how to order draft beers in a bar?

>> The word is genuine but in today's politically correct climate <<

This so-called "Political correctness" will be the death of America as we know it. Back in the good old days, people said exactly what they meant in plain, simple language. But now that the Liberal Orthodoxy has taken over, a sad, sad, fate has befallen America, in which the left-wingers extremists seek to prescribe even the words we use.

It's officially barmaids here and in the rest of the EU.

Stupid and authoritarian EU bureaucracy pisses of most Brits big time most of the time and now barmaids' boobs are the latest target for Brussels battiness. Take a peek at two London barmaids (well, at Dartford in Kent to be more precise). The EU wants barmaids to "cover up".....because of the danger of exposure to sunlight. Ha! In the UK sunlight is a bonus ffs! :-) Only joking...this past summer has been ace.

Anyway, here in the UK all female staff behind the bars are barmaids.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/display.var.622203.0.pubs_defy_eu_over_cleavage_cancer.php

<<If it were a woman then the term would be "bar maid", but it would be highly unlikely to see a woman serving drinks in a bar here in America>>

Then I must have been served by plenty of men in drag!

Q, yeah, blame the left-wingers.

<<Then I must have been served by plenty of men in drag!>>

Well, if you went to "those" kind of bars what would you expect? :-)

In Britain the letters PC can stand for several things:

Personal Computer (the thingy you're all on right now)

Police Constable (your ordinary uniformed copper on the beat)

Privy Councillor (a member of the private council of the Sovereign....please don't ask for an explanation as I can't be arsed to look it up but it's something to do with Lilibet and her sycophants)

Prince Consort (Lilibet's old man Pip, Duke of Edinburgh)

Parish Councillor (local bigwigs on local tinpot village/small town councils who in reality couldn't run a whelk stall on a wet Sunday)

Political Correctness (a euphemism for PERNICIOUS CRAP)

I've seen plenty of female bartenders. If you haven't seen one, you need to get out more.

And it's not that "barmaid" is considered politically incorrect here, it's that it sounds so OLD-FASHIONED. (Apologies to our British contingent, who still use it....)

I think some are maybe a bit too eager to blame many normal instances of semantic/lexical change on an ill-defined faceless political correctness which, if you believed everything said about it, would have a lot more power in terms of language change than it really does.

For instance, the claim comes up often in this board that using singular "they" is supposedly an example of political correctness gone awry but if you take a minute to look at a source such as the OED's (unabridged) entry on "they" you'll find citations of singular "they" in written British and American usage back to the early 1700s, way before political correctness existed as we know it.

A couple months ago someone on the board was even claiming that California prune growers deciding to call their products "dried plums" instead of "prunes" was supposedly an example of dangerous political correctness. However, that has nothing to do with politics--that's something perhaps even more powerful a force--marketing correctness.

My guess would be that "barmaid" has been on its way out for awhile, at least in the US. In my personal experience I've never even heard my grandparents or people of their generation use it, and usually they're less susceptible to politically correct speech. Hehe...for instance, my Grandma still refers to Asians as "Orientals"--not in a disparaging way, but in a neutral way. That was the normal word when she grew up and despite the fact that she's had an Asian American daughter-in-law (my aunt) for some decades now, she will probably live the rest of her life referring to her background as "Oriental."

Anyway, I'm suspicious about all the changes in language supposedly due to "political correctness."

I've never understood what's wrong with Oriental.

Yea, what's wrong with "Oriental"?

Brennus,

I'm right with you there. I don't see it as a left vs right wing issue either. I'd call myself "basically a liberal" too and I don't like the so called political correctness either. I mean to criticise Q for blaming this phenomenon on the liberals. There is no grounds for this.

Kirk,

You're probably right there too. Just as a sector of the population are all too eager to blame political correctness on the left a (largely overlapping) sector as all to eager to blame other bads real or imagined actual or percieved in turn on political correctness.

If any thing is going to be "will be the death of America as we know it", it's more likely to be foreign debt than political correctness or any form of extreme liberalism.

... Anyhow back to learning English effectively, ay ...

<<I've never understood what's wrong with Oriental.>>

It's shifted in meaning, is all. Who knows why, but somewhere in the past few decades it became derogatory referring to people but still is ok for referring to objects. Of course, the relatively recent shift is not complete--some older people like my Grandma exclusively use "Oriental" when referring to Asians because that was the normal neutral word when they grew up and that's what they're used to.

<<You're probably right there too. Just as a sector of the population are all too eager to blame political correctness on the left a (largely overlapping) sector as all to eager to blame other bads real or imagined actual or percieved in turn on political correctness. >>

Yup--agreed.

I happen to be Occidental.....it doesn't sound anything like as mysteriously romantic as Oriental does it? ....it sounds too much like "accidental".

>> I'm right with you there. I don't see it as a left vs right wing issue either. I'd call myself "basically a liberal" too and I don't like the so called political correctness either. I mean to criticise Q for blaming this phenomenon on the liberals. There is no grounds for this. <<

Yeah, I suppose you're right, it might not be completely the liberals' fault. I've just become so accustomed to just blaming the liberals when something is not quite right. It seems like the left-wingers are the ones that cause all the problems in American when they try to change the (good) system.

<<Yeah, I suppose you're right, it might not be completely the liberals' fault. I've just become so accustomed to just blaming the liberals when something is not quite right. It seems like the left-wingers are the ones that cause all the problems in American when they try to change the (good) system.>>

Um, yes, because it's perfectly reasonable and logical to boil down extremely diverse, long-running and complex issues of widely varying scopes in a perpetually changing and dynamic nation of 300 million people to just one uniform and unwavering monolithic entity which is always "causing all the problems."

<<I happen to be Occidental.....it doesn't sound anything like as mysteriously romantic as Oriental does it? ....it sounds too much like "accidental".>>

Hehe, can you imagine referring to people as "Occidental?" It does sound oddly close to "accidental." I'm happy with English's good old Germanic words "Western" and "Eastern" in this case ;)