General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
Re: Wir geht? Nomenclature
Posted by:
John Griffiths
()
Date: September 26, 2002 06:59PM
<HTML>
Welcome, gentlemen, to the forum. I hope you both have good experiences here.
On the subject of Kraut. Do you know where it came from? It stemmed from the experiences of the Germans as 'Sauerkraut' eaters - hence the abbreviation to 'kraut' which is derogatory and not at all accurate; some Germans probably don't like the stuff! They probably also eat a lot of other foods but funnily enough the name kraut stuck.
The use of derogatory terms is two sided, as the Germans referred to the British as 'Tommies' - from a poem by someone or other who called his subject ( a soldier) Tommy Atkins. Even today the term Tommies is used by many people, but mostly to do with the First, rather than the Second World Wars.
Americans? Yanks, Joes.....the first from Yankee ( a Civil War term ) and the second much later on in history and from the GI Joe era.
Japanese? Nips - from Nippon.
Kiwis - New Zealanders, from the Kiwi bird.
Aussies - from Australia, but also Diggers from the hats they wore when gold prospecting ( digging for gold ).
I don't know how the South Africans got the nickname Yarpies - it's a Naval term - and if anyone could enlighten me I'd be more than delighted!
We could go on into the use of the term pertaining to the indigenous peoples who populated a large river in Africa, and who also gave their name to a piece of ship's equipment fashioned from the hardwood that came from that area, but the utterance of that single word provokes accusations of racism - so I'll leave it.If you know your way around a ship, you'll know the piece of equipment I'm talking about though it's more windjammer than modern day.
Whilst on my soapbox, how strange it is to see that English, as a language - an international language, the language of commerce and of study, of law and of poetry, of literature - has now been polluted by many to be an insensitive, uncaring tounge. An exaple? We can no longer use the word gay as the funny ones stole it and use it as a banner to hammer us with and - even with war heroes like Guy Gibson VC (of the RAF's famous Dambuster Squadron ) - the name of his dog is considered to be a slur.......and I'll leave that one there too!
No, I'm not going mad - just thought a bit of culture might be overdue within the forum. :-)
John</HTML>
Welcome, gentlemen, to the forum. I hope you both have good experiences here.
On the subject of Kraut. Do you know where it came from? It stemmed from the experiences of the Germans as 'Sauerkraut' eaters - hence the abbreviation to 'kraut' which is derogatory and not at all accurate; some Germans probably don't like the stuff! They probably also eat a lot of other foods but funnily enough the name kraut stuck.
The use of derogatory terms is two sided, as the Germans referred to the British as 'Tommies' - from a poem by someone or other who called his subject ( a soldier) Tommy Atkins. Even today the term Tommies is used by many people, but mostly to do with the First, rather than the Second World Wars.
Americans? Yanks, Joes.....the first from Yankee ( a Civil War term ) and the second much later on in history and from the GI Joe era.
Japanese? Nips - from Nippon.
Kiwis - New Zealanders, from the Kiwi bird.
Aussies - from Australia, but also Diggers from the hats they wore when gold prospecting ( digging for gold ).
I don't know how the South Africans got the nickname Yarpies - it's a Naval term - and if anyone could enlighten me I'd be more than delighted!
We could go on into the use of the term pertaining to the indigenous peoples who populated a large river in Africa, and who also gave their name to a piece of ship's equipment fashioned from the hardwood that came from that area, but the utterance of that single word provokes accusations of racism - so I'll leave it.If you know your way around a ship, you'll know the piece of equipment I'm talking about though it's more windjammer than modern day.
Whilst on my soapbox, how strange it is to see that English, as a language - an international language, the language of commerce and of study, of law and of poetry, of literature - has now been polluted by many to be an insensitive, uncaring tounge. An exaple? We can no longer use the word gay as the funny ones stole it and use it as a banner to hammer us with and - even with war heroes like Guy Gibson VC (of the RAF's famous Dambuster Squadron ) - the name of his dog is considered to be a slur.......and I'll leave that one there too!
No, I'm not going mad - just thought a bit of culture might be overdue within the forum. :-)
John</HTML>
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