"Amerika"

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Why do so many weird maoist third worldists seem to lack a working "C" key? I've noticed a consistent inability to spell "America" properly. Any explanations?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I always assumed it had something to do with the sapir-whorf hypothesis, I had a group of friends years ago who wrote that way but I never got a satisfactory answer about it from them.

[Comrade Sun Wukong]

It might have something to do with reminding people that the social-cohesion of Amerika is based on White Power. "Whiteness" is the national-identity of the waves of Euro-Settlers that conquered the continent, and serves as the unifying basis to justify any and all crimes against humanity.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's a 60s thing. New lefters and then Maoists in the u.s. used it. K is to make it sound German and invoke nazis I guess. Often now you see amerikkka... Which is still kinda silly, but at least the reference is a little clearer.

[Rurkel]

There's also "Afrika", which is used as a positive term. Probably MTW's just like the German language ;)

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It might have something to do with reminding people that the social-cohesion of Amerika is based on White Power. "Whiteness" is the national-identity of the waves of Euro-Settlers that conquered the continent, and serves as the unifying basis to justify any and all crimes against humanity.

So the letter "C" is a pro-white-power letter and you don't want to use it? :confused::confused::confused: or is "K" the letter of white people and using it reminds people that every elite person in "Amerikkkkkka" is white?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

So the letter "C" is a pro-white-power letter and you don't want to use it? :confused::confused::confused:

I dont think they said that, it sounds like they'd like to remind everyone that the us is a white supremacist nation when the name comes up without needing to explicitly point it out in every instance.

[Remus Bleys]

What's up with the afrika thing then?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I dont think they said that, it sounds like they'd like to remind everyone that the us is a white supremacist nation when the name comes up without needing to explicitly point it out in every instance.

What's so "white power" about the letter "k" except for the fact that a bunch of bitter, bigoted civil war veterans started a white supremacist group with that letter in their name?

It's also an incredibly ignorant and simplistic way of referring to the white supremacy of the US. White supremacy in the US is much bigger than the Klan - they were merely an instrument from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s in maintaining it in parts of the country. Isn't calling it "America" as much of a reminder of America's white supremacy anyhow, considering it's a European name for a continent initially inhabited entirely by nonwhite people who lost their land to genocide and plague? The KKK didn't invent white supremacy in the US, but British Colonists who came to the US three centuries before anyone would think of founding a group like the Klan (a group which, incidentally, is today seen as a complete joke by the ruing elites of America)

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I don't know I've never encountered that usage before. What is the origin of the word Africa?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As mentioned, Amerika looks German, and ameriKKKa (and KKKanada) evoke the KKK. Also, since "woman" includes the substring "man", it is to be replaced by "womyn", which sounds like some sort of horrible disease. Also "person" becomes "persyn". "Amerika" not good enough? Then you have the United $tates because only MTWs are smart enough to have thought of that one. Also United Snakes, because of course every culture shares the "Western" negative portrayal of snakes.

It's childish beyond belief.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I don't know I've never encountered that usage before. What is the origin of the word Africa?

According to Wiki, it's what the Roman called the Carthaginians

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

What's so "white power" about the letter "k" except for the fact that a bunch of bitter, bigoted civil war veterans started a white supremacist group with that letter in their name?

It's also an incredibly ignorant and simplistic way of referring to the white supremacy of the US. White supremacy in the US is much bigger than the Klan - they were merely an instrument from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s in maintaining it in parts of the country. Isn't calling it "America" as much of a reminder of America's white supremacy anyhow, considering it's a European name for a continent initially inhabited entirely by nonwhite people who lost their land to genocide and plague? The KKK didn't invent white supremacy in the US, but British Colonists who came to the US three centuries before anyone would think of founding a group like the Klan (a group which, incidentally, is today seen as a complete joke by the ruing elites of America)

You'll notice I dont use this technique so if you want me to justify it you're talking to the wrong person. I agree the word America in itself implies white power but clearly the rest of the population doesn't feel this way so I'm guessing this is an attempt to do just that.

[Popular Front of Judea]

The use of 'Amerika' is a reference to the beloved 1987 miniseries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(TV_miniseries)), of course.

[helot]

This is funny 'cause i don't think the letter 'c' should exist, it is superfluous. The two phonemes represented by this letter are also represented by either 'k' or 's'. Pointless redundancy imo.





According to Wiki, it's what the Roman called the Carthaginians

Yup, the Latin name for the Carthaginians was afri (singular: afer). I don't think it's derived from Latin though, there is a Phoenician term 'afar' (dust) and Carthage was ruled by the descendents of Phoenician settlers.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

You'll notice I dont use this technique so if you want me to justify it you're talking to the wrong person. I agree the word America in itself implies white power but clearly the rest of the population doesn't feel this way so I'm guessing this is an attempt to do just that.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I thought you used that spelling yourself. You seem to have a better grasp of not only theoretical reality but rhetoric than these extreme third worldists, so you're obviously not the kind of person to use such language.

[Red Commissar]

I've seen then do something like "Amerikkka" or "AmeriKKKa" more often. Sometimes they'll pair that with "United Snakes" or "United $nakes".

As to why they do it, I don't know. Maybe to drive home the racism they see in the US, maybe the capitalist domination, maybe a way for them to instigate and get a response (maybe even a troll?).

I don't really think this is common parlance though. MTW just seems big because the internet is a good echo chamber.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think Alan Ginsberg was already spelling it: Amerika, back in the early 60s. If you read any later new left writing, it's full of this sort of thing, odd spellings, slang, over the top rhetoric, etc. heated language for more heated times (and blustery times) and so it looks odd to us. I'm sure we'll get it all over again in the next wave... Imagine text-slang combined with radicaler-than-thou politics. Blogs are going to be crazier than new left magazines.

[Igor]

they really like rammstein

[synthesis]

Maybe they're trying to emulate the Bloods.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Quit being fucking squares.
I'm not sorry at all that Amerikkka or U$ offends your conservative linguistic sensibilities.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/fdcac0cc4782f7a0231a1a4c2f13d33a/tumblr_mhvih5C9D41rfbheko1_500.jpg

[Remus Bleys]

Quit being fucking squares.
I'm not sorry at all that Amerikkka or U$ offends your conservative linguistic sensibilities.

Its not that it offends us, its that it is some pretty obnoxious and stupid shit.
I just can't take things seriously that say "Amerika."

[synthesis]

I think he was joking but either way KKKILL THE FA$CI$T PER$YNS

[Popular Front of Judea]

Yeah don't such squares daddy-os. All the cool kkkat$ are doing it!


Quit being fucking squares.
I'm not sorry at all that Amerikkka or U$ offends your conservative linguistic sensibilities.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think he was joking but either way KKKILL THE FA$CI$T PER$YNS

I mean, I'm not joking. Just joking. Like that Das Racist song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LliTqJNKJrM).
What I mean, actually though, is that there's something to be said for the ambiguity of of using U$, Amerikkka, womyn, insofar as they all speak to real issues of white supremacy, sexism, capital accumulation, etc., while, at the same time, presenting a sort of petulant "Fuck you Dad!" The reality is, in my opinion, that every now and then, a radical project needs to reconnect with the indigence, the subjectivity that persists beneath the political economy, the dry analysis, and so on, because nobody would bother with the latter if it weren't for the former. Certainly condition precedes consciousness, but it's not as though one springs fully formed from the other. Rage, ennui, apathy, and exhaustion are all the negative preconditions for communist consciousness (there are, in my opinion, positive ones as well, but that's another story). It's like stealing from work, or committing an act of vandalism. It's one of the little ways of keeping yourself alive as you slog through an everyday life of unfulfilling work, banal sexist advertizing, assholes in suits looking at you like you're garbage . . .

[Skyhilist]

Also United Snakes, because of course every culture shares the "Western" negative portrayal of snakes.

You're depressing the shit out of me :(

Most people I know at least like snakes but then again most of my friends also like herpetology so they aren't representative of the asshole ophidiophobes who make up a large portion of the population and think "kill it" whenever they see one.

[Sasha]

dutch radical language from the 60's onwards also uses "logical" spelling; things like "actie" (action) are written "aktie" etc which is way more sensible as a "K" is pronounced in a word as a "keh" than with a C which should be pronounced as "see" in dutch.
i dont think people should assume to much about "criticizing white power" etc, i think its just non-conformist slang...
maybe americans took it over from us?

Edit: in fact, if we take the word actie/aktie as an example dutch radicals already progressed even further, now a days its writen "axie" in scene slang which is even more phonetically correct...

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I mean, I'm not joking. Just joking. Like that Das Racist song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LliTqJNKJrM).
What I mean, actually though, is that there's something to be said for the ambiguity of of using U$, Amerikkka, womyn, insofar as they all speak to real issues of white supremacy, sexism, capital accumulation, etc., while, at the same time, presenting a sort of petulant "Fuck you Dad!" The reality is, in my opinion, that every now and then, a radical project needs to reconnect with the indigence, the subjectivity that persists beneath the political economy, the dry analysis, and so on, because nobody would bother with the latter if it weren't for the former. Certainly condition precedes consciousness, but it's not as though one springs fully formed from the other. Rage, ennui, apathy, and exhaustion are all the negative preconditions for communist consciousness (there are, in my opinion, positive ones as well, but that's another story). It's like stealing from work, or committing an act of vandalism. It's one of the little ways of keeping yourself alive as you slog through an everyday life of unfulfilling work, banal sexist advertizing, assholes in suits looking at you like you're garbage . . .

It is true that it is good rhetorically to reconnect to the rage of the masses. I agree that in certain contexts, it makes sense. If I went to a protest, I might just have a "stop U$ war profiteers" banner, but it seems childish if a person does it in their analysis. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and numerous other thinkers managed to analyze society without sounding like they were in grade school. I would also see "U$" as different from "Amerika" too as putting a K in America doesn't really emphasize America's white supremacy or patriarchy either, except in the most childish manner. The white supremacy of the US today is qualitatively different than the white supremacy of the KKK, and not recognizing that difference risks alienating people smart enough to see it. It's the intellectual equivalent of equating our suffering at the hands of police at a protest to the suffering of the victims of the gestapo - yeah both are cases of police violence but they are qualitatively different, and rhetorically ignoring that makes you less credible, not more.

It also seems to suppose that you need to add something to "America" to emphasize the racial supremacy implicit in this federal republic - the fact that this country is called "America", the name given to it by white colonists, is evidence enough of white Imperialism.

[Sasha]

So based on what I have written above my bet is that it all started out with a "movement" to make language more phonetically correct/logical/accessible to proles and that 3th worldists cs made the same mistake in interperting the reasons for it as many in this thread and started with the silly amerikkka stuff...

[Nakidana]

This is funny 'cause i don't think the letter 'c' should exist, it is superfluous. The two phonemes represented by this letter are also represented by either 'k' or 's'. Pointless redundancy imo.

How are you going to spell checkmate then? Shekmate?

[Remus Bleys]

How are you going to spell checkmate then? Shekmate?
"CH" would obviously have its own character aside to it.

And you claim to be a part of the intelligentsia.

smh

[Nakidana]

"CH" would obviously have its own character aside to it.

And you claim to be a part of the intelligentsia.

smh

Of course, removing the character C to simplify the language and then adding a new character to simplif...wait a minute...

[Crux]

I spell it Amerika all the time. Granted that's how it's spelled in Swedish. I'm sorry, $W€dish.
Of course, true revolutionaries only use wingdings.

[synthesis]

Sorry for this off-topicness, but I've wanted to say this for awhile and this seems like a good excuse.

My current theory about English is that we could get by with only two vowels: a and u, with a y for most 'i' sounds. There are a few exceptions, mostly French loanwords, but I can apply this rule to pretty much any English word you can think of that is not directly taken from another language. ('au' can approximate if not replicate the 'oh' sound, for example.) Diphthongs are crucial here.

Feel free to challenge me with words you want to see adapted to this concept, in another thread or on my user page, and I'll spell them with just 'a' and 'u'. I've never come across a word I couldn't fit to this schema, again with the exception of direct loanwords.

I started thinking about this theory when I was considering George Bernard Shaw's example intended to show how arbitrary the English language is when it comes to spelling and pronunciation: he proposed that "ghoti" could be an alternate spelling for "fish." ('gh' as in 'cough', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in nation.)

The 'gh' and 'ti' sounds are relatively easy to decipher once you've learned the context in which they are pronounced that way - 'gh' being 'f' at the end of a syllable, 'ti' generally being 'sh' at the beginning of the second or last syllable.

But vowels in English are just a clusterfuck. Even without reducing English to two and a half vowels, we could completely do away with the vowel 'e', which is both the most frequently used letter in the alphabet as well as the most amorphous in terms of pronunciation.


Most people I know at least like snakes but then again most of my friends also like herpetology so they aren't representative of the asshole ophidiophobes who make up a large portion of the population and think "kill it" whenever they see one.

I think snake aficionados and researchers should try to figure out a different word for themselves besides "herpetologist." I always forget what it means and assume it has something to do with being employed by Pfizer and working on new forms of Valtrex. What about "ophidiologist"?


I mean, I'm not joking. Just joking. Like that Das Racist song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LliTqJNKJrM).
What I mean, actually though, is that there's something to be said for the ambiguity of of using U$, Amerikkka, womyn, insofar as they all speak to real issues of white supremacy, sexism, capital accumulation, etc., while, at the same time, presenting a sort of petulant "Fuck you Dad!" The reality is, in my opinion, that every now and then, a radical project needs to reconnect with the indigence, the subjectivity that persists beneath the political economy, the dry analysis, and so on, because nobody would bother with the latter if it weren't for the former. Certainly condition precedes consciousness, but it's not as though one springs fully formed from the other. Rage, ennui, apathy, and exhaustion are all the negative preconditions for communist consciousness (there are, in my opinion, positive ones as well, but that's another story). It's like stealing from work, or committing an act of vandalism. It's one of the little ways of keeping yourself alive as you slog through an everyday life of unfulfilling work, banal sexist advertizing, assholes in suits looking at you like you're garbage . . .

Honestly, I think that the best way to deal with the societal connotations of "problematic" words is to either stop using them or to find a good synonym to replace a genuinely problematic term. Arbitrarily respelling words like "person" (which comes from the Latin persona, meaning a mask worn by an actor, not anything to do with male offspring) might get some people to think about the issues you're trying to address by respelling them, but in many other contexts people might just dismiss everything else you say because they think that arbitrary respelling is ridiculous and ineffectual, which for the sake of honesty I think is often the case.

This is not to say that people shouldn't use spellings like "womyn" and "herstory" and whatever else you might call, uh, "progressive linguistics," regardless of my personal feelings about that. It's just delusional to think that people are "offended" by it - which implies that it's somehow dangerous and subversive - because most people who aren't sympathetic to it will just find it amusing and go on with their lives; some might also go on to dismiss any valid points you may have made because you've used those spellings.

[baronci]

Misspelling words isn't revolutionary. It just makes you look like a tool and a teenage wannabe-radical.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Misspelling words isn't revolutionary. It just makes you look like a tool and a teenage wannabe-radical.

I may be a teenage wannabe-radical, but I understand that grammar is not a game :mad:

http://i.qkme.me/3s5ok2.jpg

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Misspelling words isn't revolutionary. It just makes you look like a tool and a teenage wannabe-radical.

You know what's worse?
And just to be clear, I'm not accusing you of this.

Acting as though "incorrect" spelling or grammar represents some sort of moral or political failing.

That shit is bourgeois prejudice of the worst sort.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

The origin of the word 'Africa' is the Roman term for a strip of land in Libya they found inhabited by a very small tribe known as the 'Afri'.

The origin of the word 'Asia' is the Roman term for the far-western edge of Anatolia.

Basically later Europeans would coin these regional terms as 'everything south of us' and 'everything east of us' respectively. In other words, it's geographical eurocentrism to the max.


Maybe they're trying to emulate the Bloods.

I was thinking of that as soon as I read the first few posts of this thread! Crips don't write the letters 'CK' in conjunction because they carry the annotation 'crip killer', a term the bloods are fond of using.

Maybe the MTWists are hella gangsta beardnecks who leave 'c's out of their words because it stands for capitalism? :confused:

[Klaatu]

The use of 'Amerika' is a reference to the beloved 1987 miniseries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(TV_miniseries)), of course.

I have this entire TV series taped on VHS somewhere around here...

This was way back when we were afraid of the Russians. (seems like AmeriKKKa always seems to have the unique ability to find new enemies)

oops AmeriKKKa wasn't too original :grin:

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Imagine text-slang combined with radicaler-than-thou politics. Blogs are going to be crazier than new left magazines.

The fucking nightmare vision of the future - tear it all down, burn the mobile phones; shoot the social media.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Language is but one of the many fields of class struggle. It serves as the most elementary form of communication and to win the battle of language is to win the minds of the broad working class. It might not mean much, but isn't every time someone says Amerika instead of America just a tiny victory because it helps to solidify the illegitimacy of U.$ imperial reign?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Language is but one of the many fields of class struggle. It serves as the most elementary form of communication and to win the battle of language is to win the minds of the broad working class. It might not mean much, but isn't every time someone says Amerika instead of America just a tiny victory because it helps to solidify the illegitimacy of U.$ imperial reign?

I didn't even know Amerika was some anti-American imperialism slander until I read this thread. I hardly see how typing it on the internet to people who are largely more sympathetic to American imperialism will help (probably will be counterproductive because it looks stupid).

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Language is but one of the many fields of class struggle. It serves as the most elementary form of communication and to win the battle of language is to win the minds of the broad working class. It might not mean much, but isn't every time someone says Amerika instead of America just a tiny victory because it helps to solidify the illegitimacy of U.$ imperial reign?

Not really. How does it solidify the illegitimacy? The writing of a word is in no way going to affect the superstructure of power.

I agree that language is very much a field of struggle - it deals with the very formulations of people's thoughts, dreams and rationale, but replacing a c with a k is not part of this struggle.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I didn't even know Amerika was some anti-American imperialism slander until I read this thread. I hardly see how typing it on the internet to people who are largely more sympathetic to American imperialism will help (probably will be counterproductive because it looks stupid).




Not really. How does it solidify the illegitimacy? The writing of a word is in no way going to affect the superstructure of power.

I agree that language is very much a field of struggle - it deals with the very formulations of people's thoughts, dreams and rationale, but replacing a c with a k is not part of this struggle.

Someone meantioned the Wooff hypothesis earlier but I think I'll quote him at large to demonstrate the purpose:


Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir 1958 [1929], p. 69)


The use of "Amerika" occurs in a very specific political context, it is a very small rejection of America by refusing to play to it's linguistic rules. Sure it doesn't do much, but of course building consciousness will not occur in one big wave but rather as the accumulation of small changes in the way we think of our world.

[Tenka]

Sorry for this off-topicness, but I've wanted to say this for awhile and this seems like a good excuse.

My current theory about English is that we could get by with only two vowels: a and u, with a y for most 'i' sounds. There are a few exceptions, mostly French loanwords, but I can apply this rule to pretty much any English word you can think of that is not directly taken from another language. ('au' can approximate if not replicate the 'oh' sound, for example.) Diphthongs are crucial here.

Feel free to challenge me with words you want to see adapted to this concept, in another thread or on my user page, and I'll spell them with just 'a' and 'u'. I've never come across a word I couldn't fit to this schema, again with the exception of direct loanwords.

I started thinking about this theory when I was considering George Bernard Shaw's example intended to show how arbitrary the English language is when it comes to spelling and pronunciation: he proposed that "ghoti" could be an alternate spelling for "fish." ('gh' as in 'cough', 'o' as in 'women', and 'ti' as in nation.)

The 'gh' and 'ti' sounds are relatively easy to decipher once you've learned the context in which they are pronounced that way - 'gh' being 'f' at the end of a syllable, 'ti' generally being 'sh' at the beginning of the second or last syllable.

But vowels in English are just a clusterfuck. Even without reducing English to two and a half vowels, we could completely do away with the vowel 'e', which is both the most frequently used letter in the alphabet as well as the most amorphous in terms of pronunciation.


Ay must say thys mannyr uf(auf? v?) spaylyng whyti yu suggayst hardly dus tha languaj justys.

French loanwords make up a great lot of English, but I tend to forget which are loaned. Modern English would not look anything as it does if not for that old Norman rule and other French influences on the language. Also, I don't appreciate how you pronounce "nation" apparently with only two syllables. I realise that's common, but... :cursing:. Also, do you pronounce "women" as wimmen? Oh god....

Anyway, for my part I am amused by Maoi$t misspellings and use them myself from time to time for humorous effect.

[baronci]

The origin of the word 'Africa' is the Roman term for a strip of land in Libya they found inhabited by a very small tribe known as the 'Afri'.

The origin of the word 'Asia' is the Roman term for the far-western edge of Anatolia.

Basically later Europeans would coin these regional terms as 'everything south of us' and 'everything east of us' respectively. In other words, it's geographical eurocentrism to the max.


I'm not sure if there's really anything wrong with this though. There are thousands of different languages on Earth, each one with their own geographical words. The word "Europe" itself derives from the Ancient Greeks and basically means 'everything West of us', nobody seems to have a problem with that.

[synthesis]

Nation would be "nayshun," and I'd spell women as "waummun" or "wumman."*

As for your sentence, I would do it as such: "Ay must say thus mannur uv spallang whych yu sujast hardly duz tha languaj justus." It kind of looks like a mix between pseudo-medieval English, text-speak and the spelling used by mid-90s rap artists in the titles of their songs and albums.

*I'm not saying this system should actually be adopted; it's more just intended to expand on Shaw's "ghoti" idea - a way to try to get people to think about the bizarreness of the English language as an organic development.

Also, by "direct loanwords" I'm referring to terms like "petit bourgeoisie" and so on.

--

edit: I just realized I misunderstood this part:


Also, I don't appreciate how you pronounce "nation" apparently with only two syllables. I realise that's common, but... :cursing:. Also, do you pronounce "women" as wimmen? Oh god....

The way you phrase this seems to suggest that you think I was just making that stuff up. Read this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti); I'm not sure what pronunciation you're working with, but those are the correct pronunciations in the U.S., and people have been talking about this subject ("constructed words used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling") since at least 1855, if not earlier.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Nation would be "nayshun," and I'd spell women as "waummun" or "wumman."*

As for your sentence, I would do it as such: "Ay must say thus mannur uv spallang whych yu sujast hardly duz tha languaj justus." It kind of looks like a mix between pseudo-medieval English, text-speak and the spelling used by mid-90s rap artists in the titles of their songs and albums.

*I'm not saying this system should actually be adopted; it's more just intended to expand on Shaw's "ghoti" idea - a way to try to get people to think about the bizarreness of the English language as an organic development.

Also, by "direct loanwords" I'm referring to terms like "petit bourgeoisie" and so on.

I'll have none of your gibberish shit-speak. I don't even fucking pronounce those things even closely to your bizarre attempted renditions - and this is a serious (not to mention just how fucking hideous it looks!) problem of utterly rapaciously ravaging a language back to some sort of warped phonetic alphabet (would all dialects have their own writing, then?)

[Red Commissar]

By coincidence I found an old comic boo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cla$$war)k which uses $ in the place of S's. I thought of this thread when I saw it.

[synthesis]

I'll have none of your gibberish shit-speak. I don't even fucking pronounce those things even closely to your bizarre attempted renditions - and this is a serious (not to mention just how fucking hideous it looks!) problem of utterly rapaciously ravaging a language back to some sort of warped phonetic alphabet (would all dialects have their own writing, then?)

I can't tell if you are joking or you just didn't read the rest of the post that you quoted.

[DasFapital]

Replace the "c" with "KKK". It is the only way we KKKan overthrow the KKKraKKKer patriarKKKy that rules over the United $nakes of AmerKKKa!

[Popular Front of Judea]

Yes We KKKan!


Replace the "c" with "KKK". It is the only way we KKKan overthrow the KKKraKKKer patriarKKKy that rules over the United $nakes of AmerKKKa!

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I'm not sure if there's really anything wrong with this though. There are thousands of different languages on Earth, each one with their own geographical words.

How does this relate to what I said about terms being Eurocentric? There is certainly a problem with eurocentric geography because it spreads subjective misinformation about geological facts (and also arises from a Roman-perceived bias of the world). There's nothing wrong with criticising terminology once in a while.


The word "Europe" itself derives from the Ancient Greeks and basically means 'everything West of us', nobody seems to have a problem with that.

That's because 'Europe' did not refer to western Europe, and hence did not stand for 'Anything to the west of us' but a particular region; it referred to the entire European peninsula. 'Africa' and 'Asia', on the other hand, were originally just terms for tiny Roman controlled regions immediately outside Europe. It is eurocentric because it centers around Europe. Hell, making the European peninsula out to be a continent all on it's own is a eurocentrism (Europe and Asia share the same continental plate, and what is considered Asia has a far larger amount of cultural diversity, ethnic diversity and population total than Europe. Naming Europe as a particular world region? Normal thing. But splitting Europe from Asia as a separate continent, while not doing the same for far more ethnically diverse India which by the way is a separate continent geographically, is an arbitrarism in the extreme). So unlike the term 'Europe', 'Africa' and 'Asia' did and still do, euphemistically, mean "everything from Europe to there" and "everything from Europe east". There is a difference between these meanings - a eurocentric difference.

You should search up some stuff about linguistic relativity. There's some good information on how these arbitrarisms came to be and how they can affect perception of the world (e.g. 'Asian' being a singular ethnic category, like 'French' or 'German'. You will not see this line of thinking in Japan where being Filipino can get you attacked by racists).


Back on topic, ₤abour Ari$toKKKra€y has poisoned our wonderful peoples' thread! QUICK! Shave the beards! Comb our hair to stay in line with the socialist lifestyle!

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You know what's worse?
And just to be clear, I'm not accusing you of this.

Acting as though "incorrect" spelling or grammar represents some sort of moral or political failing.

That shit is bourgeois prejudice of the worst sort.

Well, what happens in private literary circles behind closed doors in no concern of mine, but when conducting propaganda, writing about the "AmeriKKKan Kop$" and so on and so on is a political crime, since it pretty much guarantees that no one outside a very special student and activist milieu will take you seriously. Of course, the third-worldists don't really address themselves to the proletariat, or to anyone but self-flagellating student radicals really, so perhaps their $pelling works for them. I don't know. There really don't seem to be that many MTWs, but alright, glass houses, I know.

Writing propaganda like you have your head stuck in a Derrida book is also a crime in my 'umble opinion.

[La Comédie Noire]

You can do it, but keep in mind you aren't going to be shifting paradigms or engaging in class struggle. Probably just confusing most, pissing off a few, and getting high fives from the rest. I've found most people rid themselves of this habit after awhile because it gets so tiresome having to do it all the time.

[Tim Cornelis]

How are you going to spell checkmate then? Shekmate?

Tjekmate.

[Devrim]

How are you going to spell checkmate then? Shekmate?

Many languages have a separate letter for this sound, for example 'ç' in Turkish, or 'č' in Czech.

Devrim

[Devrim]

I spell it Amerika all the time.

Yes, it is the same in Turkish, which also uses 'Afrika' too, and I am sure with a lot of other languages. When I saw it I just thought it was people who weren't that familiar with English making spelling mistakes.

Devrim

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Rofl. Wait.

Maoist Third-worldists use the fucking Sapir-whorf hypothesis to justify their dumb swapping of a 'C' with a 'K'? That's fucking disgraceful; spitting on the most interesting facet of languages.

Languages affect the way we perceive the world, this is true, but drop the metaphysical bullshit. The only thing people are going perceive when they read the words 'Amerikan Fa$ci$m' is the moron behind a screen that wrote them.

Also, hɪə! hæv jo stʏpɨd "kəɹɛkt spɛlɪŋ". wɹ͡ɪtən ɪŋglɨʃ ɪz wæk ɪn təːmz ɨv fənɛtɪk ækʲəɹɨsɪi͡ ɛnɪi͡wæɪ͡.

[Red Commissar]

Replace the "c" with "KKK". It is the only way we KKKan overthrow the KKKraKKKer patriarKKKy that rules over the United $nakes of AmerKKKa!


Yes We KKKan!

They seem to have a logic (yes) behind this, from the serious ones I see (as serious as it can be), they don't do the c/ck -> KKK thing if it occurs at the beginning of the word and only substitute one K. So it would come out as "craKKKer" or "kraKKKer" depending on what the writer wants.

[Invader Zim]

Also, since "woman" includes the substring "man", it is to be replaced by "womyn", which sounds like some sort of horrible disease. [...]

It's childish beyond belief.

And also etymologically ignorant. The word 'man', historically speaking, means 'one', 'person' or 'human', in its original form it included the prefix 'wēr', which gendered the term to being male. Thus, 'man' was 'wērmann' - 'male person'. Females, on the other hand carried the prefix 'wīf', and in full 'wīfmann' so 'female person'. As language has evolved the second 'n' has been dropped, the 'wif' has morphed into 'wo' and the 'wer' has dropped out of use. Nevertheless, by inserting the 'y' to alter the term 'man', a person is, in fact, not emasculating the term but dehumanising it while leaving the gendered element of the term unaltered. What would be a more meaningful, though just as silly, banal and pointless, would be to restore the prefix when discussing men.

[Questionable]

I suppose I can appreciate the argument behind language shaping our view of the world, but I think I'd much rather be changing the objective conditions on the ground by way of strikes or some such, than making sure I use "k" in place of "c" on Revleft.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

KKKrazy!

Actually, I think that many people here simply assume that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - and a fairly extreme form that Sapir and Whorf did not argue for at that - is true. But as I recall it, the hypothesis is fairly dubious. At any rate, it would follow from the extreme version that people seem to be assuming that Russian, where the words for "man" and "woman" have nothing in common, is somehow more egalitarian than English. And that, simply, does not seem to be the case. And let's not even go into how MTWs can themselves be misogynistic.

[Devrim]

KKKrazy!

Actually, I think that many people here simply assume that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - and a fairly extreme form that Sapir and Whorf did not argue for at that - is true. But as I recall it, the hypothesis is fairly dubious. At any rate, it would follow from the extreme version that people seem to be assuming that Russian, where the words for "man" and "woman" have nothing in common, is somehow more egalitarian than English. And that, simply, does not seem to be the case. And let's not even go into how MTWs can themselves be misogynistic.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is absurd, and I believe is generally considered to have been discredited. If it were true, it would imply that speakers of Turkish (a language without gender where there are no words for he, or she even) are less sexist than speakers of German (a heavily gendered language). As far as I have noticed, this is not true.

Devrim

[helot]

How are you going to spell checkmate then? Shekmate?

The funny thing being that the digraph 'ch' represents 3 distinct sounds, /dʒ/ (like in sandwich, the same sound as is found with the J in July), /tʃ/ (like in chips) and as an aspirited 'k' (like in ache). The aspirited K could be represented by kh ('h' being the symbol for aspiration), the /dʒ/ could be represented by the letter J and then have a distinct letter for /tʃ/.



Your claims that letters representing distinct phonemes would make the English language more complex is nonsense. Even if there was an increase in the number of letters in our alphabet them all representing single, distinct sounds would drastically reduce the amount of spelling mistakes and mispronunciations. Of course such a change won't occur due to some individual's insistence but only if the majority of speakers change how they use language.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Pretty much. Actually, due to the vicissitudes of history, the speaker of heavily gendered Germanic and Romance languages, as well as the Basque isolate which is also, as far as I know, gendered, are probably less likely to be sexist than speakers of certain genderless languages, due to the high level of material development in Western Europe.

Which just underscores that in matters of sexism, consciousness is a reflection of the material conditions, and sexism isn't caused by using "bad" terms.

[D_Loco]

Why do so many weird maoist third worldists seem to lack a working "C" key? I've noticed a consistent inability to spell "America" properly. Any explanations?

look here in the philippines we have our own alphabet and you cannot find litter "C" on it, like China we spell it "Tsina", Culture we wrote it "Kultura" but if we have an international dialogue or conversation of course we used same text as you do,,, being a third world country has nothing to do with that!

[Leftsolidarity]

look here in the philippines we have our own alphabet and you cannot find litter "C" on it, like China we spell it "Tsina", Culture we wrote it "Kultura" but if we have an international dialogue or conversation of course we used same text as you do,,, being a third world country has nothing to do with that!

He's talking about the "leftist" tendency of 'Maoist-Third-Worldists' (who most if not all live in Western countries) and purposefully replace "c" with "k" or "kkk" to make some sort of point.

[Sasha]

Pretty much. Actually, due to the vicissitudes of history, the speaker of heavily gendered Germanic and Romance languages, as well as the Basque isolate which is also, as far as I know, gendered, are probably less likely to be sexist than speakers of certain genderless languages, due to the high level of material development in Western Europe.

Which just underscores that in matters of sexism, consciousness is a reflection of the material conditions, and sexism isn't caused by using "bad" terms.


hmm, i disagree, Finnish is a non-gendered language and for a way more patriarchal society than the dutch, germans or english they seemed when i was there far less sexist in everyday interactions between males and females, i did get the feeling that the gender neutral language was an important factor in that.

[Igor]

hmm, i disagree, Finnish is a non-gendered language and for a way more patriarchal society than the dutch, germans or english they seemed when i was there far less sexist in everyday interactions between males and females, i did get the feeling that the gender neutral language was an important factor in that.

finnish traditions of egalitarianism are largely shared with/inspired by sweden, while swedish is a gendered language so that might be overplaying the effect of gender neutrality a bit

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

hmm, i disagree, Finnish is a non-gendered language and for a way more patriarchal society than the dutch, germans or english they seemed when i was there far less sexist in everyday interactions between males and females, i did get the feeling that the gender neutral language was an important factor in that.

Finland is also a region of high capitalist development, almost part of the imperial metropole. I think a more pertinent comparison is between the Netherlands, for example, and KKKambodia (forgive me, I had to). Khmer has no grammatical gender, but sexism seems alive and well in Cambodia.

[Devrim]

hmm, i disagree, Finnish is a non-gendered language and for a way more patriarchal society than the dutch, germans or english they seemed when i was there far less sexist in everyday interactions between males and females, i did get the feeling that the gender neutral language was an important factor in that.

This isn't the point though. It is not about how it seems to a casual observer. For there to be something in this idea, societies of non-gendered language speakers must be less sexist than societies of gendered language speakers in general, not through the casual observations of one person with one group of speakers of a non-gendered language. You say that about Sweden, and I say that Turkish society is generally more sexist than German society. We both have conflicting examples. You need to show more than this.

Devrim

[Devrim]

finnish traditions of egalitarianism are largely shared with/inspired by sweden, while swedish is a gendered language so that might be overplaying the effect of gender neutrality a bit

Another way to do it Psycho would be to compare two groups that were similar in other ways, and to see if there was a difference between them as above. Igor implies not.

Devrim

[Tenka]

helot:

Your claims that letters representing distinct phonemes would make the English language more complex is nonsense. Even if there was an increase in the number of letters in our alphabet them all representing single, distinct sounds would drastically reduce the amount of spelling mistakes and mispronunciations. Of course such a change won't occur due to some individual's insistence but only if the majority of speakers change how they use language.

This was mentioned before, but... what about the many dialects? Clearly, not everyone pronounces these "distinct sounds" the same way. It would likely be even more confusing with more letters; it would take a massive endeavour on the part of some sort of absolute central power to stop old dialects making it unworkable and new dialects developing. Also, an uncountable number of books would have to be rewritten to be understood if everyone adopted this manner of spelling, and Anglos would recognise cognates with other languages less and less.... I know you're not seriously suggesting this, but still I feel the need to moan about the various problems it would present with.

[Homo Songun]

Language is but one of the many fields of class struggle. It serves as the most elementary form of communication and to win the battle of language is to win the minds of the broad working class. It might not mean much, but isn't every time someone says Amerika instead of America just a tiny victory because it helps to solidify the illegitimacy of U.$ imperial reign?

'At one time there were "Marxists" in our country who asserted that the railways left to us after the October Revolution were bourgeois railways, that it would be unseemly for us Marxists to use them, that they should be torn up and new, "proletarian" railways built. For this they were nicknamed "troglodytes".' Joseph Stalin (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950/jun/20.htm)

[Thirsty Crow]

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is absurd, and I believe is generally considered to have been discredited. If it were true, it would imply that speakers of Turkish (a language without gender where there are no words for he, or she even) are less sexist than speakers of German (a heavily gendered language). As far as I have noticed, this is not true.

Devrim
Definitely, the hypothesis has been rejected.

[TaylorS]

IMO if you do the "AmeriKKKa" shit I find it hard to take you seriously. It smacks of the bourgeois wannabe-radical edgy college students I ran into in my college days. :rolleyes: