Posts Tagged ‘language’
Knowing more makes you stupid
1:10 pm By la Macha · Bilingualism| Education| Immigration| children · 6 Comments
7 Oct 2009One of my biggest pet peeves about anti-immigration pro-nativist rhetoric is how it has created this universal idea in U.S. culture about what “stupid” really is, especially in the area of language. Specifically, if you don’t speak English, you are actually (among other things) stupid. Irritating logic to say the least, but somewhat understandable how easily racism can twist lack of comprehension into stupidity.
What is beyond fathomable–what just destroys my faith in humanity every time I hear it, is the idea that being *bilingual* (or speaking more than one language), means you are stupid. Or “lagging behind.” Or somehow unable to keep up with the world or simply unprepared for life.
Witness: This very interesting clip from CNN that showcases a white family that decided to send their white children to a school that teaches it’s kids in Spanish. Which means that the kids are fluently bilingual before they graduate.
Notice how many times the reporter let us know that the kids are not “lagging behind?” And that there is a waiting list to get into the school? And that, holy Jesus, it’s actually a GOOD thing to know more? That when you know more, you are actually SMARTER?
I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again here. Only in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. could the population be so blinded by racism that we actually refuse to be educated in the attempt to ‘be smart.”
Only here could we honestly take pride in and form a national identity around ignorance.
Chancellor of Honduras’s Micheletti Government Calls Obama “That black man”
6:34 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · honduras · 2 Comments
7 Jul 2009In parts of Latin America, calling someone negrito(a) can be a term of endearment however, I doubt that was the intention of Chancellor of Honduras, Enrique Ortez, in this interview. Although, I don’t know if the subtitled translation is exactly accurate either. Given how Ortez is playing up President Obama’s ignorance on Latin America in general, and specifically his knowledge of Honduras, I would be more likely to translate the use of “negrito” as the N word.
Via / Inca Kola News
Bilingual Education: The Debate Continues
10:52 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Bilingualism| Controversia| Education| society · 1 Comment
18 Jun 2009MSNBC has an interesting piece on how increased immigration to formerly non-Latino areas of the country is affecting the educational landscape of public schools, and the contrast with areas of the country where English Only has succeeded in being instated and has subsequently failed students.
Have a look at the video and let us know what you think about this continuing debate. What’s best? Bilingual education? Immersion?
Via / MSNBC
Language, The Media, & Access to Power : Peruvian Congresswoman Hilaria Supa
12:00 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Media| Newspapers| Peru| Politics| language| race · 3 Comments
4 May 2009
Via Global Voices comes the issue of language and power, specifically the criticism coming from a Peruvian newspaper that an indigenous congresswoman, Hilaria Supa, should not have her position because she doesn’t know proper Spanish.
El Correo de Lima wrote in a front page story:
Se trataba de Hilaria Supa, parlamentaria del Partido Nacionalista Peruano elegida por la región Cusco, y a decir de lo que descubrió una reveladora foto de Correo, sus limitaciones en cuanto a ortografía y sintaxis dejan mucho que desear. Las tomas obtenidas del cuaderno de notas de la mujer de 49 años hablan por sí solas.
My translation: This is about Hilaria Supa, Congresswoman form the Nationalist Peruvian Party chosen by the Cusco region, and based on a revealing photograph from el Correo, her limitations when it comes to her ability to spell and use of syntax, leave much to be desired. The images from a notebook of the writing of the 49 year old woman speak for themselves.
For a Growing Number of Latinos It’s Not Spanish Only
1:29 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration| language · 2 Comments
9 Dec 2008
One of the ways that nativists in the U.S. spread fear about immigration and Latinos is buy talking up the point of the loss of English and other so-called cultural markers that allegedly make the country what it is. More and more however, this myth is being countered demonstrating that the anti-immigrant movement has less to do with “national pride” and more to do with racism.
More Spanish speakers are speaking English very well despite a steady influx of immigrants this decade — a sign that they are blending in at least linguistically, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census data released Tuesday.
The drop in the percentage who struggle with English is most noticeable in some of the largest counties and cities that have attracted immigrants for decades.
So once we speak “your language”, we’ll be more acceptable right? We’ll fit in more and won’t seem so “other”, verdad? Latinos, like myself, who have always spoken English know that this goes way beyond language.
Via / Hispanic Tips and USA Today
Movies, en tu idioma, translated by you
4:16 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Internet| Media| Tech| language · Comments Off
5 Jul 2007Crowdsourcing — getting things done with the help of the general public — has been a buzz phrase for a while now. An interesting project called dotSUB lets you get videos and movies en tu idioma — whichever language that might be — and participate in helping translate the clips, too.
A good example of how this works is this clip of a Superman comic, which users have translated into many different languages, from Croatian to Swedish to Russian. Check out these two versions in the languages of Latin America, Portuguese and Spanish:
Spanish:
Portuguese:
Pretty cool!
Via / dotSUB.com
Proper Spanish, coming to a URL near you
5:13 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Internet| language · 1 Comment
7 Jun 2007
Spanish speakers have gotten used to seeing their language take a beating when it comes to URLs, since such common accents and even an entire letter — the beloved Ñ – have previously been unavailable for use in our browser address bar. Given the constraint, concessions have been made over the years, or people have simply had to call their website something else so as not to risk embarassment in the form of words like year becoming anus. But that’s all going to change now, as the Spanish government has labored to get the standards changed to accommodate the proper use of the language on URLs, as well as the characters associated with the other languages of Spain (Catalan, Valencian, Euskera and Galician):
Red.es, the industry in charge of domain registry in Spain, has informed the 62 accredited registry agents to allow names with the the characters ‘á’, ‘à’, ‘é’, ‘è’, ‘í’, ‘ï’ ‘ó’, ‘ò’, ‘ú’, ‘ü’, ‘ñ’, ‘ç’ y ‘l.l’.
Spanish: Second most studied language worldwide
2:10 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Bilingualism| World| language · Comments Off
27 Apr 2007
While Newt Gingrich might think that Spanish is the language of the ghettos, la lengua de Cervantes is now the second most studied language in the world, after English. According to Spain’s 20 Minutos, there are now more than 14 million people studying Spanish in 90 countries in which Spanish is not an official language.
According to the Director of the Instituto Cervantes – the Spanish organization that looks to promote the language all over the world — one of the main reasons that people are choosing to study Spanish is because they believe that it will professionally benefit them in today’s global economy. He also pointed to Brazil’s decision to make Spanish an mandatory subject in schools as an example of the growing importance of Spanish in the world.
Latino immigrants in Spain make the language “nicer”
11:59 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Culture| Latin America| Spain| language · 16 Comments
14 Sep 2006
I’m just back from Spain after a couple weeks vacation. In Barcelona, I was surprised to see the growing number of Latino immigrants; it seems that each time I visit the presence of Latinos in the streets is larger than before. Unlike in our own country, Latino immigration is not the scapegoat of choice for the Spanish government. Indeed, it goes unmentioned when the topic of “the immigration problem” is raised. The immigrants Spain is concerned about reach its shores in makeshift rafts, dying of thirst and exhaustion. In an interesting twist, Latinos are considered a more “desireable” immigrant group in Spain.
El Instituto Cervantes, the public entity that represents and foments the use of the Spanish language in the world, announced this week that the influx of Latino immigrants to Spain is not only enriching the language, but making it more “courteous”.
No more Spanish books for a Georgia library system
3:03 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Books| Georgia| language · 4 Comments
21 Jun 2006
Thinking of heading out to the library to pick up a couple of books en español? According to AP, if you live in Gwinnett County, Georgia, think again. The library system in the heavily Latino county has decided it won’t be purchasing any more non-children’s books in the language of Cervantes:
Last week, the library board in this fast-growing county of 700,000 people eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. It offered no explanation, but the chairman said such book purchases would lead readers of other foreign languages to demand the same treatment.
I can see it now. All those French residents of this Georgia county taking to the streets to demand original versions of the works of Baudelaire and Victor Hugo.
“We can’t supply pleasure reading material for all language groups, so we’re not going to go down that road,” said Lloyd Breck, chairman of the library board.
Hola!
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