Hi all, I hope you are fine. I�m looking for advice of the native speaking moderators. Yesterday I uploaded a worksheet about reported speech. It was reported and deleted. I got a message that says that it was not an English resource because of BAD language. The only sentence I could imagine would fit into bad language was this one: A guide thought; " tourists are stupid. They don�t even look around, they just take photos". So, I would like to know if the word stupid has such a terrible impact in English. As many of you know, I make worksheets in 4 languages and sometimes I don�t feel that what we can say in one language is not allowed in an other. In French, German or Portuguese, stupid is not a very heavy word. Of course, you wouldn�t say it to an other person, but in this case, it was was the guide was thinking.   If one of you would like to see the worksheet, I uploaded it also on islcollective.

 https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-worksheets/grammar/reported-speech/excursion-everglades-reported-speech/133293

I�m not fighting for my worksheet, I�m just curious about the use of the word. 

Thank you for giving me your advice 

I checked the worksheet and couldn�t find any bad language so voted for it to stay. I am surprised that it was deleted.

 

I eally hope you could post it again dear Silvia ...with no trouble at all this time.

And yes stupid is not a bad word in French ... Just sometimes the sad reality ...

I can´t see any "bad language." Must be a misunderstanding. I know that "stupid" means something slightly different in Spanish. Perhaps that has something to do with it. It´s still not what I would call bad language, though. 

Oddly enough, I tried to leave a review for your nephew�s book on Amazon España in English and it was rejected for obscenities! I looked it over again and again but could not get what they meant. I think, in the case of Amazon, it is an algorithm that hunts out bad language, in my case they just misunderstood the words as they were in English, but in this case, I suspect it´s more of a human misunderstanding. I think you should post it again. 

In my region in the US we don�t say some one is stupid very often, as some people do find it kind of insulting. It is much stronger than the word blöd in German.

 

This may have started with the Politically Correct movement to clean up the language and make it less offensive and stop labeling people with negative labels. An example of this is the word retarded. Retarded used to be a medical developmental designation of low IQ, but soon people were calling others retards in a non-medical, insulting way.

A link on political correctness https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-correctness 

 

It sounds less strong, to me, to say dumb. Tourists are dumb or incomprehensible .  "I don�t understand tourists" (commenting on their behavior) would be more politically correct.

 

 However, stupid isn�t necessarily a bad word, as can be seen here https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stupid

I don�t think your worksheet should have been removed. I think it is very nice and useful.

--Mary

 

Lynne