantic there is a freely-used expression :
"That's a bit 'Irish'"
<meaning: 'ridiculous', 'over the top'>. I'm hoping NATIVE-L's sister bboard
for discussing issues to do with minority languages and their speakers will
someday take a really long hard look at some of these epithets. One needn't
have any training in linguistics to contribute fruitfully to such talks!
Marion Gunn
[ The "sister bboard" to which Marion refers is the Native language mailing
list. Please send a request to me at "gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us" if you'd
like to be on it, unless you're a subscriber to an APC network system
(PeaceNet, EcoNet, GreenNet, Web, Pegasus, etc.), in which case you can
use the conference "native.lang." --Gary ]