Comment by sarchertech
17 hours ago
Maybe you shouldn’t sort people into allies and assholes based on whether they are willing to change decades of language use to accommodate something that doesn’t even offend you (or as you say anyone else).
I try my best not to offend anyone at work, but policing my language to match the preferences of everyone around me would be exhausting. I grew up speaking a non-prestige dialect. I have a lifetime of experience policing my words. It can be exhausting. It’s easy to underestimate the mental cost if you speak a prestige dialect.
I spent a few decades being made fun of for saying y’all. I now find it a bit weird people who would have made fun of me for using it 20 years ago now use it themselves. I’m not offended by it, but my preference would be that non-southerners don’t use it.
However, I realize that it would be a bit much to ask that of everyone I interact with. And if I did it would be insane to label people who didn’t comply assholes.
I prefer that people that people don’t use learnings instead of lessons. I prefer not to be referred to as a USian. But I don’t expect people to follow my preferences.
I don't expect either. Why is it unreasonable to say, "I'd prefer something other than USian"?
> Why is it unreasonable to say, "I'd prefer something other than USian"?
Not the person you're replying to, but my take on it: because in the grand scheme of things it's small potatoes, and putting even a minor burden onto someone else to change their language seems unreasonable and unnecessary.
You clearly do have expectations if you are classifying people who don’t meet them as assholes.
People aren’t assholes just because they don’t accommodate your every preference.
> Why is it unreasonable to say, "I'd prefer something other than USian"?
Because all I’ve done is to fix my minor annoyance by making it the speaker’s minor annoyance.
And many people don’t like the term American, so now the speaker has to decide whether to please me or other people in the group, or come up with some ridiculous compromise like Citizen of the United States.
A big part of being an adult is dealing with minor annoyances.