three names

I have had three legal names, and the name I am happiest with, as it turns out, is the one I gave myself. I know it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, because coincidentally that name was also the one I already had.

The hardest thing about going through the process of changing my name is what a hassle it is, every time. There are questions that I don’t want to answer (questions like: why are you changing your name?). It costs a lot of money, especially the bit where I need to get a new passport issued, and I have to send off to N.S.W. to get my birth certificate reissued again. It’s inconvenient. The transition period especially is a pain, and due to being overseas I’m still in that period, where my chosen name is where I can put it but that other name is all over everything that my passport touches. One of the first things I’m doing when I get back to Australia is changing my passport, again.

But this is the most comfortable I’ve ever been in a name. I didn’t realise how uncomfortable I was with my own name until I changed it and changed it again, and suddenly it fit me. And every moment of annoyance that came before has been totally worth it, because it’s my name and even thinking about my name makes me feel good, even though it’s been my name my whole life and it didn’t fit until I shifted where it sat.

I use my legal name now a lot more than I ever used to. Before this name, I defaulted far more frequently to Steph or Stephie Penguin, and I'd never put my family name on things, not any of the ones that came before, not for privacy reasons, but because it didn't fit. I seriously considered making Penguin my legal name, but whilst that, too, is part of the name that makes my identity, I don't think I could sign it on a credit card with a straight face.

There are discussions that we have, about names, whether we want to or not. After picking this name, I've chosen not to have any of these discussions. But there is a propriety there, from strangers and from not-strangers, a request for information and explanation that I don't want to give, because I picked this name for my own reasons and unlike the previous name change, there were no expectations, there was no assumption that I would do it or not do it. And I don't want to explain it.

I made my Chinese name my family name, and picked myself a brand new middle name. It means I don't share my family name with people who are my family. It means I don’t have a Chinese name anymore, not officially (though my business cards say ‘绿叶’, I kind of borrowed it from my Apore and that’s good enough for me), and sometimes I get people who are like ‘Oh...I thought you’d be Chinese...,’ or ‘...but that’s an individual name, not a family name,’ but it’s exactly right for me. And everyone else can just deal.

not a definitive definition

At yesterday's rally to end the mandatory detention of refugees, I encountered a chant which goes 'refugees are welcome, racists are not.' This chant, and many others like it, are predicated on the belief that racists are easy to spot, and that their racism is obvious. And it's incredibly unhelpful.

"I'm not a racist," thinks an hypothetical bystander (or someone saying the chant). "I think we should end mandatory detention." Woo, we're all okay then! OR ARE WE. Statements like this deny the insidious nature of racism, the institutional nature of racism. Just wandering through the crowd, listening to the comments of people chatting before the rally, I can tell you for a fact that there were people who certainly fit my definition of holding racist beliefs. Being racist isn't always about turning people back from our shores, it's about a whole lot of other stuff that everyone reading this probably already knows, because that's 101.

That's not to deny, of course, the incredibly poor turnout of the rally, and how much of that is due to racism, unconcious or not.

In other news of things that are racist when people think it's not: unchill azn bro. My non-azn friends, even if it is a joke being made by an Asian person, it's still playing on racist, offensive stereotypes! So don't go around saying how obsessed you are with it.

on more than one language

Hey so, I speak some languages! And I am very interested in the structure of languages, and how they work, and how languages contribute to our thinking! I am one of those people who enjoys learning many languages. (I speak three, from time to time, four if 'a sort of Manglish-Malay patois' counts as a language. And I enjoyed learning German for a year and a half! But then I moved and didn't find a new class. Anyway.) I like being able to communicate with lots of people! I like reading about languages! As if I was some sort of language nerd! Also, I lament that I didn't do linguistics at university (sometimes I wish I did chemistry, too).

So hey: this is a post about languages (as opposed to language, which will be another post later).

A few blogs have been linking to and/or discussing this New York Times article: As English Spreads, Indonesians Fear for Their Language. The article itself talks about Indonesians who cannot speak Bahasa Indonesian, or speak it badly; speaking English instead. But as Michel S at Ruminations on a Distant Homeland* points out, there are reasons why this is a little less dramatic than the article articulates. Bahasa Indonesian was adopted as the national language only in 1928, so for huge chunks of Indonesia, the official language is not actually their first language anyway.

Similar issue in Malaysia. I have friends (or family of friends) who, despite growing up in Malaysia, never learnt Bahasa Malaysian (BM) very well. When you grow up in a house speaking (for example) Cantonese, and go to an English speaking school, and all your friends speak Mandarin, well, BM becomes just another subject you have to do, and some people are good at it, and some people aren't.

That's not me passing comment on whether one should have to learn the national language. That's just, you know. An anecdote.

Speaking of national languages, in the USA there's some concerns the opposite way, that sometimes people don't speak English in public, and therefore English is at risk (?!) and maybe it should be the national language. My word, what a fucking outrage. So What if Nobody Speaks English Anymore at change.org is a look at that, and asks the question: does it matter?

THIS MAY SHOCK YOU (note: if it does, I am very concerned), but maybe speaking more than one language is kind of cool, and possibly even useful! The WSJ has an article up that doesn't say anything new, but is a nice summary of research that demonstrates that language shapes the way we think: Lost in Translation. Here is a large excerpt:

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

In fact, here is a 2009 essay on exactly this research! How does our language shape the way we think? I highly recommend this piece, it is a good essay and I refer to it often.

I think it's really cool and interesting, the way that language shapes thought. And I mean, I think about this all the time in another way (removing ableist, transphobic, homophobic, racist, etc, words from casual use), but talking about the impact that grammar patterns have on thought construction is really cool too. What influence does language have on our personalities? On our cultures and traditions?

Anyway, given how cool it is, it's funny, then, that there's a rumour getting around that the Chinese government is looking to limit the amount of Cantonese on Chinese TV. Almost as if there's an attempt to impose a national language that was only made a national language in the last hundred years. It's been kind of a concerted effort. And here's an oldie but still relevant: Language is Power; Let us Have Ours:

Much of the evidence the world over suggests that bilingual and multilingual language processes accelerate one's capacity to acquire English. So why are Aboriginal children being treated as if this were not so? Why is the role that parents and grandparents play in teaching their children being diminished?

Aboriginal languages, for the most part, are not officially recognised and, therefore, sit outside the nation's formal structures.

So here's the thing about Mandarin, and also Bahasa Indonesian and Bahasa Malay, and in fact English, too: they're kind of dialecty. Sometimes they're not what you're expecting. Mandarin in Beijing is different from Mandarin in Xi'an. The Cantonese my family speaks (being from Malaysia) is totally different from the Cantonese spoken in China. The English I speak in Australia is quite different from the English I use in Malaysia (sometimes referred to as 'Manglish').

Which is why I like this article: Standard English and the Literate Argument.

Is literacy so important to credibility here? Or, let me rephrase: Is Standard English literacy so important to credibility here? Or, let me rephrase again: Is white, upper-or-middle class English literacy so important to credibility here?

When we discount people and their arguments because of their command (or lack thereof) of grammar, what we are really saying is: Your thoughts are useless because you don’t use the kind of grammar I’ve come to expect from literate people on the internet. What we are also saying is far worse: You don’t have the privilege to have learned the “correct” way of writing or speaking, and, therefore, your ideas are worthless.

OH SO MAYBE, just maybe, a push to a national language is some sort of defensive bullshit thing? Maybe there's some racism and/or classism involved? What an unexpected and surprising conclusion to my post!

I don't want to hear anything from anyone about how learning a second language is a privilege or any crap like that. Because I think it's pretty clear that learning a second language is, in many cases, something so built in to a society that you don't even notice - many people know more than one language before they go to school (if they get to go to school). And for many people, learning the 'national language' (official or not) is already learning a second language. Or a third language. My mum was speaking five languages before she started attending school, and she was from a really poor family. So you know, the argument is at the least very erasing. I'll accept 'in a poor urban white monolingual family in the middle of Perth it's hard to attend language classes,' or something. And I'm certainly not accepting 'it's hard to learn another language so therefore we need a national language and no-one can speak anything else in public or have tv in any other language' or anything. That's crap. Also 'omg we all need to communicaaatteeee.' Often, that argument is used against people who already went out of their way (or, to be honest, could hardly avoid) to learn someone else's language.



Some further reading and anecdotes on the things I have discussed above:

• A Soliloquy on Language and Race in Seven Parts by Ciderpress; on why English is the Lingua Franca (hint: it's not because it's easy) and, on how someone speaking a language you (someone not involved in the conversation) can't understand isn't a dis. It's just a thing. I ♥ ciderpress and this post.
• My Pidgin Does Not Signify Lack Of Intellect by Jha, specifically talking about Singlish and the Miss World Singapore thing.
• Some discussion on no respect for non-European first languages (discussion in comments is mostly relevant to what I've been rambling over): Australia (and elsewhere): So being bilingual is bad now?
• Weird article at Wired: How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand. Weird because it's very othering ('we' may not even understand, because 'we' are not the people using patois!), and also completely ignores the big reason for English being a lingua franca (mentions World War II and some other stuff; doesn't mention colonisation). But worth a mention for some linkages of ideas.
• The Power of Language, where Jo Tamar talks about language and privilege, and then I ramble for one million years in the comments.

*please note, the blog I have linked to has only one blog post on it! And no introductory! So I don't know anything about it, other than that I liked the solitary post.

beginning of the week linkies

This is a bit of a haphazard linkery, since it's been a little while (three weeks!) and I know if I don't post them I never will.

Some Apple things: I promise not to kill myself: Apple factory workers 'asked to sign pledge.' I am sceptical that signing a pledge not to commit suicide is really solving the issues that lead to this being a problem for Foxconn (but interestingly, an update as I write this post: foxconn are raising pay for workers). And Cleaning iPhone screens, 62 Chinese workers poisoned.

At Skip the Makeup, Marriage in Malawi a Gay Issue?, about the transphobic reporting of the case of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, who were engaged to be married. Also update: Malawi: Breaking news - Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga pardoned.

Educating Rosie.

However this is not the picture of the vast new contingent of female factory workers that was being presented through the media at the time. First of all, the women on the posters and in the newsreels – and who became collectively known as Rosie the Riveter from one of the songs that celebrated them – were unfailingly white. Secondly, and no less importantly, they hailed from the middle class.

I love Muslimah Media Watch so much: How Western journalists reported the ban on burqa

These women are visible and have an opinion worth considering. Yet they are virtually ignored by the media. These women simply don’t exist when lawmakers consider punitive laws affecting them and the cultural traditions they hold close to their heart.
The nature of journalism is to tell a story of conflict. No better example can be served than the burqa ban. Yet journalists can serve the international community better if it employed just a few of the goals of Search for Common Ground by seeking collaborative solutions to issues, and at the same time hold lawmakers and the Taliban accountable for the oppressive measures they force on Muslim women.

Also on this topic, at the Cast Iron Balcony: We must arrest this woman in order to save her.

Nation's first handicapped drivers licensed in Chengdul parking spots stir debate

Cosplay, race, ability and gender; or, who gets to dress up as whom?

some indigenous australian stuff:

Stereotypes ignore lot of hard work, on stereotypes of Indigenous Australians as naturals on the footy field.

5 young white men "of good character" beat Aboriginal man to death; and An example of systemic racism is Jo Tamar's take on it.

Just a quick summary: "Reject the Names Invaders Gave Us": Second New Way Aboriginal Summit

some language stuff:

A Quick Guide to Referring to People Who Aren't White, by Chally

A concern on appropriate language vs ESL speakers

Offensive Identities: immigrant, migrant, refugee