7 ms·

The reason why I will never learn Arabic is that "black man" and "slave" use the same word in that language ..

• ithkuil 15y ago
  "abd" means also servant as in servant of god (Abdullah). Also in slavic languages "slovo" means word, so "slaveni" are ""people who speak (the same language),". But it become "sclavoni" in late latin, since appareantly many slaves were slavic? Should I avoid learning any language which has derived from latin because I'm slavic? Words have ancient roots, in times where there wasn't yet the concept of political correctness and we still have traces of it in every language.
• dreyfiz 15y ago
  English has homonyms too. Besides, the same word is also used to mean "worshipper".
• saljam 15y ago
  1) It's also the first part of some of the most popular given names. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_(name) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_(name) The word for slave simply doesn't have the same meaning as in English. 2) "Slave" (عبد) means black just as much as "nigger" means the same in English. Or "chink" means Chinese. It's a pejorative term. Anyone decent enough would simply say "black" (اسود) or "tanned" (اسمر).
• hasenj 15y ago
  What? No. Black man = رجل اسود Slave = عبد