{"id":2114,"date":"2012-09-19T03:18:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T03:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/?p=2114"},"modified":"2012-09-19T03:18:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T03:18:36","slug":"first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2012\/09\/19\/first\/","title":{"rendered":"FIRST!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So last night, I was enjoying a friendly Twitter argument with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ScientistMother\">@ScientistMother<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/27andaphd\">@27andaphd<\/a> about Tim Hortons commercials. During the course of our conversation, it transpired that both ScientistMother (born in Canada to foreign-born parents) and I (born in the UK, moved to Canada in my 20s) think that we&#8217;re first-generation immigrants: I think she&#8217;s second-generation, and she thinks I&#8217;m a New Canadian and am not assigned a generation number.<\/p>\n<p>Convinced that I was correct, I headed self-righteously to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Immigrant_generations\">Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0where, instead of the unambivalent validation I was expecting, \u00a0I found the following:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">&#8220;The term\u00a0<strong>first-generation<\/strong>, as it pertains to a person&#8217;s nationality or residency in a country, can imply two possible meanings, depending on context:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">A\u00a0<a title=\"Foreign born\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Foreign_born\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">foreign born<\/span><\/a>\u00a0citizen or resident who has immigrated and been\u00a0<a title=\"Naturalization\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Naturalization\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">naturalized<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in a new country of residence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">A\u00a0<a title=\"Naturally born (page does not exist)\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/index.php?title=Naturally_born&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">naturally born<\/span><\/a>\u00a0citizen or resident of a country whose parents obey the previous definition,\u00a0<em>or<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">This ambiguity is captured and corroborated in\u00a0<a title=\"The Oxford English Dictionary\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Oxford_English_Dictionary\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">The Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/a>&#8216;s definition of &#8220;<a title=\"Generation\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Generation\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">generation<\/span><\/a>&#8220;:<\/span><\/p>\n<dl>\n<dd><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><em>&#8230;designating a member of the first (or second, etc.) generation of a family to do something or live somewhere; spec. designating a\u00a0<strong>naturalized immigrant or a descendant of immigrant parents<\/strong>, esp. in the United States&#8230;.<\/em>\u00a0(<em>OED<\/em>\u00a0definition of &#8220;generation,&#8221; section 6b., emphasis added)b<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">In the United States, among demographers and other social scientists, the term &#8220;first generation&#8221; is used to refer to foreign-born residents (excluding those born abroad of U.S. parents).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">There is not a universal consensus on which of these meanings is always implied&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT THE HELL??<\/strong>!!<\/p>\n<p>How can this have been allowed to happen?! My logical science brain just can&#8217;t cope with this! (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ScientistMother\/status\/247888646169042944\">And ScientistMother agrees!<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>This makes determining what generation my parents would be if they moved here to join me even trickier than before! (But no less hypothetical, unfortunately).<\/p>\n<p>Oh well &#8211; ScientistMother and I have agreed to share first place, which is nicely Canadian if nothing else. However, we still disagree about those Tim Hortons commercials: I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z4hnQs0w_LU\">Team Airport Dad<\/a>, and she&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QINv6rebyTU\"> Team Hockey Granddad<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Must be a generational thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So last night, I was enjoying a friendly Twitter argument with @ScientistMother and @27andaphd about Tim Hortons commercials. During the course of our conversation, it transpired that both ScientistMother (born in Canada to foreign-born parents) and I (born in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2012\/09\/19\/first\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,45,26,58,104,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-buddies","category-canada","category-english-language","category-family","category-fun-with-language","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}