WorldCon: Things I Did Wrong

[kate_nepveu]

(I was planning to write this as a section of my big roundup post pretty much from the start, to be titled "Ego Boosting and Deflating," but since I see an aspect of it is being discussed, I thought I should break it out separately so it would go up quicker.)

A number of people were kind enough to say to me that they liked things I said on panels or the way I moderated or things I write online. I am very grateful for and appreciative of those comments. However, since very few people (even at a con!) are going to come up to me and say that they thought I did a lousy job or said something stupid, I thought it important to publicly acknowledge the times I did something wrong at the con.

• I suggested a group of people sit somewhere physically incapable of accommodating at least one of the members of the group. I apologized to the group at least but possibly not to the specific person; I apologize for being ableist and sizeist.
• During a panel, I interrupted karnythia to explain something that she was going to get to in just a minute. (I apologized after.)
• Upon reflection, I'm pretty sure I mispronounced karnythia's name at least once while on a panel. I apologize.

  (I read by word recognition not phonetics and keep wanting to swap the "n" and "y" in her name, "cah-RIN-thee-ah" instead of "car-NEE-thee-ah." However, she said it out loud, that's no excuse, I should have written it down.)

• I told Kathryn Cramer something true but not complete and appeared two-faced as a result.

  When she approached me and said that she regretted that I had dropped off a panel with her called "X, Why? Minorities in a Large Field, or Majorities in Our Own?," I said that I had been scheduled for items at 9:00, 10:00 (that one), 11:00, and 12:30. I should also have added "and as you know, we have fundamental differences of viewpoint, so I didn't feel it appropriate to be on a panel with you." I apologize for the inaccuracy.

  (I was considerably surprised by her approaching me, especially since I had previously been told that she had stated that I had refused to be on a panel with her [*], and so socialization took over in the absence of preparation.)

  [*] Yes, her knowledge of this raises other issues; I'm asking you all to defer discussion of them for now.

• I was a thoughtless Anglophone to hotel staff several times.

I have more complicated thoughts on my moderation of the "Writing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Geographic Terms" panel, but I think they need to wait.

Do feel free to add to this list. Anonymous commenting is on here as usual, but I will screen gratuitously nasty comments (and then repost under ROT13 so you all can judge for yourselves).

(As I've said before: please don't say "oh gosh those aren't that bad, you're too hard on yourself" or whatever. I'm not looking for consolation or cookies. Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd save anything nice you were planning to say for a more topical post. => )

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

In Montreal it's "bonjour hi." http://community.livejournal.com/antici_food/371.html

IME if you say "bonjour" back, though, they will *immediately* know you are Anglophone. =>

[annewashere.livejournal.com]

Oh, awesome. I wish I had known that before I went.

I hope my apologetic expression made up for it!

[kate_nepveu]

I hope so too because then it suggests mine will have. =>

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that link! People/cultures are so cool.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! I didn't know that!

[avram]

My experience, and Chris's, was that when we started the conversation by speaking even our slow, poorly-accented French, we got taken for French-speakers.

[kate_nepveu]

Huh. Perhaps Montreal doesn't have many Francophone people of Asian descent. Or maybe you just look like French speakers--I think zorinth had a theory about the lines on people's face, or something, from the way French makes you move your mouth?

[avram]

Teresa was talking, at the art show, about how it seems like French speakers have more highly developed muscles around their upper lips, and you can see it in their faces (and sometimes in art). I guess my facial hair conceals my flappy, undeveloped embrasure.

In Chris's case, her boss speaks fluent French, and she's pretty good at picking up bits of languages. She's also got a few words of Chinese from working at a Chinese company a decade or so back.

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

A Quebecois friend of mine once informed me that the derogatory term (well, at least the one she would tell me) for Anglophone Canadians is "tete-carres", ie "square-heads". She said that they just looked like they had square heads. *shrug*

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Wow. When I started in French, they immediately switched to English!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If you don't offer English, they usually won't*. You could be Latvian and your bad French the best hope of communication.

* The exception is if you're speaking English to a friend. They can then figure it out.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Well, it'd be polite for your interlocutor to think that you might have sufficient vocab and syntax to keep on, even if it's "slow" and "poorly accented"....

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think that's your experience. My husband says "bonjour" back because that's what I say, and people talk with him in French, which he does not speak. But he is a dark-haired white man.

[janni.livejournal.com]

So is opening with "bonjour hi" considered more correct (or maybe just more useful?) than opening with "parlez-vous anglais?"

I've found in German, French, and Spanish speaking places that asking in the language if they speak English gets one a little farther than just starting in English, even if that's all the non-English one knows.

(Except in Iceland. As far as I can tell the expectation there is that one start in the language one wishes to continue in, and one can sprinkle in one's handful of Icelandic words later.)

[kate_nepveu]

I'm really not sure.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Montréal is a bilingual city, and "bonjour hi" is simply the way that service employees figure out which language to use to the people they're serving. If you respond "Bonjour, je veux.." they continue in French. If you answer, "Hi, I'd like..." they continue in English.

Monoglot Anglophones and Francophones abound in Canada, but it happens that Montreal is on the boundary of the two language zones,and it's been to the advantage of the Montrealais to be bilingual. In general, bilinguality is a characteristic of a subaltern group occupying a strategic (economic or cultural location), and the Montrealais are not unusual in this regard, though a bit less adept than, say Curaçaoans, Lagotians, or Dangrigans.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Much more.

"Bonjour hi" is the way we do it here.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Thank you! ::makes mental note::