Another fundie hating on the Amish

[fauxmenno]

sandraglick.blogspot.com/2013/03/annoying-people.html

 

Seriously, by the way some of the fundies I follow talk about the Amish, you would think they are the worst people ever. Also, the SOTDRT is painful in this one. I can excuse some grammar and spelling errors because some people just aren't that good at English, but spelling rude as "rood"?

[Burris]

'Rood,' huh? Well, at least the Amish don't have much to fear from this guy and his biting intellect.

(Half the people on this board speak more than one language, including me. In a good 90% of the cases here, I'd never know the writer had a mother tongue not English unless she said so. But some of the fundies we discuss here can't even speak half a single language. And yet these are the ones destined to take over the world? LOL! Oh Yeah. I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it's just...funny - "Ha Ha" funny.)

[fauxmenno]

Good point. Nearly every non-native English speaker that I know can use the English language better than most of the fundies we snark on! It's like they are creating their own pidgin language with their "speshul, God-glorifying" phrasing and grammar

[Burris]

Good point. Nearly every non-native English speaker that I know can use the English language better than most of the fundies we snark on! It's like they are creating their own pidgin language with their "speshul, God-glorifying" phrasing and grammar

Beyond a stronger grasp of the Latin alphabet, the first thing I learned was how to diagram a sentence using simple vocabulary. English is actually pretty kick-ass and pliable - I seriously love it; I even majored in English and Communications - but there are still some rules that usually apply, such as the basic subject-verb-object construction. (Homophones - e.g., rood and rude - could be a total bitch, which is why it's important for someone in doubt to use a fucking dictionary. I still use the dictionary nearly every day.)

The irony, for me at least, is that the best part of my learning was done through reading the King James Bible and, believe it or not, Dune (Frank Herbert). There's a really good cross-section of sentence structures and varieties in both books. It's fascinating.

I honestly do not understand, first of all, why so many of these fundies seem anti-intellectual to the point of being inarticulate. And secondly, how in the hell can they claim to read the Bible every day - especially the KJV with its archaic but proper sentence structures - and yet write so poorly?

Even if they can't add one and one, they should still be able to produce simple sentences using appropriate vocabulary - and yet...

[doggie]

I think they hate the Amish because they are living more like real Christians are supposed to live but fundies can't give up their modern life.

[Hane]

Burris, I'm another who was intrigued by the linguistics of Dune.

It's funny: this gal's use of "modal" and "aria" (instead of "model" and "area") gave bits of her piece a strange yet unintentional poetic feel.

[sugarloaf]

It sounds like she hates the Amish because they're there and... looking at her.

Seriously?

[Burris]

Burris, I'm another who was intrigued by the linguistics of Dune.

One of my teachers told me I could break any linguistic rule I wanted, just so long as I first understood the rule and (when possible) the reason for its existence. Herbert was one of those who knew the rules well enough to break them with a unique and poetic style all his own.

[Miggy]

Love the final paragraph;

I'm sorry that this sounds so much like I'm complaining. I'm not really. I'm just learning to love everyone even though they are creepy and annoying. :)

Sounds like complaining to me. :lol:

[yewchapel]

Looking at the rest of her blog, she has a boyfriend?? :shock:

[MysteryHaggis]

"Rood" just makes me think of this.

9D4hmi04a2g

(Stick with it, at 1:45ish it goes cringingly awesome)

I'm sorry that this sounds so much like I'm complaining. I'm not really. I'm just learning to love everyone even though they are creepy and annoying.

:lol: Yay, tolerance!

[Guest Anonymous]

I think this is an attempt at self-deprecating humour -along the lines of the old saying. "When you find a perfect church, don't join it or you'll spoil it". But the SODRT writing skills don't serve her well enough to make her point.

[MamaJunebug]

Not to derail, but Burris, what is your first language?

[Savoring Samsara]

For what it's worth, it's not just fundies who hate on the Amish. I once had a non-fundie Christian friend who was more or less bigoted against them. He felt that it was hypocritical of them to claim to live separately from mainstream society, yet enrich themselves financially by selling their furniture and crafts to non-Amish folks through less-religious intermediaries in their families. I never really understood where this idea came from, myself. Maybe an Amish guy punched him out once like in Witness. :lol:

[gibbsgirls]

I think they hate the Amish because they are living more like real Christians are supposed to live but fundies can't give up their modern life.

Totally this.

We have a very large Amish community about 20 min from where I live. I have many interactions with them - farmers market, furniture repair, etc. In fact, one Amish woman & I are quite close. I shop every week at the small grocery store that she owns. We end up spending a ton of time talking, trading recipes, sharing child-occupying tips, husband frustrations - the list goes on. They are the first people to show up and help after a disaster. About 10 years ago our local town was destroyed by a tornado - next morning the Amish were there. The men with hammers, plywood, tarps doing what they could; the women with food. Just two weeks ago a house burned out down the street. Again, the next morning a group of Amish were helping nail up plywood and cover the roof with tarps. They do this of their own accord without seeking or asking for accolades. Most won't give their names and they definitely won't take any money.

They always have a kind word, are non-judgmental, and helpful. The Amish are a model example of Christian behavior and attitude.

[kpmom]

I think this is an attempt at self-deprecating humour -along the lines of the old saying. "When you find a perfect church, don't join it or you'll spoil it". But the SODRT writing skills don't serve her well enough to make her point.

Maybe you're right, Annie. As I read the entry all I could think was, "This is being a Christian?" But, maybe you are right. Maybe she's writing this with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, but it doesn't come across.

[Guest Anonymous]

Maybe you're right, Annie. As I read the entry all I could think was, "This is being a Christian?" But, maybe you are right. Maybe she's writing this with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, but it doesn't come across.

A couple of posts earlier she copied and pasted (without any attribution to the author) the old story of the man asking his angry son to knock nails into the fence every time he had an outburst. I'm guessing she is attempting some kind of self-improvement.

It sounds to me as though she is probably genuinely quite spoilt and judgemental, but that she is hamming it up a bit here, in an attempt at humourous humility. Doesn't work as well as it might, if she had better written language skills.

[Burris]

Not to derail, but Burris, what is your first language?

*groan* I actually hate that question, though I know I did sort of invite it. (I managed to be on here for years without over-sharing damned near anything about myself. I blame my husband's illness ;) )

That's kind of hard to answer, since I've been taking English to some extent since I first started school - but Serbo-Croation. *sigh* Or what's left of it: The language(s) re-fractured when the country did. There was always a plurality in how Serbs and Croats dealt with the language, but to see it fracture by bloc, and quickly...wow. (Want to see what racism and genocide can do to a people? Check that place out. Parts of it are like a boiling microcosm of everything wrong about human nature.)

A little German. Also some French; I took that for years, too, but never quite enjoyed it in the same way as I do English - so I wasn't a terribly good student.

My parents were right about one thing: There's a reason why English is spoken internationally whereas a lot of other languages are not. It's highly flexible and doesn't have the same burdens a more officially regulated language would - or a language where nouns are generally masculine, feminine, or neuter (which affects the verbs used around them, among other things). It's kind of hard to explain, but English is super-elastic when compared to a lot of other languages. It's also a lot of fun: I was watching a documentary about dialects in Appalachia (US) the other day and loved hearing about it.

There is an English standard, to some extent, but there is no regulatory school of standardization (such as is the case with French).

I never thought, though, that I'd *need* English. Ha ha; I'm a dumbass. I didn't even choose to work as a writer; I just sort of ended up selling services while I attended university – also worked at a low-end hotel, but the rent was cheap - and simply never stopped. (I seem to get hired often to write about unfortunate topics, such as the fate of the Inuit in Northern Canada and the genocide in Rwanda and the Nazi Holocaust. I initially said no to those projects, but then realized...well someone has to do it. Why not me?)

And getting back on subject a bit, that's one thing I don't understand about some of the fundies we discuss here: My God - they take no pride in expanding their minds. None.

(If one starts out with the view that, say, the Amish are creepy, then the view will stick no matter what one tries to learn. Unlearning prejudice once it's imbedded is next to impossible. So good luck, kid. You can thank your parents for stunting your growth.)

[2xx1xy1JD]

Burris - thanks for the info. I suspected a bit of it from some of your previous posts, but the additional background brings it all together a bit more.

[HereticHick]

I have a lot of problems with the attitude of the Amish towards education, but I really respect them for NOT trying to recruit everyone else to their lifestyle (unlike ATI and VF folks who think they need to "witness" at every opportunity). And they believe their teens should try out the outside world & make a concious, adult decision about signing up for the lifestyle.

[Burris]

Burris - thanks for the info. I suspected a bit of it from some of your previous posts, but the additional background brings it all together a bit more.

I might as well admit it: I'm flatly ashamed - of my friends, some of my family...myself. Being sucked into a vortex of that sort changes a person for the worse - every person on every side, no matter what they did or failed to do, is poisoned so completely that no amount of time or therapy or distance can free them. Not ever. And for me...well, I did not want to be a victim, so I decided – I failed to recognize it as a choice then, but it was – to become something else instead.

I warn people every chance I get, which is one of the the reasons why I snark on fundies. That's why I take projects I don't want. That's why I defend the WBC - because no one else would, and I know the worst acts start with the least popular; the people almost no one will notice or miss.

When I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, when I look in the mirror, my thought is simple: "I am pond scum." But then I think about a story someone told me, and hope, despite my own cynicism, that something I do somewhere will matter.

The fundamentalists must be permitted to speak, but they can never, ever be permitted to â€win.â€

They think they'll have a victory if they win, but they won't. Their destruction is in their efforts to destroy others and they don't even see it. They eat their own tails. In the end, they'll be like chaff in the fire too.

[MamaJunebug]

Drive by posting to thank you for your info, Burris, and to regret that I was the one to have asked -- it was your reference to the Latin alphabet that really caught my attention!

More later. Thank you again.

[Zoom]

My ESL students have a better grasp of the English language than that. I can sort of accept the spelling issues, she might be dyslexic, but not having subject verb agreement is a sin no one should commit.

And I use the dictionary almost daily too (and I TEACH English).

[Burris]

Drive by posting to thank you for your info, Burris, and to regret that I was the one to have asked -- it was your reference to the Latin alphabet that really caught my attention!

More later. Thank you again.

Don't worry about it.

Serbo-Croatian is - or was - a weird collection of, like, four mutually understandable languages. As a result, there are also multiple scripts: Serbian Cyrrilic - ćirilica - which I learned, then a variation of the Latin alphabet, which I also learned. The Latin alphabet as it is used for English speakers is yet another variation - some different letter forms and arranged in a different order.

There were rules concerning usage in official documents, but nothing terribly concrete can be said about how the different scripts were used in everyday life.

It seems Serbs favored the former; Croats, the latter. There was also an Arabic script, which I did learn during one class but have loooong since forgotten, having never used it. People who could write in multiple scripts - so, a majority of them - could also communicate across Serbian and Croatian in multiple scripts.

It was awesome, that kind of diversity. It really was.

Uh...and then it wasn't.

[Burris]

...not having subject verb agreement is a sin no one should commit.

I occasionally find myself in the middle of a complex sentence where I have completely lost track of subject-verb agreement. I either break the sentence down into a pair of shorter sentences, or I literally diagram it on paper to correct the agreements.

When I pound out posts for FJ, for example, I sometimes look back and see subject-subject disagreements, such as when using a gender-neutral term such as “one should†during part of a sentence and then finishing it with a gender-specific term such as “him†or “her†- or worse, "they." And then I cringe, because I can't edit it :)