Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 273 posts

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#261

Post by jahaja »

rayiner wrote: post #257
jahaja wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedi…

This isn’t about using a gender neutral pronoun with respect to a specific person. It’s about English-speaking people trying to change the label used for an entire group of mostly immigrant people by slicing and dicing a Spanish word and adding an English ending to it. It’s like if I started calling you “Swedix.”

> It’s like if I started calling you “Swedix.”

It would be comparable if English already divided up in Swedish and Swedishess or similar.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#262

Post by jahaja »

rayiner wrote: post #258
jahaja wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut. This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

> This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. Don’t you see how that makes it worse? The English word-Latin—is already gender neutral! Americans adopted “Latino” as gesture to the large number of Spanish speakers living in America. It’s not just…

But "Latin" is ambiguous and normally not used to describe people of Latin-American decent, at least not in Europe, and the emphasis in America seem to be towards Spanish speaking countries rather than the Latin/Romance languages as a whole.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#263

Post by jahaja »

xyzzyz wrote: post #255
jahaja wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut. This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

> Why did you skip the Swedish example? Because I don't know anything about Swedish language :) > This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. Which is silly, because "Latinos" is already gender neutral in its actual use, both in Spanish and in English. It declenses in Spanish using masculine form, but as the above example of chair a…

> It does in the case of the word "latinos", but it only says that the group is not all-female: this is the gender neutral form.

And that requires information about a groups composition ahead of time doesn't it?

Anyway, I think it's important to remember that this is English speaking folks that are trying to be more inclusive and finding "Latinos" to refer primarily to a group of males. They may even disagree with the original preference of Spanish to go with Latinos over Latinas for a mixed composition.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#264

Post by dragonwriter »

xyzzyz wrote: post #255
jahaja wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut. This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

> Why did you skip the Swedish example? Because I don't know anything about Swedish language :) > This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. Which is silly, because "Latinos" is already gender neutral in its actual use, both in Spanish and in English. It declenses in Spanish using masculine form, but as the above example of chair a…

> It does in the case of the word "latinos", but it only says that the group is not all-female:

It doesn't even say that; it only means that the groups is not known to be all-female, as the masculine grammatical gender is used for indeterminate as well as mixed human gender.

> The above is, of course, absurd, just like the word "Latinxs". Just use the word Latinos, which is already gender neutral, if you happen to care about it.

Or, since Latinx is an adjective (not a noun), use “Latin” which American English, at least, already did before adopting the Spanish Latino/Latina. If we're dropping it for a non-Spanish gender-neutral English adjective with the same meaning, why not revert to the one we were using before that was only dropped to respect the language of the described population?

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#265

Post by uoaei »

xyzzyz wrote: post #216
uoaei wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those limits exist for the same reason the US can't just spend as much money as we want it to -- the threat of runaway inflation. If one member state spends "too much" (i.e., injects "too much" money into circulation), it challenges and threatens the economic capacity of other member states because it devalues the Euro because the Euro is less scarce than it was. And there are no "EU taxes," only taxes paid to each m…

> If one member state spends "too much" (i.e., injects "too much" money into circulation), it challenges and threatens the economic capacity of other member states because it devalues the Euro because the Euro is less scarce than it was. This would make sense if only Eurozone members were part of the Stability and Growth pact, but as it turns out, other EU countries like Sweden or Poland, which neither are part of no…

They participate in much the same economy, however, so money flows even across currency lines must be managed.

It is like trade agreements anywhere else, but internalized into the EU's bureaucratic infrastructure.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#266

Post by uoaei »

nobody9999 wrote: post #230
uoaei wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, kind of, but the style of quoting at the head of your comments is typically used on this site to address specific points as part of a back-and-forth, not just "I'm introducing my own thoughts to this discussion, divorced from the course of conversation this has followed so far." You don't need to quote the comment you're replying to because your reply hangs off my comment already. If you had posted your comme…

You asked: >What do you think about the concept of "trickle-up economics"? And so I answered your question. If that was confusing to you, that's unfortunate and I'm sorry that the way I quoted you made you unable to comprehend the next twelve paragraphs of my post.

I didn't ask you, did I?

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#267

Post by jelliclesfarm »

ardy42 wrote: post #236
nradov wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many HN users have no idea how businesses operate outside the software sector. Many of those "non-essential" businesses and the associated supply chains are simply not set up in a way that can be stopped and then successfully restarted months later. If they're shut down for any significant period then they're gone for good. Crashing the economy into another Great Depression would kill more people than the virus.…

> Many of those "non-essential" businesses and the associated supply chains are simply not set up in a way that can be stopped and then successfully restarted months later. If they're shut down for any significant period then they're gone for good. Honestly, that sounds like hyperbole. You'll have to give examples, and not something like retail or restaurants. Honestly, with a little imagination and expertise (and mo…

Example: dry cleaners.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#268

Post by xyzzyz »

jahaja wrote: post #263
xyzzyz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did you skip the Swedish example? Because I don't know anything about Swedish language :) > This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. Which is silly, because "Latinos" is already gender neutral in its actual use, both in Spanish and in English. It declenses in Spanish using masculine form, but as the above example of chair a…

> It does in the case of the word "latinos", but it only says that the group is not all-female: this is the gender neutral form. And that requires information about a groups composition ahead of time doesn't it? Anyway, I think it's important to remember that this is English speaking folks that are trying to be more inclusive and finding "Latinos" to refer primarily to a group of males. They may even disagree with th…

> And that requires information about a groups composition ahead of time doesn't it?

No, because when you know nothing about composition of the group, you use the gender neutral form (masculine) instead of feminine one.

> English speaking folks that are trying to be more inclusive and finding "Latinos" to refer primarily to a group of males.

When American use the word “people”, it primarily refers to groups of Americans. Should they be more inclusive and invent a term, say, maybe peoplxs, that includes also non-Americans? That’s absurd, of course.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#269

Post by jahaja »

xyzzyz wrote: post #268
jahaja wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does in the case of the word "latinos", but it only says that the group is not all-female: this is the gender neutral form. And that requires information about a groups composition ahead of time doesn't it? Anyway, I think it's important to remember that this is English speaking folks that are trying to be more inclusive and finding "Latinos" to refer primarily to a group of males. They may even disagree with th…

> And that requires information about a groups composition ahead of time doesn't it? No, because when you know nothing about composition of the group, you use the gender neutral form (masculine) instead of feminine one. > English speaking folks that are trying to be more inclusive and finding "Latinos" to refer primarily to a group of males. When American use the word “people”, it primarily refers to groups of Americ…

> When American use the word “people”, it primarily refers to groups of Americans. Should they be more inclusive and invent a term, say, maybe peoplxs, that includes also non-Americans? That’s absurd, of course.

Sorry, but this makes no sense to me at all.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#270

Post by nobody9999 »

uoaei wrote: post #266
nobody9999 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked: >What do you think about the concept of "trickle-up economics"? And so I answered your question. If that was confusing to you, that's unfortunate and I'm sorry that the way I quoted you made you unable to comprehend the next twelve paragraphs of my post.

I didn't ask you, did I?

Given that it's a public forum, you asked everyone.
Post reply on HN