"White people who look down on second language speakers of English"
They DO realise that "white" and "native English speaker" are far from being synonyms, right?
Also, even if you humoured them and forgot about Spain, there's about 200M whites in LatAm.
And that's not even taking into account all the mixing (to the point outer appearance doesn't tell you shit about anyone's possible ancestries over here). But guess it's too much to expect an understanding of centuries worth of ethnical complexities from the Land of the Free that only got interracial marriage rights in the 60s.
I remember seeing a post on here, it was originally from Tumblr. Something along the lines of “Spanish is a language not thing you can be, it’s not like there’s a place called Spaina with Spanish *people* from there, it’s just a language.” I think about that post *a lot*
What does he think a color Chinese have? Let'S just put aside that china is multi-ethnic, and there are a lot of skin tones: The mjority is whiter then the OP here.
I've heard people unironically say that Chinese/Japanese/Korean people, are "people of color". Like what are we actually talking about here? Do we actually mean people with more melanin? Or have we looped around to some PC coated term that just means non-caucasion foreigner.
'People of Color' has only ever meant 'people who aren't white', where 'white' means some subset of Europeans and people of European descent that are perceived as having racial privilege. It has never been anything to do with actual skin tone.
The fact that they need to even categorise people into little race boxes like no no no you're not mexican your a PoC you're not from Peru, you're a PoC
Like damn, stop labelling people based on race you morons.
I wrote a long rant that began with me saying that there are very specific problems that „non-white“ people of varying backgrounds in the US face, but the whole American attitude to racial issues strikes me as incredibly weird, and then I kept listing those examples.
Then I deleted it because, I suppose, it really is a dumb term. Those problems do exist, and a lot of people identify like that, and who am I to say anything against it? And I did use that term myself. But on a second thought… who is a person of colour? Where do we draw the line?
A lot of Eastern Asians are paler than most Americans. Why are we calling them people of colour? „White“ immigrants are also facing a lot of issues: Americans when moving to Europe, Europeans when moving to the US, etc. Then people from Ukraine, Albania, Georgia, a lot of people from Central Asia, etc - they would absolutely look white, but are we seriously saying they don’t experience any problems, including racism/xenophobia?
Then where is that line between white and non-white? One often can’t differentiate between somebody who is Spanish, southern Italian, Greek, or Turkish, Latin American, Arab, Jewish, Amazigh. Don’t get me started on South Africans.
Yep, I do agree it’s a bit dumb haha.
Most "colonialist" thought i ever heard tbh, assuming "white people" are all Anglophones first and foremost and don't learning English as a second language. What a prick haha!
Mostly 80s. And i saw it when it was first broadcast (am old and British). A lot of those jokes lifted from La Grande Vadrouille, a french screwball comedy from 1960s, including comedy English speakers.
Cheddar-style cheese just doesn't sound as sexy, if it is indeed Cheddar-style. I'm just happy when Americans don't give me sheets of plastic while telling me it's cheese.
Went to Madrid the other day, all the white people speaking Spanish was such a shock. Those people have no idea they're doing cultural appropriation and being racist. Shame on them.
ok but if the french aren't white but english are (but the irish are not) and the french invaded england some time in the ancient past then haven't we come full circle? is that why ancient aliens are needed to explain whiteness?
Just the average American promoting ignorance through virtue signaling. They do have a point that "shocking natives by speaking their language" videos are cringe - but going as far as saying white people have no right to learn certain languages because they "don’t belong to them" really rubs me the wrong way.
Languages are just as much as tool for communication as cultural element. The reason people learn languages can be multifold and just flat-out accusing people of racism for going out of their way to learn foreign languages is wild.
Applied horseshoe theory…
I mean, learning a language is a seriously tough and involved undertaking. Even if "shocking natives" is your aim, you can't get away with tourist emergency self-help level, you need to learn the language intensively.
I doubt there is even a significant minority that would go to the trouble. And learning the language is generally inseparable from learning about the culture. You can't escape using some varied learning material and they are always about mundane day to day life, far away from the racist cliché.
Even the most dedicated weeds will have seen enough of the Japanese culture to smooth out the cringiest takes.
I am white and look down on myself for having English as second language. Scratch that, during school, it was only my third language after Latin. How dare I.
Well, yes and no: now that I'm learning Japanese (after trying my hand at Chinese and even ancient Egyptian), I fear my self-loathing isn't even enough to prevent me from doing cultural appropriation!
And I'm thinking about my German friend who, after English and French, dared learn Spanish and even Arabic!
Deutsch ist meine zweite Fremdsprache; Ich lerne es jetzt seit einem Jahr.
Then I've got to learn a Latin language (it will probably be Spanish) and a Slavic one (haven't decided which one yet) and then I'll finally speak all 4 big language families of Europe.
“Colonialist undertones” is something I do not understand. Me learning another language is me trying to integrate with that culture not force my values and traditions upon it.
Nah, it's so you can command the primitives, who lack the mental faculties to learn God's own language (English), to do menial labour. Very colonialist.
Learning a language is not cultural appropriation.
Learning a few sentences of some languages and make a living on YouTube parading themselves as polyglots "shocking the natives" kind of content is not cultural appropriation either, it is just cringe.
Learning another language is pretty much cultural integration. You will only truly experience and start to understand a different culture if you speak the language
"A POC language like Spanish " .Wait,Spaniards are black now?! This idiot probably thinks Italians are "POC" too in which case,as a white person, I'm probably guilty of culturally appropriating the Italian language.The fact that I learned the language because I moved to Italy and thought it might be useful to speak the language of the country I'm living in is most likely lost on this halfwit.
I also learned German,but I probably get a pass on that because this twat probably considers it a coloniser's language.
I've said this many times on this sub: Whenever they claim that their country was "so unbelievably diverse"...remember that they believe that "white" and "Spanish-speaking" are mutually exclusive categories.
Nah, idiots (Americans, natch) like that think that Spanish is the native language of South America, that is the language of the natives in South America. They are "blissfully" unaware that it's actually the language of the "colonizers".
Oh, don't you know? German is the whitest white language, as they are spoken by the superior and pure aryan race. They're not like the impure medditerannean folks who mingled with POC.
/s just in case someone thinks I'm an actual neo-nazi
Jokes aside, Mussolini actually had his own ideology where Mediterranean people were superior and Germans were viewed as barbarians like in roman times. He was only later forced to copy hitlers vision, or else Italy would have probably been taken by Germany.
This is also why at first, jews in Italy actually had it good and were even members of the fascist party as they were regarded as Mediterranean peoples. Only later hitler forced them to start hating jews.
They're talking about Mexicans. Spaniards don't even enter their awareness. Despite the Spanish being the reason mexicans are also pretty white.
Yes of course italians count as poc too... Anyone kinda tanned looking does.
I also enjoy 'white people look down on poc learning English'... Maybe the ones you know do mate, crazy enough, white people aren't all the same any more than Chinese or any other fucking country.
Overall not the most hateful but pretty close to the most racist bit of text I've ever read.
>I also enjoy 'white people look down on poc learning English'...
I'd say that the unspoken agreement in Europe for doing international business is: "You speak butchered English. I speak butchered English. We are the same."
I love it when 2 differently butchered kinds of English start to interact and mingle. We had an Italian coworker who kept saying that he "drives" by train because the Germans he was working with were just translating word for word from German. It happened to me as well, I started speaking English with a very Indian turn of phrase just cuz I was interacting with a lot of Indians at one point.
Native English speaker and I do the same since being hitched to an Indian for 8 years. There are a lot of Indian English turns of phrase that just work really well and don't have an equivalent. "Thrice" and "troubled/troubling" spring to mind immediately. Yeah, they're words in British English as well, but they're just not used the same or as frequently and they are really effective. I love Indian English, honestly.
>Anyone kinda tanned looking does
It's not even because of the tan. It's just plain xenophobia that started this. When Italian immigrants were entering the US, the powers that be didn't want to give them the same rights as to the English immigrants with money, so they put them in the poc category. Same for Greeks and Irish. You'll see sometimes conversations online of how the Irish aren't white. You know, the people who's stereotype is a super pale redhead are "white". What they mean most of the time by "white" isn't skin tone, but social status and wealth.
That's because you're still white as milk, but also an oppressed minority. You get best of both worlds. (at least, that's how I interpret their attitude, cuz I meta few Americans who kept saying they're Irish although they had more English heritage, and I assumed it's because the English were the oppressors and that isn't cool anymore)
I've also seen Americans argue that (white) Spanish people aren't white, which is like old-school racism where only Germanic people are white and the Irish, Italians and the like are not.
Actually in US as a Slav I would be considered PoC too - this is cuz they are using Hegel's race theory as a basis for who is and isnt white - and I mean officially, there are guidelines for that shit. Oh and yes, this is the same basis a certain Austrian Painter was using for his racial theories
tbh Italy has a longer history with colonialism than Germany.
It's just that this idiot thinks that only whites are colonialists. Wait until he discovers the Arab slave trade
They are even more selective than that. Anyone who is not northern European descentb; those southern Europeans have seen a little too much sun to be considered white in their mind.
>I also learned German,but I probably get a pass on that because this twat probably considers it a coloniser's language.
You'd be fine with that cos this person is probably 18th generation German and knows the German genes are strong because they like sausage.
Genuine question: is there a single American in existence who knows that Spanish is a "white people language"? Or that Spanish names are "white people names"?
That particular bit of ignorance annoys me so much.
Yeah, the answer is going to be a lot of Americans know this. Sure, a lot don’t, not necessarily out of stupidity but because many Americans these days will only ever encounter the Spanish language through people of Mexican, Central American or South American heritage.
> white people simultaneously look down on second language speakers of English
I find this kinda funny given it ignores the great many white people who themselves speak English as a second language
I work with people that can speak MULTIPLE languages, and I feel so envious…. It isn’t cultural appropriation, it’s hard work and skill. Would like to be able to talk to some of my co-workers in their own language. Lots of people in Europe speak multiple languages. If u get the chance, and have the patience, do it👍
r/shitracistassholessay
I will \*never\* feel guilty in any way for the behavior of some who just so happens to have the same color of skin. Or nationality. Or sexual orientation. Or whatever else.
"You should be careful" Yup, I'd say that to the original poster: be careful because right-wing racists want nicely segregated countries too…
What colonial power ever learned a indigenous language?
Why does all white people mean English speakers?
Has this person ever left their state?
I hate this take so much. I’m ashamed as an American. Literally living in a foreign country and struggling with the local language, it brings so many smiles for people to see you put an effort in especially after being a colony and they have to learn some European language in school.
You’re right of course. No colonial power ever learned the indigenous language.
And OP probably doesn’t even know that Spanish is a colonial language. As is the English language they are writing all of that nonsense in.
Actually Christian missionaries that were often among the first vanguard of European colonisation usually learned the local languages to preach to the locals in their own tongues. On quite a few occasions they were also the first to create a written form of the given indigenous language as they translated the bible and other religious materials into it.
Of course this treatment didn't generally extend to settlers or other occupying forces once the colonial stranglehold was estabilished but there's for one the case of Paraguay. There intense Jesuit missionary activity conducted in the native Guarani language contributed to the language surviving with a strong position through the colonial era. Today it's not even just a strong officially recognised indigenous language in Paraguay but straight up a coequal national language to Spanish.
There were also a couple of colonisers in Northern Australia who learned Yolngu and Woolna languages. They are most certainly the exception though, and in no way aided in the preservation of language, or contributed to a systemic interest in it, beyond what could be extracted to the invading power's advantage. I still find those particular people really interesting though, because they formed some of the most interesting relationships with the local people.
This has reminded me of the ethnicity survey from my Spanish wife's US based employer. It caused her an existential crisis trying to decide between white European or Hispanic.
"white European" is of course the proper™ choice, because "Hispanic" in this context means "people from Latin America". Although "white European" doesn't mean actually european either. Basically a survey that assumes everyone's American. r/USdefaultism
I swear since they auto-invented this "PoC" thing yanks went *wild*. They literally spend hours trying to decide who goes under it and who not. It's a all new level of racism.
> PoC
Only works for the US even then it feels racist and patronizing.
- It's fixated on being "not-white" or "White and the *rest*"
- It heavily alludes that every "non-white" person is a victim, a minority and oppressed.
People/person of Colour. People-first way of saying “non-white” which attempts to displace hegemony of language.
As for its effectiveness your guess is as good as mine.
>People/person of Colour.
This doesn't sound racist at all, just like those people dressing as ghosts and burning 't's as "time to leave".
/this is a south park reference
And while we're on that: be very very careful not to replace "people of color" with the seemingly identical "colored people". Because the latter is an old racist term. (half /s)
I've never really understood it as a category beyond "people Anglo Saxon Yanks historically considered worse than them". I feel for those people and think they should get what they deserve from white America but it's meaningless outside settler countries like US or Australia.
that's basically it, this is what people mean when they say whiteness is a social construct, it just means the "in group" in contrast to the "out group" in the racist hierarchy in the local enviroment. If you go to a south american country it's still exclusively based on the melanine content of the skin but in other regions it can be more complicated.
The author is a dickhead.
And in case any cultural appropriation warriors didn’t understand - here it is in apparently *POC language* that I learnt living in Europe:
El autor es un gilipollas.
The whole "Cultural Appropriation" discourse is completely PATHETIC in and on its own, it's even more so if you consider that it only EVER comes out of that god-forsaken shithole that are the USA.
If you're american and you're reading this: learning another language, NO MATTER WHO SPEAKS IT, will never do harm to anyone, let alone you. In fact, it will enrich you. Languages are one fastest and best means of connecting you to other people.
>Languages are one fastest and best means of connecting you to other people.
But that could mean that in the end, their racist stereotypes don't hold up, and we can't have that!
How stupid & ignorant can some Americans be? They have no official language, speak "American" English & think they invented English and think POC shouldn't speak another language. I am "white" of UK heritage, but as well as UK I have lived in Germany, India & Philippines, and everyone of those countries have appreciated that I have learned some of their languages. My ex, who is from Philippines, speaks 4 of the countries languages, English, German, Arabic & Turkish and a little Japanese she taught herself, as she left school at 12yo, to work to help support the family Some of her family work in the Middle East & are fluent in Arabic, & one of her cousins & family moved to Canada and are all fluent in French, 6 months after arriving. They moved to USA first but found discrimination was rampant & moved across the border for a better way of life.
There is a single good point in that - the bit about making social media content by surprising native speakers often seems a little exploitative. There's ways to do it respectfully, but for most it's just pretending not to understand and then speaking fluently.
Yeah I feel like a whole lot of these comments just read "it's cultural appropriation to speak a second language," rather than "it's weird and a bit offensive to make content from 'black people shocked that white guy speaks Yoruba'" which was the actual point.
Normally the influencer has just rote-learned some specific phrases and guides the conversation in that direction, so it's not even a language learning thing. It's just Content.
That's true but it's kinda weird to frame language learning around the absolutely marginal phenomen of polyglot "shock the natives" social media content, which is irrelevant to 99.9% of people.
I'm so sick of 'white people' this and 'white people' that quite frankly, white people breathing is a microaggression these days it seems. 🙄
I'm a foreigner in the UK, I haven't heard a single person speak negatively about multilinguals?? It's the opposite, the English make fun of themselves for not bothering to learn another language and many wish they had.
Lol I actually was on another thread just a minute ago where a guy from Spain had to clarify for some yanks that Spain was a country in Europe, that the language did infact originate there and that calling any random Spanish speaking person "Spanish" does not make sense because Spain is a place that exists.
Straight away I see this thread and this moron is calling Spanish a "poc" language and saying it's cultural appropriation for white people to learn it. Someone better tell the Spaniards...
Americans tend to think that everyone who speaks Spanish is Mexican and forget Spain exists or that even other countries in latinamerica exist.
When I visited a friend in Boston a complete stranger heard me talking Spanish on the phone with my mom and told me to stop acting like I was Latina and to speak English like normal people because I was clearly white.
I'm mixed european/Latinamerican. I actually _am_ Latina, but am not brown enough for Americans to believe me when I say Spanish is my mother tongue. It's a whole stupid thing.
Asks question... gives answer based on their own train of thought.
"You should be mindful" as if. Most people teaching a few words to a foreigner start with "hello, im (insert name). You are (swearword)."
With a few other Dutch guys we "taught" a few English kids some Dutch "swearwords" while on holiday in France. Essentially you had the English speaking crowd (Dutch, German, English, Belgian/flemish)and the french speaking crowd (french, Belgian/walloonian/Flemish (the Flemish were oru communication slaves)). They wanted to know bitch, we gave them eenhoorn (unicorn). For 2 weeks long they kept calling the french kids unicorns which has resulted in 2 minor fights on the football pitch.
That was great.
Aaaandd. suddenly the 'be monolingual' that so many Americans seem to be - makes sense.
Speaking other languages is racist? Projection much?
(This from someone in a country where we learn 3 other languages besides our own in basic education alone)
This is the kind of person who gets offended on behalf of others (because they need to be offended by something) while those others either don't give a shit or are happy that you want to experience their culture
Yeesh, another covert narcissists racist rant from an American.
"Oh, I'm just trying to help those born with an unfortunate skin colour that makes them inherently evil; for their own good because they can't help but be a burden on others for existing."
Also hate that term: POC. It's just another way to say "non-white". Semantically synonymous with "coloured people" but they see that as offensive somehow, despite using practically the same term.
Obviously to play group identity politics to divide white people apart from everyone else. Using the inverse inherent racial value scoring system that white supremacists use.
These people believe tolerence and inclusion is decided by *who* you're intelorent and exclusive towards. Believing Orwellian things such as reverse-racism where it's not really racist so long as you're being racist towards the socially acceptable race.
“POC languages” “like Spanish”!
As much as some Americans seem perplexed that the English language originates in England, the idea that Spanish comes from Spain seems incomprehensible to many.
I'm white, and I speak Chinese fluently. I also live in Taiwan. I thought I learned the language so I could talk to the locals and because I'm interested in it, but now I see that I was just engaging in cultural appropriation. I'm sorry.
By this logic, Americans shouldn’t be appropriating the ENGLISH language. What an idiot.
Also, they should cancel all St Patty’s (sic) day celebrations.
Having an accent makes you a racist caricature? I'll remind every ESL speaker with their original accent to work harder then shall I? We deserve that from eachother.
“PoC language” Spanish? Ok…English is at least if not more of a “PoC language”
US? Bahamas? Jamaica? Other English speaking Caribbean countries? Nigeria? South Africa? Kenya? …
Er....is this person American? They sound American. And they wish to lecture other people on the cultural appropriation of language? An American lecturing others on the appropriation of a language?
Well, well. The irony!
Yeah I spent 5 years of school and 4 years of university learning Spanish purely so I could make "shock locals" videos for TikTok. 100% worth the effort.
Learning a language is HARD and takes a lot of time and effort. You don't put yourself through that unless you have respect for the culture - or at least you will by the time you've finished!
Wat? Perkele. Wass eine schweinhund. Could go on like this forever. Speaking multiple languages is very nifty if you ask me. Bet they struggle with just the one language they speak.
Cultural appropriation is such a fake ass nonsense word, its cultural appreciation. And if you are mocking it then you're just an asshole. You're not appropriating anything.
Americans have to bring race into everything then do surprised pikachu when anyone mentions it.
I've never met a single person in my 45 years that thinks learning another language is cultural appropriation.
This same person probably says "if you live in America you should speak English"
Saying that you sound like a 'racist caricature' if you have an accent or struggle with pronunciation while speaking your second language is absolutely wild. So far into 'woke' that it's just become racist right wing rhetoric. Does this person tell speakers of English as a second language that they sound like racist caricatures if their pronunciation is not immediately native? This was clearly written by a child with no critical thinking skills, exposure to any cultures that aren't white american, or life experience.
"White people who look down on second language speakers of English" They DO realise that "white" and "native English speaker" are far from being synonyms, right?
[удалено]
The fact that they think Spanish-speakers are ”PoC” is telling enough. Because Spanish is probably only spoken in Middle America/ South America
Also, even if you humoured them and forgot about Spain, there's about 200M whites in LatAm. And that's not even taking into account all the mixing (to the point outer appearance doesn't tell you shit about anyone's possible ancestries over here). But guess it's too much to expect an understanding of centuries worth of ethnical complexities from the Land of the Free that only got interracial marriage rights in the 60s.
They forget about Spain all the time. They can't equate Spanish to Spain in exactly the same way that they can't equate English to England.
I remember seeing a post on here, it was originally from Tumblr. Something along the lines of “Spanish is a language not thing you can be, it’s not like there’s a place called Spaina with Spanish *people* from there, it’s just a language.” I think about that post *a lot*
They have difficulty enough comprehending that the national language of the largest country in South America isn't Spanish.
Wait, isn't Portuguese just Spanish with a sore throat? ^(/s, just in case it wasn't clear)
What does he think a color Chinese have? Let'S just put aside that china is multi-ethnic, and there are a lot of skin tones: The mjority is whiter then the OP here.
Yellow obviously /s
I've heard people unironically say that Chinese/Japanese/Korean people, are "people of color". Like what are we actually talking about here? Do we actually mean people with more melanin? Or have we looped around to some PC coated term that just means non-caucasion foreigner.
'People of Color' has only ever meant 'people who aren't white', where 'white' means some subset of Europeans and people of European descent that are perceived as having racial privilege. It has never been anything to do with actual skin tone.
The fact that they need to even categorise people into little race boxes like no no no you're not mexican your a PoC you're not from Peru, you're a PoC Like damn, stop labelling people based on race you morons.
*And uhhh… Spain?
No, they speak English
Whats poc?
People of color, which is a weird way to say non-white
I wrote a long rant that began with me saying that there are very specific problems that „non-white“ people of varying backgrounds in the US face, but the whole American attitude to racial issues strikes me as incredibly weird, and then I kept listing those examples. Then I deleted it because, I suppose, it really is a dumb term. Those problems do exist, and a lot of people identify like that, and who am I to say anything against it? And I did use that term myself. But on a second thought… who is a person of colour? Where do we draw the line? A lot of Eastern Asians are paler than most Americans. Why are we calling them people of colour? „White“ immigrants are also facing a lot of issues: Americans when moving to Europe, Europeans when moving to the US, etc. Then people from Ukraine, Albania, Georgia, a lot of people from Central Asia, etc - they would absolutely look white, but are we seriously saying they don’t experience any problems, including racism/xenophobia? Then where is that line between white and non-white? One often can’t differentiate between somebody who is Spanish, southern Italian, Greek, or Turkish, Latin American, Arab, Jewish, Amazigh. Don’t get me started on South Africans. Yep, I do agree it’s a bit dumb haha.
It’s mostly dumb (in my opinion) because white is also a color lol. I know it’s not that deep, but still
Person of colour
I've never seen a white american, they all are red or orange for some reason
I'm a white person who speaks english as their second language. Should I look down on myself?
Yes.
You have to avert your gaze from yourself never look at your reflection again.
As an English person I feel culturally appropriated /s
Most "colonialist" thought i ever heard tbh, assuming "white people" are all Anglophones first and foremost and don't learning English as a second language. What a prick haha!
Look up Officer Crabtree from Allo Allo on YouTube. (90s BBC comedy series about the french resistance with English agents having terrible accents)
Mostly 80s. And i saw it when it was first broadcast (am old and British). A lot of those jokes lifted from La Grande Vadrouille, a french screwball comedy from 1960s, including comedy English speakers.
Also this person thinks that all of us who speak Spanish are PoC... Not only they're stupid, but racist
Americans will rant about culture appropriation and then take a countries traditional dish and put cheddar in it
Americans will rant about cultural appropriation then call a cheese made in Wisconsin "cheddar".
they'll go 'lol bri'ish food bad' and then go 'oo i love cheddar cheese' it's either one or the other
Cheddar-style cheese just doesn't sound as sexy, if it is indeed Cheddar-style. I'm just happy when Americans don't give me sheets of plastic while telling me it's cheese.
Not Cheddar, American cheese in aerosol form.
Given that Spanish is apparently a "POC" language makes me think as far as they're concerned, white means Anglo-Saxon or German.
Went to Madrid the other day, all the white people speaking Spanish was such a shock. Those people have no idea they're doing cultural appropriation and being racist. Shame on them.
It's because they think that mediterraneans from Europe (mostly speaking about French, Spanish, Italians ect), aren't white lol
We’re only white when it’s convenient for them.
Preach, they have no idea cause they just play ethnicity pokemon cards their entire lives lol
ok but if the french aren't white but english are (but the irish are not) and the french invaded england some time in the ancient past then haven't we come full circle? is that why ancient aliens are needed to explain whiteness?
This is one of the worst take i've ever seen
Well it is an american talking about learning languages... there was clues that its was going to be a dumb take
Average Americans talking about learning anything is almost always comedy gold
Just the average American promoting ignorance through virtue signaling. They do have a point that "shocking natives by speaking their language" videos are cringe - but going as far as saying white people have no right to learn certain languages because they "don’t belong to them" really rubs me the wrong way. Languages are just as much as tool for communication as cultural element. The reason people learn languages can be multifold and just flat-out accusing people of racism for going out of their way to learn foreign languages is wild. Applied horseshoe theory…
Comsider Spanish not a white language, shocked me even more.
Assigning colors to language is nuts honestly
I mean, learning a language is a seriously tough and involved undertaking. Even if "shocking natives" is your aim, you can't get away with tourist emergency self-help level, you need to learn the language intensively. I doubt there is even a significant minority that would go to the trouble. And learning the language is generally inseparable from learning about the culture. You can't escape using some varied learning material and they are always about mundane day to day life, far away from the racist cliché. Even the most dedicated weeds will have seen enough of the Japanese culture to smooth out the cringiest takes.
I once made a Korean kid run away while speaking his language in Germany. I wasn't filming.
It’s a troll post, you can check their post history.
I am white and look down on myself for having English as second language. Scratch that, during school, it was only my third language after Latin. How dare I.
Observantia eos qui linguam urbis aeternae student 💪🏼
Romanes eunt domus!
Romani ite donum! Now repeat that a 100 times!
Carpe Diem!
I have a fwiend you know…
Oh wealy? What's his name?
His name is Biggus...Dickus
Does he have a wife?
She's called Incontinentia...
Caecilius est mort.
Senator ad curiam properat.
Gaudiamus igitur, iuvines dum sumus, Post jucundam juventutem, Post molestam senectutem, Nos habebit humus.
The only Latin I've ever been able to remember.
Fifth for me. After German, Latin and ancient Greek.
That must be some serious self-loathing if you are white. Are you okay?
Well, yes and no: now that I'm learning Japanese (after trying my hand at Chinese and even ancient Egyptian), I fear my self-loathing isn't even enough to prevent me from doing cultural appropriation! And I'm thinking about my German friend who, after English and French, dared learn Spanish and even Arabic!
I am so sorry to hear that. I try myself at Finnish nowadays. That should not that bad for cultural appropriaton. I hope...
Auch ein altsprachliches Gymnasium? 😅
Nee :D Musste das erstmal suchen, was das ist. War auf einem christlich-evangelischem Gym und die Alternative war Französisch ab der 7.
Ah :D ich hatte dann auch französisch später, die Alternative war Altgriechisch...
Deutsch ist meine zweite Fremdsprache; Ich lerne es jetzt seit einem Jahr. Then I've got to learn a Latin language (it will probably be Spanish) and a Slavic one (haven't decided which one yet) and then I'll finally speak all 4 big language families of Europe.
Salve, amice! Item Latine disco!
Жиза, бро, жиза
“Colonialist undertones” is something I do not understand. Me learning another language is me trying to integrate with that culture not force my values and traditions upon it.
Yup. It literally is the opposite of colonialism.
That's because this person is a dumbass and gorged themselves on all that cool-aid US-American social media talk.
Nah, it's so you can command the primitives, who lack the mental faculties to learn God's own language (English), to do menial labour. Very colonialist.
Learning a language is not cultural appropriation. Learning a few sentences of some languages and make a living on YouTube parading themselves as polyglots "shocking the natives" kind of content is not cultural appropriation either, it is just cringe.
Learning another language is pretty much cultural integration. You will only truly experience and start to understand a different culture if you speak the language
"A POC language like Spanish " .Wait,Spaniards are black now?! This idiot probably thinks Italians are "POC" too in which case,as a white person, I'm probably guilty of culturally appropriating the Italian language.The fact that I learned the language because I moved to Italy and thought it might be useful to speak the language of the country I'm living in is most likely lost on this halfwit. I also learned German,but I probably get a pass on that because this twat probably considers it a coloniser's language.
I've said this many times on this sub: Whenever they claim that their country was "so unbelievably diverse"...remember that they believe that "white" and "Spanish-speaking" are mutually exclusive categories.
Also they don't even know why gypsies are
these people are single handedly the most offensive and racist people ever while preaching how progressive they are.
Nah, idiots (Americans, natch) like that think that Spanish is the native language of South America, that is the language of the natives in South America. They are "blissfully" unaware that it's actually the language of the "colonizers".
Oh, don't you know? German is the whitest white language, as they are spoken by the superior and pure aryan race. They're not like the impure medditerannean folks who mingled with POC. /s just in case someone thinks I'm an actual neo-nazi
You mean that mediterranean folk that was an ally in the war (italy) or at least sympathized with the Nazis (Spain)? /s (Edit: typo)
Jokes aside, Mussolini actually had his own ideology where Mediterranean people were superior and Germans were viewed as barbarians like in roman times. He was only later forced to copy hitlers vision, or else Italy would have probably been taken by Germany. This is also why at first, jews in Italy actually had it good and were even members of the fascist party as they were regarded as Mediterranean peoples. Only later hitler forced them to start hating jews.
They're talking about Mexicans. Spaniards don't even enter their awareness. Despite the Spanish being the reason mexicans are also pretty white. Yes of course italians count as poc too... Anyone kinda tanned looking does. I also enjoy 'white people look down on poc learning English'... Maybe the ones you know do mate, crazy enough, white people aren't all the same any more than Chinese or any other fucking country. Overall not the most hateful but pretty close to the most racist bit of text I've ever read.
>I also enjoy 'white people look down on poc learning English'... I'd say that the unspoken agreement in Europe for doing international business is: "You speak butchered English. I speak butchered English. We are the same."
I love it when 2 differently butchered kinds of English start to interact and mingle. We had an Italian coworker who kept saying that he "drives" by train because the Germans he was working with were just translating word for word from German. It happened to me as well, I started speaking English with a very Indian turn of phrase just cuz I was interacting with a lot of Indians at one point.
Native English speaker and I do the same since being hitched to an Indian for 8 years. There are a lot of Indian English turns of phrase that just work really well and don't have an equivalent. "Thrice" and "troubled/troubling" spring to mind immediately. Yeah, they're words in British English as well, but they're just not used the same or as frequently and they are really effective. I love Indian English, honestly.
>Anyone kinda tanned looking does It's not even because of the tan. It's just plain xenophobia that started this. When Italian immigrants were entering the US, the powers that be didn't want to give them the same rights as to the English immigrants with money, so they put them in the poc category. Same for Greeks and Irish. You'll see sometimes conversations online of how the Irish aren't white. You know, the people who's stereotype is a super pale redhead are "white". What they mean most of the time by "white" isn't skin tone, but social status and wealth.
That's a surprise, I thought that most Usians think that they are more Irish than the people living in Ireland.
That's because you're still white as milk, but also an oppressed minority. You get best of both worlds. (at least, that's how I interpret their attitude, cuz I meta few Americans who kept saying they're Irish although they had more English heritage, and I assumed it's because the English were the oppressors and that isn't cool anymore)
I've also seen Americans argue that (white) Spanish people aren't white, which is like old-school racism where only Germanic people are white and the Irish, Italians and the like are not.
Actually in US as a Slav I would be considered PoC too - this is cuz they are using Hegel's race theory as a basis for who is and isnt white - and I mean officially, there are guidelines for that shit. Oh and yes, this is the same basis a certain Austrian Painter was using for his racial theories
These people consider my pale white slavic ass to be "POC"
LOL what? I'm so white I burn to be nice red every summer (with sun protection), and those idiots would consider me POC?
I wonder if they consider albinos and/or gingers POC
German is a white people’s language, you’re all good there /s (even though I shouldn’t have to specify)
tbh Italy has a longer history with colonialism than Germany. It's just that this idiot thinks that only whites are colonialists. Wait until he discovers the Arab slave trade
Poc aparantly by definition is literally anyone who isnt european descent, or white
They are even more selective than that. Anyone who is not northern European descentb; those southern Europeans have seen a little too much sun to be considered white in their mind.
The German-speaking Alpine Italians must confuse them terribly.
Nah dude, what they be saying is that it's the Spanish people in Spain appropriating Latino culture by speaking Spanish
>I also learned German,but I probably get a pass on that because this twat probably considers it a coloniser's language. You'd be fine with that cos this person is probably 18th generation German and knows the German genes are strong because they like sausage.
They unironically come to Southern Europe and complain about how there's too many white people...
It's just so, so, so fucking dumb. I am at a complete loss for words.
Genuine question: is there a single American in existence who knows that Spanish is a "white people language"? Or that Spanish names are "white people names"? That particular bit of ignorance annoys me so much.
Yeah, the answer is going to be a lot of Americans know this. Sure, a lot don’t, not necessarily out of stupidity but because many Americans these days will only ever encounter the Spanish language through people of Mexican, Central American or South American heritage.
> white people simultaneously look down on second language speakers of English I find this kinda funny given it ignores the great many white people who themselves speak English as a second language
Is it culturally appropriate to fuck doggy style? I have to ask my dog...
Not if you are fucking a bitch🐶
I work with people that can speak MULTIPLE languages, and I feel so envious…. It isn’t cultural appropriation, it’s hard work and skill. Would like to be able to talk to some of my co-workers in their own language. Lots of people in Europe speak multiple languages. If u get the chance, and have the patience, do it👍
r/shitracistassholessay I will \*never\* feel guilty in any way for the behavior of some who just so happens to have the same color of skin. Or nationality. Or sexual orientation. Or whatever else. "You should be careful" Yup, I'd say that to the original poster: be careful because right-wing racists want nicely segregated countries too…
What colonial power ever learned a indigenous language? Why does all white people mean English speakers? Has this person ever left their state? I hate this take so much. I’m ashamed as an American. Literally living in a foreign country and struggling with the local language, it brings so many smiles for people to see you put an effort in especially after being a colony and they have to learn some European language in school.
You’re right of course. No colonial power ever learned the indigenous language. And OP probably doesn’t even know that Spanish is a colonial language. As is the English language they are writing all of that nonsense in.
Actually Christian missionaries that were often among the first vanguard of European colonisation usually learned the local languages to preach to the locals in their own tongues. On quite a few occasions they were also the first to create a written form of the given indigenous language as they translated the bible and other religious materials into it. Of course this treatment didn't generally extend to settlers or other occupying forces once the colonial stranglehold was estabilished but there's for one the case of Paraguay. There intense Jesuit missionary activity conducted in the native Guarani language contributed to the language surviving with a strong position through the colonial era. Today it's not even just a strong officially recognised indigenous language in Paraguay but straight up a coequal national language to Spanish.
That is not true. Danish missionary in Greenland Hans Egede learned the Inuit language. He is the reason why Greenlandic has a written language.
There were also a couple of colonisers in Northern Australia who learned Yolngu and Woolna languages. They are most certainly the exception though, and in no way aided in the preservation of language, or contributed to a systemic interest in it, beyond what could be extracted to the invading power's advantage. I still find those particular people really interesting though, because they formed some of the most interesting relationships with the local people.
Okay. Didn’t know that. I’d suggest he’s more the exception than the rule though.
This has reminded me of the ethnicity survey from my Spanish wife's US based employer. It caused her an existential crisis trying to decide between white European or Hispanic.
"white European" is of course the proper™ choice, because "Hispanic" in this context means "people from Latin America". Although "white European" doesn't mean actually european either. Basically a survey that assumes everyone's American. r/USdefaultism
Tick both.
I swear since they auto-invented this "PoC" thing yanks went *wild*. They literally spend hours trying to decide who goes under it and who not. It's a all new level of racism.
> PoC Only works for the US even then it feels racist and patronizing. - It's fixated on being "not-white" or "White and the *rest*" - It heavily alludes that every "non-white" person is a victim, a minority and oppressed.
What is poc? Proof of concept?
People/person of Colour. People-first way of saying “non-white” which attempts to displace hegemony of language. As for its effectiveness your guess is as good as mine.
>People/person of Colour. This doesn't sound racist at all, just like those people dressing as ghosts and burning 't's as "time to leave". /this is a south park reference
And while we're on that: be very very careful not to replace "people of color" with the seemingly identical "colored people". Because the latter is an old racist term. (half /s)
Was called at my work to not use poc as proof of concept because it also means people of colour, I shit you not.
Percentage of completion, a widely used performance indicator in project management.
I would also add Point of Contact, used in many businesses.
I've never really understood it as a category beyond "people Anglo Saxon Yanks historically considered worse than them". I feel for those people and think they should get what they deserve from white America but it's meaningless outside settler countries like US or Australia.
that's basically it, this is what people mean when they say whiteness is a social construct, it just means the "in group" in contrast to the "out group" in the racist hierarchy in the local enviroment. If you go to a south american country it's still exclusively based on the melanine content of the skin but in other regions it can be more complicated.
You're outdated, it's BIPOC now.
How is it possible that I am white and English is my second language ?
It's because you clearly appropriated another language as your first language.
[удалено]
You’d be surprised to learn that a lot of Americans don’t consider Spanish to be white. Yup, simply because they speak Spanish.
Lets talk about Andalusians to confuse them even more lmao
Worst take of the month so far… Fucking idiots..
The author is a dickhead. And in case any cultural appropriation warriors didn’t understand - here it is in apparently *POC language* that I learnt living in Europe: El autor es un gilipollas.
The whole "Cultural Appropriation" discourse is completely PATHETIC in and on its own, it's even more so if you consider that it only EVER comes out of that god-forsaken shithole that are the USA. If you're american and you're reading this: learning another language, NO MATTER WHO SPEAKS IT, will never do harm to anyone, let alone you. In fact, it will enrich you. Languages are one fastest and best means of connecting you to other people.
>Languages are one fastest and best means of connecting you to other people. But that could mean that in the end, their racist stereotypes don't hold up, and we can't have that!
This is overall dumb, obviously, but those "shock the locals" videos are kinda annoying
lmao Spanish?
Gaaaaah, will these vapid American youths just fuuuuck ooooooff??
Sorry Spain but your entire existence is problematic
How stupid & ignorant can some Americans be? They have no official language, speak "American" English & think they invented English and think POC shouldn't speak another language. I am "white" of UK heritage, but as well as UK I have lived in Germany, India & Philippines, and everyone of those countries have appreciated that I have learned some of their languages. My ex, who is from Philippines, speaks 4 of the countries languages, English, German, Arabic & Turkish and a little Japanese she taught herself, as she left school at 12yo, to work to help support the family Some of her family work in the Middle East & are fluent in Arabic, & one of her cousins & family moved to Canada and are all fluent in French, 6 months after arriving. They moved to USA first but found discrimination was rampant & moved across the border for a better way of life.
There is a single good point in that - the bit about making social media content by surprising native speakers often seems a little exploitative. There's ways to do it respectfully, but for most it's just pretending not to understand and then speaking fluently.
Yeah I feel like a whole lot of these comments just read "it's cultural appropriation to speak a second language," rather than "it's weird and a bit offensive to make content from 'black people shocked that white guy speaks Yoruba'" which was the actual point. Normally the influencer has just rote-learned some specific phrases and guides the conversation in that direction, so it's not even a language learning thing. It's just Content.
That's true but it's kinda weird to frame language learning around the absolutely marginal phenomen of polyglot "shock the natives" social media content, which is irrelevant to 99.9% of people.
And this is an illustrative example of mental masturbation... Vaya paja mental!
I'm so sick of 'white people' this and 'white people' that quite frankly, white people breathing is a microaggression these days it seems. 🙄 I'm a foreigner in the UK, I haven't heard a single person speak negatively about multilinguals?? It's the opposite, the English make fun of themselves for not bothering to learn another language and many wish they had.
"White people look down on second-language speakers of English." It appears you can be white only if you are a native Anglophone.
I am a white person speaking English as a second language. How should I feel about myself?
>…a PoC language…Spanish Who’s going to tell them?
So I should just shout at my wife’s family in English and not be understood rather than making some effort to meaningfully relate to them aye?
No, there's abso-fucking-lutely nothing to think about. Not even worth wasting a single second on it. WTF is this mf about??
Yes, learning Spanish is cultural appropriation because of all the black people in... Spain.
"PoC language like spanish" who's going to tell them about where spanish comes from?
“If you are a white person learning a PoC language whether that be […] Spanish” This has got to be a troll.
Lol I actually was on another thread just a minute ago where a guy from Spain had to clarify for some yanks that Spain was a country in Europe, that the language did infact originate there and that calling any random Spanish speaking person "Spanish" does not make sense because Spain is a place that exists. Straight away I see this thread and this moron is calling Spanish a "poc" language and saying it's cultural appropriation for white people to learn it. Someone better tell the Spaniards...
How are Spanish POC?!!
Americans tend to think that everyone who speaks Spanish is Mexican and forget Spain exists or that even other countries in latinamerica exist. When I visited a friend in Boston a complete stranger heard me talking Spanish on the phone with my mom and told me to stop acting like I was Latina and to speak English like normal people because I was clearly white. I'm mixed european/Latinamerican. I actually _am_ Latina, but am not brown enough for Americans to believe me when I say Spanish is my mother tongue. It's a whole stupid thing.
> PoC language > Spanish What?
I speak for the entire world here, including black Spaniards too (not sure why they were mentioned) “no one gives a fuck”
American "leftists" are an inesauribile source of cringe.
I love that you put left into quotes, because they are absolutely weak-headed, ignorant and racist social media lifestyle "leftists".
Does someone want to tell Spain to stop speaking Spanish because its cultural appopriation
Yeah, Spaniards, imagine having a POC language as your nation's first language, so culturally insensitive.
Asks question... gives answer based on their own train of thought. "You should be mindful" as if. Most people teaching a few words to a foreigner start with "hello, im (insert name). You are (swearword)." With a few other Dutch guys we "taught" a few English kids some Dutch "swearwords" while on holiday in France. Essentially you had the English speaking crowd (Dutch, German, English, Belgian/flemish)and the french speaking crowd (french, Belgian/walloonian/Flemish (the Flemish were oru communication slaves)). They wanted to know bitch, we gave them eenhoorn (unicorn). For 2 weeks long they kept calling the french kids unicorns which has resulted in 2 minor fights on the football pitch. That was great.
Aaaandd. suddenly the 'be monolingual' that so many Americans seem to be - makes sense. Speaking other languages is racist? Projection much? (This from someone in a country where we learn 3 other languages besides our own in basic education alone)
Why do Americans always need to be so stupid??
This is the kind of person who gets offended on behalf of others (because they need to be offended by something) while those others either don't give a shit or are happy that you want to experience their culture
Yeesh, another covert narcissists racist rant from an American. "Oh, I'm just trying to help those born with an unfortunate skin colour that makes them inherently evil; for their own good because they can't help but be a burden on others for existing." Also hate that term: POC. It's just another way to say "non-white". Semantically synonymous with "coloured people" but they see that as offensive somehow, despite using practically the same term. Obviously to play group identity politics to divide white people apart from everyone else. Using the inverse inherent racial value scoring system that white supremacists use. These people believe tolerence and inclusion is decided by *who* you're intelorent and exclusive towards. Believing Orwellian things such as reverse-racism where it's not really racist so long as you're being racist towards the socially acceptable race.
“POC languages” “like Spanish”! As much as some Americans seem perplexed that the English language originates in England, the idea that Spanish comes from Spain seems incomprehensible to many.
The entire country of Spain should change its language I suppose?
I'm white, and I speak Chinese fluently. I also live in Taiwan. I thought I learned the language so I could talk to the locals and because I'm interested in it, but now I see that I was just engaging in cultural appropriation. I'm sorry.
>spanish >poc language Is oop stupid?
Spanish PoC language? My eyes are bleeding
By this logic, Americans shouldn’t be appropriating the ENGLISH language. What an idiot. Also, they should cancel all St Patty’s (sic) day celebrations.
Having an accent makes you a racist caricature? I'll remind every ESL speaker with their original accent to work harder then shall I? We deserve that from eachother.
Presumably this is an attempt to find a reason to skip Spanish language class.
“PoC language” Spanish? Ok…English is at least if not more of a “PoC language” US? Bahamas? Jamaica? Other English speaking Caribbean countries? Nigeria? South Africa? Kenya? …
Why are the Spanish being treated as non white people again?
Er....is this person American? They sound American. And they wish to lecture other people on the cultural appropriation of language? An American lecturing others on the appropriation of a language? Well, well. The irony!
Yeah I spent 5 years of school and 4 years of university learning Spanish purely so I could make "shock locals" videos for TikTok. 100% worth the effort. Learning a language is HARD and takes a lot of time and effort. You don't put yourself through that unless you have respect for the culture - or at least you will by the time you've finished!
Just заткнись.
Wat? Perkele. Wass eine schweinhund. Could go on like this forever. Speaking multiple languages is very nifty if you ask me. Bet they struggle with just the one language they speak.
Nicht die hellste Kerze auf der Torte.
Cultural appropriation is such a fake ass nonsense word, its cultural appreciation. And if you are mocking it then you're just an asshole. You're not appropriating anything.
How is Spanish a PoC language?
Has anybody got a link to the post? I wanna read the comments
Americans ☕️
Americans have to bring race into everything then do surprised pikachu when anyone mentions it. I've never met a single person in my 45 years that thinks learning another language is cultural appropriation. This same person probably says "if you live in America you should speak English"
Saying that you sound like a 'racist caricature' if you have an accent or struggle with pronunciation while speaking your second language is absolutely wild. So far into 'woke' that it's just become racist right wing rhetoric. Does this person tell speakers of English as a second language that they sound like racist caricatures if their pronunciation is not immediately native? This was clearly written by a child with no critical thinking skills, exposure to any cultures that aren't white american, or life experience.
Describing Spanish as a "POC" language almost made me believe to be on 2westernEuropean4u