I can’t get over how nonsensical Trump sounds sometimes. From yesterday’s trip to the border:
…millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages. We have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages, nobody speaks them.
What?! 🇺🇸
@Brian I was laughing just as I was typing it up. I'd love to know where this came from... It must've started as some real-ish fact that he twisted until it was meaningless.
@manton Seeking asylum from the unexplored ocean depths. Looking to escape the iron fist of Atlantis.
@manton 97% of asylum seekers at the southern border speak Spanish, 1.7% Portuguese.
People who speak rare/indigenous languages appear to make up at worst 1.3% of asylum cases.
@manton Also, have I ever explained my dog's name is Winston (after Winston Smith, the protagonist).
I'm, um, a big fan of the book.
@manton Projector Orange is just doin' his thang again, that's all. He has 0 clues about these things and can't understand other languages and just assumes/exaggerates nobody can understand them!
If he saw me speaking Japanese to my family, he'd probably have an out-of-body experience I suppose.
@patrickrhone A very compelling opinion indeed. Think about all the stupid little buzzwords that are floating around when discussing political ideology these days. Newspeak all the way.
@manton Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.
@starrwulfe Yep.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think Orwell was some sort of fortune teller or visionary. Quite the contrary. All he needed to do was look at the authoritarian regimes around him, figure out how they worked, and realize that it could just as easily happen anywhere with the right conditions and motivations.
That was the warning.
@manton He constantly sounds like the kid trying to write a book report without actually reading the book.
@manton not speaking as professional here, but I think the trick with understanding that man is the “feel of it” rather than the “think of it.” I imagine someone listening to that and saying to themselves “yeah, I don’t speak any of those weird languages! They should just learn English!”
😫
@patrickrhone @manton It’s just like when bigots say they’re “against pronouns”. They’re not actually against pronouns in language, they just don’t want to respect people’s pronouns (those of trans people specifically).
@torb I've long been impressed by how effortlessly those of my daughter's peers handle this. They use they/them pronouns when speaking of anyone for whom they do not know the preferred pronouns of and then switch effortlessly once they learn.
@patrickrhone We have two colleagues who often work together. One goes by she/her and the other by they/them. So when I have to tell others about the work both did, I have to say, "they did it quite well...well, not they/them but them they. Breaks my brain but I'm sure I'll get used to it. We should just use they/them for everyone and invent another word for a group thing. Also, doesn't help that when I say "telling others", the others are Boomers or much older GenX
@pratik Agree that English should have non-gendered third person singular. It would solve so many problems. For the "talking about their work" issue - maybe always say "they both" when you mean both of them, to distinguish from the singular "they"? Like saying "you all" when talking to a group, versus "you" (or "you, Nina") when talking to a single person in a group.
@manton He probably saw a piece in the NYT a couple of days ago about how NYC has become a haven for endangered languages.
