What word would be better then? (Serious question. I didn’t know this was an offensive term).

It depends how people identify. Some prefer country of origin (Mexican, Puerto Rican etc), others prefer latino, latina or latin@…. others use chicano, chicana, or chican@. It’s all very specific. They’ve all got their own histories. They’re used interchangeably but they’re not identical. 

It’s just definitely not the word for me.

youngbadmanbrown:

I introduced myself to this girl the other day, told her to call me Jules

she says: Are you French? That’s a very French name.

And she’s not wrong, but I’ve never really considered it, that along with all the remnants of French colonization that still exist within Haitian language (and culture) that even our names are colonized too.

Sometimes I’ll meet a Haitian and they’ll be named Francois or Westner or some ish and I’ll think “What a Haitian ass name”

But what is a Haitian name, really, if not just a French one?

And that kind of bothers me because I don’t really want to walk around with this shit the way I have to walk around with all this other colonized nonsense. My last name is a god damn French pastry, something I’ve grown to find increasingly humiliating and rage inducing

Was is a joke? Did some fucking slave is owner think that shit was funny?

I want to be proud of the culture I come from but I do not know how much of it I’m supposed to want to claim.

This.

I remember one guy at a Mecha conference identifying as Hispanic, and my 19 year old self is going, “WHYYYYYYY! That is such an ugly word.”

My dad still uses it. No se que puedo hacer… I can’t like do it lecture style, no papi that word has this history blah blah blah. La familia def doesn’t respond well to that kind of language. Maybe I’ll just start dropping xican@ and latin@ all over the place and see if it sticks.

Ahh. All you Hispanic-haters reblogging this, TQM.

Maybe chills isn’t the right word—-more of a shudder

#and a gag or two

literally gives me chills. I hate it so so so so much.

Just one of those things.

The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place.

imsorryimawayfromreality:

J’ai veux écrire français un peut, mais je ne sais pas beaucoup. Alors, je m’appelle Indra. J’aime jazz, New York City, théâtre, livres, manchots et chocolat chaud. Je t’aime ma famille, mes amis et Dieu. Je n’aime pas vivant en à la campagne. J’adore en ville. Vraiment je ne fais pas. Aujourd’hui c’est mercredi. Covert Affairs es sur la télévision ce soir! J’ai excité! Mon père parti pour travaillé. Ma mère est dormi.

I could probably say a lot more things if I just refreshed on my vocabulary and proper sentence order of things, but without being too personal.

Sorry sugar, but I couldn’t resist. Great effort!

J’ai volou écrire en français un peut, mais je ne sais pas beaucoup. Alors, je m’appelle Indra. J’aime le jazz, New York City, le théâtre, des livres, des pingouions et le chocolat chaud. J’aime ma famille, mes amis et Dieu. Je n’aime pas vivre dans la campagne. J’adore vivre en ville. [Not sure what you’re trying to say here: Vraiment je ne fais pas]. Nous sommes mercredi aujourd’hui. Covert Affairs es sur la télévision ce soir! Je suis très enthousiaste/très hereuse/ravie. Mon père est parti pour le travail. Ma mère est endormie.

Not sure if this is correct, I’m only a learner myself. Here’s my explanation:

J’ai veux — J’ai volou: I’m assuming you mean past tense here, I wanted to writein French a bit but I don’t know a lot. If you want it to be present tense, it would be Je veux, not J’ai veux. :)

Le / des: I may not have put in the correct articles for what you meant exactly, but check this out http://www.languageguide.org/french/grammar/articles/

manchots vs pingouions: I think manchots is more French, but pingouions is more common.

The “t” in Je t’aime, refers to a “you” as in “I love you.” J’aime ma famille means I love my family, sans t.

When you’re talking about today’s day, it’s very common to say “Nous sommes [le jour]”

Watch out for J’ai excité. Gramatically, it would be Je suis excitée (another e for the feminine), but literally it often means I’m horny. Try other adjectives to express happiness and excitement.

Mon père est parti - Don’t forget that past tense verbs are compound, this means you need two parts! Typically they are present forms of Avoir or Etre with the participe passé.

Ma mère est dormi. - I think you’re trying to describe your mother being asleep, in this case you should should an adjective (dormi is the participe passe), and asleep is actually endormi(e).

Great work though! :)

(via theperksofbeingindra-deactivate)

unpocoderojo:

Yesterday I was translating a document from English to Filipino, and you can imagine how my nose wanted to bleed. Of course I had to use the dictionary, which was, I believe, thicker than the Bible. Nevertheless, it brought back nostalgia because I remembered my lessons in Philippine orthography back in high school. It also reminded me of how, with a passion, I dislike it when people “make tusok-tusok the fishball.”

When people start their sentences with “Make” and complete them with a mishmash of words from English and Tagalog, I wonder why they even do that. As a child, I thought it was normal, but upon realizing that… well, there ARE rules in the art of writing and speaking… I started flipping imaginary desks in frustration. For one thing, such sentence construction does not define nor increase our status symbol because it shows one’s lack of understanding of either language. It pisses me off to see such grammar and syntax on advertisements which have the ability to promote bad grammar for the sake of publicity (Yeah, Belo Men ad, I’m talking about you).

But don’t get me wrong; I make the same mistake many times (I tend to say or type sentence like “May nagttake ng exam” when I know it should be “May kumukuha ng pagsusulit”), yet I correct myself. However, it’s okay to say “Ginamit mo ba ang binigay kong HTML coding?” because there isn’t a direct translation to “HTML coding,” unless you want to use very deep Filipino. The rules are not as firm as a porn star’s fake breasts.

As much as possible we shouldn’t start our sentences with “make” when we obviously know there are proper translations in the Tagalog language or English language (“Alagaan mo kotse ko”/”Take care of my car”; “Tusukin mo ang pisbol”/”Prick the fishball”), or, really, when we speak in Filipino, let’s speak in straight Tagalog (per sentence); the same can be said when speaking in English. Although the “make” interjection/nuance is more understandable, it degrades our appreciation of languages. It’s fun, but we shouldn’t abuse the fun (especially when there are linguists around).

Below are some rules in Filipino orthography. Orthography simply means the standards of writing systems (orthos - correct; graphein - write), but in some cases, especially when translation is involved, some rules do apply.

By the way, this is a disclaimer: I’m trying to remember what I learned from Filipino class in high school. So if I make a mistake, linguistic bloggers around here, please correct me.

1. Golden rule: Siyang bigkas, siyang basa (the way you pronounce it is the way you read it).
2. General Filipino abakada: A B K D E G H I L M N Ñ NG O P R S T U W Y. Q > Kyu, J > dyey, X > eks, Z > zi. Our present alphabet is adopted from the Latin alphabet we learned from the Spanish. It consists of 28 letters.
3. Words that do not have an equivalent in the Filipino language are written in the way the sound like: truck > trak, nurse > nars, ball > bol (kung ayaw mo ng bola).
4. When encountering foreign words with any of the following letters C, F, J, Q, V, X, and Z, unless it doesn’t have an equivalent in Filipino, substitute the letters with their phonetic spelling (the spelling of letters by how they sound). C > K, F > P, J > dy (jeep > dyip), Q > ky, V > B, X > ks, Z > S.
5. Foreign words that don’t have equivalents may be used as is. Ex. iPod, l’esprit de corps, paté, computer 
6. Words borrowed from the Spanish language may be used with their corresponding letter substitutions (ex. suerte > swerte).
7. Words borrowed from the English language must be first translated into Spanish before applying the proper letter substitutions (ex. EN cigarette > SP cigarillo > PH sigarilyo)
8. Technical words may be used as is (ex. computer, cellphone, calculator)
9. Scientific words may be used as is (elements from the periodic table, for example)
10. Follow the lexicon. Sundan ang leksikon. If a translation exists, please, do not use the borrowed term.

This, of course, is fundamental orthography. Things get more complicated when you talk about Filipino slang. At least, with formal or even everyday speaking and writing, take these to heart.

And the next time you want to “make tusok-tusok the fishball,” tusukin mo nalang ang pisbol and ‘wag mo nang sabihin sa amin.

orthography porn.

I grew up in a filipino neighborhood, and while I know nothing of the language, I miss hearing it, and I miss living in busy immigrant neighborhoods with folks from all over the world.