On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Chris McCormick wrote:
implying that the phrase "Mongolian hordes" represents a historically valid viewpoint is perpetuating a western-biased (racist) falsehood.
"horde" is not a viewpoint. It's a noun. It means "political subdivision of a (central asian) nomadic people". It comes for Turkic "orda" meaning a Khan's residence.
The mere fact that everyone knows what we're talking about when we say "mongolian hordes"
If you use political correctness to get a word loaded with connotations to be replaced by a brand new word, the old connotations tend to be carried over to the new word. Thus those are not so much properties of a specific word, than a topic of public opinion. This is something that is best fixed by education and not by "dictionary engineering".
whilst there is no similar widespread cliche for western invaders in our culture is testament to this fact.
I believe that "colonialism" and "imperialism" are widespread words, concepts and clichés, that are loaded by several centuries of history.
A little. The conflict is similar to that in Australia. There are many sides and they usually concern the ownership of traditional lands:
You could add:
passive-aggressive government wants to make programme initiated by previous government look bad
fear that it legitimises (or opens a can of worms on) some completely unreasonable claims, such as ownership of areas that are no longer usable for traditional purposes and that may have already been compensated for in a previous treaty, ...
that's what I can think about. I'm not taking any side, because I don't know about the issues, I only listed some forces that I would guess tend to have a lot of influence on policy.
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