The word is a two-layer etymology puzzle. The Germans call a refugee a Flüchtling -- a word in which the curious will see the diminutive ending -ling and the root Flucht or flight.
Our word refugee has the prefix re- meaning "back to" and a root based on the Latin verb fugere meaning "to flee" (think fugitive or centrifugal meaning center-fleeing). But the verb also means to fly or to take flight: Tempus fugit
8 comments:
Cue the Tom Petty song.
I'm really pleased with this post Chick. Thanks.
My pleasure, Lem.
"Refugee" has that double e (ee) ending also seen in several other French/latinate pairs: employee/employer, grantee/granter (sometimes grantor), etc. link.
Does this imply that there are both refugees and refugers?
Wait, why are my posts being deleted. I was first on here and suggested Lem should type the Tom Petty Refugee song. Dammit, Google eating my posts.
I'm listening to Tom Petty right now.
The thing is, I'm not so sure what the value is of i-Tunes anymore. This was free on Amazon Prime. Just move it my Amazon music lie-berry.
I thought this post was going to be about the difference between refugee and immigrant. Between immigrant forced to move due to war and because their homes don't exist anymore and people taking advantage of invasion for economic opportunity.
I don't think you honestly get to move to another country due to strife or economic disadvantage without also admitting your country of origin is fucked up. You must.
America was established in large part by people seeking religious freedom. The whole place has always been real religious-y. A lot of things started here. We're big, WAY big on religious freedom, or have been. That's the history I learned.
This is different from that. My Twitter feed is filled with images of hoards of immigrants gathering in huge numbers in the mud all throughout Europe. These are mostly male, young males seeking work but with little skills useful to Europe. Whereas the video and pictures the media show are always women and children. The one photo in particular circulating of all young men, and they're all worn out and exhausted and beaten from harrowing travel, with caption, "Our war-torn situation at home is so dire we fled to Europe leaving our women and children behind."
My grandparents came here for economic advantage. Once anchored most of the rest of two families came too. The process was ordered but viewed by many as invasion. They were incapable of changing any of their habits. Whatever they were religiously, politically, philosophically and such before they left, that's what they stayed after arriving.
But this is different. This is invasion in Europe and here because countries of origin are fucked up. Worse than us. By coming here, honestly, they must admit that or else there would be no point to moving.
*Cues REM, Losing My Religion*
The whole political-religio society is so f'd up you must abandon your homeland just to catch up economically. You MUST recognize the arrangement, the heartfelt tradition-bound beliefs failed so hard you left the land of it and sought out the success of another society altogether. One that is foreign. Knowing full well you start out there abjectly ill-equiped to even participate. You go for the products of that society without caring or even wondering exactly how the new target society did not let their citizens down the way yours did. You'll bring your sick world with you as you must. It's all you know. The religion, the largest cause of it all, the dearest thing you possess.
I've read reports of a lot of immigrants changing to Christianity through this whole experience and no doubt there are a few but what I've seen of Muslim gratitude I do not believe Christian charity will have much an effect on most of them no in toning down Islamic political aggression, f'd up as Islamists are they will never stop their aggression.
But I was wrong. It wasn't about those things. It was about language instead. And the whole time I recalling Jeffery telling me he had already seen some dude's new house. To Jeff the big dealio was the lake. He said the sign for duck and then spelled with perfect clarity:
R E F U C E
This puzzled me deeply. I got a picture of a filthy lake with ducks crawling around on it.
I spelled back like a typewriter, R E F U C E
He nodded, "yes."
I signed, "dirty?"
This is where I'm a f'n idiot. It's my greatest shame I cannot figure out the simplest things and get absolutely stuck. Everyone knows I'm a dunce and just accepts it so they have patience with me like I'm a little retard who needs special attention. Jeff said as if speaking to a child.
R E F U C E, safe place for ducks.
OOOOOOooooOOOOooooooOOoooooOOOoo R E F U G E.
"Yeah, so what. No difference." Jeff couldn't see how one little letter can hang me up so badly when anybody else around including YOU would have it all grasped in an instant.
I try to filter the crisis through my own family history. At the beginning of the 18th century, Louis the something had troops rampaging through The Palitinate (Germany) killing Protestants. War, global cooling, and famine took them by boatloads to England where they precipitated a major refugee crisis. Seriously, the Palintines, an unskilled and useless lot, were camping in filth in the streets of London. My people were shipped to New York.
I discovered this when I was working on the family genealogy. A mere 300 years ago and I hadn't a clue. I bet most Americans don't know the specifics of their family persecutions and carry no hatred of the perpetrators. I suspect they were too busy trying to survive the new world. But I digress, my point is that I do not understand hatred of specific others that lasts for centuries, much less millennia. Do you? Deep in your gut? The American mind is unprepared to deal with the Middle East problems.
My sympathies are with fleeing families, but I see no way they could mesh, in such great numbers, into The American Way. Scattered out, a family to a town, would have worked a hundred years ago. Today, with the internet, the hatreds never have a chance to die off.
Christy said ...
My sympathies are with fleeing families, ...
Mine would be too ... if I saw many "families" in this batch of refugees...but I don't from the photos I've seen...mostly military age men who refuse to fight for right in their own homelands, expect, even demand, a welcome elsewhere while others clean up their homeland messes, after which a fair number have said publicly they want to go back. They have no intention of assimilation...and therein lies the danger. I live among Muslims who've assimilated, built new lives, worked hard, and improved the community (literally rebuilding anew the neighborhood I live in), and they're not particularly pleased with current events where others who do not share their assimilated values are accepted as "refugees". They question the intent of the new comers. I'd say if anyone should know they should....
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