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Showing posts from July, 2019

To be (politicized), or not to be (politicized): That is the question

By Seyoung Jung Seyoung Jung is a graduate student in Political Science at The University of Illinois and wrote this blog post in the 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ course in spring 2019. Seyoung’s future plans include continuing the Ph.D. program. Let’s imagine the following situation. We have a main character named Lang and she is in a dangerous situation. One day, a candidate in a political campaign approaches Lang about her representing the very fundamental problem of our society. He brings a crowd of reporters and gives a passionate speech about Lang. She immediately becomes the most controversial topic of the election. On one hand, she is glad people are finally recognizing the issue that deserves attention, but she is also feeling overwhelmed now that people are deeply invested, and the tension keeps escalating. Lang now feels the conversation is no longer about her but something greater, and she is not sure she wants to be the catch-all term for all the problems t...

Portugish: linguistic differences and shared legacies

By: Nidhi Shastri Nidhi Shastri is a senior in Environmental and political Science at The University of Illinois. Nidhi’s future plans include graduating and working is Chicago regarding communications. Nidhi wrote this blog post in 418 'Language and Minorities in Europe' in spring 2019. Figure 1: Joe Penma, also known as MysteryGuitarMan Source: YouTube "E aí, galera! Tudo bem?” These are the famous (Portuguese) words of Brazilian filmmaker, musician, and youtuber Joe Penna, also known as, MysteryGuitarMan. He typically says this phrase at the start of each video, and it roughly translates to: “What’s up guys! Is everything good?” in English, and “¿Qué tal? ¿Todo bien?” in Spanish. For many years I watched his videos and tried to figure out what exactly he was saying, and as a Spanish speaker, it took a few tries to parse out exactly what the similar phrasing would be in Spanish. As I explored the relationship between the language of one of my favorite stars, Joe...