L.A. morning show host surprised that a K-pop star from Vancouver speaks English

boing
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Bald Eagle?

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Nope. Quebecois. There are francophone (78.4 %) and anglophone Quebecois (9.6 %) mainly, and also almost two thirds of the province is peopled by folks who speak a lot of quite interesting languages like Inuktitut, Mohawk, Anishnabe, Cree, Attikamwekw. And last but not least there are Quebecois allophones (people who can only say allo… :grin: ).

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That tweet is just as naïvely bigoted as the host’s remark.

Apart from English and French (and other languages from other places), Canadians also speak:

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I am an anglophone Canadian (lifelong Vancouver accent, despite learning English on either side of the Ottawa River), and on two occasions SF Bay Area people have:

  • complimented me on my fluency (“it sounds like you picked up English at an early age.” “Wow! You’re absolutely right!”)

  • asked me what language I speak when I’m at home.

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Years ago i told someone i was from Venezuela and they said something to the affect of “So you guys speak Mexican?”. Without missing a beat i answered “Yes, we speak Spanish”

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I mean, one would think it would be impossible to not know that, but who knows where the morning show host came from.

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The American education system.

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Gonna bite my tongue really hard and assume only the best intentions from you / your comment.

He’s ethnically Korean / actually Canadian. He’s not a refugee from Korea that grew up there and came to Vancouver to make a better life for himself. In other words, he’s a Canadian called Mike Lee who (unsurprisingly) speaks English. He looks Korean because his parents are Korean.

Excuse me if I’m moderately sensitive to this issue but while I am white as white, my partner is Korean-American and has to deal with this low-level racist behavior all the time - it really opened up my eyes to it.

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A moose once bit my sister.

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Your comment is an observation, rather than inherently racist. Nevertheless, this sort of comment is often uttered by racists in their ranting against immigration by people who don’t look or sound like them.

(PS: I think it is wonderful that Vancouver has welcomed many people who speak many languages. Whether or not they can speak, or choose to learn to speak English doesn’t alter my opinion.)

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Wouldn’t that be a moosehole-shark?

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møøse bites kan be pretti nasti

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There are plenty of “white” folk across the globe whose first language isn’t English, but if you ran into them on a Vancouver street, I’m guessing you wouldn’t assume they didn’t speak English.

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Those tend to be languages spoken in addition to english.

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Only if they speak English

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What, all of them?

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I am so using that. Unfortunately I know I’ll have plenty of opportunities.

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No, which is why we use moose as the trade tongue.

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That friendliy-condescending tone of the host makes me wanna retch.
I have heard this shit here in Germany too, unfortunatly. I work in telephone customer service and I have a greek name.
“Are you greek?”-“No. German.”
“Where are you from?”-“Frankfurt?”
“Is that a Greek name?”-“Yes.”-“So you´re Greek?”-No, I´m German"
“You are really speaking good German!”-“Might be because I AM German.”
The worst part is how suprised some of those people are that a German can have greek ancestry, I mean the first greek workers came to Westgermany over 60 years ago. And their questions are always in the same disgusting friendly-condescending tone as the host in the clip above.
I feel the pain of the K-Pop singer (I still fucking hate K-Pop).

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His name is Mark, not Mike.

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