More Bad Linguistic Evolution

[woodwardiocom]

-It's a little depressing to realize that, in the 15 years between GURPS Fantasy, Second Edition and GURPS Banestorm, "jihad" has gone from "foreign word, takes italics, and define on first usage" to "English word, adopted from the Arabic, italics and definition not necessary".

Comments

Re: jihad

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know anything about the GURPS audience, but I think it's a mistake to turn 'jihad' into an English word when most non-Muslims don't really know what it means. I bet 99% of Americans would say "jihad means 'holy war'" but couldn't offer any more detail than that.
Nathaniel

Re: jihad

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-As an English word, that is what it means. When words move from one language to another, they usually get more specific. (Because they're being used to describe a nuance the destination language previously didn't have a word for.) E.g., the Japanese word "anime" means "animation", but the English word "anime" means "Japanese animation".

Re: jihad

[(Anonymous)]

There's a big difference between a American-Japanese cultural divide over the word 'anime' and the American-Islamic cultural-religious divide over 'jihad'. I agree that the English language often follows other languages down dark alleys and mugs them for new vocab, but stealing 'jihad' and using it in non-'Islamic holy war' context is a bad idea.
---Nathaniel

[archangelbeth]

Why is it depressing?

(I mean, we already know that English follows other languages into dark alleys and rolls them for spare vocabulary...)

[metalfatigue]

Possibly because it would be a happier world if the word "jihad" had not been in the news so often in the last 15 years that the average member of the American TV-watching public now knows what it means?