Redefining Disability #3–What Word Do I Use?: Changing Paradigms by Creating a Common Language

This post is of interest because of the topic itself. It also caught my eye because I am a non native English speaker. I realized that in French, we don’t have the same “wide” span of expressions (positive or negative) as in English regarding persons with a disability. It is weird that I didn’t realized that the word “handicapped” really existed in English and how problematic it was in English, for the French translation for “disabled” is “handicapé” and is the most common word (and most progressive I’d say) used in French up to this day to speak of people with a disability. Being able to see the differences between French and English gave me thought about how we also talk about this topic in my native language.