Every country has its own strain.

The Japanese think it bad taste to talk about burakumin, social outcasts that include leather tanners and slaughterhouse workers. It recalls ancient prejudices, but there are lands where the repetition of not-so-old cruelties is what evokes horror: the mention of "scientific racism" in Germany, for example, or the similar assumptions behind South Africa's "grand apartheid."

All these linguistic taboos have something in common: they are meant to take the sting out of confrontations by constantly ratcheting down the sharpness of the words used. In the United States, this is the process by which, over decades, "village idiot" ratchets down to "slow," which ratchets down to "retarded," then to "challenged" and then all the way down to "special."

In today's global culture, some of this kind of thing is happening all over. Sometimes it is simply a reflection of fashions emanating from America. In Mexico, for instance, where it is still common for the common man to call homosexuals "maricones," a deep insult, the politically correct will say "gay" (though the word is pronounced "guy" and means nothing in Spanish).

Nonetheless, political correctness isn't just about America's unspeakable words. It takes taboos to tangle, and taboos tend to be local. For instance, Japanese newspapers simply avoid mentioning burakumin and even the occupations they practiced, like butchering meat. In formal Japanese, no one is blind, bald, fat or ugly. And while a tall man in a group is "the tall one," a short man is "the fourth from the left."

In Latin America, by contrast, a short man can be "petiso" -- "shorty" -- and a dark-skinned man "negro," and no offense is taken. But make an aside about someone's mother and there will be trouble.

With informers around for 20 years under the juntas, discussing politics in most Latin American countries used to be dangerous, especially for anyone who let slip socialist catchwords like "bourgeoisie." Now politics can be discussed freely, but one must disparage politicians.

Journalists say that ignoring his views will suppress them, but the theory seems thin.

Meanwhile, if Americans are sick of discussing Bill Clinton's sex life, the French are sick at the idea that Americans discuss it at all. They assume their presidents fool around -- Francois Mitterrand's mistress and their daughter attended his funeral -- and the national "don't ask, don't tell" policy never compels a leader to lie or obstruct justice about sex (not that the French expect their presidents to be incapable of either).

The Germans, by contrast, have many things that are illegal to say or do, all related to the Nazi era: one may not deny the Holocaust or make the Hitler salute. Except for rebellious skinheads and soccer hooligans, jingoism is out, and outspoken anti-foreigner sentiment is frowned upon. Still, many privately blame Turks and Africans for higher crime rates and encourage tougher immigration laws.

Some concepts protected by political correctness in the United States don't export at all in most places -- women's rights, for example. These are rapidly, and sometimes violently, retreating in much of the Muslim world. And in Mexico, secretarial ads still ask for "good-looking young women."

Foreigners can't keep up with American changes, and often think them foolish. Probably the most fashion-policed word anywhere is that with which Americans refer to their countrymen of African ancestry. In 50 years, that defining term has shifted from colored to Negro to black to Afro-American to people of color to African-American.

Colored to Negro to black to Afro-American to people of color to African-American.

An African, by contrast, would never take a cue from the now-fashionable American invention "Native American" because "natives" is an old insult. In South Africa, the former "Bantus" (an inoffensive word elsewhere in Africa) now run the country, and non-whites are sometimes called "the previously disadvantaged." There is also nothing basic about "black" -- in some contexts it refers only to black Africans while in others it includes mixed-race people and Indians.

When it comes to the context of political correctness, in some ways South Africa resembles America, with blacks and whites exchanging hostilities across an economic divide. In others, it is unique. Its constitution, for example, curbs hate speech and forbids discrimination that is based not just on race and religion but also on sex, sexual preference, handicap, pregnancy status and almost every imaginable ground.

Perhaps because South Africa spent so much of the apartheid era in isolation, America's political correctness and the backlash against it arrived simultaneously.

Take race. Everyone talks about crime, but for whites to dwell on it too long smacks of racism, because most criminals are black. Suburban wives complain about their maids, and husbands complain about labor productivity, but it's all code for "the blecks." White and black liberals strain to ask people of other races to dinner, but to get caught practicing tokenism is a faux pas.

For whites to dwell on crime too long smacks of racism, because most criminals are black.

Meanwhile, English-speaking whites call uncouth Afrikaner ones "hairybacks" or "rockspiders," while Afrikaners call the other whites "rooinek" -- rednecks, as in sunburned British soldiers -- or worse.

And then there is Russia, where the most discriminated-against groups are residents of the Caucasus -- Chechnyans, Azerbaijanis, Georgians and so on. There, unlike elsewhere, Caucasians are relatively dark skinned -- and to Russians inclined to be derogatory, this makes them "chorniye" or "blacks" (except when this is seen to be insensitive, in which case Caucasians become "people of Caucasian nationality.")

In other words, in Russia it's the Caucasians who can be blacks, but a person of African extraction is never black, except derogatorily. (A white Russian, of course, is vodka, Kahlua and cream.)