TIL that some languages apparently have words inherently differentiating one's status as a citizen or resident of the entity versus a member of a particular ethnic or cultural group? I don't quite grasp the whole thing, although I heard the point being made. What's interesting to me is a) that there is such a thing, which seems very revealing of something about a culture that would need such concepts built into the language, and b) that there seem to be people who think it's inaccurate to interpret the word choice as meaningful. Firstly, since languages have all sorts of concepts built into them, many very specific to their primary culture of use, it seems reasonable that such a thing could exist. Not that I would have thought of it before, since I'm not from a culture where that sort of subtlety functions. Secondly, if that is, indeed, the subtlety of the word choices, where one essentially and inherently includes people, and the other excludes, then I'd kind o...
All the plusses. Would plus again.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely ice cream, with a side of the teacher writing, "I will not practice war crimes," on the chalkboard 500 times.
ReplyDeleteClever girl. I used to just rage at my teacher instead. (I was right. She used collective punishment a lot, she was a terrible bully, and she was a blatant racist.)
ReplyDeleteTherese Noren I had that teacher, too, although not so much with the blatant racism. In fact, I don't think I had a teacher from 3rd to 8th grade that did not indulge in collective punishment.
ReplyDelete(Perhaps my favorite was when we were lined up to be released from school and someone was screwing around. So we had to stand there silently for five minutes. The teacher started reading something and clearly lost track of time. Eventually, I surreptitiously snapped my fingers to wake her up... and of course that was a violation of the "stand silently" directive. I do not remember my grade school teachers with fondness.)
We were the only class in the entire school that was forced to walk in line. I hated it. (Everybody else made fun of us.) She used to rant that none of us would make it through junior high, less so high school. (More than half the class went on to tertiary education, which is a lot where I come from.) But the racism was the worst, even more than the pettiness. She could spend an entire class talking about why g*ies were criminals (slur most definitely included), or why Bosnian immigrants were a worse sort of people... We actually had a black kid in our class, and looking back, I feel so sorry for him and his sister, who got our teacher when we switched schools.
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