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Slang as accepted language use.

Started by Tamhansen, October 11, 2012, 12:55:34 PM

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Tamhansen

Was unsure about the title, but the question i want to set before you is about whether or not slang should be accepted as part of the official language?

The reason I ask is this. The city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, having a huge number of unemployed (mostly immigrant descended) youth, who cannot land a job because they lack the full grasp of the Dutch language, having been raised in an area where most people speak a slang which is a mix of different immigrant languages and urban terms mixed into Dutch. They can use the language in shops, among friends and family throughout the country, so they feel no need to learn the proper official Dutch language. This leads to problems in school, and obviously problems with writing application letters.

Now the city started a project to teach these kids that streetslang isn't enough to make it in this world, that they need to learn proper Dutch. But this project has angered certain groups that proclaim street is just an evolution of the Dutch language, and that it's the employers and school systems who should adapt, claiming that street and MSN speak should be part of the official vocabulary.

How do you feel about that? Would you accept an application written in msnspeek if you were an employer. Do you think classes taught in street slang would be a good idea?
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Callie Del Noire

I wouldn't since the preponderance of my clients won't most likely be speaking it. Language is another skill you must master to work, would you hire a quadriplegic to weld?  Sometimes the smaller group gets infringed upon in small ways but at least your government is trying to help. They are trying to teach the skills these kids need to succeed. That is a good thing.

Here the government would make excuses and move on.

Lilias

I'm a linguist by trade, and used to teach (not in recent years, but once a teacher, always a teacher), and just the thought of chatspeak in writing makes me twitch uncontrollably. :-X
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
~Wendell Berry

Double Os <> Double As (updated Feb 20) <> The Hoard <> 50 Tales 2024 <> The Lab <> ELLUIKI

Nico

Quote from: Lilias on October 11, 2012, 02:05:46 PM
and just the thought of chatspeak in writing makes me twitch uncontrollably. :-X
Oh yes, same here. ~nodnod~

Sabre

It's a form of pidgin language, and if one wishes to do business in areas where it is extensively used it has always been sensible to use it rather than one side learning the full language of the other.  That's just from a local business standpoint, and it's happened all throughout history.  But this is just between businessmen.  The consumer-service provider relationship may not work so well like this if just one section of the population speaks it.

However, for school and government and other official purposes it shouldn't be promoted, and as an immigrant myself I understand that such programs that try and coddle the failures of both government policy and immigrant/urban groups are far more harmful in the end than they are good.  Over time certain slang terms will persist and enter popular usage outside just one section of the population, and then they will be added into official dictionaries like always (unless the Dutch are as controlling as the French about their official dialect).

Will classes in this pidgin language help?  Doubtful.  It may help their grades in primary and secondary school, but how will it help outside the classroom?  They will be in the exact same place with less competitiveness than their peers.  It would be far more helpful to not only teach Dutch but also a proper secondary language, in this case Arabic, and open up service industry positions that require people with bilingual skills in both Dutch and Arabic. 

It's a good idea for people in any country to learn the various slang used in their own country from various regions, but making it official?  I'm not sure about that.

Tamhansen

Actually over 75% of the indiginous dutch speaks a second or third language. Being a nation of traders after all. And speaking proper English is a job requirement in most mid to higher level jobs, as well as many jobs requiring either german or french as well. The problem is that many inner city youths just don't bother and thus get left behind.
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Sabre

It might be time then for Dutch companies to begin expanding into North Africa and the Middle East and creating jobs that require a dual Dutch/Arabic proficiency.  Immigrant youths that just don't bother is a serious problem philosophically for their sub and counter cultures.  An official promotion of learning proper Arabic and proper Dutch in certain cities would go a long way to separating the two languages and proving thrice as useful as promoting just pidgin Dutch-Arabic that only immigrants in the Netherlands and nowhere else will understand.

Whatever the solution, if one exists, it's just not a pretty situation.

gaggedLouise

#7
Quote from: Lilias on October 11, 2012, 02:05:46 PM
I'm a linguist by trade, and used to teach (not in recent years, but once a teacher, always a teacher), and just the thought of chatspeak in writing makes me twitch uncontrollably. :-X


Agrees with Lilias. Breakdown of language in talk can be itchy, but forms like didja, 4u, Inorite!, he Z yo wazzup? and the like in anything that's meant to be read on its own are something like criminal.

The idea that suburban young people with an immigrant background from any major city now speak a particular, unified dialect which sets them apart from the others around the country, the "natives", had a big vogue in Sweden too some years ago, it's been bandied about by a couple of media pundits, bloggrrs and magazine/paper/radio entrepreneurs with some connections to those suburbs and more or less immigrant backgrounds. But nearly all of those who made a career by hanging on to those concepts are completely fluent in the standard language, they are able to write pages and pages of correct and coherent newspaper prose or blog posts without slipping into the lingo they say is the new dialect. They have never had any problems in that direction, most likely not even in elementary school - so in that way they're nowhere near like the mixing-language kids, often children of half-impoverished or jobless parents, that they claim to represent, those folks who are jumbling Spanish-inspired syntax, Arabic intonation and some Swedish, English and slang words. And sure enough they do not run the "ghettospeak" when talking to their bosses or doing interviews. the ghetto sauce is, well, something that gets sprinkled over the stuff they write after the rest of the dish has been prepared and cooked.

Anyone can pick their own style repertory for sure, but when it is claimed that the new mixed language is, like, the road we gotta follow and that it should be accepted in writing also, in order not to insult the suburban kids, that's a dumb simplification of what happesn in language change. And it is also about exoticizing the population of certain suburban districs, and this isn't really helpful.

I really don't buy the attitude "I am allowed to quarrel with my difficult brother for free, to smack him loudly on the head in public/in print/in a tv discussion, but *you* or anyone else that don't belong to our family (our special set, our particular ethnic, social or sexual class, our club for mutual glamourization and namechecking) can't use the same arguments I used - to him, to or about me, or anybody else of our "family". Yo, that's forbidden, that's exploitative." Excuse me but that's BS - most of the time. There are situations when you have to weigh in that some group has faced oppression and so on but it's not a catch-all thing with any one group to be making this sort of claim and say "no one can speak openly to my peers unless they first buy into their ways, their tastes and their special mindset". It's just a trendy way to mark out a half-private arena in the public space for talking and selling yourself and exempting yourself from talkback and feedback.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

tozhma

Saussure-ean Linguistic Drift y'all, it happens whether you want it to or not. The biggest factor will be the amount of power and resources held by those who use it. Latin got corrupted into Spanish after all.

Missy

Language evolves but there's a difference between kids who just wanna do whateva' they wanna do and people who are willing to work to earn there bit.

Conformity can be bad or it can be good. It's not fair to make the larger part of society learn some barely comprehensible slang terminology just so some niche community can do whateva' they wanna do dog shizzle.

Beguile's Mistress

"Just don't bother" is where it hinges for me as far as jobs go.  I won't hire someone with that attitude about anything.  To work for me you need to bother to learn the system and requirements to do the job language aside. 

I do a lot of work by phone and while I'm sympathetic with people who are mono-lingual because I am I am frustrated with those who ignore the fact that we are and English speaking country for all business activities and refuse to accept that and merge with that standard.  Were I to move to a non-English-speaking country I would make every effort no matter how difficult to learn the lanugage of the country where I was living.

Government and business do not exist to cater to the needs of those who do not bother to add to their skill set by learning a necessary language.  "I don't want to." is an extremely childish response to the need to do something that would improve your situation.

Will

I don't think all slang can be labeled as linguistic drift.  Just the parts that persist long enough to be incorporated, which is typically not much.  So it makes no sense for a government to spend tons of money chasing down what amounts to more of a "trend" than a "drift."  Whatever sticks, sticks.
If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause
It's like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze

One day, I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
- Jack Kerouac

Callie Del Noire

You know someone in  school told me that the English language had grown more in the last 30 years than in any time since William Shakespeare had run of the Globe Theater.

phoenyx

Quote from: Lilias on October 11, 2012, 02:05:46 PM
<snip> and just the thought of chatspeak in writing makes me twitch uncontrollably. :-X
Not only do I shudder, but I cringe at the thought of future editors of novels, between chatspeak and spelling. >.<

Me personally, no I wouldn't hire anyone who can't both fill out an app properly, or speaks in slang every other word.
♪ But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me ♪

O/O

NotoriusBEN

the pidgin language speakers need to check their ego and get with the program.
I could say the same for America capitulating to the engrish and providing everything in Spanish, but its too late for us with all the PC BS of the last 20 years. If I had my way, everyone would learn English to work in America.

sorry for sounding like a redneck supremacist, but I've been to towns in Arizona where *everything* is in Spanish. The Safeway, the Kroger, the McDonald's... everything. and these places are heavily populated by Mexicans. I dunno, it was fucking irritating that I was a foreigner in my own country...

I'm too tired to continue on, but there is a reason Ebonics failed as a piece of school curriculum.

Cyrano Johnson

Obviously the best path to upward mobility in any society is to be able to speak and write its official language properly.

But I'm more interested in what the underlying dynamic here is. Whenever I see someone claiming that some marginalized, poor and under-educatd local minority "just isn't making an effort to integrate," my ears prick up. Because this claim is usually bull an oversimplification that requires very careful scrutiny. Where such populations have been isolated from the mainstream society, what's happening usually isn't that they're shiftless and lazy; it's that some significant portion of the mainstream society is racist and/or xenophobic, and has systematically and to some extent successfully sought to exclude them from the higher rungs of the labour market and chances for upward mobility.

The story of Turkish or Moroccan immigrants in Europe over the past few decades holds a lot of striking points of similarity to those of Mexican and Latin American immigrants in North America over the same period, or indeed to the story of African-American populations of the late-19th and early-20th century Great Migration who wound up largely stranded in no-hope ghettoes across the States. The pattern tends to be that the host society wants the immigrants as cheap labour but as little else, generally does not want them involved in any of its social networks or wish to expend any more than the bare minimum on educating or otherwise assisting them, finds the resulting alienated populations bizarre, repulsive and criminal and grows to fear and even hate them, hypocritically blames them for a marginalization that is largely forced upon them... and then agonizes over the "immigrant problem." Such populations tend in their turn to develop a certain skepticism about the mainstream society's sincerity and integrity and about whether attempting to integrate is really worthwhile, leading to destructive dynamics of their own: an insular ghetto mentality that may grow to regard attempts to integrate as naive or doomed ("no matter how nice you are or how well you speak, you're still just a [insert appropriate racial slur] to them"), that may thus resign itself to expecting nothing better than the marginalized life one has been relegated to, and that may even tend to reject mainstream education as such as a "betrayal" of the familiar ghetto community.

That dynamic can perpetuate itself for multiple generations. When it's at play, the particular approach being taken to "integration" is more of a side-issue until the bigger underlying forces -- racism or xenophobia on the one side and defensive insularity on the other -- have been directly confronted, called what they are and their effects addressed. Those efforts unfortunately will usually face powerful opposition and be implemented patchily at best... but they're what's necessary.
Artichoke the gorilla halibut! Freedom! Remember Bubba the Love Sponge!

Cyrano Johnson's ONs & OFFs
Cyrano Johnson's Apologies & Absences

Tamhansen

Quote from: Cyrano Johnson on October 12, 2012, 01:48:24 AM
Obviously the best path to upward mobility in any society is to be able to speak and write its official language properly.

But I'm more interested in what the underlying dynamic here is. Whenever I see someone claiming that some marginalized, poor and under-educatd local minority "just isn't making an effort to integrate," my ears prick up. Because this claim is usually bull an oversimplification that requires very careful scrutiny. Where such populations have been isolated from the mainstream society, what's happening usually isn't that they're shiftless and lazy; it's that some significant portion of the mainstream society is racist and/or xenophobic, and has systematically and to some extent successfully sought to exclude them from the higher rungs of the labour market and chances for upward mobility.

The story of Turkish or Moroccan immigrants in Europe over the past few decades holds a lot of striking points of similarity to those of Mexican and Latin American immigrants in North America over the same period, or indeed to the story of African-American populations of the late-19th and early-20th century Great Migration who wound up largely stranded in no-hope ghettoes across the States. The pattern tends to be that the host society wants the immigrants as cheap labour but as little else, generally does not want them involved in any of its social networks or wish to expend any more than the bare minimum on educating or otherwise assisting them, finds the resulting alienated populations bizarre, repulsive and criminal and grows to fear and even hate them, hypocritically blames them for a marginalization that is largely forced upon them... and then agonizes over the "immigrant problem." Such populations tend in their turn to develop a certain skepticism about the mainstream society's sincerity and integrity and about whether attempting to integrate is really worthwhile, leading to destructive dynamics of their own: an insular ghetto mentality that may grow to regard attempts to integrate as naive or doomed ("no matter how nice you are or how well you speak, you're still just a [insert appropriate racial slur] to them"), that may thus resign itself to expecting nothing better than the marginalized life one has been relegated to, and that may even tend to reject mainstream education as such as a "betrayal" of the familiar ghetto community.

That dynamic can perpetuate itself for multiple generations. When it's at play, the particular approach being taken to "integration" is more of a side-issue until the bigger underlying forces -- racism or xenophobia on the one side and defensive insularity on the other -- have been directly confronted, called what they are and their effects addressed. Those efforts unfortunately will usually face powerful opposition and be implemented patchily at best... but they're what's necessary.

I'm sorry, but that just isn't true for countries like the Netherlands or Belgium. They have from the get go made an effort to offer many ways for immigrant workers and many of those have succeeded. However many migrant workers simply refused. During the seventies eighties and nineties of the last century, language courses were given free of charge in every community centre. They even gave separate ones for men and women, so the Muslims could keep their (in my opinion backward, but that's beside the point) gender separatist ways. But many candidates flat out refused feeling it unimportant to learn Dutch and keeping within their own community in a self imposed segregation.

The mistake the governments made was allowing that. Under the pretense of tolerance this behavior was not only permitted but propagated. Now we are stuck with a whole new generation of migrant children starting with a huge disadvantage. Solutions are offered, and taken by many, but refused by just as many. And these kids are the victim there, but a lot of these kids also refuse any help themselves. But as soon as they get rejected for job openings because of insufficient language skills, they yell discrimination. Guess it's easier to play the victim than to actually try and change yourself.

I volunteer at a youth centre, and when I started working there, teaching computer skills, giving music lessons, and organizing events I was faced with a lot of little groups all speaking their own language amongst each other. Turkish, Somali, Arabic, Papiamento. I instituted one simple rule. In my class only one language is spoken, Dutch. Sure I'd prefer to speak English myself but that wouldn't help the fact.

It worked though, for most of the kids anyway. Many of the kids started using proper Dutch and even helping each other finding the right words. But I also had to endure accusations of being racist, and have had parents threaten me. But seeing the success stories I and my colleagues have achieved makes that worth it. Hell, several of our kids who were thought to end up on factory lines have with the help of our project gone on to college. And two of the kids from my computer classes just launched their own cyber security consultancy. So there is really no excuse for those kids that aren't trying. Except maybe that their parents and community are a bad influence. But then again, I believe quite a few parents should not be allowed children, migrant or not. But that's another discussion.
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

phoenyx

When I lived in California, I had a Brazilian friend that had been living in the States for ten years. He still had an accent, but spoke perfectly understandable English. We had gotten into a discussion about Language and other countries, and how America bends over backwards to accomadate non English speakers. He told me that if a Foreigner were to go to Brazil, they'd have to at the very least know the language, and if it's business related, also read and write it. Otherwise, they had to hire an interpretor themselves, and that the local interpretor would almost always translate things to favor their fellow countryman than the Foreigner.

I honestly feel that when it comes to the older generations (50+) that it should be understandable that they donn't learn a new language, it's hard for them to proccess, unless they have an aptitude for such. But in younger people, there's no excuse. Thier minds are young and agile and quicker to proccess such things, chatspeak is a perfect example. Heck, my own kids know more Spanish then I do, and that comes from both tv and friends. I also found that many of those youngsters who came from Spanish speaking countries, actually know, understand, and speak perfect English a lot of times, they just refuse to speak anything but Spanish. And they tend to get a bit pissy when they discover that a non Hispanic, knows Spanish, because now they can't play "dumb" anymore.
♪ But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me ♪

O/O

Veronica

Using an adequate language level towards your audience makes you a good speaker. For example:

- Using slang/vulgar language in a job application/interview is wrong. The other person expects a polite/common use of the language as a bare minimum.
- Using overly technical language after someone asks you "What time is it please?", is also wrong as the other person expects a more common use of the language.

Quote from: tozhma on October 11, 2012, 05:06:52 PM
Saussure-ean Linguistic Drift y'all, it happens whether you want it to or not. The biggest factor will be the amount of power and resources held by those who use it. Latin got corrupted into Spanish after all.

Latin evolved into Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Sardinian, Romanian, etc...

"Corrupted" might be a bit too offensive.

Cyrano Johnson

Quote from: Katataban on October 12, 2012, 06:12:39 AM
I'm sorry, but that just isn't true for countries like the Netherlands or Belgium. They have from the get go made an effort to offer many ways for immigrant workers and many of those have succeeded. However many migrant workers simply refused. During the seventies eighties and nineties of the last century, language courses were given free of charge in every community centre. They even gave separate ones for men and women, so the Muslims could keep their (in my opinion backward, but that's beside the point) gender separatist ways. But many candidates flat out refused feeling it unimportant to learn Dutch and keeping within their own community in a self imposed segregation.

My short summary above is of course painted in broad strokes. The parallels between all these histories don't amount to every situation being absolutely the same: the government culture in the Netherlands surely felt at least obliged to put up the appearance of making an effort at "integration", something that wasn't required or even dreamt of in say America of the 1900s. And there are always finer-grained interactions in the picture: charities, self-improvement intiatives, stand-out individuals and so on.

Nevertheless the striking similarities remain -- patterns of rhetoric and interaction which are instantly recognizable from the long history of xenophobia and anti-immigrant panics on my continent -- and again, make me wary of accepting claims like the above at face value. One of the things that makes it possible to do more than just guess blindly at whether those similarities are relevant is that the modern world features lots of scholars studying these phenomena and putting their results online, so for example one can find a summarized study like this one outlining the complex of factors influencing integration in the Netherlands and noting that "[there] is a great deal of research demonstrating the negative consequences of racial intolerance and prejudice in the Dutch labour market."

I tend to trust that kind of scholarship more than just raw anecdote, because people are of course as a rule unwilling to believe their own societies are racist -- or at least unwilling to openly admit it in an era where racism is known to be a black mark on a person's character -- and because members of a mainstream society in this situation don't necessarily know that much about the actual lives of the immigrants whose "self-imposed segregation" they speak of, or the kinds of discrimination they may or may not have encountered. Those kinds of discrimination and their effects are largely invisible to someone who hasn't undergone it themselves.
Artichoke the gorilla halibut! Freedom! Remember Bubba the Love Sponge!

Cyrano Johnson's ONs & OFFs
Cyrano Johnson's Apologies & Absences

Beguile's Mistress

There are people who will always resist any sort of integration and argue about the need for it.  There have been conquering nations who have tried to eradicate and indigenous languate and that didn't work either.  International business is conducted in English for the most part, at least all the international business I have experienced.  German was once and still might be the language of science.  Some literary works lose much when translated out of their original language so a study of something like French Literature would require a near immersion in the French language.

Slang is constantly being integrated into the English language and I assume into other languages as well but the root doesn't change.  English remains English. 

Unless you want to limit yourself you need to be conversant in the main language of a country.  Bosses don't have the time or desire to give orders and directions in more than one language.  Time is money and if you cost money rather thank are a source of revenue for a company they usually don't want you.

Tamhansen

Quote from: Cyrano Johnson on October 12, 2012, 11:50:01 AM
My short summary above is of course painted in broad strokes. The parallels between all these histories don't amount to every situation being absolutely the same: the government culture in the Netherlands surely felt at least obliged to put up the appearance of making an effort at "integration", something that wasn't required or even dreamt of in say America of the 1900s. And there are always finer-grained interactions in the picture: charities, self-improvement intiatives, stand-out individuals and so on.

Nevertheless the striking similarities remain -- patterns of rhetoric and interaction which are instantly recognizable from the long history of xenophobia and anti-immigrant panics on my continent -- and again, make me wary of accepting claims like the above at face value. One of the things that makes it possible to do more than just guess blindly at whether those similarities are relevant is that the modern world features lots of scholars studying these phenomena and putting their results online, so for example one can find a summarized study like this one outlining the complex of factors influencing integration in the Netherlands and noting that "[there] is a great deal of research demonstrating the negative consequences of racial intolerance and prejudice in the Dutch labour market."

I tend to trust that kind of scholarship more than just raw anecdote, because people are of course as a rule unwilling to believe their own societies are racist -- or at least unwilling to openly admit it in an era where racism is known to be a black mark on a person's character -- and because members of a mainstream society in this situation don't necessarily know that much about the actual lives of the immigrants whose "self-imposed segregation" they speak of, or the kinds of discrimination they may or may not have encountered. Those kinds of discrimination and their effects are largely invisible to someone who hasn't undergone it themselves.

Lol. Being an actual immigrant myself. (granted from another western nation across the atlantic) living in a neighbourhood containing mostly non western immigrants I know a great deal about the lives of immigrants in the Netherlands. And thus I can easily make the distinction that someone who based their opinions solely on research done by organisations that need the problem to exist to have right of existence isn't exactly objective.

My method of research: i volunteer in an inner city youth center 20 hours a week, and thus see for myself that there are many people who indeed choose, not being forced, but choose to segregate themselves from the main society, so that is how I make those claims. I'm in these peoples lives both in my volunteer work as my home situation.

Also if you're trying to accuse me of racism you're barking up the wrong tree, I'm not racist I'm an equal opportuinity hater, I don't like anyone. :P

Do I disagree that the last decade and a half there has been a growing sentiment of mostly unfounded aversion towards non western cultures?  No I do not, I agree, and spend quite a bit of my time proving it unfounded and stopping the racism.

The point is you are purposefully subverting my position to push your own viewpoint. I never said there was no discrimination. there is, and that sucks. However there is a difference between people actually trying, and getting refused, and people not doing fuck all to improve themselves, and then shout discrimination at not getting the high paying jobs. And I actually see this happen in my daily life, and i see success stories as well.
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Tamhansen

Quote from: Beguile's Mistress on October 12, 2012, 12:03:12 PM
There are people who will always resist any sort of integration and argue about the need for it.  There have been conquering nations who have tried to eradicate and indigenous languate and that didn't work either.  International business is conducted in English for the most part, at least all the international business I have experienced.  German was once and still might be the language of science.  Some literary works lose much when translated out of their original language so a study of something like French Literature would require a near immersion in the French language.

Slang is constantly being integrated into the English language and I assume into other languages as well but the root doesn't change.  English remains English. 

Unless you want to limit yourself you need to be conversant in the main language of a country.  Bosses don't have the time or desire to give orders and directions in more than one language.  Time is money and if you cost money rather thank are a source of revenue for a company they usually don't want you.
+1
ons and offs

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Cyrano Johnson

Quote from: Katataban on October 12, 2012, 12:15:24 PMThe point is you are purposefully subverting my position to push your own viewpoint.

I am bringing up some context that seems relevant to me. Neither of my posts are particularly intended as attacks on or criticisms of you personally (although on the other hand when someone instantly tries to derail the conversation into furious personal affront and defensiveness any time the word "racism" is mentioned, that too is a recognizable behaviour to me... and another striking parallel). You seem aware at some level that being an immigrant from another Western country isn't quite the same thing as being a non-Western immigrant, but as to what you actually know or don't know about the lives of non-Western immigrants as a result, that's something I leave to you to work out.

Quoteresearch done by organisations that need the problem to exist to have right of existence isn't exactly objective.

And another parallel. Researchers supposedly making up problems they "need to exist" are a common anecdotal device often used to deny problems uncovered by research, but I'm not inclined to accept this gambit at face value either. I'm actually surprised that this particular myth is so persistent among people who must surely know that society offers far more easy and lucrative avenues for the fraudster than the endless work of chasing after grant money.

QuoteHowever there is a difference between people actually trying, and getting refused, and people not doing fuck all to improve themselves, and then shout discrimination at not getting the high paying jobs. And I actually see this happen in my daily life

Yes, I'm sure you think you do. Maybe you're right, maybe not. I'm just pointing out that the dynamic of "people not doing fuck all to improve themselves" is often a lot more complicated than people like to think. Again, all due respect to your anecdotes, I'm not willing to accept them as an absolute authority on this. It's nothing personal, I'd say the same to anyone.
Artichoke the gorilla halibut! Freedom! Remember Bubba the Love Sponge!

Cyrano Johnson's ONs & OFFs
Cyrano Johnson's Apologies & Absences

Caehlim

#24
Quote from: Katataban on October 11, 2012, 12:55:34 PM
Was unsure about the title, but the question i want to set before you is about whether or not slang should be accepted as part of the official language?

All language is slang. Official languages are just the particularly dialectical variation employed by those with a lot of money and those who want to get on their good side. It wasn't until fairly recently in history that academics had the unmitigated arrogance to state that people weren't speaking their own language properly.

QuoteHow do you feel about that?

Well, the employers presumably want to hire someone and the employee presumably wants to get hired. Maybe they'll both have to make some effort to get that to happen, but it can't be a one-sided expectation. If I had to learn an entirely new language to get a job, then I would be willing to do that but it'd have to be a pretty good job. Likewise if I were an employer and I want to hire the very best expert in the world, but they speak a different language, then I'd make the effort to adjust whether that's hiring translators or whatever but I wouldn't do that for just any old employee.

QuoteWould you accept an application written in msnspeek if you were an employer.

Does the job they're applying for require the ability to write in formal english/dutch/whatever? If so, then obviously their application would show that they are unsuitable. Otherwise, I don't see that it would be hugely relevant. Maybe an extra effort from the HR deparment in organizing their employment records but that'd be about all.

If people are being discriminated against because of stereotypes of people who speak that language, then that's terrible and I think it needs to be addressed. If they're being selected against because language skill and usage is an aspect of the position then that's just rather common sense.

QuoteDo you think classes taught in street slang would be a good idea?

If anyone is particularly interested in learning that language, then yes it would be a good idea for them to have that available. However, I'm sure if there are people interested who can afford those classes, then I'm sure they will already exist or will require little more than a craigslist ad to get it happening.

Edit: Edited this post to remove a grammatical error. Don't think I'm missing the irony on that one. :D
My home is not a place, it is people.
View my Ons and Offs page.

View my (new)Apologies and Absences thread or my Ideas thread.