Talk:Chicana

Context tags

I forgot to say so in my edit summary, but just to clarify — the context tag that the COED applies is “chiefly United States”, and it makes no mention of this word being non-standard, or even informal or colloquial for that matter. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 12:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

How exactly do you propose that a non-standard or rare usage be cited? The fact that a dictionary does not have have full usage notes doe not serve as proof that the omission is accurate. One term has more four times more hits on Google Books than the other, and that is because it is less natural, and less common, for an English speaker to use this kind of feminine word. Dmcdevit·t 22:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

dictionary.com and m-w.com both have it. It doesn't seem nonstandard to me -- maybe use is limited to people who also speak Spanish and people around that area. dictionary.com lists an origin in the late 1960s, by the way. Cynewulf 22:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't dispute its existence. Dmcdevit·t 22:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The COED tags both logomachy and ennead, to name but two, as “rare”; it tags both irregardless and the non-standard, “a difficult situation or problem” sense of dilemma as “informal”, so maybe it doesn’t use a “non-standard” tag. In any case, you are yet to cite any dictionary that slaps any kind of disapproving tags on Chicana. Of course, I’m still open to a rationale as to why Chicana is non-standard, but I don’t buy the “because it’s a feminine word” argument — and neither do many others if you take Beobach972’s (“I do not see that the use of a gender-neutral catch-all in any way makes the specifically female term non-standard in those cases where it is used”) and Ruakh’s (“This makes them [(feminine nouns, in particular -ess terminal feminine agent nouns)] weird, but not non-standard”) comments written here as representative. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 22:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Quite simply, it's far less common. If you think "rare" is better, that's fine I suppose, but don't pretend that a perfect equivalent to the much preferred term Chicano. Dmcdevit·t 22:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I don’t think that it’s rare either — neither in absolute terms (with Chicana getting 1,502 Google Book Search hits) nor in relative terms (with Chicano getting 4,652 GBS hits — a ratio closer to 1:3⅟₁₀ than to 1:4, as you claimed). In fact, with statistics like that, I’d be more likely to consider Chicana in clearly widespread use than consider it rare! The COED backs me up when I claim that this word is neither non-standard nor rare, and that it is, in actuality, “a perfect equivalent to … Chicano” — what’s your source? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 23:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC)