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

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/

wait back up

"clitty"? was this short for... something?

I used to keep a list of the best names - Legend, Loony, Adolf, Tweety, also we had some a couple of years back called 'Deadpool' and 'W.D. Gaster'

I think silby meant if someone who was named José from birth was called Josh in any non-Spanish language class

maybe if he was in spain and taking an english class?

I know but the point of math class isn't to immerse the student in English, so why would changing the student's name even be on the table?

(xpost voodoo chili OTM)

My math name was Obtuse iirc.

and tbh I do remember a couple classmates in high school spanish who were latina (and good if not fluent in conversational spanish) and it was kind of awkward when we were "choosing spanish class names" and the teacher kind of did this "yeeeeeah" thing as they rolled their eyes

Hah, yeah. we had that too: "So, Maria Consuelo Álvarez-Delgado, what would you like your 'Spanish name' to be?"

This is a pleasant distraction from clusterflulection

did we cover this already: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Bernie-Sanders-California-poll-Democratic-primary-15067265.php

kind of off topic, but i guess we could look into it

i have debate fever

pourrr me some bubbly!

who's gonna win? who's gonna lose?

I would be down with Bernie poisoning all the other candidates.

DJP in elementary and middle school I was in an immersion program where we spent half the day learning in Spanish, including math and science. (Math switched to English and social studies to Spanish in middle school)

i hope it's one of those debates where the audience is not allowed to clap, but every once in a while someone gets such a good zinger in that a few rowdy observers can't help but cheer. if the audience is allowed to cheer all the time, that could be dangerous because bloomberg is serving hors d'oeuvres and that could cause about 30% of democratic voters to erupt into spontaneous applause for him.

didn't trump pay people to clap for him during the early GOP debates? or am i confusing it with all the times he paid for a crowd before he was able to draw one on his own?

he paid many of the people who were in the crowd at his campaign launch when he infamously arrived via slow motion escalator

He paid that part of the debate crowd comprised of women Bill Clinton slept with

Our president. Did that.

We're really gonna be living under a cloud of lowered 'well, at least it's not as bad as the shit Trump did' expectations for basically the rest of our lives, aren't we.

my french class name was 'giboyeux' and here we are today

my brother would choose the name Alfredo in spanish class because he loved fettuccine alfredo

I had a dickhead English teacher who called me "Alfredo Sauce."

He paid that part of the debate crowd comprised of women Bill Clinton slept with

― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 11:50 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Our president. Did that.

― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 11:50 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"slept with"

I was "Sylvain" in French class and "Steve" in English class. Actually, no, I've never heard of this practice before. It sounds dumb as shit.

xp I mean it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is

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.

It also seems to assume that e.g. a native French speaker wouldn't be named something like "Samir Khullar" or "Gad Elmaleh", which they are.

"Spicing up" would be at the bottom of any list of motivations. More likely: names that have language-appropriate pronunciations (so you're not dropping the accent every time the name is used), immersion experience, playfulness to make students more comfortable with the awkwardness that comes with learning a language...

good point Sund4r

this spanish name thing is hilarious to me

Very sad that we didn't get German names. Also sad that I took German, but nevertheless...

I worked in a place that did business with Taiwan, and we had a few Taiwanese people in plant for long periods. Some took "American" names and one of them picked "Nova" which was a model of the Data General mini-computers that we used, and one picked "Linger" because his family name was Lin and our company had a big-wig whose last name was Ringer.

I was "Roberto" in Spanish class. easy one.

in German class, I think we just used English names? it was college, which I only attended sparingly.

in ASL class, I have no idea what anybody said to me because i usually didn't go to class and yet somehow got a C.

Guys this primary season included a white guy who called himself Beto and we’re making fun of Amy?

Robert dropped out tho

Amy also abuses employees

Oh shit

And enjoys the reputation of being hard to work for

Fwiw, I do think that referring to your elementary school Spanish class name when giving a speech to a culinary union is sillier than going by a Spanish nickname given as a kid on a day-to-day basis.