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Indigenous lang - cultural appropriation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 25 27 April 2015 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||
There's a fallacy here. Tolerancy implies you let people hold their opinions and let them live with them as they see fit within their own communities. If a community wants to be isolated because of bad experiences with imperialism and colonialism, that is their good right. Whether that is actually beneficial for the survival of their language is another story. Indeed, no exceptions. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 18 of 25 27 April 2015 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
But how are they being tolerant towards others? Denying a whole race to learn about their language and culture? I've never heard not once in my life that someone shouldn't be allowed to connect with another culture and people just because of their physical features. How can this even be justifiable to anyone? If they would have said "we don't want anyone outside of our culture..." instead of just "whites", then fine I can understand that. But what the article is stating is that they only have this rancor and resent towards white people and that they are the only exclusion. Maybe it's just specific tribes or the 1-2 stated in the article, who knows. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 25 27 April 2015 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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White people are just not used to being excluded. Not that anyone prevents them from connecting with the culture. To me it's not that different from not letting outsiders into a certain part of a church/temple or keeping men out of women-only spaces (regardless of whether there's a corresponding space for males).
I also think they used white to mean "non-indigenous", "of European origin". So if there's any racism, it's towards the non-white people who identify as European, not towards the whites they're lumped together with. Note the source: a language documentation site. They simply assume a basic understanding of privilege and oppression. It's just like here on HTLAL we mention monolingual Americans and we know exactly what we mean. Nobody is getting defensive and screaming how not all Americans are monolingual, or how it's okay for them to be monolingual because everyone speaks English. In fact many Anglophones here are a tad dramatic in their embarrassment. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 20 of 25 27 April 2015 at 4:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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Me personally I swim in embarassment of the Anglophone linguistic problems, let us
call it, but then I wonder, as someone who is mixed of non-white and "Caucasian" if Spanish is considered "white", how would it be considered to learn those languages for people who are of mixed heritage of being part ethnicity of the "imperialists" and the "non-imperialists"? Personally I think that in this case, I do not know how they can feel if you really want to learn their language, like Navajo, Mapuche, Iroquois, etc. and you tell no one about it if you just learn it for your own interest. I think, jowever, that the main point could possibly be that, there have been certain ways in which the learning of their language has been used as a gateway to manipulation. Perhaps they feel that in the past, they initially felt good that a non-native who had zero connection to the culture and language learnt it and communicated with them, but then they ended up finding out that said person learnt the language to communicate with the people not to help them, but to trick them on the part of the imperialistic cause as they see it. This is just a guess of course, but maybe it could somehow play some part in this bad sentiment that they feel. As a very general example, if let us say, someone from the imperialist side learnt one of these languages in the 1800s or so, or even in present day. Then instead of trying to use the language to help their culture, said person tries to use the language as a tool by trying to convert all of the people of that language into one of the religions that is practised by the imperialists. I think that this might be an example of why some might feel suspicious of the modern-day imperialists learning their language. Of course then it could follow that those who want to learn the language do so and try to communicate and enter the culture of the native speakers. Then they ask why is someone completely foreign to the entire culture even doing so. The learner says that it is for interest and to communicate with the people. Then the native speakers can say, "But what is what the other person said at first too" Edited by 1e4e6 on 27 April 2015 at 5:32am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4901 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 21 of 25 27 April 2015 at 5:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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This is a very interesting notion!
Language is not land, nor is it culture (entirely). At its core, it's simply a way for humans to communicate with one another. So stealing it or appropriating it is a very interesting idea. Yes, language and culture are highly related at times, but they are not one in the same. I definitely understand some peoples' hesitation for outsiders to learn it; when your language has in-group privilege, especially when that is in response to a greater, "prestige" dialect or another language, you tend to get protective. Hence why slurs can be reclaimed by minorities, but not used by outsiders (n-word by african americans and f-word by gays). This can happen with minority languages as well - a gadje appearing in a gypsy settlement that speaks fluent Romany would most likely be met with suspision, or a RP businessman attempting his best Cockney lilt. But, the fact that language does intertwine with culture so much complicates things; I personally am in the camp, especially when it comes to minority and endangered languages, that having more people learning them is beneficial. Nowadays, most people learning Comanche, Cherokee, or Chuckchi are going to be doing it because of benevolent ideals. In order to save these tongues, I would imagine having outsiders learning them would be met with positive reactions and not vitriol. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3535 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 22 of 25 27 April 2015 at 6:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess for me at least I feel like they can believe whatever they want. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I mean honestly, I would be surprised if non heritage speakers numbered more than the thousands (or even the hundreds) for any of those given languages. So it's not exactly a pandemic they're facing in this regards. People generally learn a language to communicate and participate in a culture - given the vast majority of indigenous peoples (in the US at least, and obviously less so for uncontacted or remote tribes) are bilingual there is fairly little need to learn it outside of curiosity - which means the amount of people learning it would be very miniscule.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 25 27 April 2015 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||
Even if they are intolerant, you must be tolerant; otherwise the situation will get worse, not better. We have a duty to at least be tolerant towards them and show our good intentions; reacting with more rancour will not help our cause. @Gallo1802: Of course it is better if we could study them, and we often do. The point is not whether it's better culturally (I 100% agree that it is), the thing is that I don't agree that we can make that choice as a country for a certain minority, because it violates their individual rights not to spread knowledge of that language. This is exactly what they would view as imperialist, because it violates their idea of autonomy. Edited by tarvos on 27 April 2015 at 8:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4843 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 24 of 25 27 April 2015 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the main problem isn't a lack of tolerance but a lack of trust. Native Americans have their historical reasons not to trust white people and that's what's reflected in these quotes.
Of course, you think of yourself as a tolerant being and that you deserve to be treated with tolerance as well. And that's of course perfectly right. But you'll always be a stranger to some people who don't know you're a tolerant person, so they might mistrust you for some reason. Americans aren't used to such situations, but for Germans, this feeling is well-known. In France, we're the "sales boches", in the Netherlands we're the "moffen", in Poland we're the "kurwy niemcy" and so on. It's gotten better, but Germans still aren't very popular abroad and might even be called "Nazis" by some people. When our president delivered a speech in front of the Israeli parliament, the deputies used to be warned that he would speak in the language of Hitler and Goebbels to them. People who don't know you will always treat you according to stereotypes about your nationality or race. That's sad, but that's the way it is. So, you can't simply demand that people trust you, you need to earn their trust. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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