Just FYI, I used the word 'handicapped' in conversation recently and brought it to a grinding awkward halt. The preferred term is 'disabled', apparently due to the 'hand in cap' associations of 'handicapped.' YMMV :-)
No matter what word you use, you can't change the reality. So that reality eventually "infects" the word. So people pick a different one to try to ignore it.
It only works for a short while, because changing the word does not change the reality. And no matter what word you use people can still use it as an insult.
Thanks, it's always nice to find someone that wants to help you polish your use of a second language, it's appreciated.
Subtle changes like that are hard to get right, I don't usually use that word in English and in dutch it is 'gehandicapte', and I translated that literally.
I sympathize with 'ars' though, whatever you call it the truth is someone has a body with bits and pieces not working the way the rest of us have.
What always bothered me about this, is when a dog loses a leg, the dog instantly transforms into a three legged dog, still competes with his litter mates as though nothing has changed, no special allowances given, none expected. It's literally just another dog. We humans seem to continuously compare the people around us with the 'norm' and we like to label those that are visibly different in a negative way, and those that are visibly different like to draw attention to that fact in demanding we level out the differences.
Interestingly, it's a popular viewpoint in the deaf community (at least here in the USA) that deafness is not a handicap at all and, in the opinion of a minority, is in fact an advantage over those who are hearing.
