Official FF Generic Catch-All Thrad for Reverse Racism, Misandry, etc.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by The Man

Even when I spoke Spanish semi-fluently, I found it very difficult to understand the Castilian accent, and had to watch Pan’s Labyrinth with subtitles on (although I understood it better the more I watched it). It’s not like British and American English; the differences between Latin American and Continental Spanish are different enough that they’re practically different languages, the way the various forms of Chinese are.

Oh yeah, I have huge problems understanding a number of Latin American accents. The one where they swallow esses is completely incomprehensible to me, and I could understand Spanish pretty decently even before I learned it because it's so similar to Italian. The one that I understand the best is Argentinian Spanish. I know this is weird, but I swear to God they speak Spanish with a Roman accent.

[mickthinks]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Counsel appears to have cobbled together a plausible argument that proficiency in Spanish may not really be sine qua non for this particular job.

Just so. And yet, if all you read were The Guardian's report, you might be misled into believing, like ES, Angakuk, The Man and even lisarea have been, that Rosner and her lawyers were ludicrous, frivolous, stupid and Trump-like.

That's shockingly bad journalism from what is supposed to be a quality news provider.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by The Man

Even when I spoke Spanish semi-fluently, I found it very difficult to understand the Castilian accent

I agree that (Spain) Spanish accents are harder to understand, but there's also a large amount of dialectal variation in Spain (much as there's more in England than in the US. There is actually less dialectal variation in Spain than in England, however, as the northern dialects essentially displaced the Romance language/dialects in the southern half of the country during the Reconquista. That prior language is usually referred to as Mozarabic, despite not being a form of Arabic). Andalusian Spanish is similar to Latin American Spanish as many features of Latin American Spanish actually originate there (the merger between z and s, for example, as well as syllable-final s deletion).

It’s not like British and American English; the differences between Latin American and Continental Spanish are different enough that they’re practically different languages, the way the various forms of Chinese are.

That might be overstating it. There are vocabulary differences and certainly differences in pronunciation. Cockney is different enough that I sometimes need subtitles in movies, but if I lived there I would probably get used to it pretty quickly.

At the same time, the various forms of Chinese aren't "practically" different languages. In my experience, it is not at all controversial to say that they are different languages rather than dialects among linguists. Chinese political sensitivities are the reason you might see them referred to as dialects or varieties. It's as if we referred to English, German and Swedish as Germanic "dialects" because there was a single Germanic country that was invested in the idea that they were all one language. The larger categories (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, etc.) are quite distinct, but within those there are varieties that are debatably separate languages. For example, Shanghainese and Wenzhounese are both Wu, but Wenzhounese is considered nearly completely unintelligible even to other Wu speakers, much less Mandarin or Cantonese speakers.

I’ve certainly heard several times that native speakers of the three Scandinavian languages find them mutually intelligible.

My mother can understand standard Norwegian just fine. There's more dialectal variation within the Scandinavian languages than there is between their standard forms. But Danish is difficult to understand for a Swedish speaker (unless they're from Malmö or around there).

Spanish is quite possibly the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn

I disagree.

Spanish does indeed have some aspects that make it easy to learn. Certainly easier than most languages for an English speaker. But I'm going to say that Swedish is easier than Spanish, having learned both.

Basically it comes down to, yes, you need to learn a few vowels and a couple of weird consonants. And the spelling is not quite as consistent as Spanish. But everything else is easier. There are plenty of very basic words that correspond (kan, måste, gå, se, trä, bok, hus, arm, hand, man, vad, son, dotter, bättre, bäst, etc.) and the verbal system is very similar to English and has no conjugation by person whatsoever. Word order is often exactly the same as English for simple sentences. And that means your start up time in Swedish is much faster, enabling you to start talking about many things more quickly.

The real thing that makes it hard to learn is that almost everyone who knows it also knows English, and there are far fewer speakers to learn from. So I will concede that Spanish is easier to learn for logistical reasons. But in terms of the language itself, nah.

[The Man]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

Just so. And yet, if all you read were The Guardian's report, you might be misled into believing, like ES, Angakuk, The Man and even lisarea have been, that Rosner and her lawyers were ludicrous, frivolous, stupid and Trump-like.

That's shockingly bad journalism from what is supposed to be a quality news provider.

It’s very telling that you would quote one sentence of Maturin’s reply while literally ignoring every other sentence of it, which reveal how thoroughly ludicrous the lawsuit is.

The position includes an hour of Spanish instruction. If they didn’t need an hour of Spanish instruction, they wouldn’t have put up an application for an hour of Spanish instruction, and they’re not going to hire two instructors when they can just as easily hire one, nor are they going to inconvenience another instructor by making that instructor do work the person they’re hiring should be doing. “People who speak Spanish” is not a racial group. There are plenty of white people who speak Spanish well enough to teach it at a third-grade level, myself included. The position doesn’t list speaking Spanish natively as a requirement; it lists speaking it proficiently as a requirement. In no conceivable universe is this racial discrimination.

One can’t simply separate the “reading and writing” components of the instruction from the “Spanish” component; the course includes the instruction of reading and writing in Spanish. Even if the school could separate the components, why would they when they could easily hire someone who can fulfil all the requirements of the job? If you have one applicant who only perform two-thirds of the requirements for the job, and another who can perform all of them, you’re going to go with the latter one; that applicant is patently better qualified.

Per Matlock’s wiki article, unless the position has not already been filled or she was passed over for a less or equally qualified applicant, then she doesn’t have standing. Since the position includes Spanish instruction, presumably more than half of the teachers in Miami-Dade County are more qualified for the position than she is. Even if speaking Spanish were not actually required to teach the course, as Matlock pointed out, it’s not actually illegal to attach such requirements to a job application, but since the job description actually includes an hour of Spanish instruction as part of the job duties, it’s going to take an outright miracle for the plaintiff’s counsel to be able to argue successfully that there were no better qualified applicants for the position. And to be honest, even if the position is still open, the school department could easily argue that they’re simply waiting for an applicant who fills all the requirements, and that would still have a better than 95% chance of getting the suit dismissed without prejudice, because again, it’s Miami-Dade County. The county is swimming in people who are qualified for the position.

This woman is a complete idiot, the lawsuit is frivolous, and none of us have been misled.

Originally Posted by erimir

Spanish does indeed have some aspects that make it easy to learn. Certainly easier than most languages for an English speaker. But I'm going to say that Swedish is easier than Spanish, having learned both.

Basically it comes down to, yes, you need to learn a few vowels and a couple of weird consonants. And the spelling is not quite as consistent as Spanish. But everything else is easier. There are plenty of very basic words that correspond (kan, måste, gå, se, trä, bok, hus, arm, hand, man, vad, son, dotter, bättre, bäst, etc.) and the verbal system is very similar to English and has no conjugation by person whatsoever. Word order is often exactly the same as English for simple sentences. And that means your start up time in Swedish is much faster, enabling you to start talking about many things more quickly.

The real thing that makes it hard to learn is that almost everyone who knows it also knows English, and there are far fewer speakers to learn from. So I will concede that Spanish is easier to learn for logistical reasons. But in terms of the language itself, nah.

Well, I did say “quite possibly”. :p It probably does depend to a certain extent upon whether one has native speakers to learn it from. I don’t actually know any native Swedish speakers, and I would guess there aren’t too many regions of the country where there are many (Minnesota is probably one).

That might be overstating it. There are vocabulary differences and certainly differences in pronunciation. Cockney is different enough that I sometimes need subtitles in movies, but if I lived there I would probably get used to it pretty quickly.

I’ve never needed subtitles for Cockney, but I have listened to British English since I was a kid, so maybe that helped. I do sometimes need subtitles for Australian English, but it’s rare.

The vocabulary differences are mostly trivial and the important ones can probably be learnt in a day or two (“lorry” versus “truck”, “chips” versus “fries”, etc.). Spelling and grammar differences might take another day or two. The pronunciation differences might be difficult for non-native speakers to grasp, but they don’t seem as radical as the differences in Spanish. Granted, I’m not technically a native speaker of Spanish, but I’ve also been speaking it since I was around four years old, so I’m pretty close.

At the same time, the various forms of Chinese aren't "practically" different languages. In my experience, it is not at all controversial to say that they are different languages rather than dialects among linguists.

To be perfectly clear, I agree with this; the end of my sentence was intended to refer to “different languages”, rather than “practically different languages”, but thanks to ambiguous syntax, I might not have made that clear.

[lisarea]

She already had a job that we can assume she was fully qualified for. She asked to be reassigned to the one track that has a foreign language requirement, and asked that they make accommodations for her.

Rosner's attorneys write that her school's students are on three tracks: college preparatory, gifted, and extended foreign language (EFL), where they receive one hour of foreign language instruction per day. In May 2015, Rosner requested to be reassigned to the EFL track, where students are taught both English and another language.

An average school day in the US is probably somewhere between 6 and 8 hours. An hour a day is a big chunk of her job that she's not able to do. And even if there would be some accommodation where she would still be able to put in a full day of work, scheduling around that could make the whole thing more complicated than it should have to be.

And she's using laws that were intended to keep employers from discriminating against classes that are regularly discriminated against. Those laws specify what those protected classes are, and it is a HUGE stretch to claim that "non-Spanish speaking" is one of them. Has anyone ever successfully made a discrimination case claiming "non-English speaking" as a protected class?

Those laws do have exceptions, though, one of them being whether the accommodations are reasonable to make, in part depending on the nature of the job. And some companies pad these things out, just to avoid having to hire people they consider inconvenient, and now it is your fault that I have to tell this story again:

I had sort of become my own department at this company I was working for, and I needed to hire some new people (because I am a job creator) and write job descriptions for them. So I got these job requirements forms from HR, dutifully filled them out, and unchecked all these boxes at the bottom that had physical requirements on them because they were all desk jobs, and you didn't need to lift boxes or walk around or be able to hear forklifts coming. (We also built hardware, so I assumed that they were pre-checked because those were standard requirements for manufacturing or something.)

So I send them back to HR, all filled out, and they send them back to me, with the boxes re-checked. This might have gone around a couple of times before I talked to the head of HR and told her that these were all desk jobs, and they didn't need those. And she fought me! I ended up winning, but only because I was right and the law was on my side. But that company had been consistently putting a bunch of totally irrelevant physical requirements in all their job descriptions just to avoid having to hire anyone with a disability. The same company was also super racist and sexist, of course, but those were not as well documented as that.

That's the sort of discrimination those laws are designed to prevent, and that is the sort of situation where you use that defense. When a company is padding out their job description to intentionally exclude a protected class. That school didn't do that. The language is an actual part of the job description, and the accommodation seems pretty unreasonable, especially since it's only required for positions in that one track.

[The Man]

This is one of the best stories I've read in awhile and one of the only encouraging pieces of news I've read all fucking year. I meant to post it awhile back but forgot. I don't think anyone else posted it here either, so enjoy.

The white flight of Derek Black - The Washington Post

[JoeP]

He’d come to admire President Obama. He decided to trust the U.S. government. He started drinking tap water.

omg crazy!

[Ensign Steve]

Beyonce's 2016 CMA Appearance Sparks Outrage From Certain Country Fans

[Ensign Steve]

Also, been singing this one to myself more and more often as the election day approaches:

Sister Suffragette - Mary Poppins (Glynis Johns)...

I loved this song when I was little, even though I didn't understand about 90% of the lyrics. The way she gets all slow and low with her super British "Raaaahhhhther Stooooopid" absolutely rubbed me the right way, and still does.

[But]

I like this one:

Mary Poppins Sings Death Metal - YouTube

[Ensign Steve]

That was amazing!

As if Bert wasn't terrifying enough already.

[JoeP]

This is an awesome article and plays to many of 's core interests: Star Wars obviously, the rise of fascism, and gender, but I think most of all the delicious MRA-butthurt it seems to have created. So, this thread.

Did Inadequate Women’s Healthcare Destroy Star Wars’ Old Republic? | Motherboard

Anakin Skywalker allies himself with Palpatine in hopes that he can use the dark side of the Force to save Padme Amidala from death in childbirth.

...

He seriously spends two hours of the movie freaking out about his wife’s uterus, and hypes himself up so much that he gets to the point of slaughtering tiny tots in a Jedi temple. All because he can’t think of another way to save Padme from reproductive health complications.

Why didn’t they just go to a goddamned obstetrician-gynecologist?

She lays out a convincing case for the shocking lack of women's healthcare (specificaly - considering that general medical treatment is pretty awesome) - and lays into Lucas for allowing reproductive biology to be mysterious and inexplicable.

At the end of Episode III, Anakin gets three limbs chopped off and then falls into hot lava. He lives.

His wife has babies, under medical supervision. She dies.

Having babies is worse than being mauled by a wampa ice creature or being chopped up by lightsabers and falling into a river of lava. Lucas can write a world like that, and worse, the audience will accept it.

And then:

Since tweeting about the OB/GYN plot hole, I’ve received countless messages from men who are furious with me about letting “feminism ruin” Revenge of the Sith, which might be the first time that fans have ever crawled out of the woodwork to defend Star Wars prequels.

And finally:

I guess what I’m saying is, maybe if the Galactic Senate hadn’t defunded Planned Parenthood, the Republic wouldn’t have succumbed to an evil fascist dictatorship.

[BrotherMan]

THIS MAKES ME STAR WARS ANGRY.

The Old Republic existed thooouuusaaands of years ago - even longer long ago than the Star Wars stories we know. "The Old Republic" that gets wiped away, as Tarkin declares in A NEW HOPE isn't the same Old Republic that the BioWare games are about.

But none of that invalidates her point(s). If the best a technologically advanced galaxy far, far away can do for problematic childbirth is a robot that chants "oo-baa," then I have no idea how it all works.

[Kael]

She didn't die from childbirth, she died from plotitis. The droid even says she's medically fine but has "lost the will to live," WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT EVER MEANS!

I mean, it's still just as bullshit as not training Leia to be a Jedi...

[Ari]

Yeah, there's certainly connotation that she chose magical birth suicide over going back to being the partner of cardboard-love babykiller.

[Janet]

In defense of the audience, I think we'd all lost the will to logic by the end of Revenge of the Sith. I suspect that's the real reason Lucas got away with it, because it was just more stupid on the big heap of if that was the prequels and nobody cared anymore.

[The Lone Ranger]

Dr. Ball, M.D. | Robot Chicken | Adult Swim -...

[Ensign Steve]

Reductress » I Don't Dress For Men, I Dress For The Sea Witch That Cursed Me

[JoeP]

my cruel, salty mistress

[Ari]

How spicy would you like your food?

[Ensign Steve]

This only here cuz I don't have an account at Masculinity is ~So~ Fragile but it keeps coming up in my facebook and I have to at it with someone.

Valentine's Day Gifts for Him | Man Crates

[JoeP]

Is there a problem? It's well known that women don't actually enjoy sriracha, bacon or beer.

[lisarea]

Man, I was reading some comment thread a while ago where these men were talking about how to carry their stuff, recommending 'neck wallets' and, like, bags and stuff, and man, they were on some pretty thin ice there. They were getting perilously close to inventing purses.

Also, I was buying some paracord a little while ago and these ladies at the store asked me what people used it for, and I started explaining, but then I looked around to make sure there were no men nearby to hear and told them that it's actually just TACTICAL SURVIVAL MACRAME for men who want to make and wear cute bracelets but need to tell themselves that some day, they'll need to unravel them to lasso a wild boar or fasten some guns to a monster truck or whatever.

[Watser?]

You may be on to something because I googled TACTICAL SURVIVAL MACRAME just to see if we were no1 with that phrase and got this*:

Google

*I'm not allowed to use Google.com, they always send me to the Dutch one.

[erimir]

They have "combat roast" coffee beans in some of those. Sounds kinda gross.