Talk:Kaffir

join with kaphir
??? *a bit beffudlled* - why is there "kafir" and "kaphir" when there should be only one, they mean the same thing --don't they?Dwarf Kirlston 01:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC) note: also kaffir - they all seem to be pronounced the same way... do they mean the same thing???Dwarf Kirlston
 * kaphir should be merged here (please feel free to do it!), kaffir should stay independent, as it deals with the specialized South African meaning. dab (&#5839;) 08:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OED entry on "Kaffir"
The OED is considered *the* authority for words in the English language. The closest match is Kaffir. Thus:

From the Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989) - online version (and therefore the one most frequently updated with new words that have something resembling common usage) P.MacUidhir 18:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup of Kaffir/Kafir and related articles
I have split the old "Kafir"/"Kaffir" pages into kafir (Islam) for the religious meaning, kaffir (ethnic slur) for the insult as used in South Africa and Jamaica, South Africa Kaffir people for its neutral (sort of) use in historical contexts, e.g. the "Kaffir Wars". See kaffir (disambiguation). The old discussion is mostly in Talk:Kafir (Islam), except for some sections on general senses, that were kept here. Jorge Stolfi 22:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Anybody know more about where the ethnic slur Kaffir comes from? I saw this term in a fiction book and didn't really find a lot of info on it. Jscook55 (talk) 04:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Indentation of disamb page
The sense "blanket term for southern African natives" had been indented under the "ethnic slur" sense. I moved it up one level. The reason is that it is not clear that the "blanket" sense qualifies as an "ethnic slur".

The "blanket" sense apparently dates from the beginning of slave trade in the 16th century, and is therefore older than than the colonization of South Africa. Sure, the prejudice (and worse) existed at that time, but that doesn't seem to be enough to turn an ethnic name into an ethnic slur. (For instance, the English despised and hated the Germans during WWII, yet that did not make "German" an ethnic slur. Ditto for the English settlers in Australia and the word "Aborigine". Also, "negro" was probably synonymous with "black man" at some point, but somehow one became an ethnic slur, while the other didn't.)
 * Well, they had surrogates like "Nazi", "Kraut" etc. for that. It should be added that there was virtually no hatred against the English in Germany, despite the many war crimes commited against Germans. Then of course the term Kaffir was not understood as an "ethnic slur" in the beginning. It became only one, when "liberal Whites" started to "educate" them i.e. stirring them up against the Boers.

Methinks that a a word qualifies as a slur only if it has other negative associations besides just the name of a discriminated group, so that using it to name those peoples implicitly conveys the speaker's contempt for them; or if the speaker knows that the group dislikes that name, so that its use becomes an intentional insult. Both are certainly true of "kaffir" today, but I can't see how that could be the case in the early 19th century, say.

Also, according to this source the term had a more restricted sense in at a certain place and time (Eastern Cape frontier, the 19th century), which argues against it being just an ethnic slur at that time.

Indeed, if we should go by etymology, methinks that the slur should be subordinate to the blanket sense, rather than the other way around. But can we leave the two at the same level, as a compromise?

(Phew! Sorry to waste so many bytes on a miserly "*"...) All the best, Jorge Stolfi 23:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Article "cleanup"
Someone deleted the second half of this page, with entries like "Kaffir lime" etc, allegedly to follow WP guidelines for disamb pages. I have reverted the change because: All the best, Jorge Stolfi 21:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Those "guidelines" are still a proposal, not The Law.
 * The deleted material took many hours to compile, analyze, organize, and edit. It is not reasonable to delete someone's work for mere "uniformity" reasons.
 * The list of "terms with Kaffir in their name" is separated from the disamb list and properly labeled as such. So leaving it there does not get in the way of the disamb page use. That is, the article is a proper disamb page plus some extra value.  What is bad about that?
 * Moreover, that list is useful and important information that is not recorded elsewhere in Wikipedia. In particular, many of those entries will not turn up in searches, because their articles do not exist yet (but ought to eventually).
 * Even if all those articles did exist, a search for "kaffir" would turn up hundred of articles that use the word; and the articles that actually define "kaffir something" would be lost among them.
 * There is "danger of confusion" between all those senses (as required by the policy proposal), because a reader who wants to know about (say) "kaffir lime" may well think that "kaffir" is a general adjective like "edible" or "sweet", and hence look up "kaffir" rather than "kaffir lime". It is obviously better to tell him that "kaffir lime" is a single name, than to let him figure it out by himself.

Respectfully disagree. Disambig pages are not search engine in wikipedia. They have strictly defined function, namely, to navigate between articles with the same title. Looking into history, I see it is you hobby and I understand you will be painfully reluctant to abandon. But what you pursue is not encouraged at other diambig pages. I am afraid I have to escalate this dispute to wider participation. Mukadderat 09:31, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * How about a new article like "List of terms with Kaffir in their name"? (better investigate naming conventions for lists before creating it.) Then one line under "See also:" could link to that article, and the dab page could be cleaned up. And cleanup it needs! Also, how about creating the missing articles, or at least making stubs? "Important information" should not be on a dab page, as dab pages are out of the mainstream, and many editors will not see them, so maintenance suffers, and many readers will not see them. Chris the speller 16:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Obviously I cannot stop you from putting up a vote or anything; I can only lament that, after having spent a lot of time cleaning up other people's mess, for Wikipedia's sake (not exaclty "a hobby" as you say...), I have to spend still more time to prevent my work from being thrown away.
 * As I said above, this is not a search page. It is a page that fulfills the purpose of a disamb page, namely help the reader "navigate between articles with the SIMILAR titles" (obviously not the SAME title). It does all that a bare bone disamb page does, and a bit more. I still cannot see how taking out those entries will make Wikipedia more useful or easier to use.  On the other hand, I can see many ways in which it will get worse.
 * Editorial standards exist for certain reasons:
 * to make editing more effcient: namely, people who create or modify articles don't have to waste their time figuring out a nice layout, they can just use the standard one.
 * reader's comfort: arbitrary changes in layout (font, color, etc.) distract the reader and make reading a less pleasant experience, so they should be avoided when possible
 * marketing: a person browsing through the shelves of a bookstore is more likely to buy a book if it just looks nice (independently of what is written in it.
 * I believe that none of these reasons justifies erasing the second half of this article. As for #1, the work is already done, so it is not a question of bringing the page "up" to the standard", but rather of bringing it "down" to the standard. As for #2, the (few) readers who will get to this page will never notice that this page is "different" from other disamb pages, so the page will be no more distracting than any other. And ditto for #3.  So, I ask again, what purpose does it serve to delete that list?
 * Moreover, this page has some information contents that does not fit anywhere else: namely, it shows how the term "kaffir" got used besides its original meaning.
 * Finally, let me note that if Wikipedia had stuck to its standards since the beginning, we would not have disamb pages, list of pages, categories, sections, and many more things that began as "violations" of the standards. Here as always, one cannot make real progress without violating the prevailing standards.
 * In any case, it is not ethical to simply deelte a lot of non-trivial information because it does not quite fit some (proposed) layout standard. (I have spent the best part of the last two months fixing the format of other peoples' pages. It seems that I could just have deleted them instead...)
 * All the best, Jorge Stolfi 22:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Kaffir beer, piano and pot
None of these terms can be used in a modern sense without being insulting to black South Africans, and none are in common usage today (apart from as intensional racial slurs). Also, none of these links have articles as yet. If someone wants to put them back, maybe they can track down and find historical references, and mention that the use is depracated. -Kieran 13:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Kaffiristan is not in the Middle East
Why is Kaffiristan under the subheading Middle East when Afghanistan is in the South Asian continent? -Klep 20:31, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)