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Yiddish root simply meant goy/non jew/gentile and was gender neutral Bill.

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ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha



( PS here in Britain oracles of propaganda tend to lean towards talking in mild regional accents now as opposed to RP. People selling upscale home improvements are still RP. Lots of marketing studies measured the responses of people from various backgrounds to different accents delivering various messages advertising and otherwise and information/news. The results were studied very seriously. The news is selling something, it's selling an agenda and usually that of the government or a powerful media magnate.

This might be part of the reason that anchormen in Germany are chosen with a reassuring laziness of speech. Everyone on earth remembers just how crisp Hitler's diction was.

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RP has almost no rhythm. It needs to be done with exceptional sensitivity to sound humble and beautiful. Normally it sounds insistent and indeed 'unquestionable'. I do not wish to dwell on Hitler but from what I have heard of his demagoguery he certainly sounds insistent.

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I dislike 'The Etymology Dictionary' intensely as a title. I would much prefer 'X's Dictionary of Etymology' Not just on general poor style but also by the insidious suggestion that it is in some way unique and therefore infallible.

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Today´s average intellectuals, from the prof. of philosophy to the journalist, seem not even light versions of their passionate and sophisticated predecessors.

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We have the same problem here in Texas. More and more people are using the sloppy and incorrect "y'all" instead of the proper and civilized "you all".

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And it will only get worse, Ruphus. Most of the younger people today, known as "Millennials," (AKA "Generation Y," who came of age around the year 2000) do not read newspapers. They get their "bite-sized" news from the internet. There is no way they get the in-depth background to events occurring by depending on the internet. And the problem is newspapers are trying to cater to them while losing money and readership. Just yesterday, the New York Times announced that it is cutting 100 newsroom positions because of overall declining print revenue. Many newspapers have simply folded up.

I know younger people who do read in-depth, both books (not electronic Nooks, but honest, bound books!) and newspapers. But the vast majority don't seem interested. When I mention books by authors from whom I learned a lot: V.S. Naipaul, Nikos Kazantzakis, Paul Bowles, the great historian Hugh Thomas, and many contemporary works of history, politics, economics, philosophy, and literature, I find they have little interest. It's not on the internet, and therefore it has no value!

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It also amuses me that many of those who call the future bleak by way of a critique based on a good understanding of the Western European/ American canon of history and culture, don't actually have a realistic grasp on cultural history. That is called irony.

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ORIGINAL: BarkellWH

But then I have thought for a long time that the problem with journalists and reporters is they all get their university degrees in "Journalism," when they ought to be studying History, Politics, and Economics. But that's a subject for another thread.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: BarkellWH

Chakrabarty. Chakrabarty seeks to contest Western intellectual hegemony, and he has used the approaches of postmodernism to criticize Eurocentrism. But the irony is that most of the elements of his critiques have been derived from Western sources. V.S. Naipaul would be amused, as he so often has written of the post-colonial world's attempts to chart an independent course, only to end up aping their former colonial masters.

Bill

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Guy, as in guy Fawkes, incidentally would have pronounced Gee in the French style and has nothing to do with meaning of the word guy which we are discussing. No one ever said 'hey you guys' with the intent of comparing them with Guy Fawkes. Very very very shoddy work to suggest that they did, obtuse even, certainly not my idea of etymology.

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ORIGINAL: BarkellWH

earlier (1836) 'grotesquely or poorly dressed person,"



Bill

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Actually, many critics who have a good understanding of the Western European/American canon of history and culture, as well as of historiography in the research and writing of history, do have a realistic grasp of cultural history. Cultural history, i.e., the application of the field of "Cultural Studies" to the writing of history, has been around for about 25 years. The field of "Cultural Studies" is not the same thing as the study of cultures. But it has been incorporated into the writing of history by various "postmodernist," "post-structuralist," and "post-colonial" writers, many of whom are not even historians. They often ignore well-recognized historiographical methods, often depending on peoples "stories," and most demonstrate a decidedly anti-Eurocentric, anti-Western, anti-Neoliberal bias. Two of their patron saints are Edward Said and the ever-dependable Michel Foucault, neither of whom were historians.

You speak of irony. Let me give you an amusing example of irony. Cultural studies and postmodernist history have found their way to the non-Western world. Yet, cultural theories and their relationship to the non-Western world remain paradoxical. A good example is the Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty. Chakrabarty seeks to contest Western intellectual hegemony, and he has used the approaches of postmodernism to criticize Eurocentrism. But the irony is that most of the elements of his critiques have been derived from Western sources. V.S. Naipaul would be amused, as he so often has written of the post-colonial world's attempts to chart an independent course, only to end up aping their former colonial masters.