Monday, January 18, 2016

Corrections

Shortly after my last post, my friend Camina (who also has a spectacular blog) told me I wrote "sunset" instead of "sunrise," and that "Indians" is not the right word to use. Every country has a different preferred word, it seems, for their indigenous population. There are the politically correct words, the words that the people themselves use, and it all varies from place to place.

In Mexico and Central America, it's "indigenous people" unless you want to use the name of a specific group, which is better. There are about 25 different indigenous cultures, all speaking different languages (of the Maya language family). Depending on which statistics you use, something around 50% of Guatemalans are indigenous.
 
I'm told that in South America they prefer "aboriginal." In the United States some prefer "Native American" and some "Indian," which is a bit confusing. And in Canada it's "First People." That's a lot of words of keep straight.

So I went back and changed some words, hopefully I didn't miss anything.

No comments:

Post a Comment