"ret*d" is one of the words that I have used out of habit, but am trying to stop using because you never know who is going to be offended. Also in this category are "gay" (as in "I hate this lesson, it's so gay". It doesn't actually refer to homosexuality, but the colloquial use can confuse people who don't realise this. I haven't used this in ages) and "spaz" (short for "spastic" but adopted by mainstream culture as an insult much like "ret*d". I never used this one much to start with, though, but my friends used to say it a lot).
One way I'm helping myself to stop saying the R-word is that every time I feel that I would say it, I say "tard" instead, because then the person can choose if they want to prefix the abbreviation with "bas" or "re" (isn't it funny how "bastard" is considered more of a swearword than "ret*d", but someone is a lot more likely to be offended by the latter? Being born out of wedlock really isn't that big a deal nowadays, while disability is still a sensitive issue, so surely it should be the other way around?).
The problem with this campaign, well-meaning though it is, is that (as some people have previously mentioned) any word used to replace "ret*d" will become an insult as well. Whoever dreamt up "special needs" missed the mark, as "spesh" is now used to insult someone who is disabled (unlike "ret*d", I've mostly heard this used in a deliberately offensive way, not the casual way that ret*d is often used). I'm always getting called a spesh at school (the phrase "she gets away with everything cos she's a spesh and has no friends" is going to haunt me for the rest of my schooldays. Neither of the three parts of that statement are even true).
Lene wrote:
Just wondering, what about the word 'dumb'? It's very ingrained in culture too, but do people who can't talk find it offensive?
I've wondered about that myself. I would refer to someone who can't talk as "mute", though, not "dumb" (because dumb sounds too much like an insult even when it's meant medically or whatever).
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'El reloj, no avanza
y yo quiero ir a verte,
La clase, no acaba
y es como un semestre"