Some thoughts on demanding word choices that are not normal. I think back to Marine Corps boot camp where we were required to speak in the third person and the first and last words were Sir.
"Sir! The private requests permission to speak to the drill instructor, Sir!"
"Speak slime."
"Sir! The private requests permission to make a head cal…
Some thoughts on demanding word choices that are not normal. I think back to Marine Corps boot camp where we were required to speak in the third person and the first and last words were Sir.
"Sir! The private requests permission to speak to the drill instructor, Sir!"
"Speak slime."
"Sir! The private requests permission to make a head call, Sir!"
"Is it an emergency head call?"
"Sir! Yes Sir!"
"Sound off like an emergency vehicle."
"Awwwwwwww, awawwwwww..." while running to the head.
You were constantly reminded of who you were subservient to and were stripped of your personhood. There was no I or me and Zeus help you if you referred to the drill instructor as you. "A ewe is a female sheep." The first person who called the drill instructor you became his sheep dog and was required to run on all fours to bite the next offender on the ass. Unhappy about the task, it was what must have been a painfully hard bite, and no one used the word you again.
The current word and pronoun foolishness has the same, you must submit to me or else aspect but does not have the virtue of inspiring conciseness in the parts that were the purpose of speaking, indeed, it is an Orwellian destruction of speech allowing thought in thoughtfulness of what is relevant. Think about not offending someone unintentionally instead of clear expression in the exchange of ideas. But perhaps they were on to something with the elimination of pronouns.
"The current word and pronoun foolishness has the same, you must submit to me or else aspect"
I think what offends me most about the current foolishness is that it demands that I say or support thins that I believe are false and/or stupid. I really do try to be kind with my words, but nobody gets control of my tongue to that degree.
There was an article in Washington Post about some "nonbinary" fool who buys used copies of Rowling's books and takes them apart, rebinding them with her name removed.
O Brave New World.
It was unreadable. The writer dutifully referred to him as "they" and it was like text written by hitting word suggestions on a cell phone message app.
I am trying to imagine being so deranged to devote days, weeks, of one's life defacing books because the writer wrote something "hurtful" about "trans." I saw a side-by-side of what Rowling actually tweeted and the hate-posts she got for it. Her statements didn't budge the meter, they were scientifically accurate; the responses were murderous. If I were stuck in an elevator with one of those people responding to her, only one of us would get out.
That you (inadvertently?) use "believe" suggests that you're already infected.
You're talking about things we know to be false or stupid. For example to accept that gender impersonation is actually a transformation is at the level of creation myths or geocentrism.
You bring back memories of my own sojourn at Parris Island all those years ago…
I only did 4 years, and have memories good and bad but looking back at it with a benefit of a few decades of hindsight, I must say that my time in the Marines was where I best saw real diversity and inclusion put into practice in a meaningful way, probably not even intentionally, and certainly not for virtue signaling purposes. The drill instructors had to take people from all over the world and every walk of life of different religions and cultural backgrounds and melt them into a single cohesive fighting force. They would hurt some feelings along the way but I think they did a damn fine job of it and we all learned to get along and work together regardless of any of our multiple identities.
Semper Fi back to you brother. I just did four years too, but they were in decidedly formative years of my life.
In Vietnam a dark green Marine who didn't especially like light green Marines went in harm's way for me as a brother without regard for the tint of our green. More meaningful in those turbulent years than any diversity training I received years later.
Man you are bringing back memories...I had totally forgotten about dark green and light green....but yes, we achieved real diversity, real unity, real brotherhood without having it shoved down our throat by a bunch of academics who think it's a good idea in theory...from their gilded castles where they live out their segregated lives.
Blessings to you for a long, prosperous, and healthy life!
PS:My brother-in-law, Dennis Malvasi, served two tours in Nam with the USMC infantry. The first was hell....his unit largely obliterated; the second one comparatively a cakewalk. I have learned a lot from him.
This treatment of new recruits goes back thousands of years.
I live my life here in a language without pronouns. There is one for "I" (tôi) that is the default and at my age I am safe using it all the time but a child would almost never use it. As with Chinese, most "pronouns" are words like uncle, nephew, son, grandmother .... and there are others. I am called brother or grandfather. The generic "you" as in advertising is bạn, friend. One's own first name or nickname can be used as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
My teacher in the USA didn't know his own father's actual name until he was fourteen.
In Thai the word Pee is placed before an elder's name (older brother or sister) and Nung for younger brother or sister. It is not literally brother or sister; I am addressed as Pee Dave by people unrelated. Thanks to the more comfortable life my wife has lived in America she aged better than her sisters and people who don't know tend to call her younger sister pee saao and my wife noong saao, much to her sister's chagrin.
The language is full of words formed around relationships of age or status. Men always put the polite word krap at the end of a sentence. Women put khah. A sexual gender reference to themselves. Leaving that out is often considered rude, especially when speaking to someone who is not close in relationship rather than absurd like trying to make Spanish genderless with the word Latinx.
This is cool; I'm not surprised that relative age and status are part of the Thai language, this is so for every Asian language I know anything about. But the spoken period is news to me, like when I send a text message talking to my watch; "where are you question mark." "I'll call in an hour period."
I took a year of Cantonese before I learned Vietnamese, not very fluent in the former but I learned a lot of phrases and I can go to a Chinese restaurant and use the idiom that means I can eat real Chinese food and I am comfortable with chopsticks. But as with Russian and Italian, it's fading away.
Anyway I've seen Chinese who meet someone do a quick almost ritualistic exchange to establish how they address each other. Their faces go completely expressionless while they do it. I'm pretty sure Vietnamese do it too; in my case they ask my age, I answer "sáu mươi tám tuổi" 68 years old, and I get "ông," grandfather. Thanks a lot. Anyone younger can be "em" though I have some leeway there. It's all relative to your own age, not by the other's age as I used to think.
There are two words for uncle, depending on whether the other is older or younger than your father. Ho Chi Minh is Bác Hô, older uncle, not grandfather, more familial than maximal deference. It sounds complicated but it becomes second nature after a while.
I took a Vietnamese name long ago, I am Cao Thiên. My last name is Fox, con cáo*, so I dropped the tone mark and left it as Cao, which is a proper Vietnamese surname (there was a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Cao), which also means high, noble, or tall. Thiên means sky or heaven, so my name is "high heaven," as in "stinks to," a joke nobody here gets.
Most people call me Anh Thiên, brother Thiên. They would have trouble pronouncing my English name. I only use my English name on official documents.
*Con is a pseudo-pronoun (measure-word) for children or animals and every type of animal is called con. A cat is con mèo, a kitten is mèo con. Con cáo is a fox, and the word has a suggestion of deviousness.
My name, David, as you would know means beloved. In Thai, teelak, often translated to English as sweetheart. Years ago, that got lots of laughs since the most common usage is a reference to your girlfriend. ;0)
Some thoughts on demanding word choices that are not normal. I think back to Marine Corps boot camp where we were required to speak in the third person and the first and last words were Sir.
"Sir! The private requests permission to speak to the drill instructor, Sir!"
"Speak slime."
"Sir! The private requests permission to make a head call, Sir!"
"Is it an emergency head call?"
"Sir! Yes Sir!"
"Sound off like an emergency vehicle."
"Awwwwwwww, awawwwwww..." while running to the head.
You were constantly reminded of who you were subservient to and were stripped of your personhood. There was no I or me and Zeus help you if you referred to the drill instructor as you. "A ewe is a female sheep." The first person who called the drill instructor you became his sheep dog and was required to run on all fours to bite the next offender on the ass. Unhappy about the task, it was what must have been a painfully hard bite, and no one used the word you again.
The current word and pronoun foolishness has the same, you must submit to me or else aspect but does not have the virtue of inspiring conciseness in the parts that were the purpose of speaking, indeed, it is an Orwellian destruction of speech allowing thought in thoughtfulness of what is relevant. Think about not offending someone unintentionally instead of clear expression in the exchange of ideas. But perhaps they were on to something with the elimination of pronouns.
"The current word and pronoun foolishness has the same, you must submit to me or else aspect"
I think what offends me most about the current foolishness is that it demands that I say or support thins that I believe are false and/or stupid. I really do try to be kind with my words, but nobody gets control of my tongue to that degree.
There was an article in Washington Post about some "nonbinary" fool who buys used copies of Rowling's books and takes them apart, rebinding them with her name removed.
O Brave New World.
It was unreadable. The writer dutifully referred to him as "they" and it was like text written by hitting word suggestions on a cell phone message app.
I am trying to imagine being so deranged to devote days, weeks, of one's life defacing books because the writer wrote something "hurtful" about "trans." I saw a side-by-side of what Rowling actually tweeted and the hate-posts she got for it. Her statements didn't budge the meter, they were scientifically accurate; the responses were murderous. If I were stuck in an elevator with one of those people responding to her, only one of us would get out.
Just savage, violently angry shit.
Oh my Zeus! That is deranged.
Dilbert cartoon satirist Scott Adams infamously remarked that facts don't matter. Sadly, in the 21st century, he seems to be correct.
That you (inadvertently?) use "believe" suggests that you're already infected.
You're talking about things we know to be false or stupid. For example to accept that gender impersonation is actually a transformation is at the level of creation myths or geocentrism.
You bring back memories of my own sojourn at Parris Island all those years ago…
I only did 4 years, and have memories good and bad but looking back at it with a benefit of a few decades of hindsight, I must say that my time in the Marines was where I best saw real diversity and inclusion put into practice in a meaningful way, probably not even intentionally, and certainly not for virtue signaling purposes. The drill instructors had to take people from all over the world and every walk of life of different religions and cultural backgrounds and melt them into a single cohesive fighting force. They would hurt some feelings along the way but I think they did a damn fine job of it and we all learned to get along and work together regardless of any of our multiple identities.
Semper Fi
Semper Fi back to you brother. I just did four years too, but they were in decidedly formative years of my life.
In Vietnam a dark green Marine who didn't especially like light green Marines went in harm's way for me as a brother without regard for the tint of our green. More meaningful in those turbulent years than any diversity training I received years later.
Man you are bringing back memories...I had totally forgotten about dark green and light green....but yes, we achieved real diversity, real unity, real brotherhood without having it shoved down our throat by a bunch of academics who think it's a good idea in theory...from their gilded castles where they live out their segregated lives.
Blessings to you for a long, prosperous, and healthy life!
PS:My brother-in-law, Dennis Malvasi, served two tours in Nam with the USMC infantry. The first was hell....his unit largely obliterated; the second one comparatively a cakewalk. I have learned a lot from him.
This treatment of new recruits goes back thousands of years.
I live my life here in a language without pronouns. There is one for "I" (tôi) that is the default and at my age I am safe using it all the time but a child would almost never use it. As with Chinese, most "pronouns" are words like uncle, nephew, son, grandmother .... and there are others. I am called brother or grandfather. The generic "you" as in advertising is bạn, friend. One's own first name or nickname can be used as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
My teacher in the USA didn't know his own father's actual name until he was fourteen.
In Thai the word Pee is placed before an elder's name (older brother or sister) and Nung for younger brother or sister. It is not literally brother or sister; I am addressed as Pee Dave by people unrelated. Thanks to the more comfortable life my wife has lived in America she aged better than her sisters and people who don't know tend to call her younger sister pee saao and my wife noong saao, much to her sister's chagrin.
The language is full of words formed around relationships of age or status. Men always put the polite word krap at the end of a sentence. Women put khah. A sexual gender reference to themselves. Leaving that out is often considered rude, especially when speaking to someone who is not close in relationship rather than absurd like trying to make Spanish genderless with the word Latinx.
This is cool; I'm not surprised that relative age and status are part of the Thai language, this is so for every Asian language I know anything about. But the spoken period is news to me, like when I send a text message talking to my watch; "where are you question mark." "I'll call in an hour period."
I took a year of Cantonese before I learned Vietnamese, not very fluent in the former but I learned a lot of phrases and I can go to a Chinese restaurant and use the idiom that means I can eat real Chinese food and I am comfortable with chopsticks. But as with Russian and Italian, it's fading away.
Anyway I've seen Chinese who meet someone do a quick almost ritualistic exchange to establish how they address each other. Their faces go completely expressionless while they do it. I'm pretty sure Vietnamese do it too; in my case they ask my age, I answer "sáu mươi tám tuổi" 68 years old, and I get "ông," grandfather. Thanks a lot. Anyone younger can be "em" though I have some leeway there. It's all relative to your own age, not by the other's age as I used to think.
There are two words for uncle, depending on whether the other is older or younger than your father. Ho Chi Minh is Bác Hô, older uncle, not grandfather, more familial than maximal deference. It sounds complicated but it becomes second nature after a while.
At a Vietnamese friend's home, he chastised a child for not addressing me as uncle.
You can get in a LOT of trouble not showing proper deference. What did the kid call you?
Dave (what Hoong calls me), rather than an acceptable uncle Dave. Hoong and I are close enough to dispense with that between the two of us.
I took a Vietnamese name long ago, I am Cao Thiên. My last name is Fox, con cáo*, so I dropped the tone mark and left it as Cao, which is a proper Vietnamese surname (there was a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Cao), which also means high, noble, or tall. Thiên means sky or heaven, so my name is "high heaven," as in "stinks to," a joke nobody here gets.
Most people call me Anh Thiên, brother Thiên. They would have trouble pronouncing my English name. I only use my English name on official documents.
*Con is a pseudo-pronoun (measure-word) for children or animals and every type of animal is called con. A cat is con mèo, a kitten is mèo con. Con cáo is a fox, and the word has a suggestion of deviousness.
My name, David, as you would know means beloved. In Thai, teelak, often translated to English as sweetheart. Years ago, that got lots of laughs since the most common usage is a reference to your girlfriend. ;0)