Racism and Languages
Apr. 3rd, 2022 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiteinspaceMy new theory on why adults think your ability to learn language magically disappears when you grow up is because they developed prejudices that hindered their ability to project. To learn a language you really have to pretend to be the person that's speaking.
(fuck. not me using "adults" in a sentence as a category that I'm clearly placing myself outside of. that's so embarassing. I have to edit it to say something like "when I was younger I never believed adults when they said you couldn't learn a language" etc etc...)
Wwhen I watch Chinese people speak, am I placing myself in the same category of or as different from them? I'm definitely, have been for years, putting myself in the same category as a "White heterosexual man" in this society to prove that I'm exactly the same as him. But when I watch Chinese newscasters or reporters or streamers, am I positioning myself subconsciously as "something that's definitely different from you"? I think I am. I think I have an aversion from seeing myself as the same as them because of racism. This makes it more difficult to learn the language! Essentially you have to be really good at empathy to figure out why someone who's fluent is using the language in a number of specific ways, and if there are barriers to empathy, there ya go.
(Maybe my social development is this way because I didn't have as much access to my peers as a small child on account of immediately attaching to the adults around me, who told me that my peers were wrong about everything.)
Part of our evolution as social creatures is that ingroups and outgroups can have a significant impact on our learning of skills, and that while social discrimination plays a big part of that, it's not solved by just "saying you're not doing it" and putting in a lot of restrictions on what entertainment can show to the public. In fact, ingroups and outgroups are just baked into the geopolitical history and impacts everything we do regardless of what *etiquette* we implement to try and counteract it.
(fuck. not me using "adults" in a sentence as a category that I'm clearly placing myself outside of. that's so embarassing. I have to edit it to say something like "when I was younger I never believed adults when they said you couldn't learn a language" etc etc...)
Wwhen I watch Chinese people speak, am I placing myself in the same category of or as different from them? I'm definitely, have been for years, putting myself in the same category as a "White heterosexual man" in this society to prove that I'm exactly the same as him. But when I watch Chinese newscasters or reporters or streamers, am I positioning myself subconsciously as "something that's definitely different from you"? I think I am. I think I have an aversion from seeing myself as the same as them because of racism. This makes it more difficult to learn the language! Essentially you have to be really good at empathy to figure out why someone who's fluent is using the language in a number of specific ways, and if there are barriers to empathy, there ya go.
(Maybe my social development is this way because I didn't have as much access to my peers as a small child on account of immediately attaching to the adults around me, who told me that my peers were wrong about everything.)
Part of our evolution as social creatures is that ingroups and outgroups can have a significant impact on our learning of skills, and that while social discrimination plays a big part of that, it's not solved by just "saying you're not doing it" and putting in a lot of restrictions on what entertainment can show to the public. In fact, ingroups and outgroups are just baked into the geopolitical history and impacts everything we do regardless of what *etiquette* we implement to try and counteract it.
