Appropriate language for diverse cultures

[Mabelen]

22 hours ago, Dreamergal said:

The "confused" part is more this and to do with how "Desi" these kids are

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-Born_Confused_Desi

I am sorry about the socialization of your kids. Many in our circle are like that too, but DH and I would like our kids to be exposed to more diversity so we picked a neighborhood like that and fortunately my son's friends are very much from many ethnicities. His best friend is Hispanic. My daughter is too small to have any friends. 

 

Well, yes. The confused part applies in the same sense to each of my kids’s identities also.

They are Spanish, but how Spanish are they? They are Sri Lankan, but how Sri Lankan are they? Then we have the intersection of British identity for my English born kid. She is British, but to what degree when she left at age three? My youngest is American born, and both are growing up in the USA, how does that play in all this?

How all these parts of themselves interconnect gets complicated due to the lack of peers with whom to relate. They do share commonalities with other Desi kids, and are friendly and friends with some of them. My youngest keeps dancing kathak in part because she has a group of friends there that are important to her. It’s just that they don’t fit in completely because we are not your typical Desi family. They do share some commonalities with Mexican kids, and are friendly and friends with some, but again they don’t fit in completely for the same reasons.

We do live in a diverse neighborhood, and they have friends of many varieties. We value those friendships. All of that doesn’t make up for the feeling that there is no one like them. Hence the emphasis on confused, because for them, it’s just complicated.

ETA It doesn’t mean my kids don’t live happy fulfilled lives. They do. The just would like to meet someone with the same cultural background to crack jokes about starting the new year both with chocolate con churros and chicken curry and kiribath. 😊 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Mabelen

[katilac]

3 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:

I'm learning spanish (the goal is minimum conversant.  preferably fluent). 

I'm trying to learn also! What are you using? I have Learning Spanish from The Great Courses, which has a guide/workbook, and I'm planning on Duolingo from the library. I'm going to watch some TV in Spanish with dd1 (who is fairly fluent, but I will need subtitles, lol). I think the Easy Spanish channel on youtube looks promising; they do street interviews so you can hear how people actually use the language, and the subtitles are in both English and Spanish. They do some actual teaching videos also. 

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I instantly tend to hit it off with other Third Culture Kids no matter what three cultures they have (their home culture, adopted culture and the third mashed together culture).  There is something about that Third Cultural flexibility and ability to communicate across cultural boundaries that transcends specific cultures. 

[gardenmom5]

3 hours ago, katilac said:

I'm trying to learn also! What are you using? I have Learning Spanish from The Great Courses, which has a guide/workbook, and I'm planning on Duolingo from the library. I'm going to watch some TV in Spanish with dd1 (who is fairly fluent, but I will need subtitles, lol). I think the Easy Spanish channel on youtube looks promising; they do street interviews so you can hear how people actually use the language, and the subtitles are in both English and Spanish. They do some actual teaching videos also. 

 

I'm working with duolingo - which is helping for reading. (I also spend some time reading a few verses from the scriptures in spanish along side them in english.  this is in additon to my regular daily scripture study.)  it does have some pronunciation (when you hover over a word.), and I made sit my cursor back and forth over the same word while saying the correct pronunciation out loud.  but not for all pages.

I'm starting with a native language tutor on monday.   (it has to be native, they don't have any degree of english accent while speaking spanish - and they wont' be looking up words on the internet.)  I found Jeff Brown - poly-glot-a-lot on youtube.  He's a spanish professor, and speaks seven langauges.  (inc. mandarin, japanese, and arabic - he's learning korean.)  I've gone through and tried to extract his suggestions.   The video was made over the course of year when he was learning arabic.   He promotes teaching language the way a parent teaches a child. so you "acquire" it rather than learn it.  He doesn't teach his introductory studentse grammar. it's just confusing.  He's a strong proponent of language exchanges.  He gets his language partners from ESL classes - they spent 30 minutes teaching him their langauge, and he spends 30 minutes teaching them english.

he uses a lot of motions to teach words - and everything is in the langauge being taught.  e.g. walking - let your fingers do the walking, flying - flap your arms like a bird.  i've implemented some on my own - visualizing what the word is to get it into my head.  e.g. manejar - make motions like a steering wheel going back and forth.

I've gone through and made a word doc of many of his suggestions.  let me know if you'd like me to send it to you.

and no - he didn't "originate" this method. I've seen a lot of videos by polyglots who dont' like a lot of the lang apps - including duolingo.

I also liked: spanish playground, and  why not spanish.   

[bibiche]

🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ 🧟 

[SKL]

Some black Americans like the term African American.  Others don't like it at all (generally preferring "black").

People who look to be partly or wholly indigenous to North America also have different preferences, as well as different heritages that you can't guess just by looking.  Many people tend to put them in the category of "Hispanic," but Hispanic is not a race.  Hispanic people can be black, white, indigenous, or (usually) mixed.  A person who "looks Hispanic" may not speak Spanish, like Mexican food, or listen to Latin music.  A person who "looks white" may do all three.  (And then there are people in this group who "look" Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, ....)

In most cases, nobody in the USA wants or needs to be referred to by their race, color, or ethnicity.  If it is necessary to do so, it would make sense to ask the person being referred to what they prefer.

[Tanaqui]

Zombie thread

[Spy Car]

On 6/15/2020 at 6:55 PM, bookbard said:

OK, that sentence made me think lots of things. Oh yeah, not all people with black skin are from Africa, good point. Then - wasn't Haiti where the African slaves had a revolt and were free for ages? 

Haitians would be ethnically African but not "American" in the sense of being from the United States.

The use of the term "American" has its own controversies outside the USA (which we "Americans" tend to ignore).

Bill

[Spy Car]

47 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Zombie thread

Gah!

Bill

[Janeway]

On 6/15/2020 at 7:51 PM, bookbard said:

So I am in Australia. I would say Indigenous Australian, Anglo-Australian etc. When we were kids we'd say "I'm Anglo" (I am part Indian but as adopted didn't know that). 

I thought that when you were talking about other cultures, that was the way to do it - African-American, Indian-Australian etc. 

Is that still correct, or is it seen as old-fashioned? Is it seen as othering, if you've been in the US for two hundred years and still called "African-American" rather than simply American? 

 

 

When I grew up, we just said Indian. I just came back from seeing family and we used terms like "reservation land" and Indian. The word native seems wrong as technically, anyone born there are "natives." Where I live now, there are a lot of "transplants." But that is not a racial reference. You might a native to an area or country but not considered "Native American." I do not know any American Indians that are in love with the term "Native American." And when I grew up, we only used the term "Indian" however, now that I know a lot of Asian Indian's, I use the terms "American Indian" and "Asian Indian." When I return to reservation land, which I did this week, no one uses anything but Indian that I spoke to. It seems like the people who get all puffed up about the terms being used are not the people who are actually the ones the terms apply to. The only term I take issue with is "Native American" because it is just not descriptive. The word Indigenous would be better, but seriously...who wants to say that long word or spell it all the time? The constantly changing of PC names for one's own culture feels to me a little like we should be ashamed of our heritage. I am not ashamed. Of course, everyone feels different and everyone should respect the preferences of the person/people they are referring to. I am editing to say..all this to say, I am just "American" but it is good to just find out from the person you are referring to what they wish to be referred to as, if you actually need to reference them as something.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Janeway

[Melissa Louise]

Zombie thread. 

[Dmmetler]

On 6/16/2020 at 5:39 PM, TravelingChris said:

I am not sure what is happening in an area about 1.5 hours away from me since COVID 19 changed schools and school administration so much but a school in a mostly black community was labeled as a failing school by the state.  There were many news reports of how the community was begging the school district to keep their school open since it was not just used for education but was a center of their community.  As I said, with all the Covid news and now police tactics news, I have not read any updates as to whether they decided to keep it open..

One of the worst things I've seen happen here was turning over "low performing" schools to charter companies to run. Inevitably, those companies hire from scratch, so almost everyone from the principal down to the custodians, cafeteria workers, and groundskeepers are replaced. And the community that is around that school loses people they know, trust, and like, and who know the families. Who know, for example, that if certain kids are struggling, one of the first calls you make is to the pastor of the church, because he and his wife are a major support for them, and will help them with homework after school. You know which kids live with grandma and aunts and uncles, which kids are related, and which kids have sensitive topics that need to be taken into account (for example, I've taught children who had family members murdered due to gang violence. Those aren't the kids who need to be handed "The Outsiders" in middle school, at least not without some prior notice so they can be emotionally prepared). 

 

To this day, I am convinced that this was done, not because anyone thought it would improve the schools-it hasn't. I haven't seen a single school so replaced that hasn't gone through multiple rounds of "Restructuring" as the charter company is unsuccessful and loses the charter. But what it did do was to take these schools out of the county school district and make them a separate district, so the county looks better as a result. 

[Janeway]

44 minutes ago, Orin Conor said:

For a long time I have not seen a man so happy to just call himself an American. Recently, when I went to Italy, I squeezed in with the Italians. And they told me that Americans are the most generous but also the rudest tourist they know.

Maybe because the tourists are from a specific set of Americans? Most people I know have never travelled or been able to. My MIL travels a ton and is massively rude. Then you get all the college students on study abroad programs. I am suspecting it is the same with Italians. The only Italians I meet are study abroad or exchange students. None of them have been good ambassadors for their country. I just assume I am only seeing a small subset from that country. 

[TravelingChris]

On 6/15/2020 at 11:25 PM, Melissa in Australia said:

Sometimes people are funny, DH, a Canadian has been called a Hun by someone here( one of our neighbours) because they knew his parents are German. 

 

Why?  He isn't Hungarian and even most of them aren't HUns either.

[Matryoshka]

12 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

Why?  He isn't Hungarian and even most of them aren't HUns either.

"Huns" was a slur for the Germans in ... WW1?  Not saying it makes sense, but...

Here's a Wiki article that attempts to explain it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terms_used_for_Germans#Hun_(pejorative)

[Jean in Newcastle]

15 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

Why?  He isn't Hungarian and even most of them aren't HUns either.

It's a derogatory term for Germans.