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Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

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Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#31

Post by rdtsc »

duskwuff wrote: post #20
nullflux wrote: post #8

I'm going to ask the dumb question that the article doesn't explain: why do people hate Romanians so much? I've never found Romanians awful people. Is this just more ethnocentric rubbish and typical hostility toward Eastern European immigration?

I can only speak to my own experience: I used to hang out in #linux on Undernet in the early 2000s. There were a lot of Romanian users on the network at the time, but basically every one of them that joined the channel was showing up to ask about something sketchy (how to hack a server, how to use a proxy, how to delete/disable logs...).

That is my impression as well. They are smart but distrust authority and consider laws "optional". If there is a new botnet or some horrible virus going around, chances are Romanians had something to do with it.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#32

Post by rdtsc »

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget about other Romanians.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#33

Post by rdtsc »

Radim wrote: post #29
nullflux wrote: post #8

I'm going to ask the dumb question that the article doesn't explain: why do people hate Romanians so much? I've never found Romanians awful people. Is this just more ethnocentric rubbish and typical hostility toward Eastern European immigration?

Romanians are a magnificent, proud nation. Disclaimer: I married one :) To a large degree, the bad image comes from a small sub-populace that rejects the western life style, western values and produces a lot of what western laws see as criminality, all over Europe. So yes, typical ethnocentric rubbish. Most Romanians themselves are deeply unhappy about this image. Despite the general air of oppression/depression in t…

I think part of the pride thing is that they get embarrassed if one of theirs is acting stupid. So that probably accounts for "Romanians are stupid" phrases in Romanian language.

> Romanians are very nationalistic ...

Interestingly I hang out with the immigrants and they are not very nationalistic. As most are trying to escape and forget about their old country. But my perception is strongly biased according to a particular (rather small) sample of the ones I met.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#34

Post by alexseman »

rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

As a Romanian myself, yes you are mostly right. But another thing to notice is that most of the Romanians that leave the country aren't well... the cream of the society so to speak :).

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#35

Post by nsns »

Obviously no "people" are smart or stupid or anything else. You can only generalize like this if you don't know many of them, and so such generalizations are always a mark of ignorance, never of true knowledge. This is not only true for human users, it seems also true for the current state of the net.

It should always be remembered that the internet doesn't encompass the entire world, far from it, it is still a playground for a very limited elite, with certain views and perceptions (just recall for example how many people around the world don't even have a bank account, they are many, but are seldom heard on the net). I've googled certain cultural terms from different societies, and at times couldn't find anything or could only find extremely limited information, because these themes were outside the scope of the usual demographics of internet users.

This of course is rapidly changing, with net use going the way of mobile phone use. And I guess a general adoption of the net will also mean English will lose its hegemonic place.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#36

Post by moilolita »

rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

While I agree that romanians integrate easily into the local culture (especially when the local culture is italian, french, belgian or spanish) I don't fully agree that romanians distrust each other completely :D. There are 3 classes of romanian immigrants that don't mix with each other: 1.The engineers, medical workers (doctors & assistants) and programmers: These are the silent romanians, one barely notices. 2.Construction workers and other low paid workers: These are the generic romanians and 3. The romanian gipsy group composed of organized beggars, pimps, prostitutes and thiefs = the bad romanians. When I hear someone talking romanian outside of romania, I try to classify him, and if he belongs to 3, I stay as far away as posible.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#37

Post by moilolita »

armandososa wrote: post #13

I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.

In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite distinct. In the last 20 years there were several waves of romanian immigrants hitting the western europe, including the Roma minority which are highly nomadic by tradition and very visible in the west because they beg and steal aggressively and live in slums in very primitive conditions. This lead to the association romanians = gipsies, thiefs, primitives etc. The current campaign is a response to these stereotypes, which unfortunately are easily promoted in western europe especially since western massmedia can't pick on blacks and arabs anymore cause that's clearly racist and open racism is not trendy anymore.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#38

Post by lucian1900 »

riffraff wrote: post #19
maaku wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romanian is a latinate/romantic language, like Italian, French, Spanish, or Portuguese... but for some reason it never gets listed with the others. Relevant linguistic map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romance_20c_en.png

cause people have been exposed to spanish, portuguese, french and italian all their life and noticed the similarity, while few heard spoken romansh, romanian or ladino. Romania (and moldavia) were behind the iron courtain until yesterday. Also, as an italian, while i find it possible to understand written romanian, it's much harder to understand it spoken, as the slavic pronounciation is very different.

On the other hand, Romanians often find it very easy to understand Italian, more so than most other latin languages. I know I do, I can watch Roberto Benigni films and mostly understand everything, without ever specifically learning italian (but Italian/English subtitles do help).

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#39

Post by ddalex »

rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

This is a very good observation.

This distrust was actively cultivated during communist times - if you would speak your thoughts to the wrong person, you would be made to disappear in the middle of the night by the secret police. The kink is that you didn't know who the "wrong person" was - brothers would snitch on brothers, sons on fathers, co-workers on each other. So you couldn't trust anybody.

This slowly changes with the generation change - younger generations didn't live through this paranoid system, so they don't understand the fear and the reservations - but the change will take another 20 - 40 years IMHO.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#40

Post by amuresan »

rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

I'm Romanian. This seems like a harsh generalization, but I can see how it might look like that from the outside.

How about this alternative that's always been true for me and well.. probably everyone: people spend more time with like-minded people, be they foreigners or not. Why? I don't really need to answer that, right? :) So what does that mean? Well it means that you integrate easily into like-minded communities. If you're a foreigner then it's very probable that you're the odd one out and the community is composed of mostly natives.

I have lots of Romanian friends with whom I spend most of my time with, but I'm convinced that it's mostly due to the fact that we're like-minded. If I overhear a Romanian on the street do I instantly feel a need to talk to him? No, but I don't instinctively distance myself from him either.

edit: typing

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