The meaning of "privilege"

[Le Baron]

Well maybe her misinterpretation is down to the fact that she was in a rather angry state of mind because you'd been acting insulting towards her...? If you wind someone up, you can hardly blame them for being wound up!

No, it was just a completely wrong interpretation due to a knee-jerk reaction and inability to see past a well-rehearsed prejudiced. And also not even directed at one person, it was taken up, which is self-identification,

[Cainntear]

Well maybe her misinterpretation is down to the fact that she was in a rather angry state of mind because you'd been acting insulting towards her...? If you wind someone up, you can hardly blame them for being wound up!

No, it was just a completely wrong interpretation due to a knee-jerk reaction and inability to see past a well-rehearsed prejudiced. And also not even directed at one person, it was taken up, which is self-identification,

People who have been hurt are likely to get defensive.
People who feel attacked do not feel less attacked when they are attacked for feeling attacked.
Even if you were entirely not thinking of her, can you not understand why it looks incredibly like you were to her? And that your reaction after that looks a lot like evidence you were just trolling for a reaction to her? Maybe it's a "well-rehearsed prejudice" of mine that leads me to conclude the same thing as her. I mean, she's the only one I'm aware of talking about English privilege on this forum, so talking disparagingly about people who call "privilege" in general really looks like it's aimed at her, and then claiming "self-identification" when she rises to what looks a lot like the bait just seems crappy behaviour.

[Doitsujin]

It's definitely a First World problem, because as far as I know there isn't a version written in Quechua or Malayalam[...]

Minor nitpick: Quechua has been written in the Latin alphabet since the Spanish conquest and the Malayalam script is at least a couple of centuries old, if not older.

[Serpent]

Please remember the rules or this thread can easily get closed. If you're being attacked, don't reply, report.

To be fair, privilege has several meanings. When celebrities say "it's a privilege to be here" they're not recognizing any actual privilege, they say it like it's a good thing (even someone like Marcus Rashford)

I mentioned a Moldovan Romani deliberately. Say they speak Romani at home and learn Moldovan at school. Now they've got to use Romanian on Duolingo. Yes, it is really only a minor difference from Moldovan, but it's still another step away from the user. So they cannot learn anything through their first language, and in a variation of a language they learned at school, they can learn English, French, Italian or Spanish.

Isn't Romanian now the official languge of Moldova? Admittedly I don't know if they learn standard Romanian at school or not. I get your overall point though.

[Cainntear]

To be fair, privilege has several meanings. When celebrities say "it's a privilege to be here" they're not recognizing any actual privilege, they say it like it's a good thing (even someone like Marcus Rashford)

And this is the problem of the morphing of the idea of privilege. My understanding is that "it is a privilege to be here", "I feel privileged to be given this opportunity" etc is exactly the intended sense of "privilege" being used originally.

The word privilege was used precisely because of this. It was supposed to be about recognising the positive benefits of what you got, not about attacking you having unfair benefits.

The whole point was that people should be thankful for their privileged and recognise that their own good fortune doesn't mean they're better than other people.

Were now in a world where that's increasingly not recognised. People who were born rich get pricky about suggestions that the only reason they were successful was because they could set up a business with daddy's money, even though that's the truth. There are other people who could have done just as well if they had had the privilege of not having to take jobs to feed themselves. I'm not saying these people should feel guilty about having a rich parent, but they should at least recognise it.

But privilege has become an attack word over time, through use, and that's a real thing. However, as we're all language geeks and this is a matter of language change, I was hoping here we could talk about that...

[Serpent]

True. And some things seen as privilege should just be extended to everyone in the ideal world (like safety).
I remember a great post replying to the idea that reading for pleasure has become a privilege. The response was that ppl absolutely deserve to have the time/resources to read for pleasure, and while privilege can give you the ability to prioritize reading, it shouldn't depend on your privilege.

[Cavesa]

And that is English privilege. As I say, privilege isn't necessarily about being looked up to, and as you say, privilege can breed envy... and also other types of resentment.

A priviledge is not necessarily about being looked up to, it's about not having to face a set of disadvantages, that the people without the priviledge face.

Interesting... 'Anglophones' and 'normal people'.

Yeah, last I checked, the anglophones were not the majority, and the anglophones' situation as far as foreign languages go is exceptional, nobody else has the same priviledges.

:-D But they are not disadvantaged because of their native language. They are not pushed by their whole society, school, etc, to spend hundreds and thousands of euros to learn a foreign language just to get normal jobs not even using it, just to get the right to finish HS and apply at university in their own country, just to overcome their native language obstacle.

The country I'm in uses far more English than where you are from and there is no system in operation here where you are not allowed to finish HS without a qualification in English. That's not a real thing. You also need nothing more than school English (if at all) to apply to university. If people are pushed to spend money on these things this is a wrong-headed fiscal policy issue, not a foreign 'privilege' issue.

No? So people can just opt out of English classes completely? They can refuse completely to participate? No consequences? They'll manage to get to the end of HS?

People pushed to spend money... that's the standard in many countries, you cannot blame one with "fiscal policy issue", it's a problem of a whole system, that you are just too priviledged to see.

Really, this is clear lack of understanding of the problem and of your own priviledge. The individual native English speaker can be poor, disadvantaged, uneducated, whatever. But none of it happens because of their native language. At the same time, it's the default situation of most non-anglophones, that we actively have to get out of.

And conversely, by dint of simple logic, to see such a person succeeding and immediately put it down to the single cause of 'language privilege' and discount any work, is bad reasoning. I understanding it perfectly well, do not try to tutor me.

I'll stop "tutoring you", when I stop seeing your dire need of it. Again, you are under some false impression that the anglophone priviledge doesn't exist. Let me clarify: If that individual succeeds among their peers, other people with the same priviledge, then indeed it's thanks to their hard work. If they succeed against people without the priviledge exactly because they are a native anglophone (for example all the token expat jobs all over Europe, the ESL tutoring jobs replacing more qualified locals, etc), it's at least partially thanks to their privilege and real work has less to do with it. Is it more clear now?

The whole point was that people should be thankful for their privileged and recognise that their own good fortune doesn't mean they're better than other people.

Were now in a world where that's increasingly not recognised. People who were born rich get pricky about suggestions that the only reason they were successful was because they could set up a business with daddy's money, even though that's the truth. There are other people who could have done just as well if they had had the privilege of not having to take jobs to feed themselves. I'm not saying these people should feel guilty about having a rich parent, but they should at least recognise it.

But privilege has become an attack word over time, through use, and that's a real thing. However, as we're all language geeks and this is a matter of language change, I was hoping here we could talk about that...

Exactly, a priviledge is meant to be recognized and acted upon. Yet, exactly in the language learning community online, we can see a lot of the opposite. Blaming people without access to information (exactly due to the language barrier they're trying to fight) for their bad choices, not recognizing the disadvantage (often very expensive disadvantage) of people with internationally worthless native languages, anglophones acting as if their "success" over a non anglophone was just due to their genious, etc.

I remember a great post replying to the idea that reading for pleasure has become a privilege. The response was that ppl absolutely deserve to have the time/resources to read for pleasure, and while privilege can give you the ability to prioritize reading, it shouldn't depend on your privilege.

Precisely. In terms of language learning, these are some priviledges (mainly of the anglophones but to some extent also natives of other bigger languages), that I'd like to see extended to every learner (and it would be a good use of the IA, if that could happen, but that will still be a long road with lots of problems):
-access to information about quality of resources, so based on the original thread this discussion was on: even an Italian, Czech, or Japanese native should get the info that Duo is not really a learning tool, or what is SRS, and so on.
-access to more learning tools. A first time learner with a small native language doesn't get to profit from lots of the tools we consider normal, and also doesn't even get to consider languages outside of a few choices.
-the freedom to choose a target language really based on their individual needs and desires, without the socially enforced need to first level the field by investing a lot into English, whether or not it actually enriches the individual's life.

[Le Baron]

[tastyonions]

How dare you laugh at such injustice! Check your English privilege, sir.

[Le Baron]

How dare you laugh at such injustice! Check your English privilege, sir.

Just let me put in my monocle so I can look. The butler is just fetching it. He's Bulgarian, but I make him speak English.