Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nippon is a normal word. The slur is derived from that word, but the word itself is not a slur.

Hence why I said "comes dangerously close to" and the point still stands. I am well aware that one of the names for Japan is Nippon, the other being Nihon. But considering the former also forms the basis of a racial slur, I don't think it's being oversensitive or anything to suggest that maybe GW doesn't go for a focus on it.

You're being absurd. You wouldn't even use it in your original post, but weirdly felt the need to point out that it's like a slur, which is backwards, the slur is like the actual word.

It does not come dangerously close to a slur. The slur is derived from the word.

Nippon is a perfectly normal word and any attempts at giving it a different connotation are on you and you alone.

 Gert wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nippon is a normal word. The slur is derived from that word, but the word itself is not a slur.

Hence why I said "comes dangerously close to" and the point still stands. I am well aware that one of the names for Japan is Nippon, the other being Nihon. But considering the former also forms the basis of a racial slur, I don't think it's being oversensitive or anything to suggest that maybe GW doesn't go for a focus on it.

I don’t understand this tack. Nippon is one of their least objectionable foreign place names. What else would they call it? It can’t be “Japan” since it’s the basis for that whole “slap a ___” slur. Yamato? Perhaps at the time Yamato seemed less appropriate?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You're being absurd. You wouldn't even use it in your original post, but weirdly felt the need to point out that it's like a slur, which is backwards, the slur is like the actual word.

Not "like", "close to". There is a difference. Do not change what I have said to suite your argument.

It does not come dangerously close to a slur. The slur is derived from the word.

So it comes close to the slur. As in, the only difference is three letters.

Nippon is a perfectly normal word and any attempts at giving it a different connotation are on you and you alone.

Has an associated racial slur but has no connotations. Mk.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t understand this tack. Nippon is one of their least objectionable foreign place names. What else would they call it? It can’t be “Japan” since it’s the basis for that whole “slap a ___” slur. Yamato? Perhaps at the time Yamato seemed less appropriate?

Nihon is right there. Or, yknow they could be creative and not just call it "Japan" but in foreign.

Huh???? there's nothing wrong with calling it Nippon.

WTF are you going on about? What racial slur are you even thinking about? Is this something people actually use, or are you just digging up some obscure term from hundreds of years ago that most people won't even recognize?

CadianSgtBob wrote:
WTF are you going on about? What racial slur are you even thinking about? Is this something people actually use, or are you just digging up some obscure term from hundreds of years ago that most people won't even recognize?

It’s not an obscure slur, the first half of Nippon. Granted, it’s not used as much since the war, but I’ve heard it used. And not always ironically (although mostly ironically).

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It’s not an obscure slur, the first half of Nippon. Granted, it’s not used as much since the war, but I’ve heard it used. And not always ironically (although mostly ironically).

I don't think I've ever heard that one, but maybe it's a regional thing. Still a bit silly when by the same argument "Japan" is not an acceptable name since the first half of it has also been used as a slur (and a more common one even).

Wow holy crap! Wasn’t this thread about Tom Kirby? It went to death of fantasy by Kirby, then fantasy in general and now offensive terms. Can we get back on topic? A fight will end in the thread getting locked as we know arguing about offense (like politics and religion) always leads there.

——-

Back on topic. When warhammer fantasy died and some people were asking around to see if they could play some discontinued games at the gw the gw would always say ask the manager. When I noticed the pattern was almost always a no I suspected something was up. I asked a previous employee of gw and he said what I suspected. Apparently most of gw’s games aside from maybe lotr, aos, 40k and blood bowl were not allowed to be played at gw stores.

Yes that’s right gw tried to push the blame on to their bottom rung employees. I’m not sure if it was just an awful GW move or a Kirby move but that’s just scummy.

Blaming frontline employees is all too common. And when the employees follow policy, angry customers call corporate, get the employees in trouble, and then get a free gift card out of it. I bet Kirby GW even skimped out in the free gift cards.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It’s not an obscure slur, the first half of Nippon. Granted, it’s not used as much since the war, but I’ve heard it used. And not always ironically (although mostly ironically).

I don't think I've ever heard that one, but maybe it's a regional thing. Still a bit silly when by the same argument "Japan" is not an acceptable name since the first half of it has also been used as a slur (and a more common one even).

I went to a school named after a Japanese-American war hero, so that was a big part of it. Kids gotta have edge.

 Gert wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You're being absurd. You wouldn't even use it in your original post, but weirdly felt the need to point out that it's like a slur, which is backwards, the slur is like the actual word.

Not "like", "close to". There is a difference. Do not change what I have said to suite your argument.

It does not come dangerously close to a slur. The slur is derived from the word.

So it comes close to the slur. As in, the only difference is three letters.

Nippon is a perfectly normal word and any attempts at giving it a different connotation are on you and you alone.

Has an associated racial slur but has no connotations. Mk.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t understand this tack. Nippon is one of their least objectionable foreign place names. What else would they call it? It can’t be “Japan” since it’s the basis for that whole “slap a ___” slur. Yamato? Perhaps at the time Yamato seemed less appropriate?

Nihon is right there. Or, yknow they could be creative and not just call it "Japan" but in foreign.

The hell you are talking about? You take a word in one language (not only that but one of the ways the inhabitants of that country call themselves), point out that in another country, and another era people made a ratial slur out of that word so now we cannot use it because it's just three letters away?

Negro is a perfectly normal Spanish word that Americans have decided to derive a ratial slur from. It's just a few letters away from said slur now 580 million people, including about 50 million in hte US, better stop using it because the associated slur.

M.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Humans are interesting! I'm human! So are most of my friends!

I'm yet to be convinced about a significant portion of people posting on Dakka, however. Pretty sure some of them are malignant machine learning scripts.

 Gert wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nippon is a normal word. The slur is derived from that word, but the word itself is not a slur.

Hence why I said "comes dangerously close to" and the point still stands. I am well aware that one of the names for Japan is Nippon, the other being Nihon. But considering the former also forms the basis of a racial slur, I don't think it's being oversensitive or anything to suggest that maybe GW doesn't go for a focus on it.

Go ahead, tell Japanese people it's racist to describe their homeland as "Nippon."

 Miguelsan wrote:

Negro is a perfectly normal Spanish word that Americans have decided to derive a ratial slur from. It's just a few letters away from said slur now 580 million people, including about 50 million in hte US, better stop using it because the associated slur.

M.

If you want a laugh go to twitter and search (from:crayola) negro and see how often Crayola has to respond to people getting upset over a crayon.

 Gert wrote:

The big map on my wall says otherwise. GW very much created focuses for the specific eras of AoS so far and those regions have been fleshed out pretty well. We've got the big important Free Cities (the fate of which isn't set in stone as we have seen with both Excelsis and Anvilgard) and quite a few named regions within the Realms. I disagree that the scale means nothing is ever important when the setting is vast and I think AoS is a much more event-driven setting compared to 40k or WHFB.

Just make new areas of the map with more cities? Nothing stops you. This effects 40k as well, the intent being originally every player could have their own worlds and corner of space to make games in and it was fine. Instead you concentrate on the setting and look and feel (and slow interstellar transit - you can find an old article by Priestly bemoaning having the same chapters appear all over space in the time frame of a few years when they were meant to be regional an it isn't possible to travel that much). Now obviously GW being hacks hasn't been able to stick with this, and anyway soap operas are popular for a reason.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Just make new areas of the map with more cities? Nothing stops you. This effects 40k as well, the intent being originally every player could have their own worlds and corner of space to make games in and it was fine. Instead you concentrate on the setting and look and feel (and slow interstellar transit - you can find an old article by Priestly bemoaning having the same chapters appear all over space in the time frame of a few years when they were meant to be regional an it isn't possible to travel that much). Now obviously GW being hacks hasn't been able to stick with this, and anyway soap operas are popular for a reason.

I think you've maybe got confused here. That post was in response to someone saying AoS has no points of focus or any places of importance. I was highlighting that while the Realms are large canvases that allow for creative freedom, there are still important places.

As for everyone else, you are all correct. There's nothing wrong with a bunch of white English people from the 80s using a term for their Not-Japan which is commonly associated with a slur used in the English-speaking world.
I mean there's no way that they could have:
A - Just made up a name.
B - If they wanted to use something related to the real world, used the other option that doesn't have a slur attached.
We should never ever question whether or not things done in the past are perfectly fine in the modern day. Nope never.

I appreciate this might be tricky for you to understand, Gert, but you are allowed to admit when you're wrong...

I feel like Gert is one of those people who uses the term "Latinx", even though a majority of the latino population absolutely hate the term. I doubt any Japanese person has ever seen the Old World map, looked at Nippon and flown into a rage over racist english white men. More likely they probably wondered what the designers take on their country would be and would like to know more about it.

They probably laughed and wondered why the fictional version of Japan is called "Japan", but in Japanese.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They probably laughed and wondered why the fictional version of Japan is called "Japan", but in Japanese.

In fairness Albion is just an alternative name for Britain as well.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They probably laughed and wondered why the fictional version of Japan is called "Japan", but in Japanese.

In fairness Albion is just an alternative name for Britain as well.

Yep, and as a Brit I am OUTRAGED!

Yeah getting offended over words esp. when avoiding context and intent is usually a peak First World problem. Honestly i understand why 3rd world nations would hate us given our "problems". My favorite bit is when people tried to push their ways on to asian or latino people (like with anime rewriting or editing or trying to un-gender latino's language). You know like that isn't what angered them before in the past.

not that there is no racism in the world building of Warhammer, but it is not in the names that were used but on a level were GW made very clear differences between French, Englisch, Germans, Italians, Spanish, than put all Slavs into one faction, all ancient South Americans into one faction and all north Africans and middle east into one faction

this is not something unusual, were you go into details for the stuff you know and are more interested yourself, and the stuff you don't know or have no interst at all is all ruled into one thing with the most popular cliches

so Nippon in Warhammer being racist, yeah if Cathay, Ind and Japan would have all being 1 faction that is called Nippon it would be, but for now it is not

You can be racist without lumping multiple cultures together.

For instance by leaning on racist tropes or stereotypes. If all the warhammer-japan people were designed with exaggerated squinting eyes and buck teeth then they would definitely be racist, regardless of whether they did or did not incorporate elements of other Asian cultures.

Worth stating in the period Warhammer is set in people did group massive foreign regions as single entities and split areas close to themselves in tiny seperate bits. I can give you a basic description of many towns in England but I'd struggle to do it in France or Germany and utterly fail with Poland so that is accurate to the period being shown and well represented. It's not necessarily not racist but the Empire's main concern would be the Empire itself and those areas would be far better known

 Llamahead wrote:
Worth stating in the period Warhammer is set in people did group massive foreign regions as single entities and split areas close to themselves in tiny seperate bits. I can give you a basic description of many towns in England but I'd struggle to do it in France or Germany and utterly fail with Poland so that is accurate to the period being shown and well represented.

I mean that's just normal and isn't just limited to countries or peoples. We do the same thing with pretty much everything. Those elements of the world that are important to us, or that we are directly involved with we know in more detail with more breakdown of groupings, subgroupings and information. Those which are not important to us or which basically don't have any direct influence/impact in our lives are more fringe. So we do group them into simpler groupings and concepts.

 Gert wrote:

Nihon is right there. Or, yknow they could be creative and not just call it "Japan" but in foreign.

"In foreign"? You object to calling Japan by the name it's own people call it, in their own language? .....

ccs wrote:
"In foreign"? You object to calling Japan by the name it's own people call it, in their own language? .....

No, I object to calling a fantasy equivalent of Japan, "Japan" in Japanese. It's almost as lazy as Ind.

 Gert wrote:

ccs wrote:
"In foreign"? You object to calling Japan by the name it's own people call it, in their own language? .....

No, I object to calling a fantasy equivalent of Japan, "Japan" in Japanese. It's almost as lazy as Ind.

But Albion, Skeggi, Araby, Norsca, Lemuria, Tilea etc. are all fine, amirite?

And that wasn't his initial problem. His problem was that he thought Nippon was so close to a slur that he wasn't going to say it.