James Studdard: Please disabuse me of the understanding that Hottentot is an offensive term for a member of the Khoikhoi people and/or their language.  

 

JM:  I was too quick to appologize (not that I didn't mean it!). There was a nagging reference hoity-tottering somewhere - and I  wanted to check it in "ADA". 

Yes! On top of it all, I learnt where I stand when I'm politically correct, if not in Khoi-Khoi, at least in French morphing into German and back into ... "gallicismes". Here it is, in relation to Aqua's last note:

"Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bar (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels [...]The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ "