Wednesday, February 28, 2007

 

MBW
Political Correctness Should Be For All

If you pull out a world atlas from the past few years and look for a city in India called "Bombay," you won't find it. You'll find a city called Mumbai instead. Bombay was a horrible English mispronounciation of the native name of the city. When I was growing up, the capital of China was Peiking, today it's Beijing. The capital wasn't changed, it's in the same location that it's been in for centuries. English speakers butchered the name and it's finally being pronounced the way it's supposed to be.

I'm all in favor of that. We really should respect the language and cultures of other ethnicities. If a city is known by the name Mumbai to the people who live there, then who are we to call it Bombay instead? Respect other cultures, I say. Treat them with respct, no matter who they are.

I'm a German-American. I have a last name (not "Julius") that can be difficult for an English speaker to deal with. In German, the 'J' makes a sound like the English 'Y.' That's pretty foreign to a lot of people and my name is constantly mispronounced. It's something that I've just come to live with. But really, should I have to? I lived in Southern California for a number of years. I worked with a lot of people with hispanic last names. Ramirez? No, it's Rrrrrra-Meeerrrr-ehs! And some people were insistent. Say it right or they didn't acknowledge that you were speaking to them. But my name was often pronounced with a hard 'J' sound.

My family doesn't even pronounce our last name correctly. I always thought that it would be nice to finally pronounce my last name correctly when I moved somewhere that the rest of my family didn't live. Fat chance. People had a hard enough time getting over the soft 'J' sound, they weren't going to be able to handle the German inflection that my Familiename should have.

There is a chain of fast food places around the country, we had them in SoCal, called "Weinerschnitzel." They serve hot dogs which, by the way, is not what Weinerschnitzel actually is. When I was a kid and lived in SoCal, the chain was known as "Der Weinerschnitzel" and was pronounced Dair Vee-ner-shnit-zul. I made the mistake of pronouncing it that way, the correct way, I might add, in front of an hispanic person, who then ridiculed me for butchering the pronounciation. This person had no idea that I was pronouncing it correctly, could not pronounce my name correctly, but insisted that I pronounce her name correctly.

I use the Spanish vs. English argument here a lot because I lived in SoCal as a German-American. There was a push in one community to have a tilda on street signs that, in Spanish would require them. My computer keyboard, coincidentally, will quite readily make a tilda. If I want an umlaut? Yeah, it will do it, but it's not nearly as easy.

The fact of the matter is that my culture isn't treated with the respect that we are expected to show to hispanic culture. Or asian culture. Or pretty much any other culture on the face of the earth. There is no Teutonic Grammys telecast. You can't head down to the Bratwurst Hut for lunch (maybe locally, but it's not a national chain).

So next time your looking at a new, politically correct atlas and see Mumbai or Beijing, turn to Europe and look for Koln or Munchen. Can't find them? Try Cologne and Munich, then ask yourself why we're expected to use the proper names for asian cities but not for German ones.

BOJ

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Comments:
OMG... it's funny how though we've been apart for 4 years now, we still have similar thoughts (often at the same time). I had a discussion with the girlfriend just last week about this! How in SoCal it seems Spanish has not only become infused with English in place names and phrases with people insisting that non-Hispanic people learn how to properly pronounce the words and to respect their place in our society, but how other languages are constantly butchered and no one cares.

This conversation stemmed from driving down the street you and I aptly renamed "The Slanted Coyote" go to the old "In N Out Burger". I went on to tell her about how you'd handle telemarketers who mispronounced your name, then came to the realization that my name also is rarely pronounced or spelled correctly by others... and mine doesn't have the "soft J" or anything else out of the ordinary... it's spelled like it sounds and sounds like it's spelled.

I can only imagine if my family hadn't taken the 'h' out of the middle of it how badly it would get butchered.

There's no German TV stations locally nor available on cable or satellite TV systems, though both your and my national companies raced to put up every possible Asian and Hispanic channel.

I wonder if this loss of caring about the languages and cultures of Europe has to do with timing. Many of the German, French, and Italian settlers in the US arrived prior to TV's existance. The influx of Asians and Hispanics to the US (of course SoCal has been quite influenced by Mexico since we took the land in the 1800's) has really occured in the last 30 years. Most of the European settlers moved here before all of the 'rights' movements and "politically correct" speech even existed as a term. Our families were expected to become part of the melting pot, while today preservation of your roots seems to be the norm.

Maybe it's their timing that allows them to expect, or even demand everyone to respect their culture, while our people have pretty much given up their identities as 'German' as we're like 3rd-6th generation Americans now.

I don't know a single person, born in this country of German ancestory, who has a good command of the German language or really goes out of their way to identify themselves as German.

Most of the Asians and Hispanics I know either came here from their home country or are 1st generation American, living with family who do not speak English.

Both seem to follow these trends:

1) They're here from another country directly, and speak great Spanish and little/some English;

or

2) They're born here, they're parents came here directly from another country, and they speak better English than they do Spanish (many can't even read/write Spanish)... they're becoming Americanized!

On another note, a friend of mine who moved here from England made a comment that he's never seen people as quick to claim their ancestory as their nationality, even though they're 3rd generation or later Americans. In England, regardless of your race and bloodline, if you were born and raised in England, you consider yourself English.

OK, I think I've written enough and made no sense at all... but I had to post to this topic, as it too has been very fresh in my mind lately.

~Quinn 'Strehlow'
 
Oh... I copied your post to my blog along with my initial reply... being as I'm still in SoCal with many Hispanic friends, we'll see what kind of responses I get... I'll send any I get to you via e-mail.

Quinn
 
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