Re: Anyone speak Efe or Baka?

[snipping explanation of the varying uses of the term "[p|P]ygmy"]

Regardless of all of this, the topic of discussion was about the *African* group known as "Pygmies", so wouldn't that make observations about an unrelated group in a distant region of the world, falling only incidentally under a more general classification for which the term "pygmy" is sometimes used, irrelevant?

Besides that, what utility, scientific or otherwise, is there in having a term to denote the collection of unrelated ethnic groups whose average adult height happens to fall below an arbitrarily chosen measure? As far as I can tell, the only benefit derived from such a "classification" is that it provides fodder for arguments about whether one group or another falls into that classification, which is great fun for pure prescriptivists.
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