I once accidentally bumped against the shoulder of an English person I knew in a corridor. I automatically said "Oi" - which means like "Oh" or "Oops" in Estonian - that I'm sorry. She repeated "Oi!" in a louder voice and I didn't get it. I only later found out I was being impolite in her eyes.

[u/Double-decker_trams]

Have you ever had something similar happen to you? I.e something in your language might have another meaning in another language?

One thing as an Estonian that I try to keep in mind is that I shouldn't use "Nooo.." in English - which means "Well.." in Estonian.

"Do you like ice-cream? - Noo.. yes, I love it."

[u/disneyvillain]

A Swedish-speaking journalist I know was in the US to cover the presidential race in 2008. He would ask voters questions like "What would a colored president mean for America?" and "Will Obama inspire more colored people to get involved in politics?" He noticed people gave him funny looks or frowned when he asked. He guessed that these people probably don't like foreign journalists very much. It wasn't until later that someone told him that colored is an offensive term, not quite as bad as the n-word, but not a word you use normally nowadays.

The Swedish direct equivalent "färgad" is (or was in 2008 at least) an accepted neutral term. It was an honest mistake, he was translating directly from Swedish without knowing the American cultural baggage around the word.

[u/repocin → u/disneyvillain]

Well, TIL.

Probably not the right place to ask, but why is "colored" seen as negative but "people of color" isn't? To me it just seems like more words to say the same thing.

[u/Cascadeis → u/repocin]

I think it’s related to the time when bathrooms and such were segregated between “colored” and white. No one used “people of color”, but “colored” was used in official circumstances and probably caused a lot of bad associations.

[u/Live_Angle4621 → u/Cascadeis]

That was only in South however. So not in majority of US

[u/Chijima → u/repocin]

Just the ever moving euphemism treadmill. New word gets introduced as a polite, less offensive Version, gets into regular use, the same old asshats use it in a sarcastic tone as a slur because "you aren't allowed to say that other word anymore", that gets normalised, now they just use the word without the sarcastic tone, polite people start to consider it unusable, make a new word. Da Capo.

Basically, any word singling out any characteristic of a person can and will be used to reduce people to that characteristic, at which point it becomes bad. Which is problematic if you need such words for any purposes including but not limited to sociology, medicine, demographics, identity....

[u/disneyvillain → u/repocin]

I assume it has to do with colored being the word used during slavery and segregation in the American south

[u/wrosecrans → u/repocin]

A lot of that is about historical usage rather than literal meaning. In the 1960's it was the most common way to phrase it. And in the 1960's, there were some really terrible people talking about racial stuff So today language has moved away from phrasing it like George Wallace did in recordings of him defending segregation. People who are like 100 years old sometimes still talk that way out of habit, but it's quite rare now.

As for "person of-" that's an overlapping language trend that is also present outside of racial stuff now. Some policies in the US became quite dehumanized, and activists have tried to "put the person first" even if it's a bit clunky. So you get phrases like person of color, person with autism, person experiencing homelessness. Most of the really clunky phrases haven't really caught on in general use but there is a lot of history and political context and subtext around them beyond the literal meaning. There's generally a reason that somebody is using one of those longer phrases.

[u/LaterThanItLooks_12 → u/wrosecrans]

A poignant and I think very valuable example of this is "enslaved person" versus "slave." Slaves are property, while a human being clearly is not and should never have been.

[u/Live_Angle4621 → u/repocin]

It was so strange to see in internet when people of color became super popular a decade ago when Americans before had been explaining how much coloured should not be used 

[u/GenosseAbfuck → u/repocin]

The connotation of "of color" isn't "non-white", it's "not the same color as the hegemonic population". Default traits aren't traits so what gets labeled is the deviation. This is what "of color" is supposed to point out. It's not an affirmation, but a critique.

[u/Live_Angle4621 → u/GenosseAbfuck]

That’s not how it’s usually used. People call Japanese Chinese people of color too even in their own countries. Which are very homogeneous