Plain-English Word Finder
by Karl Jahn
I love the English language with a twofold appreciation, as an amateur linguist and prose writer. Each avocation heightens one's awareness of language as such and of one's own language in particular. This awareness enriches one's life by the beauty of which the language is capable, when well-used; on the other hand, one is also more sensitive to its ugliness when ill-used.
One class of irritant results from ignorance: the broken English of the foreigner and the uneducated native. Another class of irritant results from deliberate misuse: the linguistic engineering of the relativist-collectivist Left. To paraphrase George Orwell: "The purpose of PC-speak is not only to provide a medium of expression of the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of 'inclusiveness', but to make all other modes of thought impossible." Since the entertainment-news-education complex is almost entirely controlled by the relativist-collectivist Left, PC-speak is insidiously corrupting the language of ordinary people and even conservatives trying to resist the Left.
The process is not inevitable. It was begun deliberately, by particular, identifiable, insufferable prigs who sat around thinking up the whole set of jargon and euphemisms with which to cloud men's minds. They wrote whole books of the stuff; periodicals composed style manuals to the same end. The process can be halted and reversed the same way -- by deliberately yanking the weeds of PC-speak out of the garden of English, wherever they have already taken root. To this end, I compile this list of PC neologisms and their plain English equivalents, with commentary:
1. "affirmative action" -- reverse discrimination or racial preferences or quotas.
2. "African American" -- black. Now, let me get this straight: emphasizing the blacks' remote ancestral connection to Africa is supposed to enhance their self-esteem. Looking at Africa, one mostly sees famine, pestilence, and people hacking each other to bits with machetes. Huh?
ERROR
DOES NOT COMPUTE
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?
3. "Afrocentric" -- racist. And ironic, considering that Africans were the ones who enslaved the blacks' ancestors and sold them to Europeans.
4. "anti-immigrant" -- pro-American.
5. "Asian" -- Oriental (unless one actually does mean to include India and the Middle East and their inhabitants).
6. "diversity" -- xenocentrism* and ethnophobia.*
7. "firefighter" -- fireman. Just imagine some little firewoman trying to haul you out of a burning building when you're overcome by smoke-inhalation.
8. "gays" -- homosexuals, perverts, or sodomites. Though redeeming the word "gay" is probably a lost cause, we at least still have the noun form "gaiety" in its original sense (as opposed to "gayness"); and perhaps we can avenge the old sense by pejorating the new one -- as in, "Dude, that is so gay!"
9. "gender" -- sex. Unfortunately, the common use of "sex" as a short form of "sexual intercourse," instead of referring to the two sexes, helps push this seemingly disambiguating usage. One must bear in mind that "gender" is a grammatical term, meaning only "type" or "kind," and there are more genders than masculine and feminine -- which is precisely why the Language Commissars use it.
10. "he or she" -- he (unless the context makes it unavoidable). If anyone objects, point out that English is not the only language in the world. The Turkish, Chinese, and Japanese languages (for starters) are completely free of gender -- with genderless third-person singular pronouns, in particular: yet none of these peoples have ever been noted for their egalitarian treatment of women.
11. "the homeless" -- bums.
12. "homemaker" -- housewife. First they made "housewife" seem like a shameful thing to be, then they made up a euphemism for it. Does this make sense?
13. "homophobia" -- anti-homosexualism. Here a new term must be coined, because "homophobia" itself is entirely an invention of the homosexualists.
14. "humankind" -- either mankind or humanity.
15. "inclusiveness" -- xenocentrism* and ethnophobia*.
16. "Inuit" -- Eskimo.
17. "large" -- obese or grossly fat.
18. "Latino" -- Hispanic. Illi Latini non sunt! Portuguese, Frenchmen, Italians, etc. have as much (or as little) right to be called "Latin."
19. "mentally challenged" -- feeble-minded. This is actually a second-generation euphemism, replacing "mentally retarded," which was pejorated into "retard."
20. "multiculturalism" -- xenocentrism and ethnophobia.
21. "Native American" -- (American) Indian. Yes, of course "Indian" is a misnomer, and invites confusion with real Indians from India. But anyone born and raised in this country is a native American. Maybe we should elevate the substandard Injun -- there doesn't seem to be any reason why it should be considered derogatory; cf. "Cajun" (< Acadien).
22. "nativist" -- pro-American. Savor the irony: "Native Americans" are supposed to be proud of being such, but actual native Americans are supposed to be ashamed of it.
23. "racism" -- white people (when the term is used by Anti-Racism Commissars). In PC-speak, it is assumed that only white people can be racist, and all white people are presumed to be "racist" unless they are sufficiently self-abasing or sanctimonious in their "anti-racist" posturing.
24. "rainforest" -- jungle.
25. "Roma" -- Gypsy.
26. "senior citizens" -- old people.
27. "sensitivity" -- Political Correctness.
28. "sexism" -- manhood and womanhood.
29. "spouse abuser" -- wifebeater.
30. "street person" -- bum.
31. "transgendered person" -- weird sexual freak.
32. "undocumented immigrant" -- illegal alien.
33. "values" -- virtues or goods or opinions.
34. "wetland" -- swamp.
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