It’s a problem in more ways than one. I had a student complain to the dean of international students here that I am racist against Americans (note: I AM an American, albeit with dual citizenship) for discussing how the US actively traded away Czechoslovakia in 1968 in order to have the USSR remove missiles aimed at…

My favorite here in Eastern Europe is when people post pictures of themselves with their SO reflected in their mirrored sunglasses.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be shocked if they found a few literal skeletons in the closet with that family. Something just ain’t right with the Huckabees.

I didn’t say I liked it myself. I’m not a huge chocolate fan unless it’s got gram masala in it. Then, all bets are off.

To be fair, neither is instant hot chocolate mix. :D

Also, points for the Ghosts in the Shell tag.

Well, now I just feel super depressed about the future of the human race. They do realize there’s white chocolate as well, right?

I think the author is burying the lede on the chocolate one— who the fuck gives a shit about what color a drink (that you consume) in a to-go cup (which you cannot see through) looks like? Was she co-ordinating her drink and her outfit? I’m utterly bemused.

Yeah, I totally get you now. Sorry I came off a bit like a snarky assmunch yesterday— exhaustion and prickliness and the internet are a bad combination. I think we’re all on the same page and same side here. Nothing but love on my end.

Right on! Sorry I was so snarky yesterday. Much love here.

That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing that, that does seem to clear that up for me.

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!