ears burning!
Who taught : Kelly
Gays? (source:topnews.in)
As usual, Jessy and I took a walk this evening. During the walk, we saw two women walking along us, holding their hands. Well, we can simply tell they are together. I mean they are gays. Most of the time, if two people who are the same gender walk down streets, holding their hands, they are considered as gays. Maybe, it is 100% true. Am I right?
But, if you go to Korea and walk around, you will see a lot of ladies walking, holding their hands or arm-in-arm. 99% out of them are not gays. (Men would never do that. If you see any two guys, holding their hands, in Korea, they must be gays too.) For some reason, the Korean women all do that. I do not know why. It must be a part of culture. Not sure whether it is Asian thing or Korean thing though.
So, if you take a trip to America with your friend who is the same gender as you, you should not hold your friend’s hand in America. People here in America will think you are gays. (I mean they would not really care about it but they will just think you are gays even though you are not.)
A few weeks ago, I think, Kelly added a comment on one of my posts in which she used an expression, “Ears are burning!”
Let me give you a situation that you can use this expression! During lunch time, some of my friends are sitting together, eating lunch, and, in the middle of the discussion, they are talking about me. But I am not there. (Hope they are talking about good things! 🙂 ) A few minutes later, I show up and they say to me like, “Oh, hey T-Bone! We were just talking about you.” Then, I would be like, “Oh really? That is why my ears were burning. What did you talk about me?”
The definition of the phrase is as follows (source: wikitionary).
Said of somebody who was not present but was the topic of discussion.
Interesting thing is we, Korean, do have a very similar expression. We say, “귀가 간지럽다 (Gui-Ga-Gan-Ji-Reop-Da).” The literal translation is “My ears are itchy.” Our feeling of the expression is like, if so many people talk about me, then all of the sounds will come into my ears and that makes them itchy. But, I guess, for American, the word BURN should have that kind of feeling, right? Very interesting!
Did you remember i got my ear pierced when i was a freshman?
Back then, we totally regarded a man who has their right-ear pierced as a gay. I had my ear pierced without any idea on it.
Now that it’s been over 15 yrs since then, I have no idea of what they are thinking about it now. 🙂
I am not sure. But there is some sort of social norm here about ear piercing. If any guy has both ears pierced, then he is saying I am gay. Something like that. Anybody knows?
Yep.. I think I remember that ‘myth’ that a guy has only one ear pierced, he is considered as a gay. But I still don’t know whether or not it’s true.
Women in here go to the toilet together, even though one of them doesn’t feel a nature’s call. They say it symbolizes a sort of friendship.
What kind of correlation between going together and friendship is it? Just because of waiting one until the other’s done?
I’ve been living with the same woman for 8 years :), but i still don’t get a definition of woman. So, I’ve been trying to go to the bathroom together……. to feel our friendship these days.
I’m a guy who tries to… live up to her expectations.
But.. now? I don’t want to go together anymore.
Never try this, Terry! 🙁
Man.. that is weird.. I would not do that.
When I was in NY, one of my classmate, a Korean girl, asked me to go around someplace,then she suddenly took my arm! At that time I didn’ know it’s a common way for Korean girls, so I guess I should have worn terror in my face. ha ha But I now kind of miss that closeness.
Haha… So, I guess that is Korean thing.
You kept using the word “gays” in this post… that doesn’t sound right, almost kind of offensive. To me, it should be singular even when plural …. “gay”, like:
“Well, we can simply tell they are together. I mean they are gay”.
I’m not sure “gays” is wrong gramatically, but the only time I’ve heard it said like that is in elementary school when kids are making fun of each other.
I agree, Phil. I think “gays” is derogatory, but to say that someone is “gay” is ok. The only similar situation that comes to mind is when you call people “evolutionists” if they believe in evolution.
It’s almost like you’re creating this arbitrary class of people whereas that’s not really how they define themselves. It’s just a sexual preference, not *who* they are. That’s the best explanation I can come up with.
That is so good to know because I would continuously think gays is the correct one grammatically since it should be plural. It sounds just so hard to understand why plural makes a different feeling. So, I guess I should not use plural when it comes to gay or lesbian, right?
Hmmm … I think “lesbians” is actually ok … so maybe my logic kinda breaks down there! 🙂
I think it’s not so much an issue of plural vs. singular, but rather adjective vs. noun.
In your sentence, “They are ____” , the blank could either be “gay” or “gays”. If you use the word “gays”, then it is a noun. This is the somewhat offensive usage. The singular form of that sentence is “He is a gay” which is definitely not acceptable usage. Alternatively, if the word is “gay”, then it is an adjective. “They are gay” is the non-derogatory usage.
A similar situation I can think of is race. You may be talking about someone and use “black” as an adjective to describe her race as African-American. “She is black” is fine to say. On the other hand, “She is a black” or “They are blacks” would make you sound racist and offensive.
I hope this helps! Good discussion
Thanks for explaining that. I knew there was a difference but was having a hard time putting it in words.
I think the reason the noun version is offensive is because it makes the person being talked about only that thing, instead of being an attribute of a whole. “He is a gay” implies that’s it, that’s all that person is. “He is gay” implies there is possibly more to the person.
Lesbian is different because it is only a noun, not both an adjective and a noun like “gay” and “black”. So that would be pluralized.
A bit of history of the word “gay”. Originally, it mean “happy or joyful”. When the theme to Flinstones talks about having a “gay old time” they mean the older definition. It’s only fairly recently that it started to mean homosexual. And only more recently has it included lesbians too…. in the 80s, it would have been weird to call a woman “gay”. Not sure why, though.
Finally, if you want to make fun of a homophobe, a common thing to do is to use the phrase “the gay.” Examples: “He was afraid of the gay.” Feel free to use the intenet-meme “teh” for even more mockery: “He was afraid of teh gay.”
Hmm…
He is a gay……. He is gay….
I am trying to talk to myself to feel some difference as you pointed out. I think it will take some time for me to feel it. The only difference is one alphabet!! Well, hard to grasp it. Thanks for the info, Christian!
Oh wow, I would have not known anything about this kind of difference at all. To sum it up again, using an expression which could end up classifying a person or people is not a good idea. But, honestly, it would be so hard to figure out those kind of things during conversations.
Thanks again, Patty! This is really good! I think now we are all getting into the core of English. If fact, I had to increase the level of comments because of this discussion.
Interestingly, I think the Japanese have something similar to ears burning…. If someone sneezes, it’s because someone is talking about them.
It took a while to figure out while reading manga and watching anime. They’d mention character A and then it would cut to character A sneezing and looking around.
I think I remember a vietnamese friend mentioning the sneezing thing too.
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hello again. this topic about the usage of the word, gay, is quite helpful. for me, like you mentioned, it’s very difficut to grasp the diference between gay and a gay, but i will be careful when i have to use them on my writing. your blog and your friends’ comments never fail to inspire me. (sorry i am writing from my kindle and i do not know how to input a big character. )