Is it time to stop saying 'aloha' and other culturally sensitive words out of context?

https://www.yahoo.com ^ | January 13, 2023 | David Oliver

[Red Badger]

"Aloha." "Hola." "Shalom."

These are ways to say "hello" in Hawaiian, Spanish and Hebrew, respectively. But just because you can say something doesn't mean it's always appropriate.

On the surface, simple greetings and phrases from other races and cultures may seem fine to sprinkle into our vernacular. Inclusive even.

But did you know that "aloha" doesn't just mean hello or goodbye? "It's a greeting or a farewell, but the meaning is deeper," says Maile Arvin, the director of Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Utah. "One of my Hawaiian language teachers taught it to me as 'Aloha means recognizing yourself in everyone and everything you meet.'"

If you're not Hawaiian and you say it, it could come off as mockery. And that's just one word to think about.

The use of certain words requires education, knowledge and the foresight to understand when they should – or shouldn't – come out of your mouth.

'We live in a multilingual world' Of course, not all uses of language outside someone's culture are problematic.

"We live in a multilingual world where we're always influencing one another's language practices hand where we might come into contact with a variety of terms or language practices that we have not grown up in," says Nikki Lane, cultural and linguistic Anthropologist.

Intention matters most. Dropping "hola" or "shalom" to someone you know who speaks Spanish or Hebrew, for example, isn't something to worry about. Actively don a fake, exaggerated accent and say those words? Therein lies the problem.

Like saying "ni hao" to someone Asian American who isn't Chinese; this could be both othering and a microaggression.

[animal172]

That looks like a typical car from Vermont parked in the Co-op parking lot across from Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital.

[Clutch Martin]

Much aloha to you!

[rlmorel]

I know!

For about a year, I drove around with this on my window up here in Massachusetts:

To the Massachusetts moon bats credit (if indeed credit can be given in any way to them) my car never got vandalized, but I did have one incident that makes me laugh every time I think about it.

One morning as I was driving into work, a car passed me on my right. As I looked over I saw a hand pressed up against the driver side window with the middle finger extended. To my astonishment, it “looked like a little old lady with a gray bun on her head! (In retrospect, I'm not sure she was actually a little old lady, but one of those 50+ year old aging moon bats, but when they look like that, you can never really tell…)

I very nearly did run off the road!

[Allegra]

Ciao, Dave. Stick it where the sun don’t shine. ‘K?

[Ancesthntr]

Ok, how about “Hi, motherf’s!” or “Bye, motherf’s!”

Oh, sorry, that’s cultural appropriation from Samuel L. Jackson.

[Red Badger]

Remember back in the 80’s when Valley Girl Speak was all the rage in young Americans?

Wasn’t that cultural appropriation?.............

[Ancesthntr]

It is far more important to be able to say “DONDE ESTAS EL BAÑO?”

[Fair Paul]

I was thinking “Otra cerveza, por favor?”

[Ancesthntr]

Everything is cultural, appropriation, and that’s the whole point. We cannot simply be allowed to live our lives in peace, these utilitarian busy bodies have to run every aspect of our lives, up to, and including governing our thoughts.

I will go back to “Bye, motherf’s” WRT these azzholes.

[17th Miss Regt]

declaring Polynesians “almost white.”

Kinda like declaring the Japanese "yellow Aryans".

[PeterPrinciple]

I live in Sioux County, near Sioux City and Sioux Falls.

Lots of Sioux names in nw Iowa. I always that the naming might have been part of the treaty agreements made to show honor to them.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I always thought naming so many places after American Indian tribes was a sign of respect and honor. I grew up in upstate NY and we had countless Indian names.

It is utterly bizarre. In many places in the US and Canada, there's a big push to revert to native names for places. Yet, at the same time, we are supposed to NOT use native words like "Aloha." So which is it? Native names and words are GOOD? Or native names and words are BAD? They cannot have it both ways.

We visited the "Bison Range" in NW Montana a couple months ago. The Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes are using a lot of native language place names and words. Somehow I think the Indian replacements for English words aren't going to readily catch on:

Xest Sxlxalt, Kiʾsuʾk kyukyit! – good day!

A while back, another FReeper said he had asked some Indian acquaintances about why they didn't use their own native language. Their reply? "It's too damn hard."

[PeterPrinciple]

They cannot have it both ways.

---

In their convoluted minds they can.

They are not rational.

[seowulf]

Speaking of tribalism, I demand that native Americans (that would be Injuns) stop using the words “tribe” and “chief” both of which come from European languages and have the root words in Proto Indo-European going back more than 5000 years.

It offends me.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

While we are at it, they need to stop using "Americans" in their preferred name.

"...the western hemisphere, North and South America," in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, traditionally after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus "New World." Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci (Latin Vesputius, which might have yielded place-name Vesputia). The sense in English naturally was restricted toward the British colonies, then the United States.

The man's name Amerigo is Germanic, said to derive from Gothic Amalrich, literally "work-ruler." The Old English form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. The Italian fem. form merged into Amelia.

I'm thoroughly offended they adopted our English word "America" and demand they stop using it right now! It is culturally insensitive of them to do that. They are culturally appropriating German, Italian AND English words all at once just by using "American."

[Albion Wilde]

“America a great melting pot...”
“That’s insulting to persons of diverse culture!”

“I’m hungry. So, Mexican or Chinese?”
“Wow, that’s racist!”

“OK. Pizza, then.”
“Cultural appropriation much?”

And so on.

[Red Badger]

So, we can’t eat foods that are ‘native’ to the Americas, like turkey, tomatoes, corn, squash, pumpkin, potatoes, cranberries, persimmons, strawberries, vanilla, chocolate, or anything that contains these items.............

[GingisK]

I am rather fond of “Osmosis, Amebos”.

[Albion Wilde]

It will become that ludicrous before the trumpet sounds.

[3RIVRS]

Hawaii is no more or less culturally special and sacred than anywhere else. Also. One of the most racist places I’ve ever been. There. I said it.