Thanks For Taking The Time Lise

Much ado about nothing seems to be the fad today...while I was channel surfing last week I clicked on the Colbert Report where they were "discussing" the word nigger and I have not seen any pouring of outrage from the saviours of the world.

Offensive label likely a mistake
April 09, 2007

Racial slur on sofa label stuns family
April 6.

I think Doris Moore will be relieved to find out that the offensive wording on the label of her new sofa is probably a spelling mistake with a linguistic explanation. Many European languages use some form of the Latin word "niger" as the root of their word for the colour black. There was probably an inadvertent addition of a second "g" in the translation of the word from another language (probably a Chinese language) that, unfortunately, created an extremely offensive English word.

I hope Moore will understand that although the original Latin word "niger" was adapted much later in time to make a racial epithet, many Europeans use variations from the original Latin for a perfectly respectable word for the colour black, and what she purchased was a "black-brown" sofa.

Lise Ferguson, Toronto