John Hudson wrote:
> At 06:33 2/25/2002, Marco Cimarosti wrote:
>
> >Alain LaBonté wrote:
> > > [...] Who knows? What is the word for "gipsy" in Romanian? [...]
> >
> >"Rom", in fact: I just asked this to a Rumanian colleague.
>
> I presumed this was the reason for the code change 'request' from the
> Romanian government. Bigotry against and persecution of the Rom is a
> long-standing Romanian tradition: one of the few constants of
> the country's political scene.
I hope that you are wrong, although your suspect does not lack plausibility.
But the present case could perhaps have a more positive explanation: many
Romanians are indeed Rom (Gipsy) so, maybe, everybody felt it was
inappropriate to call all Romanian nationals with the name belonging one
single ethnical group.
It would be as calling any USA citizens were called "Californians": although
there is nothing particularly good or bad in being a Californian, it is not
generally deemed appropriate to call Texans "Californians". (Or, anyway, I'm
told that it's not advisable to should "You're all Californians" while
entering a truck driver's diner in the middle of Texas).
_ Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Feb 25 2002 - 11:44:31 EST