LL-L "Resources" 2008.03.24 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 24 March 2008 - Volume 07
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From: * "Fonken, Gael M. [foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu]" <
foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu>*
Subject: *confusion over the spelling of pale/pail*

   Thanks for the explanation about "pole/pale".  That helps to see the
phrase in a wider context.  I had always thought of it as a Jewish thing.
About "exotic" and "nearby" cultures, though, I was raised in Pakistan in my
culture-absorbing pre-school years.  And then also spent a lot of time on
the Mexican border.  My brother's kids were raised in Kyrgyzstan and came
back to the US with ESL type difficulties in reading English.  As an adult,
I am quite curious about people with "border culture" identities like this
who see border-crossing as part of their inner most identity.  Indian
linguists are now speaking a lot about "multilingual" identities as core to
what gives India its special identity as a nation.  They lament the
restrictions of "monolingual" cultures such as typify the Western world
since this view reduces borders to absolute lines in the sand that divide
people from each other in such violent ways.  I agree that borders (of this
type) instill fear in those who live behind them.  But that is just not a
universal experience.

    I'm not sure that you have figured out that my understanding of borders
is vastly different from that.  People in the West keep forcing me back into
this rather rigid western mold, as if it was supposed to be mine from
birth.  But it's not.  I tend to have much more productive conversations
with South Asians when it comes to things like this.  Recently though, I
have been toying with the possibility that the EC has helped Europeans to
enter into (recover?) this kind of multilingual worldview, but I'm getting a
lot of signals that India might be the only real example of it—as least in
the sense of it being a living yet still ancient source of meaning for them.
China is certainly not treating its language diversity like this, nor is the
US; Canada may be. At any rate, I'm grateful for the taste of this inner
freedom that I have within me.

   But please give me some space in this matter, it's not fear that leads me
to bring up the topic of borders in public.  I do feel a sense of
frustration though, that so much of the modern (wealthy) world is, indeed,
so fearful of crossing borders (the borders that they have constructed).
  You're right—that the way we treat those near to us has a lot to do with
the way we enter into every other type of relation.  A prominent writer from
the Caribbean, Eduardo Glissant, focuses on the centrality of the concept of
Relations in his work. It is core to how the colonial world builds walls
(poles?) with words.  Not all borders are the same, though, it depends on
who is looking and from which direction.  I like to think that there are a
lot of lowlanders in the 'southern' parts of the diaspora who have this
figured out. Maybe what I say has more relevance for them?

----------

From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2008.03.23 (10) [E]*
*
R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The upshot
> of this was that I experienced culture shock in reverse when I was back
> home. I had been much more open-minded going away into the "exotic" than
> returning to the familiar that now seemed strange. I questioned lots of
> things that I previously had seemed ordinary and mundane.

Yes, after my first experience living overseas (in South Asia), I was
spoiled for life ... that is, I could no longer be satisfied with the
easy life in the States. Everytime I stayed longer than a couple years
(only twice in fact), I was just too frustrated. I always described it
as frustration that "I had grown and they hadn't" (... or put less
judgmentally "I've changed and they haven't", since "growth" has an
inherent positive denotation), but suspect it was then as it is now
just wanderlust!

> And with every
> discovery of the strange we learn more about ourselves and about that we
> used to take for granted, as familiar and safe.

Yes, and myself I find that more i have lived and sojourned in places
where things can NOT be taken for granted, and the MORE I learn to
take LESS for granted (e.g. my house for the first 3 months here in
Bombay while I was looking for a place of my own, had water a maximum
of 45 minutes a day!), the happier I generally am. ... NOT happy 24-7
-- living in India the frustrations are always there around the corner
(or at least wherever there is a government official!) -- but happier
overall.

> But help you grow as
> a person it will inevitably

Of that, i am not so convinced ...  though i may once have been. I
have met too many Westerners AND too many Easterners who spend time in
another "world", be it 1 semester as a student or 2-3 years as a 単身赴任
(tanshinfu'nin = company worker, usually male, sent to a company
branch office, usually far away, to live without his family), or 4-5
years as a NOVA (or other English conversation school) teacher earning
way more money that their qualifications justify, who go back home
having SHRUNK as a person. BY that I mean, they have spent the time
overseas, have NOT been open to differences and have NOT learned
anything REAL about the culture and people around them, have been
frustrated and dissatisfied, and have then gone back home even MORE
convinced of their own provincial ways of thinking and their own
ethnic/national superiority to everyone else in the rest of the world
(even though in fact all they experienced was maybe SouthEast LA).

I am NOT saying that this is the majority case, but it big enough to
bring the word "inevitably" into question.

> help your community grow as well.

One can only hope!

> The latter meant that we had to accept the culture and as
> much as possible experience and learn it the way we would have done had we
> been local children. As much as possible we suspended judgment.

Yes, I agree totally. THOUGH after 18 years of trying, i finally gave
up on Japan. I can suspend judgment (of other people at least), but in
the case of Japan (and probably equally were I to look at America as a
real neutral ousider) the judgment is always THRUST upon you -- THEIR
judgment of THEIR superiority. And if their judgment were not so
hopelessly out of touch with any reality you or I know then perhaps
one could ignore it once or twice ... or a thousand times. But being
told, by people who have NEVER in their lives eaten anything but
Japanese rice that Japanese rice is the BEST in the world is MORE than
even I could take (thank Ganapati and all the gods I NOW live in the
country which has what is IMHO the world's tastiest rice)!

MWM || マイク || Мика || माईक
================
Dr Michael W Morgan
Managing Director
Ishara Foundation
Mumbai (Bombay), India
++++++++++++++++
माईकल मोर्गन (पी.एच.डी.)
मेनेजिंग डॉयरेक्टर
ईशारा फॉउंडेशन (मुंबई )
++++++++++++++++
茂流岸マイク(言語学博士)
イシャラ基金の専務理事・事務局長
ムンバイ(ボンベイ)、インド

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2008.03.23 (10) [E]
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Resources

> Anyway, in the meantime I have built the "skeleton" of the new site
> and would really like my fellow Lowlanders to check it out and give me
> feed-back. Especially, please help me to describe the categories a bit
> better if needed.
>
> http://lowlands-l.net/beyondthepale/

Ron,

Nice pages, as always. Sepia, too!

The cartoons remind me of another old Punch cartoon:

Hotel Maid: "Ye canna gang tae the bathroom the noo!"
London Gentleman visiting Aberdeen: "My good woman, whyever not?"
Hotel Maid: "There's a body in the bath!"

In Scots "a body" means "a person".

Will do the submission thing when I've had a think.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2008.03.24 (02) [E]
 Ron,

thanks for your thanks ;-)- *door ne' foyr* ('you're welcomed')!

> One thing though: doesn't *s'il vous plait* literally mean "if it pleases
you"?  (I think an 18th-century Germanized form of it for the "less
> cultured" was *wenn es Euch behagt* or *sollte es Euch behagen*.)

Yes, you're highly probable right- and bear in mind what I said about my
knowledge regarding French ;-)! I've had just a three-weeks trial in this
language at school, then my teacher (the very first and last female one in
all my live) chased me out- grrmmphh...

Just "raking"  together my mouldy rudiments of Latin it of course should be
translated with adding the pronoun 'you', if it's allowed to be compared
1:1!

Thanks for your improval!

Jonny Meibohm

----------

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

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

Gael, I didn't want to come across as not allowing you any space, was just
eager to explain my strong feelings about the fit of "Beyond the Pale" and
about what borders represent to me. Stubbornly though, I still maintain that
borders, any sort of boundary, even "friendly" ones, are based in fear.  ;-)

Sandy, I'm glad I hit the right tone for you, so to speak.

Actually, it now looks as though we are being haunted. A uniformed
apparition seems to be looking out from behind the post in the masthead
picture. I don't remember it being there before ... Woooo ... Is it the
ghost of a border patrolman or of an officer of the language police?
Hotel Maid: "There's a body in the bath!"

This is great! I hope you don't mind that I added it with a disclaimer
saying that you've retrieved it from memory. Please let me know if you do
mind.

So, Jonny, I take it I can enter your beloved word then.

Thanks again, everyone!

Reinhard/Ron
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