Talk:amarelo

Race

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV, this entry is missing any reference to race. Is it both a noun and an adjective, and is it ever a slur, as in English? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, yes and yes. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:08, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I’m not so sure it’s a slur. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:23, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I mean, if you called an Asian "a yellow" in English, they would probably find that offensive and leave the conversation as quickly as possible. Is that the case in Portuguese as well? If so, maybe "now offensive" would be the right label. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:43, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

At first I thought so, but after doing some research I found nothing that would justify adding that label. As expected from a dated term, most recent uses are in reference to older documents, none of which used scare quotes or some other form of distancing themselves from the term. Notably, a book called “We Are Not Racist” uses the term naturally, as does the Brazilian institute that carries out the census.

Given these circumstantial indicators of non-offensiveness, I chose not to add the label. This is not to say that someone more familiar with its usage will not come and add ethnic slur or offensive, but I can only hope that they will be describing the actual sentiment about the word among Portuguese speakers, and not how they or their clique personally feel about. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 18:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Now that I think about, yellow may not the most appropriate translation. Is there a term for East Asians that is dated and not offensive? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 18:25, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Not really; Oriental and Asiatic are more strongly marked as dated than as offensive, but they are still by no means neutral. That said, they would still be better translations here, especially because I can't actually find any cites for "yellow" as a noun referring to Asians in English. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)