Aspirations occurs in English in initial onsets like in ‘pat’ [pʰæt], ‘tack’ [’tʰæk] or ‘cat’ [’kʰæt]. It is not phonemic, since it doesn’t distinguish meanings, but it’s distinctive in Mandarin e.g. 皮 [pʰi] (skin) vs. 比 [pi] (proportion).
Language that do not possess the grammatical category of “tense”, although obviously, they can communicate about past or future situations, but they do it resorting to adverbs (earlier, yesterday, tomorrow), the context (pragmatics), but mostly aspect markers, that show how a situation relates to the timeline (perfective, continuous, etc.) or modal markers (obligation, need, orders, hipothesis, etc.)
Tenseless languages are mostly analytic/isolating, but some are not. They occur mainly in East and Southeast Asia (Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Kra-Dai, Hmong-Mien), Oceania, Dyirbal (in NE Australia), Malagasy, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ewe, Fon and many Mande languages of Western Africa, most creole languages, Guarani, Mayan languages, Hopi, some Uto-Aztecan languages, and Greenlandic and other Inuit dialects.
On this website you can read Grimms’ fairy tales in 18 different languages! (English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Romanian, Finnish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Hungarian)
New York City protest of the racist and sexist images in Miss Saigon, April 1991. The photograph of “My Sister” is of a Vietnamese National Liberation Front fighter from the Vietnam War era. Photo by Corky Lee.
Miss Saigon is a Broadway musical about the romance between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Originally, Jonathan Pryce and Keith Burns, white actors playing Eurasian/Asian characters, wore eye prostheses and bronzing cream to make themselves look more Asian. From April 1989 to May 1990, nearly 100 shows were produced under the agreement between Equity and the League of American Theaters and Producers. 33 of the shows, with 504 roles, had no ethnic minority actors and 12 other productions had only one or two ethnic actors.
Title: “SEA Legacies: Commemorating 40 Years of Southeast Asian Diasporas”
The goals of the symposium are to commemorate the formation of Southeast Asian diasporic communities in the US over the past 40 years and to educate students and the community about Southeast Asian American heritages, experiences, and histories.
Events in no particular order:
A. Keynote: Dr. Viet Nguyen, Departments of English and American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
B. Panel: Vietnamese American Authors: Telling Diasporic Stories from Vietnam to the US
C. Panel: Southeast Asian Experiences
D. Panel: The Fall of Saigon: Political Background and Military Context
E. Roundtable: Alumni Experiences: Intergenerational Dialogue
F. Panel: CBOs & JOBs: Get to Know Local Community Organizations and Resources
G. Roundtable: Let’s Get Engaged! Students Share Opportunities for Campus and Community Involvement and Service.)
H. Panel: Preserving and Sharing Our Stories: The Role of Southeast Asian Oral History Projects and Archives
I. Digital Photo Exhibit: Vietnamese Americans: A Self-Portrait of a People
J. Exhibit: Letters from Vietnam
K. Film Series: Visual Stories of Diaspora: An Exploration of Southeast Asian History and Life through Films
L. Panel: Beyond the Fall of Saigon: Communism as Discourse in National, Community, and Identity Formations in the US and Vietnam
M. Panel: Global Perspectives on the Vietnam War
N. Panel: National Resource Center for Asian Languages and Vietnamese Literacy Development for Dual Language Immersion
O. Closing Performances: Southeast Asian American Expression and Performance
The SEA Legacies Symposium is generously sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and by Dr. Craig K. Ihara.
The SEA Legacies Symposium is organized by faculty, students, and staff of Asian American Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, History, American Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Communications, Education, the HSS Office of Development, the CSUF Office of State and Community Relations, the Vietnamese Students Association, the Cambodian Students Association, and the Asian Pacific American Resource Center, and in collaboration with community partners.
Please contact Dr. Eliza Noh at [email protected] for more information.
Please don’t forget to share the eventbrite RSVP link with the campus and external community. All attendees, including speakers and yourselves, should register by Feb. 20th so that we can take a headcount for food:
To preface, Việt Nam is, and historically has been, heavily Confucian, like all the other countries in the Sinosphere. One of the most basic tenets of Confucian philosophy is the respect and deference to proper hierarchies.
Children defer to parents, parents defer to their parents, elders defer to officials, officials defer to the Emperor, the Emperor defers to Heaven and his people.
You must respect anyone who is “above” you, this, of course, applies to spirituality as well. You can command hungry ghosts and demons, you serveandvenerate your ancestors, you serve your gods. You are not holier than your ancestors, you are not holier than the gods; the proper terminology, with regards to your superiors, is that you serve them, you do not work with them.
You cannot even “work with” hungry ghosts, they are your inferiors. Hungry ghosts have no descendants to feed or clothe them, they are below you, and it would be disrespectful to yourself to say you “work” with them. Not to mention, it would embolden them, by saying you “work” with hungry ghosts, they would get the idea that they are equal to you, which is practically inviting havoc into your life.
This applies to the order in which you speak about these entities too: Buddhas (Phật, obviously only if your tradition is syncretized with Buddhism or if you’re a Buddhist), Bodhisattvas (Bồ Tát, Bồ-Đề-Tát-Đoả), Gods (Thần), Saints (Thánh), Ancestors (Tổ Tiên), yourself, hungry ghosts (Cô Hồn), and Demons (Quỷ, Yêu Quái). Hierarchies are everywhere in Vietnamese spirituality, we say Heaven (Trời, Thiên) before we say Earth (Đất, Địa), e.g. Bàn Trời và Bàn Địa; The Sky Altar and The Earth Altar.
I made this post since I see so many witches/pagans, whether they be on Tumblr or anywhere else, use this terminology with regards to Asian Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Gods, Saints, Enshrined Ancestors, etc. E.g., you do not “work” with Quan Âm (Kuanyin, 觀音), she is so high above you, you cannot even think of comparing yourself to her.
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas may be more forgiving when you don’t respect the proper hierarchies for obvious reasons (though there is some disrespect that they will not let slide, that is a whole family story I will tell later.), but our indigenous Gods, Saints, and Ancestors have no patience for that tomfoolery.
I can’t speak for the rest of the Sinosphere, China, Korea, and Japan, but I’d imagine they have similar concepts.
![Aspirated plosivesAspirations occurs in English in initial onsets like in ‘pat’ [pʰæt], ‘tack’ [’tʰæ](https://64.media.tumblr.com/336a13765fb031784e1593639b0bb427/49a2b1dfe50b20fa-60/s1280x1920/bacfce7c8a594925b494a66a1177334d9a84edb7.png "Aspirated plosivesAspirations occurs in English in initial onsets like in ‘pat’ [pʰæt], ‘tack’ [’tʰæ")
