First of all, I’ll tell you just a bit about myself: I’m an Israeli sixteen-year-old nerd, a member of the Israeli Boy and Girl Scouts, working with a group of retarded adults.
Anyway, one of the people I work with is called Avi, and he has serious communication problems, besides having the “regular” cognitive and mental problems. He never smiles, and barely speaks. We can never really know what he absorbs from the weekly activities.
So several days ago, one of the activities was sort of theoretical, we showed them pictures of Israeli landmarks and they had to tell us what they were and where they belonged. They managed to figure out some of the pictures, but not one of the easiest ones: the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv.
Avi only says his name, “yes”, and “no”. He cannot even recognize colors by their names, let alone people – he knows like ten names or something, at least that’s what we can understand. We didn’t really have our hopes up when we asked him: “Avi, do you know what’s in the picture?”
We were flabbergasted, though when he answered: “The Shalom towers of Tel-Aviv”. You see, Shalom Towers is the <I>real</I> name, people only call the towers Azrieli because of the man who owns them.
Avi figured it out! The so-called "black sheep" of their hostel was the only guy who managed to recognize the towers, and name them with their original name!
I know this story sounds kind of stupid, but for me it was fabulous.
posted
I have to ask. Is "besides having the 'regular' retard cognitive problems" a typo? This leaped off the screen at me; I guess I've never liked the noun form of the word "retarded." You're obviously a very caring, generous, and perceptive person, so I'm wondering is this a common way to refer to the people you volunteer for? Am I wrong in my understanding about the word?
posted
Dag -- I think it is considered a slam in our society, but being in a different country, they may have a different connotation to the word. After all, I believe retard is an actual psychiatric term for those with lower IQ, isn't it? Our society has just made it into a slang derogatory comment.
posted
I don't know. I generally hate the noun forms of such things, and prefer the adjective "person" structure. For example, autistic person rather than autistic, or retarded person rather than retard.
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I'm not trying to be PC. I know you were joking, but it touches on an issue I think is important. These are people who happen to have mental disabilities. They are not simply mental disabilities. I first became aware of this issue when I realized people took comfort from using the word "vegetable" when discussing the possibility of killing someone in an "irreversible" coma.
You'll note I didn't call anyone a bigot, or accuse him or her of being insensitive. I decided to take this opportunity to broach the subject. Gently, I hope.
This sort of thing happened to me all the time........of course I didn't really think about it that much back then but whatever.........
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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I've been surprised so often by so many people like this, it has almost ceased to surprise me.
Once I worked at a community living house in a community my aunt and uncle (who live several provinces away) used to work at, 30 years ago. One of the guys there, when I asked him if he remembered Kevin and Flo, said "Yes, and I gues that would make you Jayne's daughter, right?" don't think my mom ever visited the community. I doubt family trees were a common topic of conversation then. But man,what a memory.
Moral of my story: Woo hoo, that's awesome!
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
You know, I almost skipped reading this thread, and then at the last second (when I was just about to move on) I clicked on it anyway. Man, am I ever glad I read it. Thanks for posting that. Posts: 1996 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: , besides having the “regular” retard cognitive problems
Dagonee is correct. The way the sentence is written is not very flattering in English as it parses as if he is using 'retard' as a noun. I don't believe 'retard' is used as a noun anywhere in psychiatry.
Beanny, it's an honest mistake. Just remove the quoted part above and your paragraph will not be 'offensive', so to speak, and will communicate what you want to say.
You are a nice fellow and I'm glad you took interest in Avi. I'm glad nice people like you exist in the world to show kindness to those who are different. 'Love, mercy, pity, peace.'
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Yes, I don't think Beanny was doing anything wrong, and I think he or she is pretty cool for helping out.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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To make things clear, when I wrote "Retard" and pronounced it in my mind, I was thinking re-TARD, not RE-tard. According to your responses, I suppose that it isn't the right word to use.
A retarded person is a person whose mental development is much slower than normal people at the same age. Hence, he is behind them, "late" = retarded.
"Vous etes retard" means "you're late" in French, so in my opinion it's overall a good word to use.
I was born in the US and speak English at home, but clearly my concept of politically-correct English is not adequate... Posts: 803 | Registered: Dec 2004
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It sounds like you wanted to use the verb definition of retard, but since it was functioning as a noun, it had an entirely different meaning and pronunciation. I never noticed the difference in pronunciation before.
Posts: 1990 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Oh ok Choobak, thanks, I suppose that's why I got only 93 instead of a 100 on the matriculation exams in French...still, I consider any grades above 90 satisfactory, and besides I have teacher's credit points, so my final grade was actually 97.
Well, it's not the grades that define the quality of your language, so I guess the entire paragraph above was unrelated. Oh, never mind.
Posts: 803 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Dag, in semitic languages you can inflect words by changing vowel length within the word. It is very different from what we do in English. So this seems an unfortunate but fascinating case of applying nonconcatenative morphology to an agglutinative word. I guess Beanny could have written retaard. And maybe 3 people on the forum would have understood.
Beanny, it is a cool story. And inspires me to start a thread on words that label people.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Dagonnee, Hebrew doesn't just happen to be one of the most difficult languages - after Japanese and Chinese, of course...
An answer to your question: While in English we have vowels (a,u,o,i,e), and you don't need any special markings to show the pronounciation, Hebrew doesn't really have any vowels. Instead, you have dots and lines under and next to the letters that serve as vowels, called "nikkud". A parenthesis above the letter shows the accent (REtard instead of reTARD).
However, it is so tiring adding the nikkud that most writers just leave it out. A non-Hebrew speaker would read the letters, and have no idea how to pronounce them...
Anyway, thanks to you I'll now be much more careful with what I write, so... thank you!
And mothertree - I'm waiting eagerly for that thread...
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