The Cambridge Chat Thread

The West Wing

Do you think class as a concept is still as strong? (i.e. in refernce to opportunities to make it to the top)

I think Bourdieu's model of several fields with different forms of capital is more sophisticated and holistic, but empirically and logistically class is very important and shouldn't be undermined unless people are prepared to come up with something more reliable on a practical level.
And yes I think its 'still' as strong. As to your supervisor - well what else do you think is responsible? Poverty, inequality and differences in life expectancy have exponentially increased in almost direct proportion to the implementation of the neoliberal agenda by developed nations, and the introduction of development policies by the IMF and World Bank. In Eastern Europe and Russia things deteriorated significantly once they converted to market led economy. Just today I read that the unemployment rate in South Africa dramatically increased after 1994 when South Africa joined the World Trade Organisation and dropped its import tariffs. My what a surprise.

Reply 183

Craghyrax

What a perverted idea :eyeball:

Tantamount to sacrilege! Chocolate cannot be replaced :lolwut:

No chocolate it infinitely preferable to wannabe chocolate! I'll stick with alpro yoghurts, naartjies and water thanks.

Don't we call those tangerines? :indiff:

Reply 184

generalebriety

Don't we call those tangerines? :indiff:

You(pl) do, yes. Not we.

Reply 185

Craghyrax

You(pl) do, yes. Not we.

Why, who are you? "We" as in "people who speak English rather than Dutch/Afrikaans/(whatever that was)" call them tangerines. I only know the word because I have a pretty decent knowledge of Germanic languages. To most English people, it's about the same as me saying that I'm off to the kitchen to make myself a Käsebrot when really I mean a cheese sandwich...

Reply 186

generalebriety

Why, who are you? "We" as in "people who speak English rather than Dutch/Afrikaans/(whatever that was)" call them tangerines. I only know the word because I have a pretty decent knowledge of Germanic languages. To most English people, it's about the same as me saying that I'm off to the kitchen to make myself a Käsebrot when really I mean a cheese sandwich...

If you are in any way even slightly thinking of trying to imply that I ought to change my choice of language, I will be quite significantly annoyed.
I am someone who grew up in South Africa and occasionally incorporate slang from this context into my lexis because I prefer it.

On a practical level I prefer using naartjie because its used as a collective term for all citrus fruits that aren't oranges, limes, lemons or grapefruits. Because you get several different varieties (clementines, mandarins, tsatsumas, tangerines - I think there are more), all of which are very common in SA, its alot easier to use a collective than to become an expert in citrus varieties. Here it would mean standing up, going to the kitchen and looking at the label on my fruit pouch before I could confidently use any of those specific names!

Reply 187

generalebriety

Why, who are you? "We" as in "people who speak English rather than Dutch/Afrikaans/(whatever that was)" call them tangerines. I only know the word because I have a pretty decent knowledge of Germanic languages. To most English people, it's about the same as me saying that I'm off to the kitchen to make myself a Käsebrot when really I mean a cheese sandwich...

Wikipedia, the OED and the evidence of Craggy using it all suggest that it's a word in South African English as well as being Afrikaans. You can hardly tell people off for using terms from their own dialect, unless they genuinely believe nobody will have a clue what they're on about. And even then, it's really no different to using an obscure properly "English" word (whatever one of those is) that whoever you're talking to may not know.

Reply 188

Y__

13

generalebriety

Why, who are you? "We" as in "people who speak English rather than Dutch/Afrikaans/(whatever that was)" call them tangerines. I only know the word because I have a pretty decent knowledge of Germanic languages. To most English people, it's about the same as me saying that I'm off to the kitchen to make myself a Käsebrot when really I mean a cheese sandwich...

While a Käsebrot and a cheese sandwhich definitely share a common concept, I wouldn't quite say they are the same :tongue:

.

Regarding tangerines/naartjies - I had to look up both terms, so it doesn't quite matter :yep:

.

Reply 189

Y__

While a Käsebrot and a cheese sandwhich definitely share a common concept, I wouldn't quite say they are the same :tongue:

Well, words never directly correspond across languages (though they can be very similar), but as is clear for both naartjie and Käsebrot, differences in meaning are pretty common even in closely related languages.

When we say "x is language A for the language B word y," what we really mean is "the set of things known as x in language A is (very) similar to the set of things known as y in Language B."

Reply 190

Craghyrax

If you are in any way even slightly thinking of trying to imply that I ought to change my choice of language, I will be quite significantly annoyed.
I am someone who grew up in South Africa and occasionally incorporate slang from this context into my lexis because I prefer it.

Supergrunch

Wikipedia, the OED and the evidence of Craggy using it all suggest that it's a word in South African English as well as being Afrikaans. You can hardly tell people off for using terms from their own dialect, unless they genuinely believe nobody will have a clue what they're on about. And even then, it's really no different to using an obscure properly "English" word (whatever one of those is) that whoever you're talking to may not know.

Yes, I am "in any way even slightly thinking of trying to imply" that you ought to use words that more than 1% of the population of this forum will understand. I don't care if it's your dialect. That word is not an English word, it's an Afrikaans word incorporated into South African dialects of English, and no English speakers will know the word other than those who live in South Africa, those who have close connections with South Africa, or very experienced fruitsellers - and you know this. Being deliberately obscure is arsey, and as much as I'm in favour of you having your dialect, and as lovely a word as "naartjie" is, this is a UK forum and if you don't speak the sort of English that native speakers born and raised in the UK will understand you're essentially speaking a foreign language, and I'm afraid something in me cries out "yes, but for ****'s sake, why are you speaking at all if your primary objective isn't to have me know what you mean?".

Craghyrax

On a practical level I prefer using naartjie because its used as a collective term for all citrus fruits that aren't oranges, limes, lemons or grapefruits. Because you get several different varieties (clementines, mandarins, tsatsumas, tangerines - I think there are more), all of which are very common in SA, its alot easier to use a collective than to become an expert in citrus varieties. Here it would mean standing up, going to the kitchen and looking at the label on my fruit pouch before I could confidently use any of those specific names!

I don't know the difference between any of them myself. But if you used any of those words, I'd at least know you meant "small orange citrus fruit". A "naartjie" could be anything to a British English speaker.

Reply 191

Y__

13

Ah, I'm out of here, it's way too late anyways. Good night everyone!
:goodnight:

Reply 192

I adore kasekuchen (sorry - don't know how to do an umlaut) :love:

Kasekuchen is definitely a very different creature to the horrid refridgerated squishy stuff that English people think of as cheesecake. Some of its ok, but its far more frequently made horribly wrong than right. Over Christmas I downloaded a baked cheesecake recipe and added a seam of rich plain chocolate. It was absolutely divine and pretty close to what I remember of kasekuchen with a bit of artistic licence.

Reply 193

generalebriety

Yes, I am "in any way even slightly thinking of trying to imply" that you ought to use words that more than 1% of the population of this forum will understand. I don't care if it's your dialect. That word is not an English word, it's an Afrikaans word incorporated into South African dialects of English, and no English speakers will know the word other than those who live in South Africa, those who have close connections with South Africa, or very experienced fruitsellers - and you know this. Being deliberately obscure is arsey, and as much as I'm in favour of you having your dialect, and as lovely a word as "naartjie" is, this is a UK forum and if you don't speak the sort of English that native speakers born and raised in the UK will understand you're essentially speaking a foreign language, and I'm afraid something in me cries out "yes, but for ****'s sake, why are you speaking at all if your primary objective isn't to have me know what you mean?".

Despite your judgement to the reverse, my true reason for using that term is for the practical details listed above. I am not confident about labelling the small citrus fruit with a name that is quite likely to be incorrect. It is certainly not motivated by a desire to show off an unusual word or anything silly. As Supergrunch pointed out - its incorporated into everyday South African English (as are skelem, moffie and tsotse)
My friends have had no difficulty in asking me 'what's a naartjie' when I've used it before, and I so rarely use South Africanisms that nobody has minded before.
In the same way that I refuse to change my text colour for the occasional TSRer who complains that they hate reading it, I certainly am not going to refrain from saying naartjie around you GB! Its clear that you're objecting on principle rather than on practical concerns because you knew what I meant. If you are so deeply offended by my use of it, I have no objection to your reporting me. Or putting me on ignore.
Its all moot anyway since the likelihood is that you'll never hear me use a South Africanism again. I think its likely this is the first time I've done so on TSR. In four years.

If we're going for the 'principle' of the issue, a strong motivation for not complying to your request is the fact that I think the sort of linguistic purism you're advocating there (and musicbloke too) is highly discriminative, and encourages attitudes of superiority in a way that is very likely to alienate people. With PS Helping its all very well because we need to help people not risk a stuffy academic being put off by their statement. But in ordinary interaction, that sort of stuffiness is at best neutral, at worst harmful.

That is my opinion about it anyway, but I shall leave it here because I'm pretty sure that you and I will never agree, so we may as well ignore or accept our different values in this area and focus on other similarities/mutual interests.

Reply 194

generalebriety

Yes, I am "in any way even slightly thinking of trying to imply" that you ought to use words that more than 1% of the population of this forum will understand. I don't care if it's your dialect. That word is not an English word, it's an Afrikaans word incorporated into South African dialects of English, and no English speakers will know the word other than those who live in South Africa, those who have close connections with South Africa, or very experienced fruitsellers - and you know this. Being deliberately obscure is arsey, and as much as I'm in favour of you having your dialect, and as lovely a word as "naartjie" is, this is a UK forum and if you don't speak the sort of English that native speakers born and raised in the UK will understand you're essentially speaking a foreign language, and I'm afraid something in me cries out "yes, but for ****'s sake, why are you speaking at all if your primary objective isn't to have me know what you mean?".

I don't know the difference between any of them myself. But if you used any of those words, I'd at least know you meant "small orange citrus fruit". A "naartjie" could be anything to a British English speaker.

Yes, being deliberately obscure is just going to annoy people, and of course is a bad idea, but I don't think that was necessarily the case here. Okay, it's an obscure word, but it's apparently not entirely unknown to British English speakers (British, American and South African pronunciations are listed in the OED), so it's not all that odd just to use the word in case it was known by whoever you were talking to. This is far more efficient (and likely) in natural speech of course, because you can instantly clarify, but I doubt Craggy thought through using it all that much. And I don't see why it being a word imported from Afrikaans has anything to do with it - in as much as you can define these things, it's part of South African English, where it has a different pronunciation and is used by people who don't speak Afrikaans. Would you have the same reaction if I were to use slang specific to a region of the UK that nobody would be that likely to know?

Reply 195

I'd like to additionally point out that the word trek is used in common English in this country and in literature, totally legitimately, and it is directly incorporated from Afrikaans. But I accept that its far more likely to be understood than naartjie, and I did indeed know this.

Reply 196

Craghyrax

Despite your judgement to the reverse, my true reason for using that term is for the practical details listed above. I am not confident about labelling the small citrus fruit with a name that is quite likely to be incorrect. It is certainly not motivated by a desire to show off an unusual word or anything silly. As Supergrunch pointed out - its incorporated into everyday South African English (as are skelem, moffie and tsotse)
My friends have had no difficulty in asking me 'what's a naartjie' when I've used it before, and I so rarely use South Africanisms that nobody has minded before.
In the same way that I refuse to change my text colour for the occasional TSRer who complains that they hate reading it, I certainly am not going to refrain from saying naartjie around you GB! Its clear that you're objecting on principle rather than on practical concerns because you knew what I meant. If you are so deeply offended by my use of it, I have no objection to your reporting me. Or putting me on ignore.
Its all moot anyway since the likelihood is that you'll never hear me use a South Africanism again. I think its likely this is the first time I've done so on TSR. In four years.

You're not confident about calling the small citrus fruit by a name likely to be incorrect, even though the difference between a clementine, a satsuma, a tangerine and a mandarin is inconsequential to anyone but a biologist (in fact, I don't even know whether one exists - for all I know, they might be synonyms), but you're confident about using a word you know most people aren't likely to know simply because you quite like it? Why does that not seem ridiculous to you? I'm not objecting on principle, I'm objecting on practical concerns - I don't have a clue what "skelem", "moffie" or "tsotse" mean, and the only reason I know "naartjie" is because it's one of the ~4 words of Afrikaans I know from having read linguistics books, which last time I checked most people don't do (and even so, I googled the word before my first post just to make sure I wasn't being stupid). I'm not offended, nor do I wish to report you or put you on ignore (so stop acting like a child by telling me to do so), I just want you to use English words rather than Afrikaans words, because we don't all speak bloody Afrikaans.

I'm sorry if you find that offensive, but as far as I'm concerned, regional dialects have very little place outside the region they're spoken in and linguistic discussions. I call my evening meal "dinner" in Cambridge simply because I know people will misunderstand me if I say I'm going for tea. I don't even give it a second thought - I just use the word that I think the person I'm talking to is most likely to understand, rather than using the word I like most regardless of its (non-)existence in the language I'm speaking.

And yes, I know trek is originally an Afrikaans word, but my point is that naartjie is a dialectic word, rather than a word that we've incorporated into English, and as this is a UK forum, it's safe to assume that most people speak British English (and rather dangerous to assume they speak anything else). I'm prepared to bet that the plural of "trek" in Afrikaans isn't "treks" - just like the plural of "kindergarten" in English isn't "kindergaerten".

Reply 197

Craghyrax

I'd like to additionally point out that the word trek is used in common English in this country and in literature, totally legitimately, and it is directly incorporated from Afrikaans. But I accept that its far more likely to be understood than naartjie, and I did indeed know this.

But that still presumes etymology has anything to do with this, which it doesn't. It's just that naartje is a word that's in South African English, but not British English - if it came from an older form of English, or even, say, Dyirbal, the argument would be unchanged.

Reply 198

Supergrunch

Would you have the same reaction if I were to use slang specific to a region of the UK that nobody would be that likely to know?

Are you hoping I'll say "no" to that? :confused:

Of course I would. Mostly because I probably wouldn't understand it myself...

Reply 199