Engliss Only, Pliss

In Stock: Lips, Tongues, Code-Switches. Use While Offer Lasts

At the first attempt, Kolavari Di comes across as nonsensical, randomly interspersed with words that end in the suffix “U”. Does it have a narrative after all? Well, it is a spurned lover stringing together, in a very James Joyce-like stream of consciousness, words that in their nonsensicality are actually metaphorical. So he compares the physical beauty of his lady love to that of the “white-u moon-u” but her character is akin to the “black-u night-u”. Is this Joyce’s 20th-century symbolist writing making a comeback in a 21st-century guise?

What is most noteworthy is how the song plays on English. Regional English accents in India, Tamil being a case in point, are often caricatured by the anglicised urbane India, and stereotypes of vernacular accents are often inserted in Bollywood films for humorous effect. Kolavari Di reverses this psychology; it challenges the sclerotic ownership of the English language.

In the tremendous popularity the song has achieved it has brought the peripheral ownership of English into the centre where the regional lingo is now standing proudly shoulder to shoulder with the mainstream – both nationally and internationally. The English language was a legacy bequeathed to India by 250 years of British rule, and Kolavari Di stamps the English language’s reclamation by the colonised as their own – in the full view of a global audience. What makes this rendition most remarkable is that the song’s international audience are wittingly participating in this reclamation.

Kolavari Di: how India’s ‘Tamglish soup song’ went viral

TRANSCRIPT via the internet

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Here are the the Kolaveri Di lyrics;
Yo boys I am singing song, soup song, flop song.
Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di,
Why This Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di.
Rhythm Correct
Why This Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di
Maintain This
Why this Kolaveri..Di
Distance la moon-u moon-u,
Moon-u color-u white-u white background,
Night-u Nigth-u Night-u color-u black-u.
Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di,
Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di.
White skin-u girl-u girl-u,
girl-u heart-u black-u.
Eyes-u eyes-u meet-u meet-u, my future dark.
Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di,
Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di.
Maama notes eduthuko, apdiye kaila snacks eduthuko
Pa pa paan pa pa paan pa pa paa pa pa paan,
Sariya vaasi, super maama ready
ready 1 2 3 4.
Whaa wat a change over maama,
Ok maama now tune change-u,
kaila glass only English…
Hand la glass, glass la scotch,
Eyes-u full-aa tear-u, empty life-u,
Girl-u come-u, life reverse gear-u,
Lovvu Lovvu, oh my lovvu.
You showed me bouv-u,
Cow-u cow-u holi cow-u,
I want u hear now-u,
God I m dying now-u,
She is happy how-u,
this song for soup boys-u, we don’t have choice-u.
Why This Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di.
Flop song.

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Seriously, I love this song and I cannot get it out of my head anymore. Found it earlier today on Sepia Mutiny and thought it appropriate for here - Numa <3

Anonymous asked: I've been reading the anecdotes in your blog, and the one recurring thing that I don't understand is why so many feel that a language was thrust upon them. I feel like I grew up in an environment almost completely opposite of that. My family is Lebanese, more or less. And like many Lebanese, I didn't grow up in Lebanon; I used to spend at least two months a year there until I was sixteen. Rather, I've lived in a dozen different countries. Everywhere I went, my parents expected that I learn...

Hi anon,

Thanks for the ask! I’m glad that you’ve always felt comfortable learning languages of the countries you’ve lived in.

With regards to having language “thrust upon them,” I can’t answer for  Jaded or others who’ve posted, but I think a lot of the anecdotes on englissonly are rooted in the history of British colonialism and its role in spreading English as a language used across the world. 

Colonialism was about the imposition of one language/culture over others. English, as the language of the colonizer, was valued above all other languages and colonial subjects were forced to adopt it as a language in order to survive in the Empire. 

While colonialism has ended, former British colonial territories such as India are left with English, no longer a foreign tongue, but part of its history.

However, English, the way it’s spoken in South Asian countries is not accepted as English. It can’t be English, because of our accents. It can’t be English because of our sentence structures. It can’t be English because ultimately we’re not white enough for English.

We’re not worthy of English. 

Englissonly for me, is about that hurt. It’s about how even though English was thrust upon many of us, we have no claim over it. Our English is valued less. It can never be ours. 

I don’t know if that makes any sense. But there you have it!

Numa

Transcript of the poem via Jaded. Please note that stylistically and visually this poem is very different. Poem starts at 1:00. 

Discourse on the logic of language 

English is my mother tongue 

A mother tongue is not a foreign

lang lang lang language 

languish anguish 

a foreign anguish 

English is my father tongue 

a father tongue is a foreign language

therefore English is a foreign language

not a mother tongue

what is my mother tongue 

my mammy tongue 

my mummy tongue 

my momsy tongue 

my modder tongue 

my ma tongue 

I have no mother tongue 

no mother to tongue

no tongue to mother tongue me

I must therefore be tongue-dumb 

dumb tongued 

dub tongued 

damn dumb tongue

but I have a dumb tongue 

tongue dumb

father tongue 

and English is my mother tongue 

is my father tongue 

is a foreign lan lang lang language 

languish anguish 

a foreign anguish is English 

Another tongue 

My mother mammy mummy modder mater meser modder tongue

mother tongue tongue mother 

mother tongue me 

mother me touch me with the tongue of your 

lan lang language 

languish anguish 

English is a foreign anguish 

When it was born the mother held her new born child close. She began then to lick it all over. The child whimpered a little. But as the mother’s tongue moved faster and stronger over its body, it grew silent. The mother turning it this way and that under her tongue until she’d tongued it clean of the creamy white substance covering its body. 

Edict I. 

Every owner of slaves shall wherever possible shall ensure that the slaves belong to as many ethno-linguistic groups as possible. If they cannot speak to each other, they cannot then ferment rebellion and revolution. 

The mother then put her fingers in her child’s mouth, gently forcing it open. She touches her tongue to the child’s tongue and holding the tiny mouth open she blows into it hard. She was blowing words. Her words her mother’s words those of her mother’s mother and all their mothers before her daughter’s mouth. 

Edict II. 

Every slave caught sleeping his native language shall be severely punished. Where necessary removal of the tongue is recommended. The offending organ when removed should be hung on a high central place so that all may see and tremble. 

Those parts of the brain chiefly responsible for speech are named after two learned 19th century doctors. The eponymous doctors Broker and Dr. Vernicer respectively. Dr. Broker believed the size of the brain determined intelligence. He devoted much of his time proving that White males of the Caucasian race had larger brains than and were therefore superior to women, Blacks and other peoples of colour. 

Understanding and recognition of the spoken word takes place in Vernicer’s area of the left temporal lobe situated next to the auditory cortex. From there relevant information to Broker’s area situated in the left frontal cortex which then forms the response and passes it on to the mortal cortex. The mortal cortex controls the muscles of speech. 

A tapering, blunt-tipped, muscular, soft and fleshy organ describes

a) The penis.  

b) The tongue. 

c) Neither of the above. 

d) Both of the above. 

In man the tongue is 

a) The principle organ of taste.

b) An organ of articulate speech. 

c) The principle organ of oppression and exploitation. 

d) All of the above. 

The tongue is 

a) An inter-woven of strided muscle running in three planes. 

b) Fixed to the jaw bone. 

c) Has an outer covering of a mucus membrane covered with [_] 

d) Contains ten thousand buds none of which is sensitive to the taste of foreign words. 

Air is forced out of the lungs, through the larynx where it causes the vocal cords to vibrate and create sound. The metamorphosis from sound to intelligent word requires 

a) The lip, tongue and jaw all working together. 

b) A mother tongue. 

c) The overseer’s whip. 

d) All of the above or none. 

English is my mother tongue 

A mother tongue is not a foreign

lang lang lang language 

languish anguish 

a foreign anguish 

English is my father tongue 

a father tongue is a foreign language

therefore English is a foreign language

not a mother tongue

what is my mother tongue 

my mammy tongue 

my mummy tongue 

my momsy tongue 

my modder tongue 

my ma tongue 

I have no mother tongue 

no mother to tongue

no tongue to mother tongue me

I must therefore be tongue-dumb 

dumb tongued 

dub tongued 

damn dumb tongue

but I have a dumb tongue 

tongue dumb

father tongue 

and English is my mother tongue 

is my father tongue 

is a foreign lan lang lang language 

languish anguish 

a foreign anguish is English 

Another tongue 

My mother mammy mummy modder mater meser modder tongue

mother tongue tongue mother 

mother tongue me 

mother me touch me with the tongue of your 

lan lang language 

languish anguish 

English is a foreign anguish.

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Found this image on the Blaft Publications blog. It&#8217;s a nursery rhyme out of a school book for Kinder Garten/ Nursery School out of the &#8220;Little Pentagon&#8221; series published by Samba Publishers, Chennai.
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WHY, HELLO THERE BLAST FROM OUR COLONIAL PAST. Nice to see that you&#8217;re still doing your bit, helping new generations of children internalize some pretty messed up ideas about Whiteness and English. - Numa 

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Found this image on the Blaft Publications blog. It’s a nursery rhyme out of a school book for Kinder Garten/ Nursery School out of the “Little Pentagon” series published by Samba Publishers, Chennai.

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WHY, HELLO THERE BLAST FROM OUR COLONIAL PAST. Nice to see that you’re still doing your bit, helping new generations of children internalize some pretty messed up ideas about Whiteness and English. - Numa 

Jaded pointed this amazing song out to me and we felt the need to share. If I understand correctly, it’s a version of a longer song in Urdu (a filmi song) with English bits that were ultimately cut out of the final version. These are the cut out English bits put together. - Numa

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Transcript

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Some say I am Sweety

Some say a Queen of the Beauty.

I am alive. Heart is beating,

But my soul is hurting.

Some say I am Sweety…

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I don’t know dancing and singing,

I don’t know dancing and singing,

But I can’t say no to my Darling.

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Make partner of loving.

I want to be a wife.

Oh my Love.

For my Love,

I will move society.

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Some say I am Sweety…

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I want love,

Give love my Sweety!

Interest me, I am love thirsty.

Nothing is more attractive,

Than your love and directive.

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What you want,

I will do.

It will be my duty.

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Some say I am Sweety…

This is something that occurred to me a while back, when I noticed that an Indian name was trending on Twitter. The Indian name belonged to an Indian dude who had an Indian blog that was filled with Indian English and it was just the funniest thing evarevar yougaiz. The trending seemed to be largely made up of that unique form of EnglishBullying that we are so fond of doing in our onenumber country to anyone who has the audacity to use Indian English like it is a language that people actually speak in India or something. This bullying is not really bullying yougaiz because apparently it helps the other person to ‘see his mistake and correct his ‘bad’ English’.

Taken from is englishbullying in modern india like hipster racism without the hipsters and the racism yougaiz please answer me yes or no? by the always brilliant Kuzhali Manickavel. 

my name is. 我叫。 nama saya. je m’appelle.

I just received an email reading, ‘Congratulations, [last name] [first character] [second character] [English name]’ - it made me smile. I love how my name is so countercultural.

(But only if you define culture very, very specifically.)

- submitted by leabecca 

Hari Kondabolu on “Diaspora”

This next video is being made to address a gripe I’ve held onto for maybe five or six years now. It involves my best friends and college roommates, Sam and Will. Um, fellas. Remember in college at some point, I was talking about the South Asian experience? “Which time, Hari?” Okay. It was the time I used the word diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah) and you both jumped on me about it and you said that the word was diaspora (DEE-as-pour-ah). And I said no, “an alternate pronunciation is diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah)” and you said, “no, you’re wrong it’s diaspora (DEE-as-pour-ah)” and I said, “my mother uses the word diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah)” and you said, “well, she’s also wrong” and I realize it might be petty to you that I’m using public television in order to address this gripe, but I don’t care. The word is diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah) because my mother says it’s diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah) and you know why that matters, because she was part of a diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah). Therefore, by proxy, I can use the word diaspora (Dye-AS-pour-ah) and be right. Do you understand why you’re wrong? You’re wrong. Um…I’ll see you at the wedding.  

Transcript via Numa

I love Goodness Gracious Me because so many of their sketches speak to my experiences as a member of the South Asian diaspora. Many of the scenes, like this name sketch, are all too familiar and I thought it may resonate with others who have “complicated” foreign names.  - Numa 

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Transcript via Numa:

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A: I call this meeting of Delhi Electronics to order. We have a new man starting with us today, a new man joining the team. He’s from England, so let’s be gentle with him.

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Everyone: Laughs

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A: His name is um…Ja-Je

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J: Jonathan. It’s Jonathan.

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A: Joona-tan

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J: Sorry, it’s Jonathan

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A: Jaliyana

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J: No, no, Jonathan

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B: Jantawalla!

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C: Jammu and Kashmir!

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A: I don’t know you English, with your complicated names.

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J: Hang on a minute. There’s nothing complicated about it! It’s only three syllables, listen: Joh-

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Everyone: Joh-

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J: Na-

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Everyone: Na-

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J: -Than

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Everyone: -Than

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J: Joh-na-than

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Everyone: cacophony of completely different J names

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A: Haven’t you got a short version… Joona?

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J: No, it’s Jonathan!

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B: Juggy!

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J: Jonathan!

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C: Munna!

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J: It’s Jonathan!

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A: No need to get angry, yaar. Always angry. You’re not in jolly England any more, sipping tea and doing the Morrissing dancing! Why make everyone’s life difficult by giving yourself a silly, hard to pronounce, foreign name, huh?

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J: All I’m saying is, my name is not Jinnuthan, or Jandalayan, or Bunty, or anything like that. It’s Jonathan. I mean it’s quite simple, it’s quite straight forward! It’s just, Jonathan.

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A: Okay, yaar. Have it your way. But I don’t see you progressing very far with a name like that!

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J: What do you mean by that?

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A: People might think you’re a trouble maker, if you insist on keeping your long winded English name. So everyone, may I introduce…

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J: Jaghinder Pal Shiva Rama Guru Pattimers  

Dear Privileged Person

jaded16india:

I see you’ve raised your head again. This time you’re being a white literary douchebro who doesn’t know how to stop digging when in caught in a hole. Just a handy tip, when you’re talking about colonised people(s), even in an “alternate” universe, all the icky —isms from this world get transferred to *that* world! You see, it may be neato in your case to make chalk lines around identities, but for most of us, identities come in intersecting circles. As much as we may “like to”, we can’t ignore the —isms, no not even if you ask nicely.

So maybe, for you having England as a “backward colony” ruled from India seems nice and FUN! and adventurous — it is a new outlook, definitely — but apparently India is still a colony doesn’t matter to you, which is okay considering it’s your book. When you try to deny that things are not as problematic as they seem, that’s when you’ve started digging your fail hole. For making England a “backward colony”, the British has to never leave Indian shores, and I know, it’s *so* easy to pretend we dusty Orientals don’t exist, but we do. When we say there are visible cracks in the English(es) used for Indians, as Jha did so well, there are other alternatives than throwing hissy fits à la Scott Adams, and accepting critique from people you’re portraying, considering you know, a larger experiment of your novel is to examine and use English(es). Now as a dude who has never spoken or experienced first-hand how we think and what English(es) mean to us, mistakes are inevitable. What you can do is *listen* when we point out the holes in your logic/novel.

As people who live the English(es), racism, imperialism and colonisation than beyond a few pages in history and revivalist fiction texts, trust us when we say some thing is imperial. Asking rather ignorant questions in defense like “Why do you write in English as well” doesn’t encompass #winning, no matter in whichever way you look at it.

Yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Other times, it is your pantslessness showing. Dude, if you’ve learnt anything from this — if at all — acknowledge boundaries to your knowledge, experiences and language; the world doesn’t function for all of us as it does for you, co-incidentally a direct effect of that neato colonisation thing — funny how that works out, no?

No love ever,

J.

(via oncejadedtwicesnarked-deactivat)

unquietly asked: Re the anon who mentioned the pronunciation of Barack Obama's name: I think the common UK pronunciation is just an example of the tendency to ‘nativise’ things. For instance, ‘ballet’ is pronounced BALlet, not balLET as an American would pronounce it. ‘Macho’ is pronounced ‘MATcho’, with the ‘a’ in ‘trap’, not the ‘a’ in a southern English/RP ‘bath’. (Just listen to Sinitta’s ‘So Macho’ to see what I mean.) ‘Dante’ is pronounced with the ‘trap’ A, as well. French names are routinely pronounced in an anglicised way. So BARrack, with the ‘a’ in ‘trap’ isn’t an aberration, and I don’t believe that it’s a deliberate slight to his origins.

I think the OP’s contention wasn’t with Brits pronouncing Obama’s name incorrectly the first time around, as much as it was that when she told them they had pronounced it incorrectly, they argued with her.

I mean, really? How can you argue about how a name is pronounced, when you are essentially arguing against the person whose name it is? And even if nobody meant it to be a deliberate slight to his origins. It’s still a slight when people know the correct pronunciation of the name, don’t even have difficulty saying it the correct way, YET STILL REFUSE TO USE IT. 

- Numa 

In 1911, Italian Catholic priests put before a group of Acholi elders the question “Who created you?”; and because the Luo Language does not have an independent concept of create or creation, the question was rendered to mean ‘Who moulded you?’ But this was still meaningless, because human beings are born of their mothers. The elders told the visitors they did not know. But we are told that this reply was unsatisfactory, and the missionaries insisted that a satisfactory answer must be given. One of the elders remembered that, although a person may be born normally, when he is afflicted with tuberculosis of the spine, then he loses his normal figure, he gets ‘moulded.’ So he said, ‘Rubanga is the one who moulds people.’ This is the name of the hostile spirit which the Acholi believe causes the hunch or hump on the back. And instead of exorcising these hostile spirits and sending them among pigs, the representative of Jesus Christ began to preach that Rubanga was the Holy Father who created the Acholi. (Kwai Wiredu, cited in Mudimbe 1997:153)

Quote taken from The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid (2005), pp. 58

“It’s such a -beautiful- language….”

Submitted by rosainverno 

(I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I was talking about this with a friend and they directed me this way. This blog is fantastic and I felt compelled to share.)

My relationship with my hometongue has always been strange. Mainly because most people tell me that it doesn’t exist. It’s always interesting to hear that what I spoke with my family growing up is not, in fact, a language. At best it is called a dialect and at worst an “Americanized bastardization of Italian” (yeah, Americanized…perhaps because most of the people those that say this have heard speak it are immigrants).

When people hear that I am from Italy, they get very excited. They want me teach them Italian (“It’s such a -beautiful- language), which I do speak well enough, but Italian isn’t my language. I want to speak Sicilian. I want the consonant clusters that are more natural to my ears. I want to speak my language, with it’s fluctuating influences of Greek and Arabic and Spanish along with Italian, which says something more about who I am.

I know that as an Italian in the U.S. I have a degree of white privilege that my family was not granted in years past and I know that part of gaining that came from giving up our Sicilian. It causes quite the disconnect in my heart.

Thanks for the submission, rosainverno. Your story reminds me of how whiteness in the US context has been socially constructed over the past hundred years, and how this social construction is tied to English in many ways. 

- Numa 

Anonymous asked: While I personally am a white American lady who speaks English as her first language, I have a brief story you might appreciate.

I was in London for a significant part of the 2008 US Presidential campaign, and over and over again on the news and from my British friends and professors I kept hearing the strangest name being attributed to our now current President. "BAIR-rick", like an army barrack, or possible like the Anglo-Scots border town Berwick, "Bairrick" Obama is his name to the British. The President, of course, pronounces it like his Kenyan father (a British subject) did, Bah-ROCK.

I tried to convince more than one British person to change their pronunciation of his name--a man running for the highest office of a global superpower--to the way he, his father, and his father's entire British-subjected society pronounced it. Every single one of them argued the point with me. And I have seen enough British TV throughout his term to know they are still pronouncing his name "BAIR-rick." The President of the United States cannot be trusted know the proper pronunciation of his own wacky foreign name, apparently.

Hi, Numa here. 

I think this is an interesting observation and it kind of speaks to me.

I’ve often been in situations where my knowledge of English has been questioned (“Are you sure it’s pronounced that way?” or “Are you sure that’s a real word?”) and I think it’s because I’m not white. No matter how impeccable my English is, my knowledge doesn’t carry the weight of a “native” speaker. 

So I can see how this may be one of those moments where the brown person’s word isn’t trusted, even if it’s a matter of their own name. 

But I would be curious to know how other people read this particular example.