Surrender by any other name ...

[Maggie_T]

Surrender by any other name...
By Ann Coulter
Wednesday, December 13, 2006


How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"?

These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.")

<LINK href="http://www.townhall.com/styles/TownHall.css" type=text/css rel=Stylesheet>When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before the common era) and "CE" (common era)? "Withdrawal" is "redeployment," "liberal" is "progressive," and "traitorous" is "patriotic."

These new linguistic conventions -- like going from "winning" to "losing" in Iraq -- simply spread like an invisible bacterial invasion.

To be sure, last month the Democrats did win a narrow majority in Congress for the first time in more than a decade. And it cannot be denied that for the past 50 years, Democrats have orchestrated humiliating foreign policy defeats for America. So it is understandable that some might interpret their midterm gains as a mandate for another humiliating defeat.

Link (http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2006/12/13/surrender_by_any_other_name)

Ann says it all, as usual. :thumb:

[DesertFox]

I beat Ann to this one by several years. As long ago as 1995 I was bitching about the way the Left redefines everything to suit themselves, in the process literally changing the terms of debate on a number of issues.

[Naturalized-Texan]

The following quote from Ann is priceless:

It's true that no one anticipated that al-Qaida sympathizers would stream into Iraq to fight the Great Satan after Saddam fled to a spider hole, but that's because everyone expected al-Qaida to be fighting us here.

[heikediguoren]

From the original article:


Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"?


It was not. The Chinese Communist Party changed the spelling of its capital city to more accurately reflect the pronunciation. It would take a rather paranoid outlook to think that the CCP controls United States media reporting on the conflict in Iraq.

[Rhino]

It was not. The Chinese Communist Party changed the spelling of its capital city to more accurately reflect the pronunciation. It would take a rather paranoid outlook to think that the CCP controls United States media reporting on the conflict in Iraq.It's called satire, dude.

[DesertFox]

The Chinese Communist Party changed the spelling of its capital city to more accurately reflect the pronunciation. It would take a rather paranoid outlook to think that the CCP controls United States media reporting on the conflict in Iraq.It's a little much to believe that the CCP changed the English spelling of the Chinese capital. Also hard to credit that changing just the Chinese spelling would have an effect on the English spelling.

[Maggie_T]

Yes, but it gives Coulterphobes a yet another chance to put Ann down.

[heikediguoren]

It's a little much to believe that the CCP changed the English spelling of the Chinese capital. Also hard to credit that changing just the Chinese spelling would have an effect on the English spelling.

The English spelling is a transliteration of the Chinese characters. The Chinese spelling itself has not changed, only the standard of Romanizing the characters.


The Pin-Yin Romanization method has generally replaced the older Wades-Giles method for attempting to romanize the Chinese language. This system has been official use since 1958 and was introduced by the People's Republic of China.

http://qi-journal.com/culture.asp?-token.SearchID=Mandarin

[DesertFox]

It gives people who know basically nothing about something, a chance to pretend they know a lot about it.

In college I was taught a bit about one of those systems, and I think it was the Wades-Giles. In that system, "Peking" in normal English spelling is pronounced "Beijing." Similarly, Mao tse-Tung was pronounced "Mao dze-Dong." Nothing at all changed but the knowledge of the person using or not using the pronunciation system. If you knew it and used it, you pronounced "Peking" as "Beijing." If you didn't know it, or knew it but chose not to use it, you pronounced "Peking" as "pee king." It has nothing to do with transliteration.

[Maggie_T]

It gives people who know basically nothing about something, a chance to pretend they know a lot about it.




:D

[Rhino]

It gives people who know basically nothing about something, a chance to pretend they know a lot about it.

In college I was taught a bit about one of those systems, and I think it was the Wades-Giles. In that system, "Peking" in normal English spelling is pronounced "Beijing." Similarly, Mao tse-Tung was pronounced "Mao dze-Dong." Nothing at all changed but the knowledge of the person using or not using the pronunciation system. If you knew it and used it, you pronounced "Peking" as "Beijing." If you didn't know it, or knew it but chose not to use it, you pronounced "Peking" as "pee king." It has nothing to do with transliteration.I love it when you use big words. :D

[Maggie_T]

At least he knows what they mean. :)

[DesertFox]

:lol:

[DoctorDoom]

When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before the common era) and "CE" (common era)? "Withdrawal" is "redeployment," "liberal" is "progressive," and "traitorous" is "patriotic."And "gay" now means queer, "adult" means pornographic, adultery is "having an affair", terrorists have become "insurgents", and on and on.

Whoever controls the language controls the debate, and the libs have been given free rein with it.

"There's glory for you!"
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."

[heikediguoren]

In college I was taught a bit about one of those systems, and I think it was the Wades-Giles. In that system, "Peking" in normal English spelling is pronounced "Beijing."

Wade-Giles is obsolete in the People's Republic of China. Taiwan currently uses it, but most internationally available materials in transliterated Chinese use pinyin. One can draw a comparison between British English (plough, kerb) and American English (plow, curb). Pinyin is simpler and, with a few exceptions, more intuitive. Any attempts by the United States to achieve economic power with respect to the PRC will require knowledge of pinyin; with respect to the mainland, Wade-Giles is irrelevant.

[DesertFox]

With respect to this thread, nothing you've said is relevant.

[d'urville]

Irrelevant, anything for a quote.

I beat Ann to this one by several years. As long ago as 1995 I was bitching about the way the Left redefines everything to suit themselves, in the process literally changing the terms of debate on a number of issues.

Yep. And these rules keep changing, now, it's un-PC to say use the phrase "war on terror" in the UK:


The Foreign Office has advised Government ministers, ambassadors and officials to avoid the phrase "war on terror", and similar belligerent terms, as they risk angering British Muslims and generating tensions in the wider Islamic world.

It said it wanted to avoid re-inforcing the terrorists' world view of conflict between the West and the Muslim world "by using language that, taken out of context, could be counter-productive".


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/11/nterr11.xml

Supposed to be an article about attacks in the UK being "highly likely" during the Christmas season, still trying to pretend that being nice enough to the terrorists is going to make them stop.

[Large_Al]

Ann has been hitting the out of the park recently.........Oh heikediguoren thanks for the meaningless info. Are you good at trivial pursuit??

[DoctorDoom]

... as they risk angering British Muslims and generating tensions in the wider Islamic world.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Terrorism/rageometer3a.jpg

When the west cringes in abject, unreasoning fear of what the Izzyfascist camel-rapers MIGHT do, the barbarian bastards have won the war.

[Patrick Henry]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Terrorism/rageometer3a.jpg

When the west cringes in abject, unreasoning fear of what the Izzyfascist camel-rapers MIGHT do, the barbarian bastards have won the war.

:rotflmbo: That's dead-on!

The Islamo-fascists enjoy this hand-wringing, it's a sign of weakness.

[Patrick Henry]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Terrorism/rageometer3a.jpg

When the west cringes in abject, unreasoning fear of what the Izzyfascist camel-rapers MIGHT do, the barbarian bastards have won the war.

:rotflmbo: That's dead-on!

The Islamo-fascists enjoy this hand-wringing, it's a sign of weakness.