Is it not irresponsible to instruct a child, a helpless and innocent child, on a language so pointless and useless as Asian? Learning American is the ultimate upgrade to Asians. Being born wrong, they can still spend the next 10 years making it right. In Europe, kids are being forced to study "English". Which is retarded. The English could never force the French or Germans. The Americans can, so their language should be called by its correct name: American, not English. But we cannot say so in Europe, because that would be anti-American. American is compulsory for school, graduation, job training, university, everything. People only notice if they refuse to comply. Rejectionists are called Nazis, extremists, women-haters, Russian enablers, or terrorists. A Frenchman who doesn't speak American is subhuman. An American who speaks French is also subhuman-ish. You punish the lesser people by never learning their languages.
A Ukrainian "refugee" housed in Birmingham, under generous subsidy, leaves because there's too much "diversity". It is unknown whether she returned to Ukraine. https://youtu.be/se-8F8AmqoQ
A 13 year old Ukrainian teen refuses to return to her San Francisco high school due to crime and harassment. https://archive.fo/fneLZ
Language structures the mind, as Jacques Lacan and probably many others said.
Roughly between 1930 and 1960, most rural Bretons switched from raising their children in Breton to French. That's a brutal transition, which psychological impact has been studied. Some have named it the "brutal mother tongue transmission interruption syndrome", with symptoms ranging from wild alcoholism to expertise in languages because one has no emotional attachment to languages, for having being raised by a mother in a language that was not her own native language, thus deprived of the emotional charge. The cold-headed objectivity of linguists regarding languages is strange to most people.
The Asian kids clinging to you speaks to some basic truth, but I guess it’s wrong to feel sorry for them. Those kids are probably lucky to be where they are. I created mixed race kids, whatever that means. Sometimes I wonder if I was in error, but I was a freak and outcast, so there was no appeal for me in white homogeneity. I do regret the onslaught of Coca-Cola Disney culture, like the obscure (obscene?) message on that waitress’s pants. I used to watch Bollywood movies for fun and practice, to get the rhythm of the lingo. Around 2008 or so, there were so many English cognates and phrases in the genre that I couldn’t watch anymore.
Since I hadn't read Lacan in a while, I went back:
"The unconscious is structured like a language". It seems to work the opposite way, as in "Language structures the unconscious". But I may be wrong. You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of "Wrong!"
Well, like Jung said, "Language, in its origin and essence, is simply a system of signs or symbols that denote real occurrences or their echo in the human soul."
Trời ơi em bị mất comment, lần thứ hai... phải hì hục gõ lại...
Trong một lần tình cờ nhìn thấy quảng cáo món "khoai tây múi cau" của một chuỗi fastfood ở Saigon, bạn em đã nói viết là múi cau thì genZ sẽ không hiểu và marketing như vậy là 'không hiệu quả'. Hỏi kỹ thì bạn cho biết hình ảnh múi cau với genZ là một thứ rất xa lạ... Sau một hồi lan man, chuyển sang chuyện tiếng Việt đang thoái hoá, em nói nếu từ ngữ đang mất đi thì những người còn nhớ như mình càng phải nhắc nhiều để giữ nó (dù có vẻ vô vọng), bạn em thì lại cho là không cần, với lý do 'ngôn ngữ luôn vận động và biến thái theo thời đại'. Những từ 'lỗi thời' như 'khoai múi cau' thì cứ để nó biến mất.
Người bạn này của em chưa từng bước chân ra khỏi Việt Nam, nhưng chỉ có thể tư duy mạch lạc và giao tiếp trôi chảy bằng tiếng Anh. Bạn học mọi thứ qua các kênh Youtube của người Mỹ.
Một cô bé 18 tuổi ở Saigon, từng tâm sự với em, hồi trước xem Youtube nhiều thì khả năng diễn đạt của cô bé mạch lạc hơn hẳn bây giờ - sau 2-3 năm toàn dùng Tiktok. Em hỏi bé có định làm gì để cải thiện tình trạng này không thì nhận được 1 cái lắc đầu ngán ngẩm.
Mùa thu này cô bé sẽ sang Mỹ học Liberal arts (giáo dục phóng đâu cũng thấy khai :D ), nhưng khi em mới dạy một chút cho cô bé về địa dư chính trị, và đưa cho vài trang giới thiệu trong cuốn Sự va chạm của các nền văn minh (Clash of civilizations - Huttington), bé cũng đọc không nổi và miêu tả cuốn sách là 'disaster'.
Em thực thà là, dù có về Việt Nam, coi đất mẹ là tôn giáo, có muốn làm gì vì lòng thương xót tha nhân, đối mặt với những chuyện này thì cũng thấy mình vô dụng và bất lực :) Như Jung cảm thán, cô đơn khi mình có hét toang lên thì cũng chẳng có ai chịu tỉnh ra. Một người quen cũng từng bảo em, 'rồi văn hoá Việt Nam sẽ chết.'
As for language, it is important but not the only thing. I notice that a lot of independence movements have become more about language than about ethnicity. Catalans want to speak Catalan, Quebecois want to speak (their version of) French. It doesn't matter if the newcomers are Haitians, Senegalese or Vietnamese, as long as they speak le Français!
I hear now that Germany has a population with a staggering 23% of immigrants or descendant of immigrants, and that's not counting the 2 million Ukrainian newcomers. Since German is a difficult language, some are trying to turn English into a second language for the country, which will help to bring in more Indian immigrants, a sorely missed ethnicity in the New Germany. In any case, most of the immigrants keep speaking Arab at home, and Deutsch outside. I suppose it's the same for the Ukrainians and the occasional Asians. What a mess.
Nearly every day, I sit at this food stand in an alley to write. That's the owners' youngest daughter. Seeing me with my laptop, she would sometimes come over to help me type!
Her dad is half Cambodian, a quarter Vietnamese and a quarter Chinese. During the worst Khmer Rouge years, his family fled to Vietnam. That's why he speaks Vietnamese.
He's also gone to Vietnam a few times just for fun, and this month, he'll take his father to Da Nang and Hoi An. Cambodians and Vietnamese don't need visas to enter each other's country.
P.S. Like children everywhere, this 2-year-old girl is becoming glued to the screen. What psychological and neurological damages are kids worldwide subjected to? The Metaverse is the next step, if the WEF crowd have their way.
Is it not irresponsible to instruct a child, a helpless and innocent child, on a language so pointless and useless as Asian? Learning American is the ultimate upgrade to Asians. Being born wrong, they can still spend the next 10 years making it right. In Europe, kids are being forced to study "English". Which is retarded. The English could never force the French or Germans. The Americans can, so their language should be called by its correct name: American, not English. But we cannot say so in Europe, because that would be anti-American. American is compulsory for school, graduation, job training, university, everything. People only notice if they refuse to comply. Rejectionists are called Nazis, extremists, women-haters, Russian enablers, or terrorists. A Frenchman who doesn't speak American is subhuman. An American who speaks French is also subhuman-ish. You punish the lesser people by never learning their languages.
A Ukrainian "refugee" housed in Birmingham, under generous subsidy, leaves because there's too much "diversity". It is unknown whether she returned to Ukraine. https://youtu.be/se-8F8AmqoQ
A 13 year old Ukrainian teen refuses to return to her San Francisco high school due to crime and harassment. https://archive.fo/fneLZ
Language structures the mind, as Jacques Lacan and probably many others said.
Roughly between 1930 and 1960, most rural Bretons switched from raising their children in Breton to French. That's a brutal transition, which psychological impact has been studied. Some have named it the "brutal mother tongue transmission interruption syndrome", with symptoms ranging from wild alcoholism to expertise in languages because one has no emotional attachment to languages, for having being raised by a mother in a language that was not her own native language, thus deprived of the emotional charge. The cold-headed objectivity of linguists regarding languages is strange to most people.
The Asian kids clinging to you speaks to some basic truth, but I guess it’s wrong to feel sorry for them. Those kids are probably lucky to be where they are. I created mixed race kids, whatever that means. Sometimes I wonder if I was in error, but I was a freak and outcast, so there was no appeal for me in white homogeneity. I do regret the onslaught of Coca-Cola Disney culture, like the obscure (obscene?) message on that waitress’s pants. I used to watch Bollywood movies for fun and practice, to get the rhythm of the lingo. Around 2008 or so, there were so many English cognates and phrases in the genre that I couldn’t watch anymore.
Since I hadn't read Lacan in a while, I went back:
"The unconscious is structured like a language". It seems to work the opposite way, as in "Language structures the unconscious". But I may be wrong. You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of "Wrong!"
Well, like Jung said, "Language, in its origin and essence, is simply a system of signs or symbols that denote real occurrences or their echo in the human soul."
Trời ơi em bị mất comment, lần thứ hai... phải hì hục gõ lại...
Trong một lần tình cờ nhìn thấy quảng cáo món "khoai tây múi cau" của một chuỗi fastfood ở Saigon, bạn em đã nói viết là múi cau thì genZ sẽ không hiểu và marketing như vậy là 'không hiệu quả'. Hỏi kỹ thì bạn cho biết hình ảnh múi cau với genZ là một thứ rất xa lạ... Sau một hồi lan man, chuyển sang chuyện tiếng Việt đang thoái hoá, em nói nếu từ ngữ đang mất đi thì những người còn nhớ như mình càng phải nhắc nhiều để giữ nó (dù có vẻ vô vọng), bạn em thì lại cho là không cần, với lý do 'ngôn ngữ luôn vận động và biến thái theo thời đại'. Những từ 'lỗi thời' như 'khoai múi cau' thì cứ để nó biến mất.
Người bạn này của em chưa từng bước chân ra khỏi Việt Nam, nhưng chỉ có thể tư duy mạch lạc và giao tiếp trôi chảy bằng tiếng Anh. Bạn học mọi thứ qua các kênh Youtube của người Mỹ.
Một cô bé 18 tuổi ở Saigon, từng tâm sự với em, hồi trước xem Youtube nhiều thì khả năng diễn đạt của cô bé mạch lạc hơn hẳn bây giờ - sau 2-3 năm toàn dùng Tiktok. Em hỏi bé có định làm gì để cải thiện tình trạng này không thì nhận được 1 cái lắc đầu ngán ngẩm.
Mùa thu này cô bé sẽ sang Mỹ học Liberal arts (giáo dục phóng đâu cũng thấy khai :D ), nhưng khi em mới dạy một chút cho cô bé về địa dư chính trị, và đưa cho vài trang giới thiệu trong cuốn Sự va chạm của các nền văn minh (Clash of civilizations - Huttington), bé cũng đọc không nổi và miêu tả cuốn sách là 'disaster'.
Em thực thà là, dù có về Việt Nam, coi đất mẹ là tôn giáo, có muốn làm gì vì lòng thương xót tha nhân, đối mặt với những chuyện này thì cũng thấy mình vô dụng và bất lực :) Như Jung cảm thán, cô đơn khi mình có hét toang lên thì cũng chẳng có ai chịu tỉnh ra. Một người quen cũng từng bảo em, 'rồi văn hoá Việt Nam sẽ chết.'
Mây ơi, văn hóa mẹ đẻ chỉ chết trong bọn nông cạn hay đã chết rồi. Để chúng chết!--Linh
Who's the kid in the ice box? Cute.
As for language, it is important but not the only thing. I notice that a lot of independence movements have become more about language than about ethnicity. Catalans want to speak Catalan, Quebecois want to speak (their version of) French. It doesn't matter if the newcomers are Haitians, Senegalese or Vietnamese, as long as they speak le Français!
I hear now that Germany has a population with a staggering 23% of immigrants or descendant of immigrants, and that's not counting the 2 million Ukrainian newcomers. Since German is a difficult language, some are trying to turn English into a second language for the country, which will help to bring in more Indian immigrants, a sorely missed ethnicity in the New Germany. In any case, most of the immigrants keep speaking Arab at home, and Deutsch outside. I suppose it's the same for the Ukrainians and the occasional Asians. What a mess.
Hi Tom,
Nearly every day, I sit at this food stand in an alley to write. That's the owners' youngest daughter. Seeing me with my laptop, she would sometimes come over to help me type!
Her dad is half Cambodian, a quarter Vietnamese and a quarter Chinese. During the worst Khmer Rouge years, his family fled to Vietnam. That's why he speaks Vietnamese.
He's also gone to Vietnam a few times just for fun, and this month, he'll take his father to Da Nang and Hoi An. Cambodians and Vietnamese don't need visas to enter each other's country.
Linh
P.S. Like children everywhere, this 2-year-old girl is becoming glued to the screen. What psychological and neurological damages are kids worldwide subjected to? The Metaverse is the next step, if the WEF crowd have their way.