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Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#141

Post by lolinder »

JohnFen wrote: post #29
wonderwonder wrote: post #6

"The American Cancer Society advises that Latinx, along with the equally gender-neutral Latine, Latin@, and Latinu, “may or may not be fully embraced by older generations and may need additional explanation.” Cool cool, I look forward as a white guy to explaining to a group of Spanish people why they are wrong and are really LatinX and I'm doing it for their protection. Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn…

A good friend of mine is a Spanish translator for a social services agency. She was telling me that the "latinx" thing is a real problem, because for people -- particularly older people -- who are not strong on their reading in the first place, they hit "LatinX" and genuinely have zero idea what that's supposed to mean. So then time, energy, and goodwill gets wasted by having to explain to people what they "should" b…

> But she also mentions that the younger generation of LatinX people do care, and often prefer the term. It's all a big mess and makes compassionate communication more difficult.

As someone who's interacted extensively with the Hispanic community in the United States, I just want to point out that the younger generation generally are not completely fluent in Spanish. They often can understand their parents perfectly well but have trouble actually speaking the language.

With that in mind, I'm still suspicious that preferring LatinX correlates primarily with fluency in Spanish rather than age.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#142

Post by open-paren »

throwawayapples wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend of mine is a Spanish translator for a social services agency. She was telling me that the "latinx" thing is a real problem, because for people -- particularly older people -- who are not strong on their reading in the first place, they hit "LatinX" and genuinely have zero idea what that's supposed to mean. So then time, energy, and goodwill gets wasted by having to explain to people what they "should" b…

The most amusing part about this is that literally the entire Spanish language is gendered, so we should probably change all words to 'x' replacements as well. No more "los gatos"! Lxs gatxs has so much more of a latin ring to it. (/s) Spanish is being obliterated by lXs que lo hablan peor.

It should obviously be pronounced "le-teh-quis gah-teh-quies", right?

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#143

Post by shrimp_emoji »

ryandrake wrote: post #123
scarmig wrote: post #9

The semantic turn of the Left is one of the worst signs of intellectual decay. There's approximately zero evidence that linguistic changes influence thought: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is rejected by linguists except perhaps in some very narrow situations. The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color. And none of them are better or worse than the o…

> The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, It feels more like a minefield than a joke. A minefield that gets new mines added every so often just to keep everyone on their toes. When I was younger, I used to feel like I could keep up with all the new taboo words, but it seems like it is happening faster and faster these days. You can unintentionally say something that turns out to be taboo, and you're done for. Some…

>in the 2010s it's become totally lingua-non-grata*

I thought it was the 2020s.

But it's too good not to use, and it's the last good insult we have. Mental ableism is the last bastion. I make my stand here.

The slippery slope we're being forced down on leads to "don't be mean to anyone ever", and I, as a product of the era of https://youtu.be/C4dnCZSYmbY, fundamentally refuse to accept that.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#144

Post by red-iron-pine »

cwkoss wrote: post #127
bradleyjg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about class. Not in the usual American sense of how much money you make, but in the older sense of people thinking they are better sorts of people because they have the correct diction, education, religious views, professions, and so on.

I wonder how much if this is a result of corporate power fighting for ever-increasing economic inequality. Class discussions about material wealth are excluded from the zeitgeist because they make the ultrarich people who control things uncomfortable and they don't want any discussion that could lead to change. The war over language could perhaps be viewed as a way to enjoy the privileges of classism without the mate…

> It doesn't threaten capital, so it is amplified to drown out dissent.

Wedge issues have been political footballs since the Reagan Era. Keep everyone riled up about something essentially trivial and no real economic changes happen.

A ~20 year old punk song goes "we are the queer / we are the whore / the ammunition / of the class war"

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#145

Post by blahblah1234567 »

throwawayapples wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend of mine is a Spanish translator for a social services agency. She was telling me that the "latinx" thing is a real problem, because for people -- particularly older people -- who are not strong on their reading in the first place, they hit "LatinX" and genuinely have zero idea what that's supposed to mean. So then time, energy, and goodwill gets wasted by having to explain to people what they "should" b…

The most amusing part about this is that literally the entire Spanish language is gendered, so we should probably change all words to 'x' replacements as well. No more "los gatos"! Lxs gatxs has so much more of a latin ring to it. (/s) Spanish is being obliterated by lXs que lo hablan peor.

"Spanish is being obliterated by white people."

Spanish is being obliterated by a very small minority of politically biased and likely neo-marxist-propaganda-influenced young people.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#146

Post by roughly »

scarmig wrote: post #132
roughly wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, there’s a theory of change at play here that follows a relatively long path of inquiry through politics, sociology, and neuroscience to identify in-group/out-group dynamics and mental shortcuts as central blockers to attempts to increase cross-group empathy and drive social change.

I don't dispute that there's a theory of change here: "if we explore the linguistic landscape, we can discover a set of signifiers that will help us to destroy racism/sexism/etc." I just reject that. We don't live in a Harry Potter book where the correct series of incantations affect the material world.

That's not the theory of change at play here. You're rejecting a straw man.

As to the rest of it: "Officer, arrest that man" is a series of incantations that affect the material world.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#147

Post by b800h »

13years wrote: post #14

Given time, “woke” will evolve into its own dialect completely incomprehensible to common language. Every persons unique experience becomes new terms to be added to the lexicon. A burden of irrelevant knowledge for the rest of society to navigate in order to communicate.

The curse of Babel.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#148

Post by blahblah1234567 »

hirvi74 wrote: post #98
JohnFen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend of mine is a Spanish translator for a social services agency. She was telling me that the "latinx" thing is a real problem, because for people -- particularly older people -- who are not strong on their reading in the first place, they hit "LatinX" and genuinely have zero idea what that's supposed to mean. So then time, energy, and goodwill gets wasted by having to explain to people what they "should" b…

> "LatinX" How is such a word pronounced? Is it "Latin" + "ex" or is it "La" + "tinx" (-inx like in Sphinx)?

X is pronounces EK-EES in Spanish.

so its "LA-TEEN-EK-EES" if we are respecting the Spanish language.

but in reality such silly butchering of a language isnt respecting the Spanish language in the first place. its merely more communism attempts to disrupt tradition & reform societies towards some immature high school wanna-be communist ends by people who've never lived in communist society.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#149

Post by blahblah1234567 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #36
wonderwonder wrote: post #6

"The American Cancer Society advises that Latinx, along with the equally gender-neutral Latine, Latin@, and Latinu, “may or may not be fully embraced by older generations and may need additional explanation.” Cool cool, I look forward as a white guy to explaining to a group of Spanish people why they are wrong and are really LatinX and I'm doing it for their protection. Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn…

> Imagine being an immigrant and having to learn both English and then a made up filter created by well paid academics on top of it. Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language non-binary community, originally for use in Spanish, neither (AFAIK) by “well-paid academics”. Latinu and Latin@ I’m less sure about, but wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same. While th…

>Latine and LatinX both originate in (different geographical parts of) the spanish-first-language

I doubt it. Having lived in Latin America, Latin American social norms are influenced by Catholicism and their societies are more conservative & traditionalist than the US and Europe.

The vast majority of people in Latin American countries (outside of Costa Rica & Chile) struggle with academic achievement (including literacy levels), adequate n utrition, enviornmental pollution.

To claim that they would put neo-marxist language changes before actual human needs (literacy, nutrition, environment) is a paltry claim and demonstrates a lack of experience with such societies.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#150

Post by 13years »

ticviking wrote: post #136
13years wrote: post #14

Given time, “woke” will evolve into its own dialect completely incomprehensible to common language. Every persons unique experience becomes new terms to be added to the lexicon. A burden of irrelevant knowledge for the rest of society to navigate in order to communicate.

ADnD called these kinds of dialects, "Alignment Languages." They're a larger form of Shibboleth that provide a filter of if someone is in a particular in-group, and the rulebook actually explicitly calls out speaking an Alignment Language in public as seen as very rude. Being able to code switch between them, or simply avoid jargon from your own Alignment Language and understand the jargon from others is a critical c…

> radically different values than your own

These values didn't originate naturally. It is a side effect that creates division.

Cyberpunk RPG 1995 rule book NeoTribes ...

"It is now accepted among historical scholars that in the decades before the Collapse, America suffered from the sicknesses of racism and "cultural identity'. Everyone wanted to be seen as special. Every group had to be "equal" to or preferably better than its neighbors, and fought to protect its "special" rights. If anyone had something that someone else wanted, they were painted as racist, sexist, elitist or worse. This divisive "me first" attitude eventually tore the fabric of American culture apart and caused it to self-destruct in a fireball of competing ideologies, none of which truly recognized each other's validity. Diversity led inexorably to anarchy."

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