Can we retire the term 'booootay'?

Can we retire the term 'booootay' in the filter? I find it much more offensive than the word it's replacing. It is such a specialized slang term, has some strange racial overtones and is a word that few outside the U.S. would recognize. At first I didn't realize it was a filter term. I was amazed at which people were using it. Didn't make any sense.


How about 'butt' or 'rear'?

Thanks,

Don

Lol, you should hear the language we use in social situations, it'd prolly leave you confused with the feeling you should be angry.

Ditto.

Personally, I don't really think the "a" word is offensive, but "rear" would seem to cover the meaning for internantional members. I didn't realize it was a filter term either, and I kept scratching my head at how it seemed to clash with "Lord oh Lord" (LOL). These were some strange hip-hop Christians, I thought...

I discovered this bizarre censorship recently when hyphenating the word "assume" to demonstrate an old cliche.

People generally know the difference between buttocks and a donkey. In the international community most speakers of English even know what an arse is.

You wouldn't believe how naive I am sometimes, with regards to understanding what people have written. The 'confusion of tongues' so to say.
So although I've noticed this term 'booootay' cropping up, I must admit I was flummoxed as to it's meaning. Dictionary.com was no help either.
Here's a sample of my current 'confusion of tongues'.

How about 'butt' or 'rear'?

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OK, I think I've finally got the meaning.

Can we retire the term 'booootay' in the filter?

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So it's a term which gets around the filter and which replaces the word bottom, or the american term a**?

At first I didn't realize it was a filter term. I was amazed at which people were using it. Didn't make any sense.

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I totally agree. I'd never heard it before. Thought it was something to do with a baby's first pair of shoes.

Cyre said:

Lol, you should hear the language we use in social situations, it'd prolly leave you confused with the feeling you should be angry.

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It sounds like you'd even make an ex yorkshire coal miner blush.

Anyways, thanks for clearing my confusion.

Can I just take this oportunity to sneak in an unrelated question, but IS to do with comunication in a way? Has anyone else noticed how often many people write the word 'then' instead of the word 'than'?
It seems to be mostly north american people who does it, and my theory is that it's got something to do with the 'american drawl' when they speak, like in films etc. (John Wayne?).

What I can't understand is, at the school I went to, if a pupil handed in an essay writing 'then' instead of 'than' all the time, it would be returned with every error circled in red pen. I admit it was a while ago when I was last at school and things might have changed, and I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most educated bloke around (understatement) but with regards to the basics, is this a reflection of lower standards of teaching in general nowerdays?

Spelling is not an outstanding product of the US education system for the tech savvy txt junkie generation, except for participants in National Spelling Bees, LOL.

EsoQuest said:

Ditto.

Personally, I don't really think the "a" word is offensive, but "rear" would seem to cover the meaning for internantional members. I didn't realize it was a filter term either, and I kept scratching my head at how it seemed to clash with "Lord oh Lord" (LOL). These were some strange hip-hop Christians, I thought...

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EQ you just made me Lord Oh Lord at my desk with this one. Thanks for the chuckle -- and the filter has just been changed to 'arse' - although, if you'd prefer 'rear' we could do that instead.


a

Hi Peam,

The 'then' for 'than' just like 'loose' for 'lose' has to do I think with spell checking programs. They catch mispelled words but not the wrong word spelled correctly, if you know what I mean.

But then I don't use spell checking and I have used 'than' for 'then' just out of sloppiness from writing quickly.

Don

Peam said:

Can I just take this oportunity to sneak in an unrelated question, but IS to do with comunication in a way? Has anyone else noticed how often many people write the word 'then' instead of the word 'than'?
It seems to be mostly north american people who does it, and my theory is that it's got something to do with the 'american drawl' when they speak, like in films etc. (John Wayne?).

What I can't understand is, at the school I went to, if a pupil handed in an essay writing 'then' instead of 'than' all the time, it would be returned with every error circled in red pen. I admit it was a while ago when I was last at school and things might have changed, and I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most educated bloke around (understatement) but with regards to the basics, is this a reflection of lower standards of teaching in general nowerdays?

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Hmm. Spelling.

In the old days, spelling used to be very inconsistent and personal. There might've been 3 or 4 different spellings of the same word. Then movable type came along, and all those other alternative spellings collapsed into one spelling for each word. People got so used to seeing the word spelled the same way all the time, that they would get annoyed when people didn't spell their words according to the standard movable-type spelling. So they started teaching children, this is the way you're supposed to spell the word - only this way, no other.

It looks like we're moving away from that age to another age, where spelling is becoming inconsistent and personal once again. I guess it's the difference between having a few publishers of the written word, and having many different publishers.

These things run in cycles, maybe, and we're in the other part of the cycle.

As far as rewriting bad words go, maybe just replace the bad word with ***'s The last one is the most general, as you can get rid of one column of your lookup table. I think most people can recover the bad word from the context, if they choose to do so.

The problem with proliferation of self-"publishing" is that as well as idiosyncratic spelling you have an idiosyncratic (and untested and unedited) presentation based on an idiosyncratic grasp of key facts and issues.

I don't essentially agree that unconventional spelling is "cyclical". In many circumstances it will relate more to subculture and conscious breaking of conventions that then becomes its own convention, but on the whole it's just dumbing down and poor attention to detail in the curriculum and bad spelling. And there are no elitist values in a desire for prescribed spelling, it's just the truth.

Ass and arse are not bad words. <<<<<----- testing

Yeah, but I remember before the internet when people complained that no one wrote anything anymore. No one wrote letters, etc. Now people are writing like crazy and that is good, IMO, even if a lot of it is inane (try the Next Blog feature on Blogspot, for example).

I like idiosyncratic stuff (not spelling, though!) especially if it means we are not dependent on big media and big publishing for our information. I don't want to go back to those days!

MaskedAvatar said:

The problem with proliferation of self-"publishing" is that as well as idiosyncratic spelling you have an idiosyncratic (and untested and unedited) presentation based on an idiosyncratic grasp of key facts and issues.

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Yes, it would appear to me that balance is a very important thing, and that people want and now have a better outlet for their voices.

I would temper that with two observations:

(1) the actual nature and quality of work that is done by publishing houses (large and small, conservative and progressive) in generating refined material from the crude form is not widely understood;

(2) the enormous filtering requirement for dross in the voices of people who wanted a voice but who really have nothing to use it for, is a consequence of the "proliferation" that doesn't truly provide for an informed society.

And I note that you already made one of those.

I do appreciate "real" journalism and publishing. I like the fact-checking, editing and proof-reading. As a blogger, I know that blogging is to some degree parasitic on the mainstream media. Someone has to do the reporting and fact checking and that is very hard for an isolated amateur to do.

MaskedAvatar said:

Yes, it would appear to me that balance is a very important thing, and that people want and now have a better outlet for their voices.

I would temper that with two observations:

(1) the actual nature and quality of work that is done by publishing houses (large and small, conservative and progressive) in generating refined material from the crude form is not widely understood;

(2) the enormous filtering requirement for dross in the voices of people who wanted a voice but who really have nothing to use it for, is a consequence of the "proliferation" that doesn't truly provide for an informed society.

And I note that you already made one of those.

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