Whenever I hear “motherland” or “fatherland,” WWII immediately comes to mind, particularly for “fatherland.” As I was reading this story about Venezuela, I was struck by Chavez’s use of “fatherland” a few paragraphs into the piece.
Do the words “motherland” and “fatherland” have similar authoritarian/totalitarian connotations to you?
In a sort of vague way. I’m not really creeped out by it, I just realize it can be used in different contexts and with different meanings altogether.
Yes, because of the WWII association. If someone uses those terms, I do tend to be slightly creeped out, but I realise it’s an emotional rather than a logical connection, so I try and ignore it.
If anything, motherland has the opposite connotations of fatherland, particularly in writing post-Nazi Germany.
Yep, but it creeps me out in part because its supposed to create an emotional connection. Language used to emotionally manipulate. Unfortunately, for those of us who see “fatherland” and get an immediate impression of jackbooted Nazis, it doesn’t turn out to be the emotional response they want.
Yes. As does “homeland.” It turns out my angst was well founded. When Congress buckled to their freaked-out constituencies over the Dubai Ports deal, I could see how lathered-up our citizens have become over “us” vs. “them.”
Exactly.
“Homeland Security” is the modern-day equivilant of “Motherland” and “Fatherland”
Saying “for the sake of** Homeland Security**” is the same as saying “for the sake of the Fatherland”
It has always bothered me.
The Soviets, however, used “motherland” in WWII and beyond. So while the term may be in opposition to Nazism from a certain point of view, given the mass killings, brutality, and disappearances that characterized life in WWII USSR and well after, “motherland” could have quite a bit of baggage as well.
I agree completely, and also feel the same about the horrible “Homeland.” However, it does make me wonder what term I do like, and I can’t think of any. Do we even need a term such as this outside the context of propaganda?
none of these words is particularly great, but “homeland” is marginally better, I think. It doesn’t have any expansionist connotation as such. However “motherland” or “fatherland” imply that there must be children.
Commonwealth countries used to talk about Great Britain as “the mother country”, but that isn’t as creepy as if the British themselves were to do it. These days, it’s just vaguely embarrassing.
Yes, homeland, fatherland, motherland, whether by skins or politicians, it gives me the creeps.
The fatherland is the land of someone’s fathers. It’s basically the germanic version of the latin patria, as in patriot. I can see how the word got a bad name in English, but originally there was nothing expansionist about it.
Now that’s a feat of biology!
I wonder what he really said. I am not very familiar with Spanish, but in Portuguese, a closely related language, one would use pátria in this place. That word can be translated as “motherland,” “fatherland,” or “native land” as one wishes.
Assuming that Chavez used a similar word, it was really up to the translator to choose an appropriate word, and perhaps Fatherland with its slight Nazi feel was not the best option. Fatherland is slightly creepy to me.
In Spanish, Chavez shouted *“Viva la Patria”. * Which has been shouted by just about every Spanish-speaking Head of State at one time or another. And old Spanish-language US History schoolbooks called “Jorge” Washington el padre de la patria. A cognate is also used in French – the first line of La Marseillaise reads, “Allons, enfants de la patrie” .
As kellner stated, it from the Latin word that is the root of “patriotic” or “patriotism”, itself from the word for “father” (pater). “Patria” means “of or referring to the fathers”, so when referring to a country, “patria” meant literally “the land of our fathers”.
In the cultural context of the Romance-languages world it does** not ** have anywhere near the “baggage” that it has for English-speakers. “Patria” in public speech in Spanish is the conceptual/cultural equivalent to the “country” in* “My country, ‘tis o’ thee”* or to the “land” in “Land of Hope and Glory” . It’s the personification of your home/native land.
But that’s part of the problem with the connotations in English of “fatherland” or “motherland”. Translators from German went for the literal “fatherland” in absence of an English equivalent of “la patria”.
This may also be the case with the Chávez statement: the translator wanted to convey the flavor of populist nationalism that does perfuse Chavez’ discourse.
Eh? Really? I use motherland, occasionally. I’m an American citizen and love this country, but I was born in India and still consider it my motherland.
It’s just like the swastika. It’s a religious symbol for me, but thanks to the Nazis, people still question it and even get mad when it’s on our temples. But that doesn’t mean we should stop using it, just that we should educate people about it. Same with motherland.
matr-bhoomi - motherland in Hindi.
Yeah. Sheesh - who ever does that in politics?
I like to call it the mothership.
Fatherland has Nazi connections.
Motherland has Soviet connections.
Though I believe the Romans used the term “motherland” when referring to their country, if I remember my latin correctly.
“Motherland” also has extremely romanticized connections with the entire African continent for thousands of pro-nationalist African-Americans.
Or, y’know, the mothership will work, too.