On Tue, 2013-04-09 at 08:28 -0400, Carl Fink wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 02:23:11PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > > That's a description of the term "banana republic", but colloquial I use > > it for other countries with similar issues too. In Germany most people > > won't call Islamic nations that kill their own and other people "banana > > republic". When I call those nations "banana republics" the term I use > > is much more harmless, then the terms that are usually used to describe > > such countries. > > Ralf, that's not what "banana republic" means. It refers to ... well, read > the Wiki article. You can't just redefine the word because you wish it meant > something else. "Corruption-riddled states ruled by strongmen" are just > that, not "banana republics".
We could go more and more off-topic about how semantics of words differs by colloquial language and even how it differs for scientific and philosophical terms. The original email fits to the behaviour of "banana republic" and of "Corruption-riddled states ruled by strongmen", the context should have made clear what I meant. More important than semantics of the individual term is the context of the words. If somebody completely uneducated does use words in a completely wrong way, the context still could make clear what he wants to say. "civilized" is also a very vague term ;), but I also wrote about "witch-hunting" ... a witch isn't male, so also a wrong term? ;D So, office work is finished, I go off-line within the next minutes and try to make music with "SABOTAGE(D) OPEN SOURCE" only. Btw. what's wrong with continue such discussions at the off-topic list? Is this list useless? I'm subscribed to this list. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1365512523.2607.162.camel@archlinux
