Like I'm not pissed at white people who like Chinese food or artwork or language or whatever But if someone is, because of the legacy of colonialism, well that's their prerogative And you can't like earn your way out of it by accumulating cred
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The whole thing about this is that as languages go, English is very unusually accommodating In modern English it is surprisingly easy and common to drop in a word from another language with the "rules" attached to it mostly intact and just go ahead and use it
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Because English is an uninflected language based on word order Because it's a "world language" This fact is not really a demonstration that the Anglosphere is the most humble and self-effacing linguistic community in the world The opposite, that it's the most rapacious empire
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So I dunno, I have tremendously mixed feelings about the idea among hipster liberals that if they learn the language, if they learn the right words, if they pronounce everything properly that's some kind of absolution To me it almost feels like the opposite
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Who's more of a colonizer really, the white girl I knew from Pensacola who said "tortilla" with a hard L and blushed over her redneck past because of it, or some NY celebrity chef who says it perfectly and has made a fortune from "Mexican-inspired fusion cuisine"
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Isn't the blushing the first step between one and two? I mean, I don't mind the "fusion food" guy, but I take some issue with the people trying to do something authentic, botching it and then being angry when called out (cue every British cook ever, by the way).
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Replying to @MudDude4 @arthur_affect
I will say that I'm less annoyed by the first example because they typically react to being corrected with interest and curiosity. I've been in some truly cringe-worthy conversations with activists. Not all of them white, either.
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Replying to @MudDude4
It's not that she didn't know the "correct" way to say the word, it's that in her community growing up that's the way the word was said and she was uncomfortable changing it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @MudDude4
I mean that's kind of my point She came from a community that was, by and large, dirt poor and that had eaten tortillas as a staple food for generations and that's just how they said it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @MudDude4
It'd be kind of weird for me to treat her embarrassment as a "teachable moment" or to try to guide her onto the path of someday learning to say the word "tortilla" correctly, as though it actually mattered
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It'd probably be different if I were of Mexican descent rather than just a cultural liberal who saw "incorrect" Anglicized pronunciations as déclassé and cringe I dunno I'm not really condemning people who get mad about this stuff, it's just... not my thing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @MudDude4
I guess part of this is my own lived experience of being corrected on language shit is having it directed against me pretty often and bristling about it in general
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Replying to @arthur_affect @MudDude4
Like, my immigrant parents were pretty bad about correctly pronouncing stuff from other languages - *not* just "white people" languages, any other language - and growing up I felt a lot of cultural cringe over that
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