Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

(Trump burrito bowl pic: "I love Hispanics!")

I've been trying to concentrate on work but my brain keeps returning to "but when I was in fourth grade Spanish" and then I start cracking up

DJP I see you have typed both the words "Pete" and "Buttigieg" today and thank you for your endorsement

loooool

The taking of "foreign" names in language classes was always so cringe. My friend Miles was in French and took the name "Kilometres" and everybody laughed but it was only funny for like two days and that was in 1981.

my German names were awesome (Wolfgang, Siegfried)

haha I was Ulf

I never had a teacher give us “Spanish names” in 11 years of Spanish classes

It was SOP at my high school, both Spanish and French classes.

i was Andrés in 9th and 10th grade Spanish. kinda bummed that before that, we went through four years of required German and never got names assigned.

I have a name that easily translates to any european language to I just rolled with that

but yeah, picking a new name in language class cloud be a little off now that I think about it and I'm now getting x3ni j4rdin "what set you with" vibes

I don't remember what my Spanish name was. I only took it for one year.

We didn't have nearly that much latitude. My deadname had a common variant in nearly every language, so that's what I got.

¡Me llamo Diego! I'm quite positive that I was also bringing powerful Peggy Hill energy while trying to speak Spanish in Argentina last month.

I do remember my first semester Spanish teacher called himself "Matias" and, after I transferred out of his first-year class into second-year because I was burning through the material, he asked me if I'd be interested in getting a cup of coffee sometime. (I said no. I was 18 at the time and no longer his student but still: dude, what are you doing, no)

I guess if I stretch my memory some white people with common European first names would get called the Spanish cognate by my teachers but it wasn’t “their Spanish name”. NB for grades 1-8 I was in a partial Spanish immersion program and my classes were heavy on native or heritage Spanish speakers

i remember the biggest delinquent in my 9th grade Spanish class got to be Nacho, of which he was inordinately proud. a real Stand by Me moment. I was Sergio...man, I can barely speak ten words of Spanish and yet somehow I still remember that.

! Thanks evol j, I was also Sergio

Basically this practice sounds vaguely racist to me

Mucho excitedo para el debatero tonighto! Que necesitamos to gango up on el Berño or elsero todos los everyone will gango up on mi.

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) February 19, 2020

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=08202007

what's your fiesta name, though?

Basically this practice sounds vaguely racist to me

uh

Let me reassure you; it isn't

I think it does carry some weird cultural baggage but I don't think it's implicitly racist

Idk it was/would’ve been weird if in the English half of the day someone called Josué Joshua, what even is that

As someone with a name that is spelled the same but pronounced differently in French and English and grew up attending an Acadian school, I can't relate to any of this at all.

My Spanish name is Don Soto.

this is def not a thing in uk language classes iirc

xp that's the other cultural weirdness -- people come up with anglicized versions of their names all the time, although it's a lot less common now than it used to be

my dad used to work with someone who was never anything but Charlie at work and Carlos at home

everyone went with variants of their real first names but in until spanish 4 people went for the lols and so there was Raúl (me) and jota D (JD, for Jack Daniels) and Nacho and etc.

I am filing my French citizenship application this week and as part of that you can ask to have your name officially Frenchisized and so the loltemptation is strong again, for Jacques-Strappes and the like

My Spanish name is President Um...somebody

yeah, my school used spanish names in spanish class too, and i went to middle/high school in the 00s

btw the Bloombito parody account is a Puerto Rican Staten Island resident who began it during his mayoralty

they made an offer to coopt her recently; she refused

tbh it would have been amazing if Amy Klobuchar got up there and said her fourth grade spanish class name was Nacho

Solidarity w Bloombito poster

ABC/WaPo poll: 20% of adults say Bernie is TOO CONSERVATIVE (and they didn't even ask me)

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders is soaring and Joe Biden has crashed in national preference for the Democratic primary, new @ABC News/WaPo poll finds—while Iowa and New Hampshire helped clear room for a candidate not yet on the ballot: Mike Bloomberg. https://t.co/I2ciI4bOim pic.twitter.com/lsynMaYn1q

— ABC News (@ABC) February 19, 2020

critical support for the cryptocommunists who make up 20% of the american population

my dad used to work with someone who was never anything but Charlie at work and Carlos at home

there's a lot of Hmong people in the area who were given names that are difficult for non-Asians to pronounce so they just give themselves names like "Elvis", it's pretty badass imo

this is def not a thing in uk language classes iirc

There were multiple Johns in my freshman Spanish class, so there was already a Juan by the time I had to choose. I went with Esteban because I thought it'd be fun to have the same Spanish name as my best friend Steve (who was in a different class). Steve and I soon drifted apart, but I was Esteban until graduation.

tempted to think that at least 5% of that 20% are simply ppl who wish he weren't old and white tbh

This conversation....is deeply fascinating to me.

I reluctantly went with Daniel and then spent several years kicking myself after realizing that Federico actually contained my entire goddamn real name.

I remember a new EFL teacher in China objecting to the practice of students picking English names, however as names do not work the same in English as they do in Chinese and getting tones wrong mangles Chinese names into incomprehensibility, he had to give in within a week.

I also remember a student called Václav in Prague who had chosen to be known as 'Vince' in class - the actual Anglicization of his given name should be Wenceslas, quite disappointing that he didn't go with that.

hello, "Santiago" here

I reluctantly went with Daniel and then spent several years kicking myself after realizing that Federico actually contained my entire goddamn real name.

― Sammo Hazuki's Tago Mago Cantina (Old Lunch), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 11:15 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

pleasure to meet you feder

"Jose... Cuervo?"

"Present!"

Yeah it's a bit too trivial to be straight-up racist but it was def weird.

The underlying assumption is that an American high school classroom is by default presumed to be full of boring old Matthews and Jennifers and Heathers, so it needs to be spiced up with Rositas and Marios for more ethnic flava.

At the same time, lots of earnest white ppl were praising the US for being a "melting pot" that accepted all the wretched refuse of teeming shores etc. etc., and where you're judged on the content of your character etc. etc.

And of course if you happened to be in a school that was already plenty diverse, the exercise was especially weird. I knew people with given names like Tuan and Hung-Sook, whose parents changed them to Vernon or Audrey on arrival in the US, only to get to Honors French class and find they were expected to go by Serge or Marie.

roberto here (my middle name + the spanish "o")

i have debate fever. i am ready to watch bloomberg be an asshole and my favored candidates yell at him in public

as an ESL teacher in china i encountered lots of edwards and bellas (twilight was popular), and names like snake, and erm, 'clitty'.

Idk it was/would’ve been weird if in the English half of the day someone called Josué Joshua, what even is that

Half the day? It was one period out of the school day, so 45 minutes tops.

They also do this at the Concordia Language Villages: http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/