#language politics

[adhd-languages]

Hey do people realise the “bri ish” jokes are really just mocking a predominantly lower class accent for a linguistic feature that has already been mocked for being “lazy speaking” relentlessly in the UK?

[ohsalome]

Again and again and again I see (mostly) westerners accusing Ukraine of "opressing russian-speaking minority" by our language law (without reading the language law itself, obviously). It really looks like people have some kind of pavlovian reflex to the word "minority", immediately jumping to the assumption that minority = opressed by the majority. But a minority by numbers does not automatically mean minority by power. Billionaires, too, make up a minority of population, does that mean that they are opressed by the majority class? Are gaelige speakers in Ireland priveleged in comparison to the English? Are Elon Musk's white emerald mine owning family opressed by the majority black African population?

For the 1000th time, the relationship between Ukraine and russia is that between colonised and coloniser. It is russian identity, russian language, russian culture, russian world that has been privileged on the territory of ukraine for at least last 400 years. It is ukrainian language, ukrainian culture, ukrainian identity that people have been repressed and killed for.

russian propaganda takes this assumption westerners have about how the world fuctions (minority=oppressed) and uses it to twist the reality. To make you believe that Ukrainians somehow "deserve" to be genocided. To make you believe that it's the best course of action for the West to abandon Ukraine to be raped and plundered by russia. But we can call it "peace", because russians won't allow western journalists to report on it, and we all know that if the west doesn't talk about something, it means it doesn't exist :))))

Here are statistics about the "opression of russian language" from 2012 - during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovich, russian puppet and a literal mafioso [source]:

More than 60% of the total circulation of newspapers, 83% of magazines, and about 87% of books (most of which are imported from Russia) are published in Russian in Ukraine.

In October 2012, only 28% of the prime time on the top 8 TV channels was devoted to Ukrainian-language programs, 44% to Russian-language programs and 28% to bilingual programs.

On the 6 top-rated radio stations, songs in Ukrainian account for only 3.4% of the total number of songs in prime time (last year - 4.6%). At the same time, songs in Russian account for 60% of the total number of songs.

Out of 290 restaurants in 29 cities, only 50% of them have signs in Ukrainian, 46% have menus in Ukrainian, and only 36% have employees who answer Ukrainian to Ukrainian-speaking customers (in another 11%, employees switched to Ukrainian during the conversation).

The "oppression of russian speakers in Ukraine" is nothing but the tyranny of russian chauvinism and imperialism losing its footing. Y'all had no trouble understanding how white ethnonationalists complaining about "the great replacement" is nothing but fear of losing the privilege. Y'all had no trouble understanding that "white cis male is the most opressed person" is a moral panic not grounded in the real power structure of the western society. But in this question, you've decided to ally with the opressor.

[shro0msquid]

I want to learn a new language this year but am torn between Mandarin, Ukrainian, and Russian. The cases are as follows:

Mandarin: There are a lot of mandarin speakers in my university department and it would be helpful for my career and I may consider moving to China in the future. However, I don't feel I'm passionate about the culture though I am interested.

Russian: The language I'm most interested in with current access to fewest speakers. Possibly useful to my career and may move there after the war. I'm interested in the literature and would love to visit Siberia one day. Downsides being the awful government, politics, obviously the war.

Ukrainian: Access to many speakers at my language exchange. But I'm already learning Romanian which is a language in Eastern Europe limited to 1 country and I want to spread out a bit. No chance to visit the country in the immediate future and not especially useful for my career. Could act as a stepping stone to Russian. Again I'm interested in the culture, but not necessarily passionate about it. Could be a useful stepping stone to Russian though and having both languages would be very useful.

Choosing a language to learn is like betting on geopolitics.

[tori-fta]

A Rant on "I Decline to Self-Identify" | Midday on August 15, 2024

Like many "young professionals" (although I hate that term and the corporate lifestyle it promotes), I have been applying for job after job after job to try and find something sustainable and that doesn't make me want to attempt to "ropemax" again (a new term I learned for ending oneself this week, Gen Alpha is unhinged for this one). As someone gender non-conforming and still in the early stages of my social transition, I still frequently b*ymode in public and especially when applying for jobs, listing my pronouns as they/them or selecting non-binary if the company provides that option.

Minor tangent: I assume that many trans people can relate to this exact feeling and fear at the start of their transition. To explain the specific feeling I deal with, gender dysphoria coupled with body image issues make it difficult to see myself as feminine even when I put in hours of effort to feel so. When out in public, I still get clocked as m*sculine, and if I am doing myself up as femme as I possibly can, I get referred to as a gay m*n.

Returning to the topic at hand, more often than not, I find myself forced to choose either "other" or "I Decline to Self-Identify" when asked about my gender. Of course the issue with "other" should be quite obvious as it quite literally others those who fall outside of the binary our society has deemed to be the bounds of gender. Do I want to just select "woman" for this question, ignoring that they placed "other" just below it? Of course! I've dreamed of waking up to the world seeing me as a woman since I was a young child. But, unfortunately, I know that much of the world won't see me as a woman, and even when I have socially transitioned, and if I miraculously pass, there will still be people pushing me into "other".

But the meat and bones of this rant comes from seeing and selecting "I Decline to Self-Identify" time after time, day after day, month after month. When I see this as the third of three options under gender on a job application, my heart drops. I wish that they had just put "other" and treated me like an outcast. Forcing every gender non-conforming person applying to your job to select "I Decline to Self-Identify" is forcing them to reject their understanding of their own identity because it does not fall into the binary which you believe to be fact. You are creating a workplace culture of rejection before the application is even submitted. Then, the gender non-conforming applicant is faced with the struggle of having their gender essentially assigned by the hiring manager and eventually the team they're assigned to work with despite making their identity know.

I left my previous job because of this sort of culture, along with issues I had with management and how our team was treated. Even though I was only non-binary to the people I worked with (aside from one coworker who quickly became a close friend outside of the office and still is, but they respect and adhere to what I am comfortable with in public), the dress code and professional we were to maintain per our contract forced me to dress more m*sculine. I live and work in a more progressive area of the country, so I knew that I could push the bounds of the dress code so long as I did not break it. The one day I decided to feel myself at work and wear minimal, professional makeup, I suddenly became the center of attention, coworkers and managers assaulting me with an unending stream of questions and passing remarks to veil their distaste with this "egregious change" 🙄.

While no one could outright tell me to wash it off or that I wasn't allowed to wear it (management is constantly terrified of any HR issues despite our HR department's only job being protecting management), they used a subtle sense of shaming and othering to correct what they deemed an outline behavior. This was quite literally one of the 3 times in total our regional manager spoke to me. She never came into our office space aside to make an appearance wishing someone "happy birthday". I knew that someone had mentioned this situation to her and it caused her to come talk down to me while trying to maintain some sort of friendly facade. After that day, I didn't wear makeup to work again, terrified of becoming the center of attention and drawing the ire of upper management.

While that's only one example, there are numerous others ways the office environment denied my identity, most notably the one coworker who would go out of her way to interject and correct me when I was asking someone not to use m*sculine terminology to refer to me or explaining why I am so uncomfortable with being generalized as a m*n. Almost daily. From telling me I want to be tall because "girls like tall g*ys" (sure, I am attracted to women, but also men and everyone else, but I'll rant about that sort of subtle homophobia at another point probably) when I was saying I wished I was 3-4 inches short (gender dysphoria FTW!) to her bringing in a box of samples she got from some skincare brand and apologizing to me since they didn't send her any m*n's samples. Those moments cut deeply, and I spent many of my government allotted breaks sitting in the corner of our breakroom crying.

I left that job and culture because I no longer had the energy to repeat the same things every day, to defend my identity every day, to constantly correct the same people misgendering me every. single. day. And I don't want to return to that, which is really the core of what made me organize my thoughts into this rant instead of scouring the internet for yet another job to apply to as Gender: "I Decline to Self-Identify". If the work and company culture is going to reject ones own identity before they even have the change to interview and inquire about the culture, it's a company that won't value any of their employees, even those that fall into the binary view of gender.

As always, be queer, dismantle the establishment, and serve cvnt while doing so 💖

[omgellendean]

[blergityblargh]

"Harm reduction" as a concept comes out of the field of drug addiction. It was a response to decades of the "war on drugs" locking people up, screwing up their lives, and not doing anything to reduce addiction. It's an appeal to dramatically rethink the problem, to bring a proper scientific understanding to it, and shift the method of dealing with drugs entirely from the criminal justice system to the healthcare system. It's looking at what had been done for decades, saying "well that's not working" and changing tracks entirely.

Do you see how it's not analogous to voting Democrat? How it doesn't just mean "pick the least bad option in a shitty system"? How instead it means "the system isn't working, so let's change it"?

Like if the current political understanding of "harm reduction" were applied back to drug addiction, people wouldn't be advocating for it to be treated as a health problem instead of a criminal problem, they'd be advocating for drug offenses to get $100,000 fines instead of prison sentences. Because that's on the surface a less bad option within a bad system, but that still fucks up people's lives anyways and in a lot of cases will probably mean that someone just ends up in jail for some other reason.

What a real application of harm reduction logic to politics would mean is acknowledging that the American political system doesn't work, thinking about what would actually improve people's lives, and organizing to do that instead.

[fluentisonus]

everybody's a theatre nerd on here until it's time to appreciate that comedy as a medium is just as rich & fascinating & culturally important as tragedy

[allthecanadianpolitics]

One of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in this country is now available through Google's translation service, the first time the tech giant has included a First Nations, Métis or Inuit language spoken in Canada on its platform. Inuktut, a broad term encompassing different dialects spoken by Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, has been added to Google Translate, which translates text, documents and websites from one language into another. The latest addition is part of a Google initiative to develop a single artificial intelligence language model to support 1,000 of the most-spoken languages in the world.  There are roughly 40,000 Inuktut speakers in Canada, data from Statistics Canada suggests.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[reasonsforhope]

"In an unprecedented step to preserve and maintain the most carbon-rich elements of U.S. forests in an era of climate change, President Joe Biden’s administration last week proposed to end commercially driven logging of old-growth trees in National Forests.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, issued a Notice of Intent to amend the land management plans of all 128 National Forests to prioritize old-growth conservation and recognize the oldest trees’ unique role in carbon storage. 

It would be the first nationwide amendment to forest plans in the 118-year history of the Forest Service, where local rangers typically have the final word on how to balance forests’ role in watershed, wildlife and recreation with the agency’s mandate to maintain a “sustained yield” of timber.

“Old-growth forests are a vital part of our ecosystems and a special cultural resource,” Vilsack said in a statement accompanying the notice. “This clear direction will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”

But initial responses from both environmentalists and the logging industry suggest that the plan does not resolve the conflict between the Forest Service’s traditional role of administering the “products and services” of public lands—especially timber—and the challenges the agency now faces due to climate change. National Forests hold most of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees, and therefore, its greatest stores of forest carbon, but that resource is under growing pressure from wildfire, insects, disease and other impacts of warming.

Views could not be more polarized on how the National Forests should be managed in light of the growing risks.

National and local environmental advocates have been urging the Biden administration to adopt a new policy emphasizing preservation in National Forests, treating them as a strategic reserve of carbon. Although they praised the old-growth proposal as an “historic” step, they want to see protection extended to “mature” forests, those dominated by trees roughly 80 to 150 years old, which are a far larger portion of the National Forests. As old-growth trees are lost, which can happen rapidly due to megafires and other assaults, they argue that the Forest Service should be ensuring there are fully developed trees on the landscape to take their place...

The Biden administration’s new proposal seeks to take a middle ground, establishing protection for the oldest trees under its stewardship while allowing exceptions to reduce fuel hazards, protect public health and safety and other purposes. And the Forest Service is seeking public comment through Feb. 2 (Note: That's the official page for the proposed rule, but for some reason you can only submit comments through the forest service website - so do that here!) on the proposal as well as other steps needed to manage its lands to retain mature and old-growth forests over time, particularly in light of climate change.

If the Forest Service were to put in place nationwide protections for both mature and old-growth forests, it would close off most of the National Forests to logging. In an inventory concluded earlier this year in response to a Biden executive order, the Forest Service found that 24.7 million acres, or 17 percent, of its 144.3 million acres of forest are old-growth, while 68.1 million acres, or 47 percent, are mature."

-via Inside Climate News, December 20, 2023

-

Note: This proposed rule is current up for public comment! If you're in the US, you can go here to file an official comment telling the Biden administration how much you support this proposal - and that you think it should be extended to mature forests!

Official public comments really DO matter. You can leave a comment on this proposal here until February 2nd.

[mysharona1987]

[useless-catalanfacts]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

[twosignificantfigures]

whenever i rewatch criminal minds episodes i'm always reminded that emily is actually crazy good at her job

today i was rewatching seven seconds (best cm episode ever btw nothing will ever top seven seconds) and if you look at emily's face when the uncle was explaining that maybe katie was just playing dress-up you can see in her eyes how she put the pieces together in her head that there was something going on and that the uncle may have done something to katie

it's even more obvious when you watch the clip like you see the moment when it clicks for her but she couldn't say anything unless she had proof of it

and i have to admire paget's acting here too because she was just so good at the subtle changes with just her eyes and body language she was just too good in this ep this was HER ep

i still get chills thinking about the scene where she was getting the aunt to confess what she did to katie and goes "you have robbed katie of her childhood, are you going to steal the rest of her life from her as well?" with so much fury and passion my god she is excellent

[odinsblog]

[kristiliqua]

CHUNSIK MY BELOVEDDDDDD

[celine-song]

Kneecap (2024) dir. Rich Peppiatt

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

If it's bad when someone you dislike does it, it's bad when someone you like does it too.

Ideological consistency matters.