The situation, for those who don't follow football, is that during a recent match between Liverpool and Manchester United, the two most popular teams in England, Liverpool's striker Suarez, who is Uruguayan, was giving United's Evra, who is French, a hard time.

Evra (who, it should be noted, is black) got upset at him, and called him a "sudaca," which is sort of a derogatory term for a South American, but which has nothing to do with race. Suarez replied by saying "Porque, negro?" (or possibly "negrito" depending on who you listen to), meaning "Why, Negro?"

Now, obviously to an English speaker, calling someone a "Negro" is totally offensive and wrong, and thus the English Football Association, trying to make a strong stand against racism, decided to ban him for the very stern sentence of 8 games. The problem is that "negrito" and "negro," though literally translated "black," have long since been used to mean different things in South America.

You can go anywhere in South America, where I'm from, and hear people call each other these names, and they're used like "dude" in the US or "mate" in England. You can call a white person a "negrito," and no one will blink an eye. Simply put, they are in no way racist, and I'm sure that Suarez didn't even consider the term a reference to Evra's race when he used it.

The question becomes, then, what responsibility does someone have to adapt to a new culture when he moves? If he is speaking his own language, is it OK to use the terms in that language that don't have a negative connotation, even if they are offensive in the language used by the people in the country of his new residence?

The English FA has obviously taken the position that it doesn't matter what a speaker meant by his words, what matters is that they could be perceived as racist by the people who hear him. I'm curious to see how people on here would take this, as it's really an interesting situation to me.