What if the whole world spoke only English?

I've been thinking about this article for a few days now. I even emailed the link to one of my old professors to see what he thought about it. I know no one actually reads this because this blog has absolutely no real theme, no consistency, no interesting images, and I post maybe once every six months. Well, on that note, for the invisible reader, this article is about English becoming a global language. The author argues that its somewhat politically correct to fear the loss of native languages with people moving into cities and all that, but that losing language actually doesn't have anything to do with losing culture- that this concern for language is a purely aesthetic concern. He also argues that the only reason we have this total hang-up against it is because English automatically has colonial associations, so we would be much less perturbed by the idea of one global language if that language were, say, Inuit, instead of English. I was really excited to stumble upon this article because in my last four months here (in China, I'm living in China now), I still haven't gotten used to the fact that there's so much English around. It's one of those things that I know-- I've traveled quite a bit, and its not 'surprising' to me, per se, but it just pops into my head once and again. It's like being amazed that the world is so big and there are so many people in it- it's something you already KNOW, but is still amazing, every time you think about it. This is how I am with seeing English around. Of course I know all the historical reasons that led up to English being such a huge force here, but it still feels so strange and arbitrary sometimes! Like going to an ex-pat bar in Hong Kong and hearing all these different people speaking English is tons of different accents. All these people from all over the world, and the default being English. It makes me realize (again, and again and again) how strange it is for us Americans, to never HAVE to learn another language. This must seriously make us so different from the rest of the world, have such a different frame of mind. I was eating lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant today reading "The Blind Assassin" when suddenly I heard The Star Spangled Banner playing on a Chinese news station on the TV. The song was dubbed in Chinese, though. So bizarre.

That felt good, actually. Maybe I'll start updating here more often. Pictures, rants, all that jazz.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html

PS. Since Mad Men is over, I need a new fix. I'm starting on "In Treatment" tonight... we'll see how it goes

PPS. I've been thinking it over, and how can language NOT be a part of culture though? This past summer I helped my mother translate a Bengali short story into English for this online literary magazine and it was so much more difficult than I would've imagined. I knew all the right words, but it just didn't sound the same. Words have completely different tones and implications in different languages. I feel like a different person almost when I speak in Bengali, my other self. Is this just me not sufficiently being able to express myself in both languages? What's lost in it?

gilmore girls nostalgia...

The last couple days, I have been on a constant Gilmore Girls kick. I started watching this show at age 13, and continued watching faithfully for the first three seasons or so. It was a good influence on me, I think. Here was a smart, witty character who knew as much about Dickens as she did 80s pop culture… pretty much the exact image I was trying for in my early teens. Actually, forget trying. Impressing others really didn’t require much. Since 90% of the other teenagers around were too obsessed with Kate Spade backpacks and John Mayer to read, it was pretty easy to stand out. I read a lot of books and knew about music played with real instruments- pretty much all I needed to gain the respect of parents, teachers, whoever. As a teenager, you could be precocious. By 14, I read the completed works of Oscar Wilde, tried to get into Virginia Woolf. I was lucky to have a few friends who were equally interested, so we could throw out Dorothy Parker verses to each other and then snuggle up and watch Vincent Gallo movies. Twenty-two year olds can’t be precocious. Maybe you still have potential, but no one really cares about what you could do anymore, just if what you are currently doing is respectable or not. In your twenties, you have fewer excuses. The other day at school (this time as a teacher), I was having a particularly off-day and couldn’t help myself from crying. Several of the other teachers in the office tried to offer me solace and asked me my age. I muttered “21” without even thinking about it, and it took me a second to realize I’ve been 22 for eight months. She exclaimed, “Oh! You’re still a baby!” and I felt better. Yes, yes I am still a baby and I’d like to stay one for awhile, please. But why am I already starting to lie about my age? When you’re a precocious teenager, you’re special and there aren’t too many of you. But then, over time, like when you finally get to that elite college you’ve been trying for all this time, you realize you’re a little less special. By the time you graduate, you’re hardly special at all (like me, I participated in almost zero extracurricular activities and my GPA was astonishingly average and I certainly wasn’t even the most avid reader in my school). And now, post-graduation? I am suddenly jealous of people who were definitely non-precocious teenagers eight years back, people who happen to be doing more interesting things than I am. Why didn’t I go to art school to become a children’s book illustrator? Anyway, watching Gilmore Girls is like watching the end of an era for me, the last time I was smart, the last time being smart was good enough. The last time I thought I could make a swift transition from the best reader in high school to senior officer at the UN. Ah well. Makes me wonder— if Rory were real, what would she be doing now?

Well

I completely forgot I had this. I do that a lot, I think I've signed up for a million different sites over the years, including orkut (India's facebook) and Going and xanga and Twitter, and after a month I hardly ever go back. Which of course makes me wonder about how much shit there is floating around on in the internet somewhere about me, but since there's already so much, it doesn't really matter. It's like this friend I have who's still afraid of getting Facebook because she hates the idea of having her email address and information stored somewhere... but that in return reminds me of this project they had at school where there were hidden video cameras everywhere, but basically when there's a million times more footage than people watching, it all becomes somewhat meaningless, right? and that's how I feel about the online information being saved... since there's way too much information than people looking at it, it's like it doesn't even exist. My laptop stopped working a good two weeks ago and I think anyone else would have freaked out by now and tried to have gotten it fixed, but maybe it's just that I'm lazy (or that I've pretty much moved into my bf's room) but I feel like I don't even mind all the music and photos and documents being erased, because half of it's online anyway, right?

Anyway, the reason I found this again was just because I found a new blog I adore.
http://thesnailandthecyclops.blogspot.com/

I want to start spending more time decorating and making pretty things. That's my new goal. I have unlimited free time now and while I do enjoy what I do (which is mostly reading The House of Mirth and watching movies), I keep thinking I should study for the GREs or learn to knit or something. Maybe this summer I'll have something going. I need to find some sort of job first.

I love this kid

17 Year-Old Gay Vermont Youth Speaks Out On Marriage Equality
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/2629934.html

fashion protest?

I want you (and by you I mean the literally one or two people who may read this) to understand that very little thinking goes into these blog posts, which is why more often that not I end up posting something trivial to bitch about, but I don't quite know myself what in particular bothers me. It's more like I'm vaguely disturbed and instead of thinking about it at a deeper level, I'd rather just put it out there even while my thoughts are still fuzzy and undecided.

And so, HOW WEIRD IS THIS AD? I guess a major point of anxiety for me has been trying to reconcile my love of aesthetics and fashion with my interest in politics. Not that they're necessarily at odds with each other, but yes, sometimes the worship of fashion gods and labels feels extravagant and wasteful in comparison to subalterns and postcoloniality and blahblahblah. But looking at this ad sort of clarifies for me (just like that Erin Wasson image) just how distant the world of Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld is from the one of actual political protests and activism and ANGER. It's, once again, almost mocking.

It reminds me of this piece on hipsterdom from Adbusters, that states "Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion... The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution." (I'm equating the 'hipster' with the 'fashion-conscious' because even if the hipster is set up as the anti-label, they feed off each other so its essentially the same thing). My point? That we are at a loss for actual movements, that the well of protests has run dry and now the only thing worth marching for isn't human rights or protecting the earth or or... anything like that, but consumerism. The only thing worth protesting is the cut and design of textiles as a sign of social status?

At least, that's the message I get from this.

Images

Meulen Hotel in El Calafate
Perito Merino Glacier
Iguazu Falls
Buenos Aires

Back from the Southern Hemisphere

And I don't know what to do with myself.

Before leaving, I thought that a trip might be really productive just because I seriously needed to get out of Poughkeepsie. It worked out better than I had expected. I still don't have any idea about a career path, but at least now I feel motivated to find work, just so I can save up to head back to Buenos Aires for at least a few months. I also want to learn Spanish.

At the hostel, one of the people I met was a fairly successful writer working on a project about global belief systems. I was a little jealous because she seemed pretty young and said that she didn't have any unpaid internships. Editors just called her based on her work in college. She seemed to have a pretty easy go of it, getting paid to travel for a full year and conduct interviews. But when I looked up the project (utruthproject.org) I had some misgivings about it... instead of attempting to "discover commonalities within the human drama that supersede surface differences" so many of the answers just reinforce past assumptions, such as women from Southeast Asia claiming that family is most important. Maybe it was just the wording that bothered me ("going where no woman has gone before") as if leaving the United States is some huge accomplishment, or that people from other nations are just scenery to be discovered and not "men" or "women" themselves. When I spoke to her about it, she said that she disliked Southeast Asia the most because people there seemed more cold and unwilling to respond to her. But if the only way to get answers out of them is to ask them to fill in the blank: I believe that ___, the wording already allows for very few answers. Also, why should people be willing to share their deepest beliefs to a near stranger, before said stranger has made any attempt to humble herself and respect the people she meets? I think her intentions are admirable, but its so privileged and kind of egotistical to assume that all the people she meets should respond to her in the way that she's looking for. Her inability to understand that, and her inability to accept potential language/cultural barriers kind of shows how her project is faulty.

I guess she can be lucky as a writer, but that doesn't make her that much more enlightened than the rest of us.