Boers

Kriton Kyrimis kyrimis at cti.gr
Sat Aug 24 15:18:06 CEST 2002


SIMON:

> > I suspect that this is a double pun: Assuming that "oe" is pronounced
> > the same way in Afrikaans as it is in Dutch, what Scrooge heard was
> > not what English speakers would assume he heard by reading Don's dialog
> > ("I'm a bore"), but "I'm a boor". Either way, Scrooge's reaction to the
> > misunderstood word is appropriate!
>
> I hope that wasn't a slur on the Afrikaans race as a whole - I am of boer
> ancestory & find people make assumptions about my political & social views

Just in case the above was addressed to me, let me point out that I was
merely pointing out the two ways that an English-speaking person who
is not familiar with the word "Boer", like Scrooge seemed to be, would
perceive the word when they first heard it. Presumably, this was also
Don's intention in that gag, and if it was a slur (or, more likely,
a gibe) against anybody, it was against people who refuse to learn
foreign languages, filtering what they hear through their own language.

As for Boers being stereotyped as being associated with any kind of
political and social views, I wouldn't know anything about it.

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?"
-----




More information about the DCML mailing list