Language, Linguistics, & Culture

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one of the aspects of being bilingual that we don’t talk about enough is that awkward moment when the structure of your other language slips into your first language so you phrase a sentence like you would in your second language but using your native language (or vice versa) and so the syntax gets all fucked up and for a long while you just stare at nothing like, what the hell just happened, questioning your entire existence

I honestly believe that the admiration and the discrimination both come from the same thing: emigration. After over 150 of being a state, Italy still has to fix the economical differences between the north and the south. As a result, southern Italians have always emigrated more than those living in the north. Mind that when I talk about emigration I also mean emigration towards north Italy, which resulted in extreme prejudice and even hatred towards, you know, these poor people coming to steal your underpaid jobs (sounds familiar?)* Italians abroad could get themselves a better reputation because they did bring a lot of great things along with them. It’s much harder, I suppose, to overcome such prejudices in your own country, where you’re not bringing a new culture to the table. And that’s not to say that northern Italians are justified in their hatred (any polentone who shits on us terroni can die by my sword).  *In entirely unrelated news, the political party that started off advocating for the separation of north and southern Italy into two different states and was famous for shitting on southern Italians is now the local “Immigrants suck and if they die it’s not our problem” party. Shocking, right? 

Italians abroad, especially Southern Italians, had never had a good reputation in the US, Canada and Australia. All the contrary, we often met extreme marginalisation, abuse and racism. In addition to prejudice based on ethnicity, we also had to face hatred because of our religion. In general, Italians abroad were marked as “other” and considered a lesser and unworthy ethnic group.

Italians abroad had fewer opportunities than other ethnic groups because they were discriminated against and criminalised based on ethnicity, skin colour or region of provenance alone. Needless to say, Southern Italians were the most targeted immigrant group.

As early as 1899, according to the New York Sun the average American southerner will “classify the population as whites, dagoes and negroes”, where “dago” is a racist derogatory term to describe Italians as well as Spanish and Portuguese people.

Italian immigrants who arrived to the US between the late 1870s and early 1920s were not considered white, so not on par with other immigrants from northern Europe; instead they were often being described as being “infused with African blood”. It did not help that Italian immigrants and Black Americans worked often under the same conditions on the sugar-cane, cotton and rice plantations. This only helped blur the differences between Italians and Africans. For similar reasons, during the 1906 election campaign in Mississippi, “gubernatorial candidates discussed whether Italian immigrants’ children should be placed in segregated schools”. Homer Clipper observed that Italians were ‘as black as the blackest Negro in existence’”. [x]

Italian male immigrants were the lowest paid workers (US 1920 census data). Northern Italian immigrants had a weekly income of $11.28, whereas Southern Italians earned only $9.61, which was less than the average income of Black Americans at $10.66, while white Americans had a weekly income of $14.37.

It also did not help that racist northern Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso and his students theorised that criminals were recognisable by certain physical traits which distinguished them from law-abiding individuals.

[From: The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago]

Italians only started to be regarded as “white” during the 60s and 70s, that is when they began to fight for racial balance in public schools:

Notes / Further readings:

Tenseless languages

Language that do not possess the grammatical category of “tense”, although obviously, they can communicate about past or future situations, but they do it resorting to adverbs (earlier, yesterday, tomorrow), the context (pragmatics), but mostly aspect markers, that show how a situation relates to the timeline (perfective, continuous, etc.) or modal markers (obligation, need, orders, hipothesis, etc.)

Tenseless languages are mostly analytic/isolating, but some are not. They occur mainly in East and Southeast Asia (Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Kra-Dai, Hmong-Mien), Oceania, Dyirbal (in NE Australia), Malagasy, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ewe, Fon and many Mande languages of Western Africa, most creole languages, Guarani, Mayan languages, Hopi, some Uto-Aztecan languages, and Greenlandic and other Inuit dialects. 

Tumblr, how do you call this part of the bread??

We say koxkorra in Basque and currusco in Spanish…

In Germany it depends on the region you’re from. I know the terms Remftchen, Rändchen and Kanten

This is a Mürgu

Usually it’s “Knust”, but with croissant type breads like this one I usually just call it “Ende”

I’m Spanish but I call it tetita ‘little tit’ 😂 or codo/codito ‘elbow, little elbow’

Tetita?? 🤣🤣 Nunca lo habíamos oído!

The comment section is throwing me for a loop. Like I never really thought about there being a word in so many languages for the butt of the bread? It’s so cool! And also hilarious that so many of them translate to tit or ass

The German-speaking side of Tumblr has been particularly active in this post and shared all the different words they have, which is awesome.

We’d like to know more from more places! We may have found what unites us all: the little tit or booty of the bread! lol

Unemployment rates in Europe.

KOALA

Don’t let this die

Someone in facebook also posted this too

Omg

Mediglyphics

This shit’s infuriating

Oh, this is a type of shorthand!

There are 3 main types, but from my research, this looks to be American Gregg Shorthand.

As you can see, there are set symbols for every letter.

Let’s break one of the words down:

Using the Gregg Alphabet as reference, we can see most of the letters in “atrophied” are present. But why no “o” vowel, and why is “ph” written as “f”?

Simple. In shorthand, you cut out all vowels in a word when writing it down, with the exception of words that BEGIN or END with a vowel (hence the “a” at the start being present), or like in the “i” in “atrophied”, to make it more readable when the sound could be harder to distinguish if it isn’t written. In “atrophied” if the the “i” isn’t written, it could be hard to tell if the writer meant a “fud”, “fad”, “fod” or “fid” sound, for example.

Also, since Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, you are encouraged to write down the phonetic sounds of words rather than the actual letter blends - in this case, write an “f” instead of a “ph”.

So in actuality, these aren’t just meaningless scribbles - it’s Gregg Shorthand, a writing system developed to take down notes more quickly than when written out in full, which is very useful in a medical or journalistic environment.

Some people can even write over 100 words in a minute! And, it’s been in use since John Robert Gregg invented it in 1888! Wow! So old!

Isn’t language amazing~?

Countries in the Americas that recognize the State of Palestine.

wow

SAVAGE.

haha

wait what

lmaoooo

Etymology of the Neighborhoods of Buenos Aires.

New favourite example of Latin morphology being semi-transparent to English speakers. 

For my Jewish followers, this is for you. Here’s a list of films and documentaries about Italian Jewish and the Italian Jewish community.

Some films and documentaries about about the raid of the Jewish Italian community in Rome, which took place in 1943. Out of 1259, only 16 people survived the horrors of Auschwitz.

Please, feel free to add more links.

N.B. to access the RAI website you need to create an account. Registration is free but you will need to set a VPN to get behind geographical restrictions.

VPNs are easy to get. You can find lots of free apps and Chrome and Firefox extentions that’ll do that. If you need help accessing a website just message me.