No, that wasn’t my intention at all! I’m sorry it came across that way (it’s about 10:30 at night here and I’m quite ready to turn in for the night). I get your points about the importance of Spanish and accuracy in reporting, and I agree with it.

But again, if the beef is that the name in the text doesn’t reflect the actual name (because of diacritics) I get it. But you’re missing my point here. Maybe I’m not being too clear (it’s not easy switching back to English after writing in Czech all day), so if so, let me know.

That’s not my logic either, though that does happen— see the example of Pilsen (which is not pronouced like PILL-sen, more like PLLzejn, but English doesn’t have a soft “n”, or treat “l” as a vowel). I do think it’s insulting when names are fucked up. But what I’m saying is that proper nouns in other languages are…

That’s not my point at all. It was snarky as fuck though, so I’ll take my lumps for that.

The point was, language politics are messy, and I sympathize with OP on it. But we all compromise on some areas— unfamiliar scripts, diacritics, sounds that don’t exist in our native languages, and so on. So, I like the OP’s…

So do many other languages with diacritics. Let me give you an example from my every day life. The town of Plzeň in the Czech Republic is known far and wide to anglophone beer drinkers as Pilsen, the home of Pilsner Urquell. Pilsen is also the German name, and has associations with the Third Reich and Sudetendeutsche…

Just out of curiosity, do you type “Putin” or Путин when talking about geopolitical events in Россия? Or is this something that only applies to Spanish names?

Because you brought it up in response to someone’s negative experience, saying “I don’t understand this perspective. I know there are assholes on Reddit (as there are on Gawker), but I read the French language subreddit as well as one about jogging, both of which seem to be populated by normal people, and so I don’t…

That’s not my claim. My claim is that you’re extrapolating your specific experience as indicative, when many people have different ones. That’s why you’re experiencing the disconnect, not because the claims are false, but because they’re both islands of very different experiences. They are what they are.

That said, I…

Because that’s not indicative of the majority of Reddit’s readership? I mean, I have fantastic hockey discussions in the Czech/Slovak language subforum of a very large hockey site, but that doesn’t mean I’d go as far as to say that people there are wonderful, well-educated, and witty. It’s just self-selection bias.

People still use Cragislist? How quaint!

JB, you got the best stories!

Living in a Slavic land will do wonders for one’s appreciation of beets. I hated them in America too, but I’ve had a huge number of surprisingly tasty beet dishes since I moved here.

But... generally speaking, people ARE terrible.

It was mostly an odd night in general. Storytime! (Full disclosure, I am an American living in Prague who speaks fluent Czech and has a really distinctly American regional accent when I speak English, which will play a part in the story.)

So, Prague, where this story takes place has a pretty bustling nightlife. It’s…

I had a beer a few months ago with everybody’s favorite B-level Irish beardy musician celebrity, (Glen Hansard) responsible for creating a pretty mom-tastic film and Broadway musical. It was pretty odd.

One of these days, the Party for Personal Responsibility will actually take responsibility for something. Well, besides of course, whatever successful things liberals do.

Yeah, what a dick to think about a potentially life changing decision. After all, some dude on the internet has ENTERTAINMENT NEEDZ.

Are you Jeremy Clarkson? Shouldn't you be flailing away on an intern about now?

I teach American kids in Central Europe on study abroad trips. There's definitely something to this with 18-20 year olds. Factor in the insane hive-mind/peer pressure that a high school teenager already has going on and things are bound to get awkward, ugly, and insulting real quick.