LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.02.07 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 06 February 2007 - Volume 05

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L 'Language varieties' 2007.02.06 (06) [E/German]

Karl-Heinz:
>Her mit dem Buch. Wenngeht kauf isch dem Buch auch, ohn Scheiss. Weisstu,
Salman Rushdie liest auch dem Koran!
>Ciao schwör isch

Stop it, no more, I surrender, you win, please don't hurt me! You almost
made my coffee come out of my ears... echt krass, ey, indeed!

Actually, I do have a Turkish nephew in his late twenties (the very one who
would only shut up when we sang the "Vogelhochzeit"), and he loves to talk
like that for a joke (he only knows a few fragments of Turkish!). He also
does it to nosy people who, from his name, make certain assumptions about
his background.

Gabriele Kahn

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Mathias wrote under "Linguistics":

> FYI, the term kanak-sprak was coined by Feridun Zainoglu who is an author of
Turkish provenance in Germany.

That's interesting.  I was referring to the origin and the original meaning
of the words when I added the background information:

> The naming clearly reveals racism and/or xenophobia.  Kanak, Kanaker* etc.
(perhaps not directly related to "Canuck" 'Canadian', but it may have
influenced it) are approximately equivalent to "wog" in non-American
English.

> * from Hawaiian kanaka 'human being', 'man', 'mankind', typically
'indigenous person(s)', developed from Polynesian tangata lit. "that/those
that have been (here) before," originally used to refer to Polynesians
transported as laborers to Queensland ("Kanakaland"), Australia -- possibly
introduced into German via sailors' jargon

I assume you'd agree that it would not be advisable for an ethnic German to
call someone Kanaker in Germany, at least not to his face, that the word is
loaded and derisive.  The fact that Zainoğlu uses it himself does not change
this, at least not at this juncture.

This is a well-known situation called "owning": despised populations
deliberately take on previously derogatory names for them, thus "defusing"
them and at the same time creating in-your-face attention with the names'
shock value.  In Germany this happened with Schwule (male homosexuals) for
instance, in the English-speaking world with "Dikes" for female homosexuals
and with "Bitches" for radical feminists.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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