this is no longer relevant, please read “maybe i was wrong” its a post posted after this one.

every time i call something retarded or say someone is a retard, it sends a shockwave towards all my foreign readers. it’s always “let’s understand other cultures”, unless a said culture uses a word your culture considers offensive. understanding others shouldn’t be conditional, yet, in practice it seems like it fucking is. in the balkans, eastern europe, and seemingly a huge portion of the world, “retard” or 'retarded“ is just another word. it doesn’t have the same connotation it does in the west, and mainly the united states. in my country, you’ll hear ”retarded“ coming from a small child, an influencer, or even a sweet grandma. quite literally, that word is a second nature to us. it’s not as easy as ”just not fucking using it“, when your brain automatically fills it in when you’re typing. it simply... fits... we don’t even consider it a hard insult, let alone a slur lol. someone did something ridiculously stupid? well, that is retarded. someone is making fool of themselves? yep, retard. something doesn’t work the way its supposed? you guessed it, that thing is retarded. its a comment on the situation, not an insult. and even if you call someone retarded, 9 out of 10 times, at least in my country, that is not an insult.

nobody should care about words this much. i mean no harm and no malice to anyone, and that should be enough. like the world wouldn’t end if i saw someone, for an example, slashing someone’s tires, and said that person (the slasher) is retarded. in this example that’s not even an insult, but a fact. it’s not even because it’s a crime, but because you need to be a genuine fucking retard to do that to someone else.

in my country and culture, ”retard“ is just a harsher version of ”idiot“ or ”imbecile“. or, it is sometimes used to comment on something abnormal. like i said, you’d hear that word from people of many walks of life. okay, a politician or a CEO probably wouldn’t say it. but regular people would. you’ll hear it in real life, on the internet, and even in entertainment such as TV series and some movies. ”retard“ is everywhere. and (almost) no one here takes an offense to it. here, it is not seen as a taboo thing to say. its probably in the same register as our equivalents of ”fuck“ or ”shit“. so basically a slightly crude language, you’ll hear everywhere. the issue is i think is that we do not function on same register. when i write, even when using english, im still functioning on my own area’s registry, and the readers perceive it with an american/international register. so both sides just see a word, but through different lenses.

in fact, by 2022 the ‘old’ medical term was (or still is) in active use. as (translated) ”F70 - F72: mental retardation“. yet in daily speech no one thinks about this, or honestly cares. the word never became a taboo. no one sees it as wrong. and in fact if you tried to complain about usage of this word, you’d likely be laughed at. now whether this is right or wrong, i don’t know. all im trying to say is that in my country... no one really cares. and people freely uses it between languages, and yes, most people here are in fact multilingual. the first ever time i ever had people be weird at me for saying ‘retarded’ was circa 2019 on twitter. and mind you, i was online in general since i was 10-11, and in english spaces since 15. no one ever saw anything wrong with this word until i was in my 20s lol. it may be a me issue, but not using a word you’ve been using all your life out of a sudden is nearly impossible. especially since you’re ‘expected’ to use it in my native language. like i already said ‘retard’ is a common colloquialism. literally everyone says it. its a normal word of everyday speech.

i’m not even sure if there is a concept of slurs in my language, there is just bad or derogatory language. i’ll give you one thing though, some local organizations do have comments about this word and it’s usage, but yet again, the most of regular population, quite literally, doesn’t give a shit. i think another 10 to 15 years have to pass for this word to be considered offensive from where i am from, but even then i doubt it. we are very blunt people that say what they think.

i mean cussing, cursing, and potentially offensive language is a pretty much every day thing in general, not just this word lol. ”dabogda ti svaka dala, a ti bio peder.“ is a genuine insult you could say to a guy. it roughly translates to ”may every girl want to give it [pussy] to you, only for you to be gay". retard doesn’t seem so bad now, does it, huh? and mind you, this insult is one of the MILDER examples i could’ve given. there are insults about dead ancestors, the living, family, food, the sky, the sun or the moon, god, pets, animals, produce, etc.