• Engywook@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      I’m italian and in Italy that’s not considered a slur. It’s more telling someone they’re funny or amusing.

      • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        In english there’s a similar sounding word that means a joke or something done in jest, Jape with a long a

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not the sentiment, the word used for Japanese people. Saying “if Japanese people didn’t exist, they should be invented” would be totally acceptable.

        It can be hard to avoid slurs in other languages though, especially when English has so many. My husband’s not a native English speaker and it comes up maybe every other month that he’ll say something and I’ll have to tell him to avoid that word or only use it in one specific usage. I’ve only been corrected/gaped at for inadvertently using slurs twice in over five years living in Germany, for comparison.