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> Is it absurd? Do they understand? Can you show me how you know this?

It is absurd, they do understand, and I know it because I'm a native English speaker and I've never been in a conversation where anyone was confused by the term nor even in which someone bothered to clarify that they didn't mean to imply a hierarchy. I'm sure you're going to understand that this is satisfactory evidence and not resort to some sort of "BuT Do YoU kNoW eVeRy SiNgLe PeRsOn On ThE PlAnEt?!" nonsense.

> Sorry, I can see where I was unclear. I was referring to Africa.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. That makes sense.



>It is absurd.

Again, how so? The two connotations are not mutually exclusive.

If the goal is to avoid implying a hierarchy, why not change to a term that has no connection to hierarchy?


Because there's no indication that it causes confusion for anyone except, perhaps, you. There is a lot more ambiguity in English than this and we don't put aside all of our other problems to deal with this. Anyway, these kind of semantic debates are the most boring, dull, tedious things I can think of (see also the people who think we need to replace "latinos" with "latinxs") so I'm going to entertain myself with anything else besides this thread.


I never held that it causes confusion. The duplicity of meaning is probably, in fact, a bonus for some. I don't like that duplicity. I would rather the terminology be unambiguous and direct, if it is possible (and, in this case, it is).




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