A lot of business are named occidental, like Occidental Life Insurance. It might sound too much like "accidental" for marketers though.
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"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
-- Capt. Copeland
This echoes of the pitiful people who are proud of hating mathematics.
I don't think Latin should be mandatory either. It was for me, and it felt bizarre to have it as simply an exercise on memorization. But studying it in a broader context gives you insight into your own language (particularly so for romance languages).
Last edited by nextormento; 2015-12-13 at 05:41 PM.
Like a vast number of english words, both occidental and oriental stem from old french (which comes from latin, hence the misconception that these words came directly from latin) and were used in late middle english. As a matter of fact occident/occidental is still commonly used in modern french, but for some reason it's considered antiquated in other languages.
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English didn't borrow much from latin outside of scientific terms. It borrowed a lot from old french which was basically bastardized latin though.
Last edited by mmoc5058569db4; 2015-12-13 at 07:44 PM.
Ive only known of this terms because theres a region in the Philippines named Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental.
Most people will simply use 'east' and 'west'; occident and orient tend to be restricted to contextual discussion about history.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
In the US, people mostly use "Asian" for Southeast Asians and Far East Asians. For Indians, etc, it's South Asians. In the UK, Asians refer more to Indians and Orientals is still commonly used for East/Southeast Asians. "Orientals" in the US has fallen out of favor.
I´ve heard both, though it seems here that "occidental" is more rare, to me is not an unused word. "Ociddental" has been used more like an expression to describe the European-American way of life.