The Dominican...Republic
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
I guess it became known over Easter weekend that one of my mom's biggest pet peeves are people who reference the Dominican Republic as just "the Dominican". She even argued with a close friend who kept calling it that becuase it pisses her off so much.
So we are at Andrew's parent's for Easter dinner and Andrew's mom (Jayne) keeps referring to the Dominican Republic as "the Dominican" (and I'm talking like at least three times) and I thought for sure my mom (Paula) was going to go bucknut on her. Paula stayed poised and didn't say anything but I knew she wanted to lay down on armbar.
So being blissfully ignorant I went and did some research on why "The Dominican" may be offensive to Dominican Republicans (no I didn't....i just wanted to say Dominican Republicans because it sounds funny) Picture a handful of George Bush suppporters dancing the merengue.
posted by aforward @ 3:01 PM,
6 Comments:
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At 1:06 AM,
royassaly said...
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I think I understand why. I just read the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic)and there's anctually another country called Dominica! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominica).
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At 3:41 AM,
Ryan Lowe said...
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I don't want to get in the middle of a firestorm, just offer a few possibilities. :)
To continue Roy's use of Wikipedia, check out the word republic: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic). There seems to be no significance to the word "republic", since most countries in the world are now republics in one way or another.
This kind of thing could simply *seem* to be pedantic. However, it's easy to side with Paula on this one.
No disrespect to Jayne, of course, but tourists tend to have a disconnected and casual attitude about the countries they visit while on vacation. The countries themselves can share the blame for this, since many of them isolate tourists to specific areas and dumb down their culture into digestable, entertaining (and sometimes stereotypical) bites.
A symptom of the casual attitude being the nicknaming or casual shortening of countries, not realizing how the people of those nations might feel about it.
I think it's less the potential confusion between Dominica and the Dominican Republic and more just a general respect thing that outsiders may not completely understand.
Somewhat silly example: How would we feel if the world insisted on shortening Canada to "Can"? The original native word that Canada is based on is lost, as is a large portion of implied history through the name. To us, it means something. I don't think it's hard to believe we'd rush to defend it.
Surely outsiders mean no offense (which is probably why Paula was so understanding) but nevertheless it still has the potential to bug people.
Political correctness probably dictates that neither side should make much of a fuss either way: if it is corrected or not. -
At 9:48 AM,
aforward said...
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i knew you guys would look it up.
Yes Dominica (pronounced dom-in-eeca)is a small island near St. Lucia (where my mom is from).
Czech Republic is probably a better example of why we should say it in full. We say Czech Republic not The Czechican. Its wierd how often I notice it now:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/04/20/acosta.killed.ap/index.html
Sad article but check out the second paragraph. -
At 11:10 AM,
royassaly said...
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Significance lies in the context! Whe president Hu came to US just recently, apparantly a US announer said "The Repulic of China" which was the old name of Taiwan. That apparently offended some people.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1870289 -
At 11:15 AM,
royassaly said...
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sorry...not old name...formal name..in my head I was thinking former :P
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At 2:22 PM,
Ryan Lowe said...
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I don't blame people for ignorance of other cultures. It's impossible to know everything and be completely politically correct all of the time. There are just too many local customs.
That said, I don't mind if people correct me or educate me about these things, as long as they aren't snotty about it. The same reason applies: you shouldn't expect people to know about your culture, so be a little understanding about casual slip-ups.
Andrew, you're right. That was a silly example. A better example might be how Europeans sometimes refer to Canadians as "Americans", lumping us into the USA. Given the completely different loyalist history of Canada, it doesn't really make sense to us but technical we are in (North) America. I would politely correct someone on that, and have in the past.
Likewise, some Irish people in Northern Ireland don't like to be called Britains, even though they technically are. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic, just don't be an asshole. :)
