general

retard has general utility as a word, same as stupid, idiodic, insane, etc. But as an insult, it is no different to calling someone "low-IQ" which make me hard pressed to say its a slur, retard isn't a specific affliction, you don't catch "retard disease" there's no uniform group like there are for genders/races

I find "Autistic" more insulting than retard

still not a slur

You would, wouldn't you

but I think it at least is attacking a specific group

versus the broad category of "every person of lower-than-average intelligence"

or w/e the actual cutoff is for being a clinical retard

I think retard has stronger connotations than lower than average

I would not say someone who is 90IQ is a retard. The image implied is moreso 75 or lower

I think I am basically saying not only are you below average, you are nonfunctional if I am calling you a retard

isn't 70IQ a literal vegetable though

Yeah, and if I am calling you a retard, I mean you are basically a vegtable

there's the cutoff for retard that's 90, and the cutoff for vegetable which I think is 65-70 or thereabouts

at which point you're not a person

Apparently the historic cutoff was 85

Okay, spooky, read googles AI thing I just got and tell me its not a slur

you are basically calling them black

rather than a number, since IQs are supposed to just be a bell curve

it's the bottom X% of people

and I've always assumed the bottom ~20% are probably retard-class

I have never assumed it to be that exclusive

so yeah, somewhere around here

Yeah was about to say, standard dev is about 15

Anyways the fact that they had to raise the cutoff for black people is all I need to say

my case rests

its a slur

lol

After this research, I am voting yes

Retard is too formal to be a slur. For something to be a slur it must be either a mispronounciation or a shortening of an existing word.

Like how Bob is a slur for people named Rob.

What makes something a slur is not the meaning or the harshness of the word, but rather the etymology and how it was invented.

I don't think it is a slur, however I am careful about who I say it around https://www.instagram.com/p/DY6ZXVQOkVJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

all of these slur debates are funny because they don't really apply to me being a non native English speaker, but because Dutch people use Dutch and English interchangeably, we still use these words like normal and no one gives a fuck

Agreed, similar to any curse. I'd stick retard in a level 3 swear word. In public, I'd say hell and damnit. At work, I'd say fuck and shit. With friends, I'd say retard and nigger.

Eh, maybe 2. I've said retard at work a lot.

on the topic of Dutch people using Dutch and English, i sometimes hear Dutch people straight up speaking English to each other, and sometimes i even say things in English to my brother for no reason

the Netherlands is basically English at this point

Is it even close in language?

close enough but not really

compared to every other language that isn't Frisian, it can be argued that Dutch is closest

Frisian is essentially just old English before the French frenchified English

the funny thing about why English speakers think Dutch looks weird is BECAUSE it's so similar to English, giving it an uncanny feel

Would you say Dutch or German is closer to English? I thought German was basically the same.

Dutch is closer to English

but it's closer to German than English

The use of ij and z does, yeah

Well, like, I remember a lot of signs having more z's. Obv we have that, but in my mind, I know something is instantly Dutch with the ij and usually if there's a random Z in there.

ij is a huge giveaway yeah

don't know many other languages that use that as much

lots of double vowels too

or in some cases triple vowels like in pika's favourite Dutch word that he loves to pronounce

Which word is that?

geëerd

don't question it too much

I got google translate to say it for me, I think it makes sense lol

it's just eer with the prefix and suffix to make it an adjective

like adding -ed at the end in English

it's honor > honored

sorry, the linguist in me was activated

I'll stop now and go back to work

I like linguistics lol I just don't know Dutch besides how to pronounce a few words

And I like the band K3

oh no Ventt

that band was every teenage girl's obsession like 2 decades back

(and their dads)

I tried looking up 99 luftballons and I thought it was 100 balloons, and that got me to the 10.000 luchtballonnen song by them lmao

lol

i use it more carefully now, and yea if you say it against an actual vegetable person thats not ok, but idt its that big of deal otherwise

If I believe that it is but it shouldn't be should I vote yes or no

imagine there's a nationwide poll to make the word a slur or not

image you do that for every world in the language

I think you'd get a funny funny ones that get made into slurs

and a few slurs that get declasified

What do you think would be classified as a new slur?

woman

I wonder if anyone still uses womyn or if they gave up on that entirely

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The Villain has won.....