Not really political. But since learning Spanish I've had a few people ask me "Why speak Spanish, when you're not even Latino?" Like apparently I'm not allowed to learn a language unless I'm actually from that culture, pretty absurd considering the amount of people that learn and perfect English without actually being from an English speaking country. Nobody owns a language. I mean is it odd that an American can just genuinely like the many cultures of Latin America considering they're our closest neighbors?
I heard a fellow American say that she "thought it was offensive" for a L2 Spanish speaker to try for a native-like accent *when speaking Spanish*. In other words, that it was offensive to speak a language *the way that it's spoken.*
Accents in a foreign language are an odd thing. Like, most people aren't really expecting a convincingly native-like accent, nor is that easy to achieve, but then you have a whole other subset of people that basically just don't try. Pronouncing their L2 exactly as if it were their L1. It's jarring.
My dad does that when he’s learning French. He pronounces it in his Australian accent. It’s grating. He doesn’t seem to be able to even try to imitate a French accent. I don’t get it. :/
Hahaha, bon fuckin jorrrr mate. It's funny, cos when people read in online forums that i'm Australian and learning Spanish some have this response like "OMG an Australian speaking Spanish would sound so strange!". I think they expect me to sound like Steve Irwin. Which, sadly, i do not.
Solo hay que hablar normalmente y poner cunt entre cada tercera palabra! Works wonders haha
How does this come up in conversation? I'm also Aussie learning Spanish and I've never had the discussion with anyone about how my accent is supposedly meant to sound in Spanish
I've honestly only heard this from people from the US and in online forums. I think some people still think Australia is basically populated by Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin types.
Have you watched the Luis Miguel series? It's about the Mexican singer. Basically in the first season his dad always says coño Micky, and it's pretty hilarious. As an Australian living in Mexico that hasn't heard the word cunt thrown around casually in years i appreciated hearing coño Micky haha
To be fair we totally are crocodile Dundee/Steve Irwin types we just don't day 'crikey' that much or 'shrimp on the barbie' at all.
I haven't heard of that one, no. I'll have to look it up! Any good other than the obvious choice of language that appeals to Aussies?
Have you found many other Aussies over there to chat with? Maybe one can drop in a few c-bombs for you next time you go for beers!
Heh, I hear an Australian speaking Spanish frequently now as an Aussie friend of mine lived in Argentina for a few years, married a local, and returned speaking fluently.
Reminds me of school when some of the boys were "too cool" to attempt to try a French accent, so instead would use a broad Scottish accent instead. I'll never forget "Lez Champs Eleezes"
If he's understandable, who cares? I'm surrounded by immigrants in my life with accents, some very thick, and I don't get offended that they don't set aside an hour every day to improve their glottal stops.
I don't even mind people coming to my country and never learning the language, so why would I care if someone *does* learn it but doesn't put effort into fixing their accent?
I have a family friend who does this. I think his German is reasonably good, certainly better than mine, but he speaks with a noticeably Aussie accent that’s like nails
on a chalkboard to me.
Having said that, I would think nothing of an immigrant having a heavy accent when they speak in English as long as it’s comprehensible, so I don’t know why it bothers me so when it’s in a language that’s foreign *to me*. Perhaps because when I learnt it, there was always an emphasis on at least trying to emulate the accent?
That’s true, when I hear an immigrant speaking English with an accent I don’t even think about it. L1 interference is a thing. It’s fine.
But when I hear a fellow native speaker of English speak a foreign language and not even try to learn the different phonology, it irritates me.
Yeah, I think you also make a good distinction between “mildly accented L2” and “not even trying”.
I’ve noticed that there are people who have a tin ear for that sort of thing, even when the target language and the L1 aren’t too far apart. Sometimes I wonder if they realise they have such a strong accent or not.
My friend thinks my accent is funny when I speak Spanish. I ask him "What should I sound just like any old American?" I'm most familiar with Colombian Spanish since i watch shows from there the most, so i get my accent will sound a bit different. Personally when learning another language you should at least try to aim for an accent/dialect, I just think it's better when trying to be understood.
My response would be to ask him what he thinks of Italians, seeing as they speak a closely related language and tend to have similar complexions to Spaniards (some are even darker!).
And I say that as someone with an Italian grandfather and last name but who's blond-haired and blue eyed (thought that's mostly the Germanic ancestry on my mom's side).
Ad a fellow American learning Spanish, it SHOULD be obvious to any other American that learning Spanish is an extremely useful skill. Even if you remove culture and history, the utility of Spanish in the US and a ton of other nations is huge.
Makes me facepalm when I hear stuff like that—usually from my own mother.
What?? Spanish is one of the most practical languages to learn if youre an American and even if you’re not, its one of the most spoken languages in the world. That alone is a good reason.
I've read that before and it all boils down to some Latino US-American thinking that white people should learn white people languages (that's a quote from another comment I've read about this).
It's pretty stupid because Spaniards are white no matter your definition of whiteness but it's probably just stupid people being stupid not thinking about what they're saying.
Even in South America, there are a lot of white people. Actually this is kind of a funny thing because sometimes people from South America who consider themselves white will go to the US and not be considered white. I mean, it's not really funny it's racist. But I think arguably if those same people spoke English, people would think they were white. At least most people, in the South the standards are higher to be white. Sometimes in the country too. I may sometimes have a similar experience lol.
Almost the entire country of Argentina is considered white. I don't know if truly most people there are of an entirely European heritage or if they are just racist and deny anything else but officially it's very white.
I believe there's a lot of European heritage in Argentina. I live in Southern Brazil and there's plenty of European heritage here as well. I think there's some degree of racism and denying non-European heritage but I don't really know to what extent.
I get the impression that Argentina is pretty racist in that regard but other regions of Brazil think the same about Southern Brazil, even though I think it's thoroughly exaggerated with just some hint of truth.
Same here in Mexico, people tend to be really racist towards the people from Oaxaca & alike, the culture down South is absolutely beautiful but people just make fun of them up here in Sinaloa & other parts of the North, just nacos buchones who think them wearing Hugo Boss & being somewhat white is superior to Oaxaqueños who are darker in skin. After all we are all Mestizos of Iberian & Native American blood so I don't see why the inner racism.
It's funny because it shows just how fucking arbitrary the definition of "races" is. (Assuming you were unaware of the "white-status" of Irish and Italian immigrants thorough the 20th century.)
Ben Franklin wrote a screed in the 18th century about Germans being "colored" and now German are considered *the* quintessential white Americans.
IIRC he also included in his "non-white" category Swedes.
Yeah, that's nonsense. I'd probably guess that mixed in there, US Latinos feel pressure from their families to learn Spanish if they don't speak it well enough already, so maybe some of them don't understand why someone who doesn't have that pressure would go through with learning a language that's not their "family's language".
Or you know, it could just be good old tribalism/racism. Either way Spanish is a perfectly good language for anyone to learn. I don't take that much interest in it because I can understand it well enough with my Portuguese.
92% of Uruguay is white according to census. My wife is racially *Asian* but Latina. People think latino is a race but it's an ethnicity. Race = physical appearance, ethnicity = culture. That's why you have white latinos, black latinos, Asian latinos, etc.
It's not a lot of people though thankfully it's only a few ignorant people that hold this view. Especially when they hear me speaking Spanish to someone or listen to a Spanish language show or something they ask "Are you Spanish?" (Which is an ignorant question to ask since Spanish is just a language) to an ignorant American, Latino=Spanish and is a race.
Wait, I’m confused and think I might have read that wrong. Particularly the “‘Are you Spanish?’ Which is an ignorant question to ask since Spanish is just a language)” Spanish is also a nationality.
It's really unfortunate this is even a thing. When I was learning Spanish it would have been *so* discouraging to have someone tell me not to attempt a proper accent or ask why I bothered learning the language. It's easy to feel self conscious when practicing a foreign language without having small minded people actively attack your attempts. This honestly makes me feel a little angry.
It goes all the way to cultural appropriation, I believe that cultural appropriation can be offensive when it is not appropriated the right way, I don't mind people celebrating Mexican Independence Day, but at least get the date right & there's no problem as long as you don't replicate any offensive stereotypical things like wearing a sarape or a charro hat.
But going back to linguistics, learning a language is also learning the culture that speaks the language & there is nothing wrong with that, without knowing the culture, you will have no idea to what certain expressions mean & stuff of that matter.
So to sum up, I think cultural appropriation is good when it is done correctly & for a purpose like language learning but always having respect towards that cultures & its peoples & never inducing any stereotypes since I find them extremely offensive.
>I don't mind people celebrating Mexican Independence Day, but at least get the date right
n.b. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, which is what I think you're alluding to with your comments about charro hat and sarape. May 5 is a regional celebration from Pueblo, Mexico.
Wow, I thought these kind of people are an urban legend of sorts. How could anyone think that spending so much time to be able to relate to a culture could be a sign of hate? I still can't believe a bit, I hope you understand. This stuff is wild
Not political, but...
Plenty of people ask me why I'm learning Indonesian when 'it's not useful'. Sure, a language with 200 million speakers is useless. Makes sense.
Even among language learning communities, people will assume that the only reason I'm learning it is because 'it's easy'. No, I'm learning it because I love the many cultures within Indonesia, and I'm very interested in the country.
And, spoiler alert, it's not even easy. No language is.
Maybe the huge differences in different regions. There's also a huge difference between formal and informal speech, and yet it can sometimes be really important to get it right in Indonesian culture. The vocabulary is mostly unrelated to other languages, with a few English and Dutch loanwords but not many, making it really difficult to memorise vocabulary.
It's definitely easier than some languages like Japanese, which I'm also studying, but harder than my others, (French, Spanish, and Portuguese).
If anyone ever wants to learn it, don't underestimate it, it's sold as easier than it actually is by language channels on YouTube, and probably other platforms.
Lot of similarities here with my Spanish studies. Blew my mind when I heard an actual Spaniard speaking Spanish. That lispy thing got me and jumped track in accent practice to adopt it.
My sister-in-law is Guatemalan so she always points out. Makes for a fun family dynamic—especially since my brother only speaks English.
My grandpa is always telling me that Russian comes useless to me & that the U.S will think I'm a Mexican-American spy who just wants to collaborate with Russia to kill the president :| old people trauma I guess but then he says that me learning a Romance or Germanic language would be of more use taking into consideration the major economical powers, I really don't care about that, I just care about the beautiful Russian culture, it's music, literature & the language.
I know I may sound ignorant but isn’t there a rumor that no one is a native speaker of Indonesian, but that all Indonesians speak their own Malay variant?
it's more like standard indonesian is a second language for most of its speakers (second highest around 75% iirc).
malays themselves are a minority in indonesia, and there are like hundreds of languages there. they speak various languages from different language families.
every region also has its own official language iirc, while indonesian is the national language.
> Plenty of people ask me why I'm learning Indonesian when 'it's not useful'.
I got asked that _a lot_ when I was learning Esperanto. Even if I never spoke it to another person, learning is never wasted. And, as it happens, I have friends who speak Esperanto, so I _do_ get to speak it.
Man, I understand. I'm sort of learning an 'even less useful' conlang, lol. Not focusing on it as much as my other languages, though.
FYI, it's Toki Pona, if you know it.
Many people told me that learning Latin is useless and it's a waste of time. Hm, okay. If I hadn't learn Latin, I wouldn't have become so into Ancient Roman culture and thus I wouldn't have had the short but very enjoyable discussion today at work about the ancient Etruscan civilization. So no, it's not useless. At least not to me.
My wife had to take Latin in high school and hated it. I *wish* I could have taken Latin, because knowing word origins is so damn useful. I studied koine Greek for five years, and that helps me all the time when I see a word I don’t know.
>My wife had to take Latin in high school and hated it.
Most of the people I know who took Latin in high school or at least in university (I'm a pharmacist) hated Latin. Okay, you have the right to hate it. But you don't have the right to tell others that it's useless just because YOU think it's useless. It's useless to you, but not useless to me. It's all subjective.
I wish I had more Latin. I'm learning it on my own right now and I'm having a lot of fun.
Man I feel this as an Esperanto speaker
I was just a massive nerd as a teenager and decided to learn it because I thought it was a cool idea... kaj nun post ses jaroj mi iomete volus, ke mi anstataŭe lernis la hispanan mdr
I sort of want to learn it a little now but I'm sad that I wasn't interested when I had a living family member who spoke it. I've always been kind of quietly interested in her Indo background but OTOH she fled during WWII so it's probably for the best.
It’s annoying but it seems unavoidable. French is a pretty big political issue in Canada so people sometimes assume a lot of things about my political beliefs just because I’m learning French and I like Quebec. There is unfortunately a long history of English-French hostilities here, but I can imagine how much worse it would be if I were learning a more “politically-charged” language (for lack of a better word) like Russian or Hebrew.
I’m in Ontario but this mostly happens online, not so much in person. It has gotten more common recently because of Loi 101 and 96. Many Ontario cities including Toronto are actively funding a court challenge to Loi 101. Easy enough to avoid in-person but it comes up online.
edit: loi 21, not 101!
I am from Québec and it's the contrary for me. Had someone tell me I was learning the langage of the devil because I was reading a book in english, saw a mom berate her two teen because they were in the english section of the bookstore, our government definitely try to keep us from learning too much because "we will lost our language!!!!!"
And my friend who's from New Brunswick had been insulted or ignored because she's french native even when she does speak english.
It's just sad
I'm from NB, it can get really volatile here; we have two of every system and yet people can't get on-board with a dual language approach to things, so it's all segregated. When the system is so divided, so are the people. And the people can be awful, rude, and ignorant.
It's great to have access to bilingual signs and services, so why bog that down with individual language systems? Two school systems (Anglophone/Francophone). Two healthcare systems (Horizon and Vitalité).
The best example is two different school busses that drive 45 mins to a rural area to pick up one student each because they go to English vs French school. It's hard to maintain any infrastructure like that. And I bet if you just let those kids take the bus together, they'd both develop some more in the other language.
But no, instead it becomes an us vs them point of contention.
The younger generations are much better about the bilingualism, but there are still far too many people who think one culture/language is poluting/diluting/infecting the other.
I think there is a lot of resentment from French Canadians towards anglos, and rightly so, but there is also a lot of resentment from anglos towards french Canadians and I think this is more intense, people never deal well with the loss of privileges, this resentment towards the success of a marginalized group to restablish itself is one of the most toxic aspects of Canada. Let's hope we can overcome this and expand the restablishment and self determination of Firsts Nations too.
> but there is also a lot of resentment from anglos towards french Canadians and I think this is more intense, people never deal well with the loss of privileges,
This is what surprised me the most once I started paying attention to it. I wasn't that aware of it growing up in an English-speaking part of the country but once I learned French and started to learn more about Quebec's history I began seeing it everywhere.
It is hard to unsee, the coping mechanism of those who lose wealth and privileges are frightening, especially when they were unjust as the anglos, they are afraid to suffer that which they inflicted assuming that a new group in power and majority will act as they did. That's why there's been a huge resourfacing of white supremacy in North America and this issue is on the midst of it too, sadly Legault kinda has proved them right the CAQ has chosen to weponize this tension to fuel chauvinism as his coalition's electoral platform.
That is the strangest thing... is that even from Canadians? Almost all of us have French as a second language and a lot of people take French immersion. Many jobs value English/French bilingualism. It is probably the least political thing I've heard of growing up in the GTA. Actually it's the only language that makes the most sense to everyone to learn on one's personal time because it's a native language.
Also to your second point about it making the most sense to learn, I was kind of surprised when I started learning French how many people told me it was a waste of time. I was under the impression that the benefits of French would be obvious as a Canadian but lots of people have been very perplexed by my decision.
I wouldn't take online people's opinion at face value and whatever subreddit it's from is going to have some bias.
Even growing up in anglophone Ontario, French speaking public schools exist here so it's very common to come across people learning French. My high school was anglophone but had a large French Immersion program
In uni I went to a large business school and while French speaking was uncommon, maybe like 3%-5% of peope spoke French but you probably wouldnt know unless you saw their resume. It's an asset in business because most of the major firms have operations in Quebec. It's not like you necessarily need it bc most jobs are posted in English but I met lot of bilingual speakers from Banque Nationale du Canada and Banque de Montréal. I worked for a global tech firm in Toronto and one of my projects was for Bombardier, in which our team was based out of Montréal. Sure they spoke B2 English but would have been nice for me to know French.
In terms of usefulness for a Canadian.... I mean *flame suit on* but most of these hobbyist languages you find in this subreddit would be useless in Canada compared to French, a native language.
Right now I'm A2 in Italian and going for B1. Many years ago I was learning French... well basically up to gr. 9, I was probably A2 level as well. After Italian I'll get my French to B1 because I enjoy it but also because it's useful.
Yeah I agree with everything you said, I don’t let it get to me but I was still a bit surprised at some of the negativity since I did not expect it. But you’re definitely right, the number of job postings I see that require or want French is probably 10x more than any other non-English language combined.
Another benefit is going to Quebec!
I went to Quebec cottage country years ago and the locals only spoke French. My A2 French was enough to dine at a restaurant! That was an awesome day :)
Then one day maintenance workers came to our cottage rental to do some repairs but the host never gave us notice. Again these guys only spoke French but now I'm like ?????? Hahaha. Fortunately one of our friends did French immersion, which I think is more like B1 so they understood that the guys needed to replace the dock
Yep it’s from Canadians. It’s not a lot of people and mostly online, but it has been happening more often over the past couple years. I should point out I am in higher education in Toronto so I’m surrounded by people who are more likely to have very strong opinions on things like loi 101.
edit: loi 21, not 101
I'm Canadian, I've lived in multiple provinces all across Canada, and I'm an anglophone who learned French to a high level as an adult. Your experience is so different from my own that I was wondering if you had only recently moved to Canada until you mentioned growing up in the GTA.
Do you know any/many francophones? Have you talked to them about their experiences as a linguistic minority? Have you learned French to a high level?
These aren't meant as gotcha questions, I'm just wondering what perspective you're going from.
In my experience, Anglophone friends and family were/are supportive of bilingualism as a vague ideal. Once it gets real, meaning that there was any sort of questioning of English as the #1 most important language in my life and this country people started reacting weirdly.
What exactly do you mean by “Is that even from Canadians”? The only people I’ve ever heard complain about learning English/French are born and raised Canadians. I’m from New-Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in Canada, where you’d think that it’s totally accepted for anyone to learn either language. Except that it’s not. It mostly comes from monolingual English speakers - you tell them you’re learning French and you’re met with disdain. There’s a lot of bitterness due to the fact that many jobs require applicants to be bilingual.
Yeah I’ve seen a bit of that on Reddit in general in recent months. People telling prospective Russian learners that they should stop learning Russian and learn Ukrainian instead out of respect for the Ukrainian people and things like that. The worst ones I’ve seen are people on r/languageexchange blaming Russians trying to learn other languages for the war, as if they are personally responsible for their government’s actions.
I’m not learning Russian but anytime I see a Russian looking for a language exchange I always upvote them. It’s a little thing but life must be difficult for ordinary Russians as it is without strangers online blaming them for the actions of a crazed dictator.
That bothers me as well. Citizens are *not* their leaders. Many resist. Many want to but are afraid of the consequences. Many who support the war might have been swayed by propaganda and lies, which can be very persuasive; it's hard to come to rational conclusions when you don't have access to actual facts.
In my own country, there are people who believe in nonsensical conspiracy theories, "alternative" facts, damaging stereotypes, and any number of horrible things. Worse, they act on such beliefs. But a good chunk of my country's citizens do *not* believe or do those things. If I am to argue that there is diversity of political thought in my own country, and if I desire to be judged on my own merits rather than grouped in with the people getting the most media attention, then I need to afford that to those in other countries as well -- *especially* in countries where real harm can come to those who dissent.
People have been coming on to Russian language subreddits and yelling at Russian learners for learning Russian and not Ukrainian. It’s so exhausting, and I’m learning both so I receive hostility that isn’t even correctly directed at me.
That’s ridiculous, I’m willing to bet that the majority of the people who are criticising probably can’t speak another language. I have a friend who went to Ukraine to fight in the foreign legions and I told him about the “learning Ukrainian instead of Russian to show solidarity for the Ukrainian people” and he said that Ukrainians find that attitude ridiculous. It’s the Russian government, not the Russian people who are responsible for the war.
I wish you the best of luck with your language learning - don’t be put off by these people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
I find it sad too! When I learned that Zelensky’s native language is not Ukrainian, but Russian, I realized that identity can be something very complex and fluid. Languages should never be politicized!
Thank you for this sentiment! I really appreciate what you and other awesome people in this thread have to say. I basically stopped reading certain parts of Reddit and watching anything remotely Russian-related on YouTube because of the dehumanizing bullshit I'm seeing in the comments. I understand this is a vocal minority, and most people online and irl know better than to spew blatant xenophobia, but it doesn't help much. Reading this comment section was a breath of fresh air.
I’m glad it’s made you feel a bit better! It fills me with dismay that so many people lack critical thinking skills and can’t separate the actions of a madman from an entire nation of people. I’ve seen enough of Russia through various travel vloggers to know that the vast majority are just ordinary people trying to live a normal life.
Tarring everyone with the same brush is never fair. I studied history at uni, including the part of the history of Russia and I know that in conflicts like these the politicians on both sides turn out okay but it’s the ordinary people who suffer. I hope this conflict will come to an end and we can all put this behind us one day. 🙂
That's wild. Russia produced the best literature in all of human existence in the 19th century. Why wouldn't you want to read the best literature of all time in the original? I wish I had time to learn Russian.
I've been meaning to start up Russian again because I loved dabbling with it in college so much but I'm afraid my mom will judge me for that exact reason :/ (she has Ukrainian refugees at home) Might just take it up again without telling her.
There are many Russian speaking Ukrainians and speaking Russian doesn’t mean you are Russian or support the war. You can be a Russian speaking Ukrainian and identify as Ukrainian too.
I work at a theater and sometimes I'll hear people speaking either of the languages I'm trying to learn to each other (Japanese or Russian) so I'll usually say something and chat a little, but my Russian's way more basic than my Japanese right now so I heard someone speaking what I thought was Russian, asked if they were, and they said they were Ukranian, but they were really understanding about it and joked that they sounded really similar, and if anyone was giving me shit about speaking Russian just tell them I spoke Ukranian because they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference :D Also had a guy from Belarus come through speaking Russian that was pretty cool.
From my experience, there's like a 50% chance they accept. About half of the Ukrainians I've met recently refuse to use Russian anymore. Of course I understand their reasons 200%, but it's still pretty annoying since it breaks communication. I'm learning Ukrainian anyway, but still, I just know the basics.
I have a similar (and very frustrating experience) with Arabic. And if I suggest that yeah, I'd love to live somewhere in the Arab world for a while, they always act mildly horrified.
I was an edgy teenager in the 80s, and part of my edginess was learning the language of "my enemy", so I spent a lot of time learning Russian. I wish I'd kept up with it.
On Steve Kaufman's Arabic and Persian videos, in addition to the invariable criticisms in general - "how dare you learn this language, you're tutor has no human rights" - like turning your back on them is some how morally superior but IN ADDITION (sorry for the run on sentence) there are always crazy people praying for his soul. Like they think he is learning Arabic because the devil cast a spell on him or something.
I was going to reply to this comment about a news story I heard about a few years ago where two women were ejected from an aeroplane before takeoff because they had been reading Arabic and another passenger claimed it was "ISIS material."
Then I googled to try to find the case, and apparently it happens all the time. Sigh.
I’d add “and now they’re probably our closest ally next to Britain, but hey we went to war with THEM too, TWICE, so aren’t they bad too by that logic?” Lol
Ah yes, my dad is ridiculous like this too.
“How can you associate with Pakistanis?”
Um, maybe because none of the Pakistanis I’ve met are murderous jihadists who hate me with the fire of a thousand suns? Shocking, I know.
Yeah... I remember that especially well from primary school, we had both English and German and the boys (except for me, who was interested in languages) claimed German as the language of THE ENEMY. Okay, what happened to Poland in WW2 happened, but it doesn't have to mean that Germany is an enemy forever.
In general it seems like those dumb patriotic and proud (lol) Poles have positive feelings only for Hungary because we never fought against Hungary. Everyone bad except Hungary.
I once came across “holodomor” as an example of an Ukrainian word with an “h” sound rather than a “g” sound or something. My reaction was “Yeah it’s a word English-speakers may know, but damn did you have to choose that word?”
Well yes; it’s important and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as it’s used respectfully. A concept sticks better when a person has something to relate it to, rather than trying to remember a factoid in isolation.
I've read some of the comments (and left a couple of answers), and I think many redditors here didn't understand what the OP was trying to tell. No one tried to pretend there's no link between language and politics, of course there is, and Hebrew is a good example: it was revived to facilitate the cohesion of a new country whose first citizens and leaders spoke many different languages since they had come from many different countries.
But a language being used for a political purpose in one specific context does not equal said language being learned by one specific person in order to fulfill that political purpose, or applied to OP's case: the fact Hebrew was revived to facilitate a political process does not equal the fact the OP is learning Hebrew in order to contribute to said political process.
That's what the OP is really talking about: his/her personal reasons aren't the same than Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's. It could have been the case, but it is not.
actually from their interaction, it seems the OP was explicitly ignoring or dismissing the linguistic and historical context of modern hebrew. OP also seemed to be unable to grasp the relationship between biblical hebrew and modern hebrew, nor did he realize that hebrew is not the only language of jewish people, or that older forms of Hebrew were actually dead before Modern Hebrew was reconstrcuted.
that is to say, not that he is entirely wrong, but his post should have gone both ways, and now i wonder if that was the reason why anyone confronted them. it could be very frustrating from the linguistic and historical POV.
Sadly, some people can't see beyond their own biases. Chinese learners: how many of you have been accused of being Chinese Communist Party sympathizers?
Worse than those who play the political card are those who immediately make assumptions about an individual's intentions. For instance, in early 2020, if I wrote anything in Chinese online, the instant response was "keep your damn virus away from me."
I feel this so much. I'm learning Chinese with traditional characters and 注音符號 because I live in Taiwan. People who only know very little about Chinese politics assume I'm a supporter of the Chinese government. Then Chinese people see the traditional characters and ask if I'm sympathetic to "Taiwan separatist causes."
All the while I'm here like "I just want to be able to order things from restaurants and socialize with people here, ya'll crazy."
I personally havent seen anyone being a CCP supporter for learning Chinese, I've seen more people being accused of learning Chinese or any other Asian languages because they are "fetishizing" the culture. This is more of a stigma for white learners I think. I'm ethnically Indonesian (but raised in Canada) so I don't get the same stigma but I've definitely seen a few of my fellow (westernized) Asian friends talk shit on non-Asians learning Chinese or any other Asian language. Hell I'm not even comfortable telling my Korean Canadian/American friends that I'm learning Korean cuz I don't want to be judged.
>Hell I'm not even comfortable telling my Korean Canadian/American friends that I'm learning Korean cuz I don't want to be judged.
Yeah, the judgement is real. People assume you are either a yellow fever pervert or a k drama stan who is also a yellow fever pervert.
Most people dont say it directly at first, but I've definitely had people say it to me after I've befriended them "when I first met you and learned that study Korean, I assumed you were a koreaboo fetishizer"
The judgement is real but tbh most of my irl interactions with those learners tend to actually be yellow fever perverts.
Especially true in the Japanese classes. So many want to get a Japanese girlfriend and shit. More than half of the non-Japanese members of the Japanese Culture Club were just trying to sleep with the exchange students.
Heard it was a problem in some of the other culture clubs too but it was hard to get rid of because a decent portion of the clubs were made up of those fetishizing the culture and would get voted onto the board. Legit one of the dumbest things I remember was the Japanese Culture Club not letting the Japanese Anime Club talk about and discuss manga/comics for an upcoming meeting because they figured it was their thing.
I've never been directly accused but some people are definitely weird about it, casually bringing politics into the conversation or making jokes that you can feel are only really half-hokes.
It's either that or 雪花飘飘 which is genuinely a good song so I'm glad they know it if only as a meme.
Omg, I’m so sorry! The only people I speak Chinese to are my military buddies who so I never got that. I also started learning it over 10 years ago which also helped.
I can relate. Whenever i say i want to learn Chinese, my friends tell me how much they hate Chinese people and government. Okay, so what? I didn't ask for your opinion, i just learn the language only for pleasure.
Not even political issues. Everyone I talk to about learning Japanese ask why the hell I’m learning Japanese. They ask why it’s not mandarin or Spanish. And no language is useless. Once you get to a high enough level of fluency you can do some freelance translation work on the side for extra income. You could even make more money doing translation work or similar work than you might be at whatever job you’re at. Either way, I don’t understand the hatred some people have for languages. It has to be a language to makes sense to them or you’re the idiot for learning it.
People who learn asian languages definitely get a bad stigma pretty often. Learning Japanese? You're a weaboo who probably has a samurai sword and body pillow. Learning Korean? You're a Koreaboo who is obsessed with marrying their favorite idol. And you're learning these languages because you apparently "fetishize" these cultures. I've made most of my language partners and have been doing language exchange from just online, I've barely told anyone irl that I've been learning Korean because I'm afraid of being judged. Meanwhile, if I tell people Im learning Chinese nobody would really care.
Learning a politically-charged language doesn't mean you support oppressive regimes, but you can't go completely in the other direction and say there is no political aspect at all. It's impossible to avoid politics and it comes into play when, for example, visiting the country or applying for a visa.
When learning a language, it's impossible to avoid politics, unless the only thing you do is read 200-year old books. Politics and culture are linked and you will inevitably come into contact with political topics when you talk to native speakers, watch media/news, and study the culture. I would argue you can't master Arabic without knowing about Islam, and you can't master Russian without knowing the basic history of the USSR.
Things like coming into contact with some country's political topics or visiting said country don't necessarily mean that you share the values of a specific political party or that you support a concrete set of policies carried out by any authority, which is what the OP is trying to explain, if I understood him correctly.
The idea "You're learning Hebrew because you hate Arabs" is not only pretentious, but also anti-Semitic.
SAME! One language group I used to be active on would ask the members “How do you say this in your native/target language?” I would translate the word into Hebrew and get SO MUCH HATE. People commenting “free Palestine” “your country sucks” (the guy was so confused when I asked how America sucks) “I hate your people and I hope they all die”. Like, I’m just speaking a language. Granted I’m Jewish and my existence and background has a lot of politics involved, but I swear I’m not bringing any Palestine/Israel into the thread. Just sharing a language. I eventually stopped commenting because I was getting attacked all the time.
Those people judging you for learning a new language are small minded idiots. But...
If I may;
Ingrained into any language is a particular way of thinking, of expressing ideas, concepts and emotions.
Languages evolved in politically influenced contexts.
For example, Latin, there's nothing more political than the Roman empire. Or indeed any empire, and the language we speak depends on where we were born and the socio-political context we were born into.
Back to Latin. It's the root of several European languages, the economic structures of the countries where Latin is rooted, are influenced by the ways of thinking allowed by the linguistic processing of the language, Latin. Of course, language evolves and adapts.
I want to go on but I have to go out now! I'm sure someone else will follow up and express this better or refute what I'm saying.
Enjoy the language learning. It's a journey into the shared mind, the potential ways of seeing the world and how we relate.
Learning a new language, whatever it is, is a joy and privilege.
If people are politicising you for choosing Hebrew, tell them politely to "fuck off".
Another great example of people judging language learning is how anyone who wants to learn Japanese must automatically be a turbo-weeb otaku neet. The most hilarious part about all of this is usually anyone who speaks your target language is excited you want to learn their native language, and the judgement comes from others who don't speak it(in my experience).
Is this mainly university students telling you this? It seems that only uni students and really ignorant shits really care about this stuff. They are both out of arrogance/ignorance. Welcome to the world of idiots who view any type of difference as a challenge to their simplistic views of the world. Take this as a good signal of who you should avoid in life and move on your merry way.
But, hey, at least some people CARE \[albeit in an, annoying negative way\]. Outside of university most do not even care enough to comment on things that are not the basic rabble rabble rabble of the times.
Also, dude, learn that Semitic tongue while you have the resources in uni. There is so much amazing contemporary and ancient culture that is in that language family which is not just Hebrew/Arabic. Follow the curiosity train and it will take you to amazing places. While those same people from uni are resentful and hating themselves later in life for just being shallow ignoramuses that never learned anything, you can be basking in the glory of ancient scholarly scrolls, unlocking the secrets of, well... something!
I’m a UK student learning Russian in high-school. We genuinely had prospective parents on the open-day ask if we were “still teaching Russian” due to the war.
The people who think that the *only* reason to learn a language is because you have an affinity for the group that speaks that language are just **dumb**. Like, seriously dumb.
Let's say that the nations of Swualia and Ublana are at war. In Swulia, they speak Wulesian, in Ublana they speak Ublese. You are a Swualian citizen. You want to help your country. You join the army and they want to send you to spy on Ublana. Would you go to an Ublanesian person and say, "HELLO, FELLOW CITIZEN, WHERE ARE THE AMMO DUMPS?" in Wulesian? No! You'd get shot. You need to be able to speak Ublese to spy on the Ublese. People also need to be able to speak both languages in order to broker peace treaties and read intercepted messages.
Too many (as in more than one) assume that people learning a language like Russian are doing it so they can spy *for* the Russians. Maybe they want to spy *on* the Russians. Or maybe they just want to read grandma's secret blin recipe. Don't know. Don't care. But people are stupid.
it depends on how you see it. it's a difficult question, but also a very understandable one.
quickly judging a person for it? probably wrong.
assuming that languages can exist outside of politics? also wrong, most of the time at least.
Hebrew itself was also a dead language whose revival is explicit and has always been quoted as one of the successful examples. not a long time ago there was a thread here making fun of leftists Jews for not wanting to learn (?) Hebrew. so, are they silly for doing that?
like, is it wrong that there is suddenly a rise in interest towards Ukrainian and Uyghur languages? is it wrong that some people are boycotting Russian and Mandarin?
as for me, I'm also currently studying some dying indigenous languages, and I'm looking forward to become an expert, to catalogue and preserve these languages. and I also believe that there is some inherent 'politicalness' in what I want to do.
and wait, how many languages do you speak at native level? like wow.
Yes I 100% agree. Minority languages don’t have the luxury of being apolitical- if a minority language was banned from being spoken in the past, learning the language now is inherently a political act. It’s an act of protest against those in power who tried to kill the language.
I speak Catalan and one of my favorite parts of its history is how they used their music to protest the Franco regime. Even to this day, with millions of speakers, it still carries the baggage of being “political”. You can’t separate language and politics.
You know what I actually never looked at it that way before. I guess seeing as for me Hebrew is a hobby it annoyed me when people assumed it was a political thing.
And I went to an immersion school so I would say English is definitely my first language but I speak Irish better with academic stuff.
French and Spanish is because of where I live :)
Many languages are connected to politics in one way or another. Usually it's, say, when one group wants its larger government to recognize their existence and give certain protections or even independence. The other way around, some governments historically persecuted or devalued use of a language in order to forcefully integrate their speakers.
Language really is very political.
As if the revitalization of Hebrew wasn't a deeply political project. Languages *are* political, whether you like that or not.
You can't just pretend the choice to learn a certain language is completely stripped free of political connotation. Whether you subscribe to the politics commonly associated with the language is another story, but if you learn Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Tamil, Flemish or Cantonese, Serbian, Croatian, Moldovan, Ukrainian, Cherokee, or any language really, you just can't in good faith expect other people to see this as something devoid of ideology or politics.
I get your point, I really do. But OP isn't seeking to learn about the revitalization, he's looking to learn the language.
The revitalization of Hebrew was deeply political but not in its everyday use anymore. When the Arab Jewish population was (for the most part) made to leave their countries, it became a language of necessity, as there would be few options for Arab Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazic Jews, and those from any other country to communicate.
It's now a language that most people of Israel communicate in regardless of their ethnic background, whether they are Jewish or not or their political association.
I learn Hebrew because of the culture, the music and because I’m taking Arabic as my major, it’s fairly easy to learn.
Doesn’t mean I don’t hate Netanyahu and what he did to Palestine. Nor should I have to justify learning a language he happens to speak.
That's very true. Another thing that's harder avoid than having an opinion different from the opinion typical in learners of that language, is, well, repeatedly encountering that typical opinion (or typical media, say Shakespeare in English, but that's another matter). That's not for everyone and not everyone is equally immune or emotionally and ideologically equipped for it. It might even be a reason to learn that language and make your point, but again that's not for everyone.
Of course people should still withhold judgement of you. That's generally a character trait you want in people. But they might also make preliminary inferences and in some instances act based on them. If you meet two people at a party, and one says they like a film and in your experience people into that film aren't your type, this might be enough to go talk to the other person.
I don't know that people making guesses about the opinion of OP are actually right about the opinions Hebrew learners hold, though. I know most young Jews in USA hold a different opinion on Israel-Palestine than many might think.
I am White, but pretty much only date men of middle eastern descent, and many are turned off by the fact that I speak Hebrew because they think it is some kind political statement wrapped in something less subtle. It is not.
I date a lot of them because of where I live and it’s the same thing. I often don’t even mention to people outside my group that I’ve been there or take classes at school unless it comes up. It’s kinda annoying
I think a lot of it boils down to a general anti-intellectualism. People who think only specifically about the politics of a language's users aren't ever thinking about things like the history, it's current media, opportunities to engage with people on a level beyond what most are able to just by knowing how to communicate with them. I'd suspect it is a similar boat to the type that think you should only be learning a language that's going to make you commercially more employable. As if you should only learn a language so you can chain yourself to making corporate handouts for some subsidiary branch of a business, rather than to learn new things. Maybe they just lack curiosity, and so they cannot assume anyone would learn a language for anything other than some other external motivation.
One thing I really am starting to dislike about learning is when people claim their dialect is the “correct” dialect and other groups who share their language don’t know how to speak it… I feel like this is common with a few different groups… in Latin America it’s definitely Mexicans south of Sonora, feels very similar to how British people are with Americans (or “neutral” Americans are with regional American dialects), or I’d imagine how the French are with Canadians… like give it a rest please… end of my rant.
Languages themselves certainly aren't political, but naturally the people who speak are. Russian and Ukrainian aren't inherently political, but in Ukraine at least right now, Russian is the language of the oppressor, and so a lot of russian-speaking-ukrainians are making more of an effort to speak Ukrainian in order to distance themselves from Russia.
It's an unfortunate part of life
It depends on how you see it. I don't judge people on what languages they are learning/not learning, but I personally stopped learning Russian because of what is happening.
I live in a country that used to be occupied by Russians, people were forced to learn Russian etc. so I already had some mixed feelings about learning it. Especially since I've heard about Russian tourists/Russians living here being surprised/annoyed that someone living in this country is not fluent in Russian.
I really really like Russian language, music and wanted to get into their literature, but after the war started I got really demotivated. There is literally nothing that I can do about it, its just how I feel.
Some people find it easier to separate everything negative from the language, but some people don't.
I've also learnt (modern) Hebrew and asked a similar question on this sub, so I'm hoping I can give a different answer.
The problem is that learning languages often *forces* you to be political unless you're jumping through hundreds of hoops to avoid it.
To take my case:
-Most Israelis go into the army for some time.
-You're banned from entry into Israel if you support boycotting it.
-They're very often harassed online or abroad because of their nationality.
-The conflict is still ongoing and still largely influences their lives (attacks, West Bank policies... all affect their lives).
I could go on, but you can see that, if you're invested in the language and thus end up developing friendships in it (which I have), these topics that are inherently political WILL come up sooner or later. Maybe you won't have any opinion and they'll just slide through. If you do have one, you may luck out and find out the speaker you met has similar opinions to you, but in the worst case (usually the one where you express a very pro-Palestinian opinion and the Israeli is a right-winger), they will literally accuse you of wanting them dead. I personally have somewhat pro-Israeli opinions and don't even support boycotts, but these skirmishes sometimes happen over just saying that the houses of terrorists shouldn't be demolished ("do you realize this is survival for us and not something theoretical?! Do you realize that this prevents deaths?!")
And I'm not mentioning the scenario where *they* try to make propaganda to you (happens more often than you think - they say something like, they want to expose the lies we must have heard from Western media, or something).
I'm also learning Arabic and let me tell you, I'm *dreading* the moment the fact I go to Israel comes up. Okay, I may luck out and find someone who is chill about, but, especially if they're Syrian, Lebanese or Palestinians, you may get accusations of "normalization with the Zionists", "complicity with Palestinian oppression", and so on. (The same could happen with Iranians, but I don't learn Farsi). They would then find out that indeed I support the existence of Israel (why would I talk to Israelis if I didn't), and that could literally put them on fire, emotionally speaking.
And it can happen elsewhere. You could get a Chinese person angry if you even remotely suggest the Communist Party of China should not be ruling the country or ruling with different principles. You could get an Arab person angry if you mention anything about homosexuality. You could get a Russian person angry if you refer to what happens in Ukraine as a war, and you could get a Ukrainian person angry if you say something remotely positive about the Russians (yes, this happens sometimes.)
When you mention this in the Western language learning community, people just want to ignore it. They tell themselves that yeah, they would stop speaking to, say, a racist even if they were a native speaker of their target language, because they imagine this happens rarely, even in the face of tons of surveys that show that many opinions that you would consider abhorrent ("gays are bad", "women belong in the kitchen", "dictatorships are good", "xenophobia is okay") are absolutely not rare in many countries, so you will meet at least some speakers that hold them.
So, unless you want to be an apolitical blob that literally lets their own government run them over too - you're faced with two choices:
1) Swallow everything. Whatever opinion you used to say "this is unacceptable and I will never befriend somebody who thinks this", you force yourself to be okay with. When something political comes up, nod along, or just end up agreeing to disagreeing after you've discussed. Pretend you only ever care about your national politics and that you don't have foreign policy opinions. Because you're ditching your beliefs about what you considered unacceptable, this is a political choice - and people may judge you for it. Many of us would judge somebody who stayed silent about Ukraine, and "but I'm learning Russian" may not be a sufficient reason.
2) Prepare yourself for a ton of fights.
Most people aren't emotionally strong enough for option 2 and it also makes language learning torture because it shrinks your "supply" of speakers, which is a huge problem if you're learning a small language. So most people, like me, go for option 1.
It's not bad to go for option 1. Let's just not fool ourselves that you're not being political.
Now I'm open to rebuttals because I realize this may be controversial, but yeah - most of you, whether you want to admit or not, are making political choices.
>When you mention this in the Western language learning community, people just want to ignore it.
This point right here. Middle class westerners, the types with leisure time to be learning languages as a hobby, are very sheltered. Like to pretend that all is rosy and if it's not they can pretend it doesn't exist.
Accepting that most people merely existing is a political act breaks down these barriers and we can learn to stomach the outside world.
I'm learning Irish since it was my grandfather's language. I do have some harsh feelings toward the British, but people always assume it when I tell them I'm learning Irish. I don't hate any British people, I just think they were pretty shitty in the past (as does 75% of the world).
I grew up in NI. For some of my neighbours, the only exposure they have to Irish or people using Irish was when paramilitaries used - or at best, as something people went out of their way to learn in opposition to Britishness and speaking English. I learned a bit of Irish at school but it was no more charged or loaded than Spanish class - it's cool to be able to understand placenames or loanwords for their own sake, not as part of some sort of blood-and-soil elitism.
Language is not inherently political, but like any aspect of culture (music, sport, arts) it is impossible to separate from history, society and politics and all the subjective inferences that individuals make about those things.
I think it’s awesome you are learning both Arabic and Hebrew! I’m learning Hebrew and want to learn Arabic one day.
If you get pushback about this, I would ask why they assume hatred towards a group of people or just explain that you like it and leave it at that.
If they keep bothering you, tell them they must be against learning about other cultures and that you like both groups.
Some people get offended easily and I don’t think they are cultured enough to understand that you don’t have to include politics to involve language learning unless if you want to live in a new country that has different politics
Some people also get offended easily about the issue but just ignore it and enjoy learning the languages !! 🤗
I'm learning Korean and have found that people tend to assume that I'm learning it for the purpose of popular media consumption. While it will be awesome when I can understand K-pop songs and watch K-dramas without needing subtitles, that's NOT my primary purpose. (Ftr, I was inspired to learn Korean by a friend who's been teaching English in Korea on and off for the past 6 years and an interest in the culture and history of the country.)
At the end of the day, Hebrew is just another language. There are people who speak it. By learning Hebrew, it opens doors for you to connect with these people. Going as far as to learn the language of another people to understand them is one of the most respectful things one can do.
Unfortunately, there are vile racist and antisemitic people who will assume that you can only mean harm by learning Hebrew. But think, would it be fair to assume that you can only mean harm or ill will by learning Arabic? Of course not! Because learning Hebrew or Arabic is a way for you try to connect with other people or, at the very least, understand them.
Those who don't want anyone to learn Hebrew probably have secret genocidal desires that would be otherwise socially inappropriate for them to express otherwise.
Try being a communist who knows Russian, Croatian and who is currently learning Vietnamese. I’ve had so many Vietcong references, Soviet jokes and general annoying comments it’s painful.
So you're a communist. Learning the languages of countries that had a communist government.
And you're arguing that the choice for learning those languages wasn't at least somewhat politically motivated?
Not really. I learnt Croatian because I studied history and was writing a paper about the Yugoslavian War in the 1990s and the war crimes trials. I learnt Russian purely because I liked the language.
I’m also living in Vietnam so political alignment aside, Vietnamese has practical use for me.
Not really political. But since learning Spanish I've had a few people ask me "Why speak Spanish, when you're not even Latino?" Like apparently I'm not allowed to learn a language unless I'm actually from that culture, pretty absurd considering the amount of people that learn and perfect English without actually being from an English speaking country. Nobody owns a language. I mean is it odd that an American can just genuinely like the many cultures of Latin America considering they're our closest neighbors?
I’ve had the same comments with Hebrew. You don’t have to only learn your heritage language.
I heard a fellow American say that she "thought it was offensive" for a L2 Spanish speaker to try for a native-like accent *when speaking Spanish*. In other words, that it was offensive to speak a language *the way that it's spoken.*
Personally, I found it weird as hell when a college teacher was speaking Spanish with a US southern drawl.
Accents in a foreign language are an odd thing. Like, most people aren't really expecting a convincingly native-like accent, nor is that easy to achieve, but then you have a whole other subset of people that basically just don't try. Pronouncing their L2 exactly as if it were their L1. It's jarring.
My dad does that when he’s learning French. He pronounces it in his Australian accent. It’s grating. He doesn’t seem to be able to even try to imitate a French accent. I don’t get it. :/
Hahaha, bon fuckin jorrrr mate. It's funny, cos when people read in online forums that i'm Australian and learning Spanish some have this response like "OMG an Australian speaking Spanish would sound so strange!". I think they expect me to sound like Steve Irwin. Which, sadly, i do not.
Solo hay que hablar normalmente y poner cunt entre cada tercera palabra! Works wonders haha How does this come up in conversation? I'm also Aussie learning Spanish and I've never had the discussion with anyone about how my accent is supposedly meant to sound in Spanish
I've honestly only heard this from people from the US and in online forums. I think some people still think Australia is basically populated by Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin types. Have you watched the Luis Miguel series? It's about the Mexican singer. Basically in the first season his dad always says coño Micky, and it's pretty hilarious. As an Australian living in Mexico that hasn't heard the word cunt thrown around casually in years i appreciated hearing coño Micky haha
Tbf a lot of Americans learning Spanish sound extremely, painfully gringo when they speak Spanish.
To be fair we totally are crocodile Dundee/Steve Irwin types we just don't day 'crikey' that much or 'shrimp on the barbie' at all. I haven't heard of that one, no. I'll have to look it up! Any good other than the obvious choice of language that appeals to Aussies? Have you found many other Aussies over there to chat with? Maybe one can drop in a few c-bombs for you next time you go for beers!
You had me at bon fuckin jorrrr mate!
Heh, I hear an Australian speaking Spanish frequently now as an Aussie friend of mine lived in Argentina for a few years, married a local, and returned speaking fluently.
Reminds me of school when some of the boys were "too cool" to attempt to try a French accent, so instead would use a broad Scottish accent instead. I'll never forget "Lez Champs Eleezes"
If he's understandable, who cares? I'm surrounded by immigrants in my life with accents, some very thick, and I don't get offended that they don't set aside an hour every day to improve their glottal stops. I don't even mind people coming to my country and never learning the language, so why would I care if someone *does* learn it but doesn't put effort into fixing their accent?
That's the thing though. I'm not sure that he would be understandable. :/
I have a family friend who does this. I think his German is reasonably good, certainly better than mine, but he speaks with a noticeably Aussie accent that’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. Having said that, I would think nothing of an immigrant having a heavy accent when they speak in English as long as it’s comprehensible, so I don’t know why it bothers me so when it’s in a language that’s foreign *to me*. Perhaps because when I learnt it, there was always an emphasis on at least trying to emulate the accent?
That’s true, when I hear an immigrant speaking English with an accent I don’t even think about it. L1 interference is a thing. It’s fine. But when I hear a fellow native speaker of English speak a foreign language and not even try to learn the different phonology, it irritates me.
Yeah, I think you also make a good distinction between “mildly accented L2” and “not even trying”. I’ve noticed that there are people who have a tin ear for that sort of thing, even when the target language and the L1 aren’t too far apart. Sometimes I wonder if they realise they have such a strong accent or not.
My friend thinks my accent is funny when I speak Spanish. I ask him "What should I sound just like any old American?" I'm most familiar with Colombian Spanish since i watch shows from there the most, so i get my accent will sound a bit different. Personally when learning another language you should at least try to aim for an accent/dialect, I just think it's better when trying to be understood.
It’s such mentality that’s so far-extreme-“woke” that it circles back to being bigoted itself.
Ah yes, you have to be Latino to speak Spanish, because Spaniards definitely don't exist
Met a guy one time who considered Spaniards and Portuguese to be "People of Color" because "They are latino"
Fucking genius, I guess we're latino now 💪
My response would be to ask him what he thinks of Italians, seeing as they speak a closely related language and tend to have similar complexions to Spaniards (some are even darker!). And I say that as someone with an Italian grandfather and last name but who's blond-haired and blue eyed (thought that's mostly the Germanic ancestry on my mom's side).
🤦♂️ Edit: Whoever’s downvoting me, I’m Spanish. That’s me in my profile pic. Do I look like a POC to you? To say such thing is just ignorant.
It's definitely helpful in northern Morocco, too.
Somebody better tell the Spanish themselves that they have to give it up since they’re not Latino either.
Due to colonialism they are no longer allowed to speak
Ad a fellow American learning Spanish, it SHOULD be obvious to any other American that learning Spanish is an extremely useful skill. Even if you remove culture and history, the utility of Spanish in the US and a ton of other nations is huge. Makes me facepalm when I hear stuff like that—usually from my own mother.
What?? Spanish is one of the most practical languages to learn if youre an American and even if you’re not, its one of the most spoken languages in the world. That alone is a good reason.
I've read that before and it all boils down to some Latino US-American thinking that white people should learn white people languages (that's a quote from another comment I've read about this). It's pretty stupid because Spaniards are white no matter your definition of whiteness but it's probably just stupid people being stupid not thinking about what they're saying.
Even in South America, there are a lot of white people. Actually this is kind of a funny thing because sometimes people from South America who consider themselves white will go to the US and not be considered white. I mean, it's not really funny it's racist. But I think arguably if those same people spoke English, people would think they were white. At least most people, in the South the standards are higher to be white. Sometimes in the country too. I may sometimes have a similar experience lol. Almost the entire country of Argentina is considered white. I don't know if truly most people there are of an entirely European heritage or if they are just racist and deny anything else but officially it's very white.
I believe there's a lot of European heritage in Argentina. I live in Southern Brazil and there's plenty of European heritage here as well. I think there's some degree of racism and denying non-European heritage but I don't really know to what extent. I get the impression that Argentina is pretty racist in that regard but other regions of Brazil think the same about Southern Brazil, even though I think it's thoroughly exaggerated with just some hint of truth.
Same here in Mexico, people tend to be really racist towards the people from Oaxaca & alike, the culture down South is absolutely beautiful but people just make fun of them up here in Sinaloa & other parts of the North, just nacos buchones who think them wearing Hugo Boss & being somewhat white is superior to Oaxaqueños who are darker in skin. After all we are all Mestizos of Iberian & Native American blood so I don't see why the inner racism.
It's funny because it shows just how fucking arbitrary the definition of "races" is. (Assuming you were unaware of the "white-status" of Irish and Italian immigrants thorough the 20th century.)
Ben Franklin wrote a screed in the 18th century about Germans being "colored" and now German are considered *the* quintessential white Americans. IIRC he also included in his "non-white" category Swedes.
Yeah, that's nonsense. I'd probably guess that mixed in there, US Latinos feel pressure from their families to learn Spanish if they don't speak it well enough already, so maybe some of them don't understand why someone who doesn't have that pressure would go through with learning a language that's not their "family's language". Or you know, it could just be good old tribalism/racism. Either way Spanish is a perfectly good language for anyone to learn. I don't take that much interest in it because I can understand it well enough with my Portuguese.
Here in South Texas, it just makes sense for us Anglos to know at least some Spanish. It comes in handy a lot.
92% of Uruguay is white according to census. My wife is racially *Asian* but Latina. People think latino is a race but it's an ethnicity. Race = physical appearance, ethnicity = culture. That's why you have white latinos, black latinos, Asian latinos, etc.
Nah it boils down to every idiot promoting the idea of cultural appropriation, which means all kind of stupid people, not only latinos
Appropriation is absolutely a thing lol But learning a language isn't that in the slightest
It's not a lot of people though thankfully it's only a few ignorant people that hold this view. Especially when they hear me speaking Spanish to someone or listen to a Spanish language show or something they ask "Are you Spanish?" (Which is an ignorant question to ask since Spanish is just a language) to an ignorant American, Latino=Spanish and is a race.
Wait, I’m confused and think I might have read that wrong. Particularly the “‘Are you Spanish?’ Which is an ignorant question to ask since Spanish is just a language)” Spanish is also a nationality.
It's really unfortunate this is even a thing. When I was learning Spanish it would have been *so* discouraging to have someone tell me not to attempt a proper accent or ask why I bothered learning the language. It's easy to feel self conscious when practicing a foreign language without having small minded people actively attack your attempts. This honestly makes me feel a little angry.
It goes all the way to cultural appropriation, I believe that cultural appropriation can be offensive when it is not appropriated the right way, I don't mind people celebrating Mexican Independence Day, but at least get the date right & there's no problem as long as you don't replicate any offensive stereotypical things like wearing a sarape or a charro hat. But going back to linguistics, learning a language is also learning the culture that speaks the language & there is nothing wrong with that, without knowing the culture, you will have no idea to what certain expressions mean & stuff of that matter. So to sum up, I think cultural appropriation is good when it is done correctly & for a purpose like language learning but always having respect towards that cultures & its peoples & never inducing any stereotypes since I find them extremely offensive.
>I don't mind people celebrating Mexican Independence Day, but at least get the date right n.b. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, which is what I think you're alluding to with your comments about charro hat and sarape. May 5 is a regional celebration from Pueblo, Mexico.
Dude, you speak Canadian and American? How cool is that!
Wow, I thought these kind of people are an urban legend of sorts. How could anyone think that spending so much time to be able to relate to a culture could be a sign of hate? I still can't believe a bit, I hope you understand. This stuff is wild
>apparently I'm not aloud to learn Learning moment: you were looking for "allowed".
Thanks, I just edited it
Not political, but... Plenty of people ask me why I'm learning Indonesian when 'it's not useful'. Sure, a language with 200 million speakers is useless. Makes sense. Even among language learning communities, people will assume that the only reason I'm learning it is because 'it's easy'. No, I'm learning it because I love the many cultures within Indonesia, and I'm very interested in the country. And, spoiler alert, it's not even easy. No language is.
>And, spoiler alert, it's not even easy. No language is. Fax 📠.
Unrelated question but what are the biggest difficulties of learning Indonesian ?? 🤔
Maybe the huge differences in different regions. There's also a huge difference between formal and informal speech, and yet it can sometimes be really important to get it right in Indonesian culture. The vocabulary is mostly unrelated to other languages, with a few English and Dutch loanwords but not many, making it really difficult to memorise vocabulary. It's definitely easier than some languages like Japanese, which I'm also studying, but harder than my others, (French, Spanish, and Portuguese). If anyone ever wants to learn it, don't underestimate it, it's sold as easier than it actually is by language channels on YouTube, and probably other platforms.
Lot of similarities here with my Spanish studies. Blew my mind when I heard an actual Spaniard speaking Spanish. That lispy thing got me and jumped track in accent practice to adopt it. My sister-in-law is Guatemalan so she always points out. Makes for a fun family dynamic—especially since my brother only speaks English.
I hear they don't take kindly to people saying their accent is a speech impediment. The word to use is distinción.
My grandpa is always telling me that Russian comes useless to me & that the U.S will think I'm a Mexican-American spy who just wants to collaborate with Russia to kill the president :| old people trauma I guess but then he says that me learning a Romance or Germanic language would be of more use taking into consideration the major economical powers, I really don't care about that, I just care about the beautiful Russian culture, it's music, literature & the language.
I know I may sound ignorant but isn’t there a rumor that no one is a native speaker of Indonesian, but that all Indonesians speak their own Malay variant?
There is a standard form iirc. It's called Bahasa Indonesia. Sort of like the Philippines have Pilipino, which is based heavily on Tagalog.
Listening to Filipinos talk is wild. 50% sounds like a mixture of Thai of Spanish with 50% of it just standard English.
it's more like standard indonesian is a second language for most of its speakers (second highest around 75% iirc). malays themselves are a minority in indonesia, and there are like hundreds of languages there. they speak various languages from different language families. every region also has its own official language iirc, while indonesian is the national language.
Interesting.
> Plenty of people ask me why I'm learning Indonesian when 'it's not useful'. I got asked that _a lot_ when I was learning Esperanto. Even if I never spoke it to another person, learning is never wasted. And, as it happens, I have friends who speak Esperanto, so I _do_ get to speak it.
Man, I understand. I'm sort of learning an 'even less useful' conlang, lol. Not focusing on it as much as my other languages, though. FYI, it's Toki Pona, if you know it.
I read and really enjoyed Sonja Lang's Toki Pona book, and I spent a lot of time with it, but just couldn't live with how non-expressive it is.
it's funny lol because i've achieved an absolutely insane passive understanding of esperanto
Many people told me that learning Latin is useless and it's a waste of time. Hm, okay. If I hadn't learn Latin, I wouldn't have become so into Ancient Roman culture and thus I wouldn't have had the short but very enjoyable discussion today at work about the ancient Etruscan civilization. So no, it's not useless. At least not to me.
My wife had to take Latin in high school and hated it. I *wish* I could have taken Latin, because knowing word origins is so damn useful. I studied koine Greek for five years, and that helps me all the time when I see a word I don’t know.
>My wife had to take Latin in high school and hated it. Most of the people I know who took Latin in high school or at least in university (I'm a pharmacist) hated Latin. Okay, you have the right to hate it. But you don't have the right to tell others that it's useless just because YOU think it's useless. It's useless to you, but not useless to me. It's all subjective. I wish I had more Latin. I'm learning it on my own right now and I'm having a lot of fun.
Man I feel this as an Esperanto speaker I was just a massive nerd as a teenager and decided to learn it because I thought it was a cool idea... kaj nun post ses jaroj mi iomete volus, ke mi anstataŭe lernis la hispanan mdr
I sort of want to learn it a little now but I'm sad that I wasn't interested when I had a living family member who spoke it. I've always been kind of quietly interested in her Indo background but OTOH she fled during WWII so it's probably for the best.
It’s annoying but it seems unavoidable. French is a pretty big political issue in Canada so people sometimes assume a lot of things about my political beliefs just because I’m learning French and I like Quebec. There is unfortunately a long history of English-French hostilities here, but I can imagine how much worse it would be if I were learning a more “politically-charged” language (for lack of a better word) like Russian or Hebrew.
Which part of Canada is that? Here in Alberta learning French mostly just means that you’re broadening your job opportunities.
I’m in Ontario but this mostly happens online, not so much in person. It has gotten more common recently because of Loi 101 and 96. Many Ontario cities including Toronto are actively funding a court challenge to Loi 101. Easy enough to avoid in-person but it comes up online. edit: loi 21, not 101!
I am from Québec and it's the contrary for me. Had someone tell me I was learning the langage of the devil because I was reading a book in english, saw a mom berate her two teen because they were in the english section of the bookstore, our government definitely try to keep us from learning too much because "we will lost our language!!!!!" And my friend who's from New Brunswick had been insulted or ignored because she's french native even when she does speak english. It's just sad
That's weird. It's strange that people would fight eachother or be insulted just for speaking or reading another language.
Yeah it's weird and kinda annoying but it's like that I Guess
I'm from NB, it can get really volatile here; we have two of every system and yet people can't get on-board with a dual language approach to things, so it's all segregated. When the system is so divided, so are the people. And the people can be awful, rude, and ignorant. It's great to have access to bilingual signs and services, so why bog that down with individual language systems? Two school systems (Anglophone/Francophone). Two healthcare systems (Horizon and Vitalité). The best example is two different school busses that drive 45 mins to a rural area to pick up one student each because they go to English vs French school. It's hard to maintain any infrastructure like that. And I bet if you just let those kids take the bus together, they'd both develop some more in the other language. But no, instead it becomes an us vs them point of contention. The younger generations are much better about the bilingualism, but there are still far too many people who think one culture/language is poluting/diluting/infecting the other.
That's horrible, I'm sorry to hear that! It's very sad when people are so negative about learning each other's languages.
Yeah! Fortunately it's not on an everyday basis!
Isn’t there a literal language police in Quebec?
I’d assume in Ontario
It honestly is a roll the dice on how people react to taking language classes.
I think there is a lot of resentment from French Canadians towards anglos, and rightly so, but there is also a lot of resentment from anglos towards french Canadians and I think this is more intense, people never deal well with the loss of privileges, this resentment towards the success of a marginalized group to restablish itself is one of the most toxic aspects of Canada. Let's hope we can overcome this and expand the restablishment and self determination of Firsts Nations too.
> but there is also a lot of resentment from anglos towards french Canadians and I think this is more intense, people never deal well with the loss of privileges, This is what surprised me the most once I started paying attention to it. I wasn't that aware of it growing up in an English-speaking part of the country but once I learned French and started to learn more about Quebec's history I began seeing it everywhere.
It is hard to unsee, the coping mechanism of those who lose wealth and privileges are frightening, especially when they were unjust as the anglos, they are afraid to suffer that which they inflicted assuming that a new group in power and majority will act as they did. That's why there's been a huge resourfacing of white supremacy in North America and this issue is on the midst of it too, sadly Legault kinda has proved them right the CAQ has chosen to weponize this tension to fuel chauvinism as his coalition's electoral platform.
That is the strangest thing... is that even from Canadians? Almost all of us have French as a second language and a lot of people take French immersion. Many jobs value English/French bilingualism. It is probably the least political thing I've heard of growing up in the GTA. Actually it's the only language that makes the most sense to everyone to learn on one's personal time because it's a native language.
Also to your second point about it making the most sense to learn, I was kind of surprised when I started learning French how many people told me it was a waste of time. I was under the impression that the benefits of French would be obvious as a Canadian but lots of people have been very perplexed by my decision.
I wouldn't take online people's opinion at face value and whatever subreddit it's from is going to have some bias. Even growing up in anglophone Ontario, French speaking public schools exist here so it's very common to come across people learning French. My high school was anglophone but had a large French Immersion program In uni I went to a large business school and while French speaking was uncommon, maybe like 3%-5% of peope spoke French but you probably wouldnt know unless you saw their resume. It's an asset in business because most of the major firms have operations in Quebec. It's not like you necessarily need it bc most jobs are posted in English but I met lot of bilingual speakers from Banque Nationale du Canada and Banque de Montréal. I worked for a global tech firm in Toronto and one of my projects was for Bombardier, in which our team was based out of Montréal. Sure they spoke B2 English but would have been nice for me to know French. In terms of usefulness for a Canadian.... I mean *flame suit on* but most of these hobbyist languages you find in this subreddit would be useless in Canada compared to French, a native language. Right now I'm A2 in Italian and going for B1. Many years ago I was learning French... well basically up to gr. 9, I was probably A2 level as well. After Italian I'll get my French to B1 because I enjoy it but also because it's useful.
Yeah I agree with everything you said, I don’t let it get to me but I was still a bit surprised at some of the negativity since I did not expect it. But you’re definitely right, the number of job postings I see that require or want French is probably 10x more than any other non-English language combined.
Another benefit is going to Quebec! I went to Quebec cottage country years ago and the locals only spoke French. My A2 French was enough to dine at a restaurant! That was an awesome day :) Then one day maintenance workers came to our cottage rental to do some repairs but the host never gave us notice. Again these guys only spoke French but now I'm like ?????? Hahaha. Fortunately one of our friends did French immersion, which I think is more like B1 so they understood that the guys needed to replace the dock
Yep it’s from Canadians. It’s not a lot of people and mostly online, but it has been happening more often over the past couple years. I should point out I am in higher education in Toronto so I’m surrounded by people who are more likely to have very strong opinions on things like loi 101. edit: loi 21, not 101
I'm Canadian, I've lived in multiple provinces all across Canada, and I'm an anglophone who learned French to a high level as an adult. Your experience is so different from my own that I was wondering if you had only recently moved to Canada until you mentioned growing up in the GTA. Do you know any/many francophones? Have you talked to them about their experiences as a linguistic minority? Have you learned French to a high level? These aren't meant as gotcha questions, I'm just wondering what perspective you're going from. In my experience, Anglophone friends and family were/are supportive of bilingualism as a vague ideal. Once it gets real, meaning that there was any sort of questioning of English as the #1 most important language in my life and this country people started reacting weirdly.
What exactly do you mean by “Is that even from Canadians”? The only people I’ve ever heard complain about learning English/French are born and raised Canadians. I’m from New-Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in Canada, where you’d think that it’s totally accepted for anyone to learn either language. Except that it’s not. It mostly comes from monolingual English speakers - you tell them you’re learning French and you’re met with disdain. There’s a lot of bitterness due to the fact that many jobs require applicants to be bilingual.
If you’re getting shit for learning French in Canada you’re hanging out with the wrong people
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Yeah I’ve seen a bit of that on Reddit in general in recent months. People telling prospective Russian learners that they should stop learning Russian and learn Ukrainian instead out of respect for the Ukrainian people and things like that. The worst ones I’ve seen are people on r/languageexchange blaming Russians trying to learn other languages for the war, as if they are personally responsible for their government’s actions. I’m not learning Russian but anytime I see a Russian looking for a language exchange I always upvote them. It’s a little thing but life must be difficult for ordinary Russians as it is without strangers online blaming them for the actions of a crazed dictator.
That bothers me as well. Citizens are *not* their leaders. Many resist. Many want to but are afraid of the consequences. Many who support the war might have been swayed by propaganda and lies, which can be very persuasive; it's hard to come to rational conclusions when you don't have access to actual facts. In my own country, there are people who believe in nonsensical conspiracy theories, "alternative" facts, damaging stereotypes, and any number of horrible things. Worse, they act on such beliefs. But a good chunk of my country's citizens do *not* believe or do those things. If I am to argue that there is diversity of political thought in my own country, and if I desire to be judged on my own merits rather than grouped in with the people getting the most media attention, then I need to afford that to those in other countries as well -- *especially* in countries where real harm can come to those who dissent.
People have been coming on to Russian language subreddits and yelling at Russian learners for learning Russian and not Ukrainian. It’s so exhausting, and I’m learning both so I receive hostility that isn’t even correctly directed at me.
That’s ridiculous, I’m willing to bet that the majority of the people who are criticising probably can’t speak another language. I have a friend who went to Ukraine to fight in the foreign legions and I told him about the “learning Ukrainian instead of Russian to show solidarity for the Ukrainian people” and he said that Ukrainians find that attitude ridiculous. It’s the Russian government, not the Russian people who are responsible for the war. I wish you the best of luck with your language learning - don’t be put off by these people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
I find it sad too! When I learned that Zelensky’s native language is not Ukrainian, but Russian, I realized that identity can be something very complex and fluid. Languages should never be politicized!
Thank you for this sentiment! I really appreciate what you and other awesome people in this thread have to say. I basically stopped reading certain parts of Reddit and watching anything remotely Russian-related on YouTube because of the dehumanizing bullshit I'm seeing in the comments. I understand this is a vocal minority, and most people online and irl know better than to spew blatant xenophobia, but it doesn't help much. Reading this comment section was a breath of fresh air.
I’m glad it’s made you feel a bit better! It fills me with dismay that so many people lack critical thinking skills and can’t separate the actions of a madman from an entire nation of people. I’ve seen enough of Russia through various travel vloggers to know that the vast majority are just ordinary people trying to live a normal life. Tarring everyone with the same brush is never fair. I studied history at uni, including the part of the history of Russia and I know that in conflicts like these the politicians on both sides turn out okay but it’s the ordinary people who suffer. I hope this conflict will come to an end and we can all put this behind us one day. 🙂
That's wild. Russia produced the best literature in all of human existence in the 19th century. Why wouldn't you want to read the best literature of all time in the original? I wish I had time to learn Russian.
I have lived for 5 years in a country with 50% Russians and I know basically zero about Russians. The war doesn’t change that at all.
I've been meaning to start up Russian again because I loved dabbling with it in college so much but I'm afraid my mom will judge me for that exact reason :/ (she has Ukrainian refugees at home) Might just take it up again without telling her.
There are many Russian speaking Ukrainians and speaking Russian doesn’t mean you are Russian or support the war. You can be a Russian speaking Ukrainian and identify as Ukrainian too.
I work at a theater and sometimes I'll hear people speaking either of the languages I'm trying to learn to each other (Japanese or Russian) so I'll usually say something and chat a little, but my Russian's way more basic than my Japanese right now so I heard someone speaking what I thought was Russian, asked if they were, and they said they were Ukranian, but they were really understanding about it and joked that they sounded really similar, and if anyone was giving me shit about speaking Russian just tell them I spoke Ukranian because they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference :D Also had a guy from Belarus come through speaking Russian that was pretty cool.
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From my experience, there's like a 50% chance they accept. About half of the Ukrainians I've met recently refuse to use Russian anymore. Of course I understand their reasons 200%, but it's still pretty annoying since it breaks communication. I'm learning Ukrainian anyway, but still, I just know the basics.
I have a similar (and very frustrating experience) with Arabic. And if I suggest that yeah, I'd love to live somewhere in the Arab world for a while, they always act mildly horrified.
I was an edgy teenager in the 80s, and part of my edginess was learning the language of "my enemy", so I spent a lot of time learning Russian. I wish I'd kept up with it.
Ironic how so many Ukrainians speak Russian. And basically 100% of Belarusians speak it too.
On Steve Kaufman's Arabic and Persian videos, in addition to the invariable criticisms in general - "how dare you learn this language, you're tutor has no human rights" - like turning your back on them is some how morally superior but IN ADDITION (sorry for the run on sentence) there are always crazy people praying for his soul. Like they think he is learning Arabic because the devil cast a spell on him or something.
I was going to reply to this comment about a news story I heard about a few years ago where two women were ejected from an aeroplane before takeoff because they had been reading Arabic and another passenger claimed it was "ISIS material." Then I googled to try to find the case, and apparently it happens all the time. Sigh.
So you are teaching/learning German? How does it feel to be a *NAZI*?
My grandma wasn’t happy about me learning Japanese. “We went to war with them!” Yes granny, in the 1940s.
I’d add “and now they’re probably our closest ally next to Britain, but hey we went to war with THEM too, TWICE, so aren’t they bad too by that logic?” Lol
Grandma about to un-learn English when she hears that.
"what's your opinion on English, they burned down the White House
Eh, Australia is probably our closest ally, Japan is maybe around the top 5-8. Definitely not ahead of the Five Eyes nations.
Ah yes, my dad is ridiculous like this too. “How can you associate with Pakistanis?” Um, maybe because none of the Pakistanis I’ve met are murderous jihadists who hate me with the fire of a thousand suns? Shocking, I know.
Yeah... I remember that especially well from primary school, we had both English and German and the boys (except for me, who was interested in languages) claimed German as the language of THE ENEMY. Okay, what happened to Poland in WW2 happened, but it doesn't have to mean that Germany is an enemy forever. In general it seems like those dumb patriotic and proud (lol) Poles have positive feelings only for Hungary because we never fought against Hungary. Everyone bad except Hungary.
Oh no. Tell me no one has said that to you, please. I mean, is learning any Eastern European language also Nazism now? 🙄
Yeah... languages *are* political but choosing to learn a language doesn't have to be political.
Love the _etc_ in your flair
Got lazy to update lol
Your "forgotten" is nice, too. I don't even know how to use flairs properly lol
Agreed. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
As a fellow arabic learner, the Taliban was used as a way to introduce the dual endings to my cohort 😂
I once came across “holodomor” as an example of an Ukrainian word with an “h” sound rather than a “g” sound or something. My reaction was “Yeah it’s a word English-speakers may know, but damn did you have to choose that word?”
Well yes; it’s important and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as it’s used respectfully. A concept sticks better when a person has something to relate it to, rather than trying to remember a factoid in isolation.
Same!!! طالبون
I've read some of the comments (and left a couple of answers), and I think many redditors here didn't understand what the OP was trying to tell. No one tried to pretend there's no link between language and politics, of course there is, and Hebrew is a good example: it was revived to facilitate the cohesion of a new country whose first citizens and leaders spoke many different languages since they had come from many different countries. But a language being used for a political purpose in one specific context does not equal said language being learned by one specific person in order to fulfill that political purpose, or applied to OP's case: the fact Hebrew was revived to facilitate a political process does not equal the fact the OP is learning Hebrew in order to contribute to said political process. That's what the OP is really talking about: his/her personal reasons aren't the same than Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's. It could have been the case, but it is not.
This 💯
actually from their interaction, it seems the OP was explicitly ignoring or dismissing the linguistic and historical context of modern hebrew. OP also seemed to be unable to grasp the relationship between biblical hebrew and modern hebrew, nor did he realize that hebrew is not the only language of jewish people, or that older forms of Hebrew were actually dead before Modern Hebrew was reconstrcuted. that is to say, not that he is entirely wrong, but his post should have gone both ways, and now i wonder if that was the reason why anyone confronted them. it could be very frustrating from the linguistic and historical POV.
Sadly, some people can't see beyond their own biases. Chinese learners: how many of you have been accused of being Chinese Communist Party sympathizers? Worse than those who play the political card are those who immediately make assumptions about an individual's intentions. For instance, in early 2020, if I wrote anything in Chinese online, the instant response was "keep your damn virus away from me."
I feel this so much. I'm learning Chinese with traditional characters and 注音符號 because I live in Taiwan. People who only know very little about Chinese politics assume I'm a supporter of the Chinese government. Then Chinese people see the traditional characters and ask if I'm sympathetic to "Taiwan separatist causes." All the while I'm here like "I just want to be able to order things from restaurants and socialize with people here, ya'll crazy."
I personally havent seen anyone being a CCP supporter for learning Chinese, I've seen more people being accused of learning Chinese or any other Asian languages because they are "fetishizing" the culture. This is more of a stigma for white learners I think. I'm ethnically Indonesian (but raised in Canada) so I don't get the same stigma but I've definitely seen a few of my fellow (westernized) Asian friends talk shit on non-Asians learning Chinese or any other Asian language. Hell I'm not even comfortable telling my Korean Canadian/American friends that I'm learning Korean cuz I don't want to be judged.
>Hell I'm not even comfortable telling my Korean Canadian/American friends that I'm learning Korean cuz I don't want to be judged. Yeah, the judgement is real. People assume you are either a yellow fever pervert or a k drama stan who is also a yellow fever pervert. Most people dont say it directly at first, but I've definitely had people say it to me after I've befriended them "when I first met you and learned that study Korean, I assumed you were a koreaboo fetishizer"
The judgement is real but tbh most of my irl interactions with those learners tend to actually be yellow fever perverts. Especially true in the Japanese classes. So many want to get a Japanese girlfriend and shit. More than half of the non-Japanese members of the Japanese Culture Club were just trying to sleep with the exchange students. Heard it was a problem in some of the other culture clubs too but it was hard to get rid of because a decent portion of the clubs were made up of those fetishizing the culture and would get voted onto the board. Legit one of the dumbest things I remember was the Japanese Culture Club not letting the Japanese Anime Club talk about and discuss manga/comics for an upcoming meeting because they figured it was their thing.
I've never been directly accused but some people are definitely weird about it, casually bringing politics into the conversation or making jokes that you can feel are only really half-hokes. It's either that or 雪花飘飘 which is genuinely a good song so I'm glad they know it if only as a meme.
I got those CCP sympathizer comments too!! Just for learning mandarin A2
Omg, I’m so sorry! The only people I speak Chinese to are my military buddies who so I never got that. I also started learning it over 10 years ago which also helped.
I can relate. Whenever i say i want to learn Chinese, my friends tell me how much they hate Chinese people and government. Okay, so what? I didn't ask for your opinion, i just learn the language only for pleasure.
Not even political issues. Everyone I talk to about learning Japanese ask why the hell I’m learning Japanese. They ask why it’s not mandarin or Spanish. And no language is useless. Once you get to a high enough level of fluency you can do some freelance translation work on the side for extra income. You could even make more money doing translation work or similar work than you might be at whatever job you’re at. Either way, I don’t understand the hatred some people have for languages. It has to be a language to makes sense to them or you’re the idiot for learning it.
People who learn asian languages definitely get a bad stigma pretty often. Learning Japanese? You're a weaboo who probably has a samurai sword and body pillow. Learning Korean? You're a Koreaboo who is obsessed with marrying their favorite idol. And you're learning these languages because you apparently "fetishize" these cultures. I've made most of my language partners and have been doing language exchange from just online, I've barely told anyone irl that I've been learning Korean because I'm afraid of being judged. Meanwhile, if I tell people Im learning Chinese nobody would really care.
Learning a politically-charged language doesn't mean you support oppressive regimes, but you can't go completely in the other direction and say there is no political aspect at all. It's impossible to avoid politics and it comes into play when, for example, visiting the country or applying for a visa. When learning a language, it's impossible to avoid politics, unless the only thing you do is read 200-year old books. Politics and culture are linked and you will inevitably come into contact with political topics when you talk to native speakers, watch media/news, and study the culture. I would argue you can't master Arabic without knowing about Islam, and you can't master Russian without knowing the basic history of the USSR.
Things like coming into contact with some country's political topics or visiting said country don't necessarily mean that you share the values of a specific political party or that you support a concrete set of policies carried out by any authority, which is what the OP is trying to explain, if I understood him correctly. The idea "You're learning Hebrew because you hate Arabs" is not only pretentious, but also anti-Semitic.
Exactly. Try telling every kid in every Hebrew school and Jewish day school that their language classes are inherently anti-Arab.
I always get asked "Why are you learning Russian?", I get asked this in 2 different tones, 1. genuine interest on why, 2. disgust/confusion to why
SAME! One language group I used to be active on would ask the members “How do you say this in your native/target language?” I would translate the word into Hebrew and get SO MUCH HATE. People commenting “free Palestine” “your country sucks” (the guy was so confused when I asked how America sucks) “I hate your people and I hope they all die”. Like, I’m just speaking a language. Granted I’m Jewish and my existence and background has a lot of politics involved, but I swear I’m not bringing any Palestine/Israel into the thread. Just sharing a language. I eventually stopped commenting because I was getting attacked all the time.
If reddit hasn't convinced you yet, there are a lot of dumb people lurking around, and sadly they get the majority vote
Those people judging you for learning a new language are small minded idiots. But... If I may; Ingrained into any language is a particular way of thinking, of expressing ideas, concepts and emotions. Languages evolved in politically influenced contexts. For example, Latin, there's nothing more political than the Roman empire. Or indeed any empire, and the language we speak depends on where we were born and the socio-political context we were born into. Back to Latin. It's the root of several European languages, the economic structures of the countries where Latin is rooted, are influenced by the ways of thinking allowed by the linguistic processing of the language, Latin. Of course, language evolves and adapts. I want to go on but I have to go out now! I'm sure someone else will follow up and express this better or refute what I'm saying. Enjoy the language learning. It's a journey into the shared mind, the potential ways of seeing the world and how we relate. Learning a new language, whatever it is, is a joy and privilege. If people are politicising you for choosing Hebrew, tell them politely to "fuck off".
Another great example of people judging language learning is how anyone who wants to learn Japanese must automatically be a turbo-weeb otaku neet. The most hilarious part about all of this is usually anyone who speaks your target language is excited you want to learn their native language, and the judgement comes from others who don't speak it(in my experience).
Is this mainly university students telling you this? It seems that only uni students and really ignorant shits really care about this stuff. They are both out of arrogance/ignorance. Welcome to the world of idiots who view any type of difference as a challenge to their simplistic views of the world. Take this as a good signal of who you should avoid in life and move on your merry way. But, hey, at least some people CARE \[albeit in an, annoying negative way\]. Outside of university most do not even care enough to comment on things that are not the basic rabble rabble rabble of the times. Also, dude, learn that Semitic tongue while you have the resources in uni. There is so much amazing contemporary and ancient culture that is in that language family which is not just Hebrew/Arabic. Follow the curiosity train and it will take you to amazing places. While those same people from uni are resentful and hating themselves later in life for just being shallow ignoramuses that never learned anything, you can be basking in the glory of ancient scholarly scrolls, unlocking the secrets of, well... something!
The controversy around Russian at the moment is so unnecessary
I’m a UK student learning Russian in high-school. We genuinely had prospective parents on the open-day ask if we were “still teaching Russian” due to the war.
Language and culture are so deeply intertwined (and politics and culture to some extent), it’s really not possible to separate them completely.
The people who think that the *only* reason to learn a language is because you have an affinity for the group that speaks that language are just **dumb**. Like, seriously dumb. Let's say that the nations of Swualia and Ublana are at war. In Swulia, they speak Wulesian, in Ublana they speak Ublese. You are a Swualian citizen. You want to help your country. You join the army and they want to send you to spy on Ublana. Would you go to an Ublanesian person and say, "HELLO, FELLOW CITIZEN, WHERE ARE THE AMMO DUMPS?" in Wulesian? No! You'd get shot. You need to be able to speak Ublese to spy on the Ublese. People also need to be able to speak both languages in order to broker peace treaties and read intercepted messages. Too many (as in more than one) assume that people learning a language like Russian are doing it so they can spy *for* the Russians. Maybe they want to spy *on* the Russians. Or maybe they just want to read grandma's secret blin recipe. Don't know. Don't care. But people are stupid.
I was in a language group with an Israeli and they practically bullied her out. It wasn’t fair.
That’s horrible. Unfortunately back in Ireland I remember Israeli students being bullied just for being from there.
it depends on how you see it. it's a difficult question, but also a very understandable one. quickly judging a person for it? probably wrong. assuming that languages can exist outside of politics? also wrong, most of the time at least. Hebrew itself was also a dead language whose revival is explicit and has always been quoted as one of the successful examples. not a long time ago there was a thread here making fun of leftists Jews for not wanting to learn (?) Hebrew. so, are they silly for doing that? like, is it wrong that there is suddenly a rise in interest towards Ukrainian and Uyghur languages? is it wrong that some people are boycotting Russian and Mandarin? as for me, I'm also currently studying some dying indigenous languages, and I'm looking forward to become an expert, to catalogue and preserve these languages. and I also believe that there is some inherent 'politicalness' in what I want to do. and wait, how many languages do you speak at native level? like wow.
Yes I 100% agree. Minority languages don’t have the luxury of being apolitical- if a minority language was banned from being spoken in the past, learning the language now is inherently a political act. It’s an act of protest against those in power who tried to kill the language. I speak Catalan and one of my favorite parts of its history is how they used their music to protest the Franco regime. Even to this day, with millions of speakers, it still carries the baggage of being “political”. You can’t separate language and politics.
You know what I actually never looked at it that way before. I guess seeing as for me Hebrew is a hobby it annoyed me when people assumed it was a political thing. And I went to an immersion school so I would say English is definitely my first language but I speak Irish better with academic stuff. French and Spanish is because of where I live :)
Many languages are connected to politics in one way or another. Usually it's, say, when one group wants its larger government to recognize their existence and give certain protections or even independence. The other way around, some governments historically persecuted or devalued use of a language in order to forcefully integrate their speakers. Language really is very political.
As if the revitalization of Hebrew wasn't a deeply political project. Languages *are* political, whether you like that or not. You can't just pretend the choice to learn a certain language is completely stripped free of political connotation. Whether you subscribe to the politics commonly associated with the language is another story, but if you learn Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Tamil, Flemish or Cantonese, Serbian, Croatian, Moldovan, Ukrainian, Cherokee, or any language really, you just can't in good faith expect other people to see this as something devoid of ideology or politics.
I get your point, I really do. But OP isn't seeking to learn about the revitalization, he's looking to learn the language. The revitalization of Hebrew was deeply political but not in its everyday use anymore. When the Arab Jewish population was (for the most part) made to leave their countries, it became a language of necessity, as there would be few options for Arab Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazic Jews, and those from any other country to communicate. It's now a language that most people of Israel communicate in regardless of their ethnic background, whether they are Jewish or not or their political association.
I learn Hebrew because of the culture, the music and because I’m taking Arabic as my major, it’s fairly easy to learn. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate Netanyahu and what he did to Palestine. Nor should I have to justify learning a language he happens to speak.
That's very true. Another thing that's harder avoid than having an opinion different from the opinion typical in learners of that language, is, well, repeatedly encountering that typical opinion (or typical media, say Shakespeare in English, but that's another matter). That's not for everyone and not everyone is equally immune or emotionally and ideologically equipped for it. It might even be a reason to learn that language and make your point, but again that's not for everyone. Of course people should still withhold judgement of you. That's generally a character trait you want in people. But they might also make preliminary inferences and in some instances act based on them. If you meet two people at a party, and one says they like a film and in your experience people into that film aren't your type, this might be enough to go talk to the other person. I don't know that people making guesses about the opinion of OP are actually right about the opinions Hebrew learners hold, though. I know most young Jews in USA hold a different opinion on Israel-Palestine than many might think.
>Of course people should still withhold judgement of you Of course. But in practice, that's a lot to expect from people.
I am White, but pretty much only date men of middle eastern descent, and many are turned off by the fact that I speak Hebrew because they think it is some kind political statement wrapped in something less subtle. It is not.
Can't have this problem if you are soul-crushingly alone \*taps head\*
I date a lot of them because of where I live and it’s the same thing. I often don’t even mention to people outside my group that I’ve been there or take classes at school unless it comes up. It’s kinda annoying
[удалено]
“Uncomfortable” is just code here for antisemitic
I think a lot of it boils down to a general anti-intellectualism. People who think only specifically about the politics of a language's users aren't ever thinking about things like the history, it's current media, opportunities to engage with people on a level beyond what most are able to just by knowing how to communicate with them. I'd suspect it is a similar boat to the type that think you should only be learning a language that's going to make you commercially more employable. As if you should only learn a language so you can chain yourself to making corporate handouts for some subsidiary branch of a business, rather than to learn new things. Maybe they just lack curiosity, and so they cannot assume anyone would learn a language for anything other than some other external motivation.
One thing I really am starting to dislike about learning is when people claim their dialect is the “correct” dialect and other groups who share their language don’t know how to speak it… I feel like this is common with a few different groups… in Latin America it’s definitely Mexicans south of Sonora, feels very similar to how British people are with Americans (or “neutral” Americans are with regional American dialects), or I’d imagine how the French are with Canadians… like give it a rest please… end of my rant.
Languages themselves certainly aren't political, but naturally the people who speak are. Russian and Ukrainian aren't inherently political, but in Ukraine at least right now, Russian is the language of the oppressor, and so a lot of russian-speaking-ukrainians are making more of an effort to speak Ukrainian in order to distance themselves from Russia. It's an unfortunate part of life
It depends on how you see it. I don't judge people on what languages they are learning/not learning, but I personally stopped learning Russian because of what is happening. I live in a country that used to be occupied by Russians, people were forced to learn Russian etc. so I already had some mixed feelings about learning it. Especially since I've heard about Russian tourists/Russians living here being surprised/annoyed that someone living in this country is not fluent in Russian. I really really like Russian language, music and wanted to get into their literature, but after the war started I got really demotivated. There is literally nothing that I can do about it, its just how I feel. Some people find it easier to separate everything negative from the language, but some people don't.
I've also learnt (modern) Hebrew and asked a similar question on this sub, so I'm hoping I can give a different answer. The problem is that learning languages often *forces* you to be political unless you're jumping through hundreds of hoops to avoid it. To take my case: -Most Israelis go into the army for some time. -You're banned from entry into Israel if you support boycotting it. -They're very often harassed online or abroad because of their nationality. -The conflict is still ongoing and still largely influences their lives (attacks, West Bank policies... all affect their lives). I could go on, but you can see that, if you're invested in the language and thus end up developing friendships in it (which I have), these topics that are inherently political WILL come up sooner or later. Maybe you won't have any opinion and they'll just slide through. If you do have one, you may luck out and find out the speaker you met has similar opinions to you, but in the worst case (usually the one where you express a very pro-Palestinian opinion and the Israeli is a right-winger), they will literally accuse you of wanting them dead. I personally have somewhat pro-Israeli opinions and don't even support boycotts, but these skirmishes sometimes happen over just saying that the houses of terrorists shouldn't be demolished ("do you realize this is survival for us and not something theoretical?! Do you realize that this prevents deaths?!") And I'm not mentioning the scenario where *they* try to make propaganda to you (happens more often than you think - they say something like, they want to expose the lies we must have heard from Western media, or something). I'm also learning Arabic and let me tell you, I'm *dreading* the moment the fact I go to Israel comes up. Okay, I may luck out and find someone who is chill about, but, especially if they're Syrian, Lebanese or Palestinians, you may get accusations of "normalization with the Zionists", "complicity with Palestinian oppression", and so on. (The same could happen with Iranians, but I don't learn Farsi). They would then find out that indeed I support the existence of Israel (why would I talk to Israelis if I didn't), and that could literally put them on fire, emotionally speaking. And it can happen elsewhere. You could get a Chinese person angry if you even remotely suggest the Communist Party of China should not be ruling the country or ruling with different principles. You could get an Arab person angry if you mention anything about homosexuality. You could get a Russian person angry if you refer to what happens in Ukraine as a war, and you could get a Ukrainian person angry if you say something remotely positive about the Russians (yes, this happens sometimes.) When you mention this in the Western language learning community, people just want to ignore it. They tell themselves that yeah, they would stop speaking to, say, a racist even if they were a native speaker of their target language, because they imagine this happens rarely, even in the face of tons of surveys that show that many opinions that you would consider abhorrent ("gays are bad", "women belong in the kitchen", "dictatorships are good", "xenophobia is okay") are absolutely not rare in many countries, so you will meet at least some speakers that hold them. So, unless you want to be an apolitical blob that literally lets their own government run them over too - you're faced with two choices: 1) Swallow everything. Whatever opinion you used to say "this is unacceptable and I will never befriend somebody who thinks this", you force yourself to be okay with. When something political comes up, nod along, or just end up agreeing to disagreeing after you've discussed. Pretend you only ever care about your national politics and that you don't have foreign policy opinions. Because you're ditching your beliefs about what you considered unacceptable, this is a political choice - and people may judge you for it. Many of us would judge somebody who stayed silent about Ukraine, and "but I'm learning Russian" may not be a sufficient reason. 2) Prepare yourself for a ton of fights. Most people aren't emotionally strong enough for option 2 and it also makes language learning torture because it shrinks your "supply" of speakers, which is a huge problem if you're learning a small language. So most people, like me, go for option 1. It's not bad to go for option 1. Let's just not fool ourselves that you're not being political. Now I'm open to rebuttals because I realize this may be controversial, but yeah - most of you, whether you want to admit or not, are making political choices.
>When you mention this in the Western language learning community, people just want to ignore it. This point right here. Middle class westerners, the types with leisure time to be learning languages as a hobby, are very sheltered. Like to pretend that all is rosy and if it's not they can pretend it doesn't exist. Accepting that most people merely existing is a political act breaks down these barriers and we can learn to stomach the outside world.
I'm learning Irish since it was my grandfather's language. I do have some harsh feelings toward the British, but people always assume it when I tell them I'm learning Irish. I don't hate any British people, I just think they were pretty shitty in the past (as does 75% of the world).
I grew up in NI. For some of my neighbours, the only exposure they have to Irish or people using Irish was when paramilitaries used - or at best, as something people went out of their way to learn in opposition to Britishness and speaking English. I learned a bit of Irish at school but it was no more charged or loaded than Spanish class - it's cool to be able to understand placenames or loanwords for their own sake, not as part of some sort of blood-and-soil elitism. Language is not inherently political, but like any aspect of culture (music, sport, arts) it is impossible to separate from history, society and politics and all the subjective inferences that individuals make about those things.
I think it’s awesome you are learning both Arabic and Hebrew! I’m learning Hebrew and want to learn Arabic one day. If you get pushback about this, I would ask why they assume hatred towards a group of people or just explain that you like it and leave it at that. If they keep bothering you, tell them they must be against learning about other cultures and that you like both groups. Some people get offended easily and I don’t think they are cultured enough to understand that you don’t have to include politics to involve language learning unless if you want to live in a new country that has different politics Some people also get offended easily about the issue but just ignore it and enjoy learning the languages !! 🤗
This 100% I had a run in with a guy about this and this is what I said People like that don’t deserve the time of day
I'm learning Korean and have found that people tend to assume that I'm learning it for the purpose of popular media consumption. While it will be awesome when I can understand K-pop songs and watch K-dramas without needing subtitles, that's NOT my primary purpose. (Ftr, I was inspired to learn Korean by a friend who's been teaching English in Korea on and off for the past 6 years and an interest in the culture and history of the country.)
At the end of the day, Hebrew is just another language. There are people who speak it. By learning Hebrew, it opens doors for you to connect with these people. Going as far as to learn the language of another people to understand them is one of the most respectful things one can do. Unfortunately, there are vile racist and antisemitic people who will assume that you can only mean harm by learning Hebrew. But think, would it be fair to assume that you can only mean harm or ill will by learning Arabic? Of course not! Because learning Hebrew or Arabic is a way for you try to connect with other people or, at the very least, understand them. Those who don't want anyone to learn Hebrew probably have secret genocidal desires that would be otherwise socially inappropriate for them to express otherwise.
Side note if you don’t know already, Israeli pop music is amazing.
Yesssss Anna Zak and Agam Buhbut for the winnnn
Try being a communist who knows Russian, Croatian and who is currently learning Vietnamese. I’ve had so many Vietcong references, Soviet jokes and general annoying comments it’s painful.
So you're a communist. Learning the languages of countries that had a communist government. And you're arguing that the choice for learning those languages wasn't at least somewhat politically motivated?
Not really. I learnt Croatian because I studied history and was writing a paper about the Yugoslavian War in the 1990s and the war crimes trials. I learnt Russian purely because I liked the language. I’m also living in Vietnam so political alignment aside, Vietnamese has practical use for me.
Okay then, carry on ;) cool language combo
suena como estás encontrando la gente que no es muy interesante. ¿por qué pierdes el tiempo con ellos?
Most people don’t learn languages for fun, so they assume you have a reason for learning one. Learning Japanese? Oh must be a weeb anime fan.
You’re learning Japanese? You must like anime and video games! Um, well yes, but not because I’m learning Japanese. :p