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Originally Posted by dwig
It does bother me on two levels.
One, the two words, at least in American English, refer to people of differing ethnic groups. The change isn't just a modern PC term that replaces the old now non-PC term.
Secondly, I question, due to a lack of knowledge, whether the term "dago" has really changed meaning or is it just that using it has changed in acceptability. Was "dago" a derogatory term in 1920s England as it is today and its use was simply acceptable? Or, on the other hand, was it considered simply a descriptive term with no denigration implied? If the former, it should not be changed as doing so changes to tone of the text. If the latter, it could be replaced, but if so using a proper replacement that doesn't change the character's origin.
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Here's an example of its usage in the book. A man has been stabbed with a stiletto and the police inspector is pondering the crime:
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Idly he considered the type of man it would be. No thorough Englishman used such a weapon. If he used steel at all he took a razor and cut a person’s throat. But his habitual weapon was a bludgeon, and, failing that, a gun. This was a crime that had been planned with an ingenuity and executed with a subtlety that was foreign to an Englishman’s habit of thought. The very femininity of it proclaimed the dago, or at the very least one used to dago habits of life. A sailor perhaps. An English sailor used to the Mediterranean ports might have done it. But then, would a sailor have been likely to think of anything so subtle as the queue? He would have been more likely to wait for a dark night and a lonely street. The picturesqueness of the thing was Latin. An Englishman was obsessed with the desire to hit. The manner of the hitting did not habitually concern him.
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This is the same paragraph from the 1960's version of the book:
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Idly he considered the type of man it would be. No thorough Englishman used such a weapon. If he used steel at all he took a razor and cut a person’s throat. But his habitual weapon was a bludgeon, and, failing that, a gun. This was a crime that had been planned with an ingenuity and executed with a subtlety that was foreign to an Englishman’s habit of thought. The very femininity of it proclaimed the Levant, or at the very least one used to Levantine habits of life. A sailor perhaps. An English sailor used to the Mediterranean ports might have done it. But then, would a sailor have been likely to think of anything so subtle as the queue? He would have been more likely to wait for a dark night and a lonely street. The picturesqueness of the thing was Levantine. An Englishman was obsessed with the desire to hit. The manner of the hitting did not habitually concern him.
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Perhaps you disagree, but I don't see the use of the word "dago" in the original as being intentionally derogatory, and it's been quite reasonably edited for the 1960s version, to my mind. You are of course correct in saying that "dago" and "Levantine" don't actually mean the same thing, but this is of no importance to the story.