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linguistic intolerance

A symptom of bigotry in which a bigot insists that the spelling, grammar, or pronunciation of other languages, cultures, or subcultures are inferior, or simply wrong.

Some linguistically intolerant Jews and Muslims, such as the late Sheikh Ahmed Deedat complain about what they call, the J Sickness, in which most European languages substitute the letter J for the letter Y when transliterating names from ancient texts, such as:

Joel for Yael
Judah for Yehuda
Joshua for Yeheshua
Joseph for Yusuf
Jonah for Yunus
Jesus for Yesus or Yeshua
Jehovah for Yehowa or Yahweh

Since J is the letter used to produce the Y sound in most European languages, this complaint is an example of petty linguistic intolerance. Sheikh Deedat also rather amusingly blamed the "J" sickness on Jehovah's Witnesses, as if they, in the 20th century had had the power to change the way Europeans spelled names in medieval times, so it's difficult to determine whether his bigotry was against Christians in general, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Europeans. (Source: www.jamaat.net/name/name3.html)

by Downstrike October 19, 2005

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