America Must Die For Us To Fix This Shit

Unrepairable: They Were F*cking Erasing Chinese Ideas Out Of Existence!

“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” –George Orwell

What's the point in learning Chinese [or Indian, or Russian, or Farsi…] if you’ll never be given the opportunity to use it, right?

We all know that Americans don't learn foreign languages. They hate everything foreign, except the lesser foreign that comes to America and has to become totally Americanized. Then the Americans love you! They also rename everything you have in American language. To remind you that everything in this world past, present and future belongs to Americans anyway, and nothing, absolutely nothing belongs to the Chinese, not even Chinese names, concepts, and ideas. And then the Americans turn around and say, look, there was nothing original about the Chinese anyway!

The reality of world cultures hurts. Yes, it may have been true that America was a melting pot for different people. But for different cultures it was… the gas chamber.

All American schools, universities and the publishers, without exception, and especially The New York Times practice Orwellian Rules of Writing in order to keep their China reports "Chinese-free" — meaning pure, clean, and unpolluted!

Orwellian Rules Of Writing At The New York Times

The New York Times, a US genocidal press dressed as global public service, is perhaps the most notorious offender to the world's diversity of languages, foreign cultures, and non-Western people. All its writers and editors, letting alone outside contributors, are forced to "avoid foreign words" in their “submissions,” especially if it’s about foreign nations, their governments, and their (non-Western) people, wherever they can in order to keep the paper’s sovereignty over the definition of thought.

The NY Times must write from the position of highest authority, like the voice of an overlord and colonial master, which it cannot if the matter is discussed on foreign terms.

It means that 95% of the world’s (non-US) population is effectively censored and/or their cultures and words omitted.

Not all words are created equal, of course. Americans can call the Chinese whatever they want. But, still, what an attitude this is. It amounts to saying to our friends the Chinese [but also the Russians, the Iranians, the Germans, the Indians…] : “You may express your ideas, but only by using OUR dictionary. You must use OUR vocabularies — forged in OUR culture, pleasant to OUR eyes!”

RELATED CHINA: "Stop Saying CCP, It's CPC!"

Even if it’s bordering on cultural and intellectual property theft: “You must translate foreign ideas and concepts into convenient English words and categories that a Westerner could have said and thought up independently from you. We don’t want to hold a candle to non-Western thinkers and inventors you see.”

Image (above): Most 'Style Guides' in the US are still obsessed with purity of language and xenophobic advice: "...avoid foreign words. Write in English."

As any philosopher, politician, historian, or social-scientist (letting alone linguist) will attest to you: Language is power. Stripping billions of powerless people off their cultural key terminologies so that your publication looks pure and thoroughbred isn't just some journalist’s cruel joke. It is a form of cultural genocide. The New York Times may think New York as a worldly place. It is not. It is full of Americans.

This dead-serious form of language imperialism is of course an age-old and time-tested strategy: "It is knowledge only if we know it!" — meaning that unless (and until) a Westerner also said it, and named it, and took credit for its discovery, as far as our media channels and academics are concerned your foreign ideas, concepts, and categories remain “fair game.” (This discrimination against foreign words, I claim, is worse than racism.)

Anyway, here's a taste of blatant NY Times language imperialism (see this link). It is in the form of a China op-ed (already his second) by China professor Daniel A. Bell who in order to get published in The New York Times prostrates himself not only to "Teaching Western Values," but also more so to "Teaching China the correct English terms" for all their Chinese thoughts on cultural and ideological matters.

I am all for the inclusion of foreign cultures, not their omission in our media. Foreign names, brands, and inventions must be allowed [and will be allowed some day, I’m sure of it] to show and to compete in US publications. Today, most foreign words are still banned. And almost 7 billion people whose languages are not English are silenced.

End.

Next round: The New York Times Sales Scam!!!

Thorsten J. Pattberg, Ph.D., is a German writer and cultural critic. He is the author of The East-West Dichotomy. Journalists may contact him here: pattberg'at'pku.edu.cn