Vodou Brooklyn

1. Sid Morrison
   October 4th, 2007 at 11:46 am

   Vodou? I had to do a doubletake. So this is the new P.C. term for Voodoo, huh? Voodoo is the stuff of cheezy B-movies, while Vodou is a legitimate religion (with zombies)?

   Come on, this is ridiculous. First Hindoos want to be Hindus, then Moslems want to be Muslim, and now this. Stop re-inventing yourselves, people. At least the Mormons, Shakers, and Quakers, had the good sense to embrace and adopt the names given them. Those were teh good old days...

2. Kerozene
   October 4th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

   Its like those wiccans/watever spelling "magic" as "Magick" or "magik".

   They just want to feel "special " or "different" so they just CAN'T spell it the same way. Kinda dumb really. Ooga booga to them, I say. :p

3. Miss Curly
   October 4th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

   This is totally cool! I would love to see something like this!

4. Traveler
   October 5th, 2007 at 8:34 am

   The terms used in english are really perversions of the actual names, so I think it's pretty ridiculous to mock people for spelling things the correct way. And where are you people from? Moslems? Hindoos? Do you have any idea what century it is? Sorry that the good old days of imperialism are over, when people like you could don their pith helmets and quash these "lesser" religions. Oh, and the book The Rainbow and the Serpant is a really interesting way to explore Voudon. It's written like a novel but it's the true story of a Harvard ethnobiolgist in Haiti.

5. Sid Morrison
   October 5th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

   "Perversions" is a strong term when we are really discussing transliterations from Sanksrit, Arabic, or whatever into the Latin alphabet. The exact spelling is open to interpretation by the scholars involved but once it is established in a language, let's not keep re-visiting it every time some new know-it-all wants to assert their moral superiority over the previous generation.

   Undoubtedly there are plenty of English words that get mangled upon entry into other languages. We just don't get our grass skirts in a bunch over it. Loosen the bone, and get back to witch doctoring. We will try our best (we consider this our "white man's burden") to properly transliterate your words into the Roman alphabet. If we screw up, let us know now, not in 50, 100, or 200 years.

   Straight talk from Sid

   P.S. - if you use our calendar system, please abide by the proper B.C. and A.D. date system. "B.C.E." & "C.E." are hokey modernisms that bow to political correctness whilst still curiously embracing the Christian calendar. If using B.C. and A.D. is painful for you, come up with your own date system based upon the reign of Atahualpa or whatever.

6. Alex
   October 5th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

   This is done all the time: Peking becomes Beijing, Bombay becomes Mumbai. Language (and spelling) change - unless you want to stick to the throwback of thou and yore.

7. Micheline Laroche
   January 30th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

   We must all pray to Papa Legba. He is the gatekeeper, the met Carfour. Pray to him -- it really works!!

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