Coconuts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6921534.stm
I lolled a little at first because of the use of what i thought was just an internet slang / london / poor person word in a BBC article. Still, its interesting. As usual its an issue fraught with contradictions; not least - "Three-quarters feel their culture is being diluted by living in the UK and nearly half believe white people do not treat them as British." Well - surely nationalism (Britishness in this case) is defined by culture; and if you dont follow British culture you're less likely to be treated as British? I cant help but agree with something my dad said to me; he suggested that if he were ever to move to France, he would have to speak french and follow to a public degree at least, french customs and practices - in essence, become french. I think the same thing applies in the UK. Now obviously some blanket covering of what culture does entail is ridiculous; but sometimes its easier to tell what it doesnt entail. With a growing muslim population in the UK, should we have courts that practice Sharia law? Should we begin redoing road signs to read in Urdu as well as English? Basically what i'm trying to say is the tone of this article is there shouldnt be pressure on immigrant communities to become 'coconuts' - white on the inside - if we got rid of colours and creeds for a minute and replaced 'white' with 'moderately liberal, western, passive, and tolerant', then i really dont get the problem at all. Thats exactly what you want in your immigrant communities, surely. |
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I had to double take who posted this thread. But nvm.
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For the sake of argument if we replaced that with 'speaking with received pronunciation, pro-union, pro-monarchy' then i don't see how many people in scotland would classify themselves as British. As it is i think tags like moderately liberal, tolerant and passive are nearly meaningless as practically every country on earth would declare themselves that*. The inherent problem of trying to group together a diverse bunch of people into something as abstract as the notion of 'statehood' is that you end up using the most banal language to acheive some kind of consensus. I personally couldn't really give a damn if anyone feels british; scottish or asian. Broadly i think the problem is more to do with social exclusion than anything else; historically most communists amongst the proles would see themselves as 'communists first' rather than (if at all) nationalists, and given they were disenfranchised from society you can't really blame them. It isn't exactly surprising that many muslims don't want to associate themselves as british at this moment in time. Besides it doesn't really make sense to say 'hey be more tolerant...don't be different' *in a shocking poll the Bolivians tell the world they're proactive reactionary and completely intolerant?!? |
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The street signs in Brick Lane are already written in Bengali (/Sylheti) as well as English and in parts of soho there's a few signs in Cantonese. I'm not sure what the problem would be with more bilingual signs, although given the huge range of languages that abound, it'd be unlikely that anything would realistically challenge English as the dominant language. People would use it as the lingua franca even if they didn't use it as their mother tongue.
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You do realise youd have got the same results if you had asked the same questions to white people in Scotland?
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The whole case regarding the integration-assimilation is really an upside down question. For some reason, the modern view is that cultural integration should happen: there should be a plethora of cultures inside one culture (subcultures, whatever you call them), to allow things like languages, burkhas in passports (come'on, what's the point of having a picture in a passport if all you can see is the eyes and cloth), and such. Personally I'm a fan of assimilation: Quote:
Why on earth would someone want to move to a country where the culture is such that you don't want to adjust to the way of life there? |
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Without reading the op, and assuming this is to do with a malfunctioning coconut, I shall suggest the following:
Fruiterer (Expensive, quality normally good) Supermarket (Cheaper, hit and miss on quality) Circus (Cheap, hit and miss depends on your aim HAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAZHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAKEKEEKZOMFGLOLABMFAOROLFOFLFLFLFOLOLFOLFOLFOL FOLOMG!) |
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There's a woman on the paper requesting an improved status for the Livvi-speaking minority in Finland. Evidently it's some psedo-Finnish-Estonian-Russian dialect a few grannies here and there might speak. This is really what you get, all sorts of idiots wanting their gibberish as an official language.
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Shit peoplsay shit things, it's a fact of life. t's easy enough to always find at least one nutjob to slag off if you are against something and then imply it's some sort of giant conspiracy |
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Wait, horn did what?
I don't think street signs in other languages are very productive. In fact if it discourages people from learning english (or whatever language) it's entirely unwelcome. However realistically it's just a street sign and social pressures are going to be adequate enough to let people know that speaking their shit semi-language isn't going to be accepted. You do get some amusing shit though like the irishman who got off his speeding ticket because he demanded it be issued in irish as his rights entitle him to. Because those are the sort of rights we should be concentrating on. The right to have your speeding ticket served in a language spoken by thirty thousand people. |
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No no, it's just a shit person saying shit stuff. It's a prime example, though, how shit immigrants and shit minorities include shit people who don't want to assimilate but want to integrate their own shitness into otherwise bland and mediocre society.
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Nobody whose opinion is even vaguely worth listening to thinks that different languages are worth preserving. I mean for ****s sake even the jews got it with the tower of babel story.
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