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So, I've been mulling this about.
As we all know, it has fairly suddenly become perfectly acceptable for young people to address each other as what we oldsters in horror refer to as "the N word" as long as they say "nigger" with a soft "r;" i.e., "niggah."
Now, the linguist in me believes that "niggah" isn't its own word; it's just nigger pronounced with a soft r, as nigger is pronounced in many dialects of English.
However -
nig -GAH - with the acCENT on the wrong sylLAble - arguably is its own word - and therefore its acceptability is heretofore not decided.
So...
When a flag is thrown in an NFL game going forward, because some referee has thought he has heard the word nigger -
Are we going to see, for example, Bill Belecheck running out onto the field and screaming at a flag throwing referee "my player didn't say nigger - he said 'nig-GAH' - it's its own word, and is a completely different word."
The banishment of "fag'" and also probably "faggot" is problematic in its own right.
If, let's say, Tom Brady, gets flagged for saying fag, is he going to affect a British accent, and say, "no, I didn't mean fag as in homosexual - my wife is a European supermodel, and I said fag as in cigarette - because I'm jonesing for a fag."
A lot of people from our beautiful Great Lakes Midwest pronounce fag as "faig" with a hard "a" sound.
So when a football player from the NFL Midwest gets flagged for fag, will he say "no - I didn't say faig - I said 'fake.' I thought the other team was running a fake."
The Yiddish word for fag is 'fagala;' is that going to be banned?
And if so, why wouldn't any player who was flagged for fagala just claim to be Islamic, and say "no, I didn't say fagala - I said "Thank Allah."?
As we all know, it has fairly suddenly become perfectly acceptable for young people to address each other as what we oldsters in horror refer to as "the N word" as long as they say "nigger" with a soft "r;" i.e., "niggah."
Now, the linguist in me believes that "niggah" isn't its own word; it's just nigger pronounced with a soft r, as nigger is pronounced in many dialects of English.
However -
nig -GAH - with the acCENT on the wrong sylLAble - arguably is its own word - and therefore its acceptability is heretofore not decided.
So...
When a flag is thrown in an NFL game going forward, because some referee has thought he has heard the word nigger -
Are we going to see, for example, Bill Belecheck running out onto the field and screaming at a flag throwing referee "my player didn't say nigger - he said 'nig-GAH' - it's its own word, and is a completely different word."
The banishment of "fag'" and also probably "faggot" is problematic in its own right.
If, let's say, Tom Brady, gets flagged for saying fag, is he going to affect a British accent, and say, "no, I didn't mean fag as in homosexual - my wife is a European supermodel, and I said fag as in cigarette - because I'm jonesing for a fag."
A lot of people from our beautiful Great Lakes Midwest pronounce fag as "faig" with a hard "a" sound.
So when a football player from the NFL Midwest gets flagged for fag, will he say "no - I didn't say faig - I said 'fake.' I thought the other team was running a fake."
The Yiddish word for fag is 'fagala;' is that going to be banned?
And if so, why wouldn't any player who was flagged for fagala just claim to be Islamic, and say "no, I didn't say fagala - I said "Thank Allah."?
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