Largest English speaking nation.
Rushtown
English.
The educated people of India are fluent in English and the benefits are
clear----including providing internet advice when I call the manufacturer on
the phone.
On my last visit to Korea I saw how their emphasis on making English the second
language is paying off. Often when I was the only American visitor at a house
I would hear children reciting "ABC's" or counting in English.
India should stop supporting or promoting the native languages and really push
English. The only objection might be that it is a vestige of "colonialism".
But who cares if it can make the country more prosperous.
And with a billion people speaking English, Indians could become the standard
setters for proper usage---not some guys in Oxford.
John Dean
Shabash Huzoor!
--
John Dean
Oxford
Luca
>The leaders of India would do well to attempt to make everyone fluent in
>English.
>The educated people of India are fluent in English and the benefits are
>clear----including providing internet advice when I call the manufacturer on
>the phone.
>On my last visit to Korea I saw how their emphasis on making English the second
>language is paying off. Often when I was the only American visitor at a house
>I would hear children reciting "ABC's" or counting in English.
>India should stop supporting or promoting the native languages and really push
>English.
Why stop supporting native languages?! India already is a multilingual
nation, so promoting English more heavily would just add another
language to pupils' curricula.
It's not like Hindi and all the other hundreds of languages spoken
across the subcontinent would interfere with people's using E.
Luca
John Varela
> Why stop supporting native languages?! India already is a multilingual
> nation, so promoting English more heavily would just add another
> language to pupils' curricula.
> It's not like Hindi and all the other hundreds of languages spoken
> across the subcontinent would interfere with people's using E.
It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is English, so it
is natural that English should become the language of business and government.
I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
lives of those who don't?
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam is too much.
Donna Richoux
> On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:36:53 UTC, Luca <bob...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
>
> > Why stop supporting native languages?! India already is a multilingual
> > nation, so promoting English more heavily would just add another
> > language to pupils' curricula.
> > It's not like Hindi and all the other hundreds of languages spoken
> > across the subcontinent would interfere with people's using E.
>
> It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is English, so it
> is natural that English should become the language of business and government.
>
> I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
> preserving them.
I think it's usually more a matter of, not actively trying to stamp them
out, discourage them, mock the users, punish them, and sometimes kill
them off. People will always raise their children in their own language,
if given any choice at all. By this natural mechanism, languages
persist.
>Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
> read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
> lives of those who don't?
I don't understand. You and I and our neighbors might not know how to
read ancient Greek, but (a) that doesn't mean I hope that no one on the
planet knows how to read ancient Greek; on the contrary, I hope someone
does, if for no other reason that to continue to improve the
translations of Homer available, and (b) how does someone being able to
read ancient Greek relate to "preserving languages," by which I assume
you mean, not as a dead language only to be puzzled over on paper, but
as part of a living, breathing, community culture?
Anyway, we're all on one of the winning teams here, so that shapes our
viewpoint. If our countries were invaded by, say, the Chinese, who took
measures to make sure our children wouldn't learn English anymore, I
think one or two of us might have something to say about the value of
preserving languages.
If I remember correctly, you have Louisiana connections, as I do. Do you
have any first-hand knowledge of how French was stamped out there in the
20th century? My impression is that this clash of cultures was quite
hard on my father's generation. (Later, I was read, people tried to
revive the Cajun French, making it fashionable again, but the chain was
broken.)
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Charles Riggs
<OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
>preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
>read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
>lives of those who don't?
Much of the great Irish poetry is available, I'm told, only in the
original Irish. I think that alone is enough reason to continue to
teach it, at least at the university level. Can Homer be translated so
as to preserve the precise tone Homer intended? Can anyone be? I am
very glad I speak English and don't have to read Shakespeare in, say,
French, lovely as that language is.
--
Charles Riggs
Email address: chriggsŚatŚeircomŚdotŚnet
Luca
>It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is English, so it
>is natural that English should become the language of business and government.
Yes, English or Hindi. And human beings are perfectly capable of using
two or more languages, depending on the situation and purpose. In fact
the majority of the world's population grows up in a multilingual
environment. You may be in the minority, then.
>I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
>preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
>read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
>lives of those who don't?
Ancient Greek has in part survived in Modern Greek, even if
pronunciation has changed and new words have been added. I don't suppose
you are one of those who have read Homer in the original. - Otherwise
you'd know the difference it makes.
To answer your question, I fail to understand why one should want to
actively discourage people from speaking the language of their
community. After all, a language always carries its own meaning and
philosophy. Punjabi poetry can't just be replaced by an English
translation. And the English vocabulary, however rich it may be, cannot
convey the humour of a joke or pun in Tamil.
Some of the languages are going to die out anyway, but it would be wrong
to want to speed that process up for the ridiculous idea that an
English-speaking-only India would then gain economic power. What they
need is more education for everyone, not a monolingual masterplan.
Luca
John Varela
> John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:36:53 UTC, Luca <bob...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
> >
> > > Why stop supporting native languages?! India already is a multilingual
> > > nation, so promoting English more heavily would just add another
> > > language to pupils' curricula.
> > > It's not like Hindi and all the other hundreds of languages spoken
> > > across the subcontinent would interfere with people's using E.
> >
> > It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is English, so it
> > is natural that English should become the language of business and government.
> >
> > I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
> > preserving them.
>
> I think it's usually more a matter of, not actively trying to stamp them
> out, discourage them, mock the users, punish them, and sometimes kill
> them off. People will always raise their children in their own language,
> if given any choice at all. By this natural mechanism, languages
> persist.
Not always. It's common experience in the US that the first generation born
here speaks the parents' language only poorly and the next generation speaks
it not at all. Do any of the native-English-speaking Americans here feel
impoverished because their families lost the ancestral German, Italian, or
whatever?
> >Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
> > read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
> > lives of those who don't?
>
> I don't understand. You and I and our neighbors might not know how to
> read ancient Greek, but (a) that doesn't mean I hope that no one on the
> planet knows how to read ancient Greek; on the contrary, I hope someone
> does, if for no other reason that to continue to improve the
> translations of Homer available, and (b) how does someone being able to
> read ancient Greek relate to "preserving languages," by which I assume
> you mean, not as a dead language only to be puzzled over on paper, but
> as part of a living, breathing, community culture?
Your response is tangential to the point I was (apparently poorly) attempting
to make. What I had in mind was the recurring articles in US newspapers about
some ancient who is the last living speaker of some AmerIndian language. The
article is always sympathetic, and indeed one can feel for the person who sees
her (it's always a woman) language dying with her. But in a larger view,
there is little lost. Her descendents don't seem to care, or they would have
learned the language.
> Anyway, we're all on one of the winning teams here, so that shapes our
> viewpoint. If our countries were invaded by, say, the Chinese, who took
> measures to make sure our children wouldn't learn English anymore, I
> think one or two of us might have something to say about the value of
> preserving languages.
Suppression of a language, which is tantamount to suppressing a culture, will
of course be resisted. But when a stronger culture overwhelms a weaker the
people will often willingly change languages. Think of the spread of Arabic,
or the replacement of Greek with Turkish in Anatolia. If a local language
disappears, the victim of a stronger culture, so be it.
> If I remember correctly, you have Louisiana connections, as I do. Do you
> have any first-hand knowledge of how French was stamped out there in the
> 20th century? My impression is that this clash of cultures was quite
> hard on my father's generation. (Later, I was read, people tried to
> revive the Cajun French, making it fashionable again, but the chain was
> broken.)
Would your father's generation be the same as my generation? I don't think
Cajun French is dead. I'll be in New Orleans in a couple of weeks for Mardi
Gras, and I'll ask. I have a suspicion that my cousin, who is himself 1/4
Cajun, won't know.
John Varela
When I spoke of "preserving languages" I meant as living languages, not as
objects of study. Since you and Donna both misunderstood my point, it's
evident I didn't make myself clear.
John Varela
> "John Varela" <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is English, so it
> >is natural that English should become the language of business and government.
>
> Yes, English or Hindi. And human beings are perfectly capable of using
> two or more languages, depending on the situation and purpose. In fact
> the majority of the world's population grows up in a multilingual
> environment. You may be in the minority, then.
So what?
> >I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
> >preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
> >read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
> >lives of those who don't?
>
> Ancient Greek has in part survived in Modern Greek, even if
> pronunciation has changed and new words have been added. I don't suppose
> you are one of those who have read Homer in the original. - Otherwise
> you'd know the difference it makes.
> To answer your question, I fail to understand why one should want to
> actively discourage people from speaking the language of their
> community. After all, a language always carries its own meaning and
> philosophy. Punjabi poetry can't just be replaced by an English
> translation. And the English vocabulary, however rich it may be, cannot
> convey the humour of a joke or pun in Tamil.
> Some of the languages are going to die out anyway, but it would be wrong
> to want to speed that process up for the ridiculous idea that an
> English-speaking-only India would then gain economic power. What they
> need is more education for everyone, not a monolingual masterplan.
No one suggested that the process be speeded up. The closest the OP,
Rushtown, came to that was when he (she?) said: "India should stop supporting
or promoting the native languages and really push English. The only objection
might be that it is a vestige of "colonialism". But who cares if it can make
the country more prosperous."
Rushtown can speak for him(her?)self, but I don't read "stop supporting or
promoting" as the same thing as "actively discourage".
Donna Richoux
> On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:01:36 UTC, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> > John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:36:53 UTC, Luca <bob...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Why stop supporting native languages?! India already is a multilingual
> > > > nation, so promoting English more heavily would just add another
> > > > language to pupils' curricula.
> > > > It's not like Hindi and all the other hundreds of languages spoken
> > > > across the subcontinent would interfere with people's using E.
> > >
> > > It is often the case that two Indians' only common language is
> > > English, so it is natural that English should become the language of
> > > business and government.
> > >
> > > I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the
> > > sake of preserving them.
> >
> > I think it's usually more a matter of, not actively trying to stamp them
> > out, discourage them, mock the users, punish them, and sometimes kill
> > them off. People will always raise their children in their own language,
> > if given any choice at all. By this natural mechanism, languages
> > persist.
>
> Not always. It's common experience in the US that the first generation
> born here speaks the parents' language only poorly and the next generation
> speaks it not at all. Do any of the native-English-speaking Americans
> here feel impoverished because their families lost the ancestral German,
> Italian, or whatever?
Although most of my ancestors spoke English going way back, the two
"foreign languages" I know of are different from what you ask for,
because these weren't cases where scattered immigrants moved into a
largely English-speaking community, they were residents of extremely
large, established colonies where that language was dominant. I have a
line of six or seven generations "Pennsylvania Dutch" (German) -- I
don't think I ever felt much emotional connection there, and I'm pretty
sure they were speaking English by 1830 if not before. The other such
language would be the Louisiana French.
Do I feel impoverished... I don't spend a lot of time wishing the past
was different than it was, but sometimes I do feel a sort of wistful
longing, wondering what we have gotten ourselves into, and what we've
lost without knowing.
>
> > >Even languages that have great literatures: how many people read Homer
> > >in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the lives
> > >of those who don't?
> >
> > I don't understand. You and I and our neighbors might not know how to
> > read ancient Greek, but (a) that doesn't mean I hope that no one on the
> > planet knows how to read ancient Greek; on the contrary, I hope someone
> > does, if for no other reason that to continue to improve the
> > translations of Homer available, and (b) how does someone being able to
> > read ancient Greek relate to "preserving languages," by which I assume
> > you mean, not as a dead language only to be puzzled over on paper, but
> > as part of a living, breathing, community culture?
>
> Your response is tangential to the point I was (apparently poorly)
> attempting to make. What I had in mind was the recurring articles in US
> newspapers about some ancient who is the last living speaker of some
> AmerIndian language. The article is always sympathetic, and indeed one
> can feel for the person who sees her (it's always a woman) language dying
> with her. But in a larger view, there is little lost. Her descendents
> don't seem to care, or they would have learned the language.
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is
the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. The way I see it,
the last death of the last person of that society is not deeply tragic
in and of itself. It represents, however, several centuries of fighting,
massacres, plague, discrimination, etc, that has trailed off into this
lonely old woman. (She probably outlived her children, which does
happen.)
Anyway, that's a hypothetical example. I think the death of languages is
an interesting phenomenon, but I'd rather read about actual cases than
trade generalized stereotypes. Do you remember any particular articles
or languages? I remember looking through a chapter in a textbook in a
bookstore about the language death, and it identified a variety of
social and economic factors as possible causes.
>
> > Anyway, we're all on one of the winning teams here, so that shapes our
> > viewpoint. If our countries were invaded by, say, the Chinese, who took
> > measures to make sure our children wouldn't learn English anymore, I
> > think one or two of us might have something to say about the value of
> > preserving languages.
>
> Suppression of a language, which is tantamount to suppressing a culture,
> will of course be resisted. But when a stronger culture overwhelms a
> weaker the people will often willingly change languages.
I can see people willingly (or grudgingly) adding a language in order to
do business with their masters. But I can't see them happily changing
the language they use to talk to their children and old folks and
friends, unless the extended familes are broken up and relocated, they
are punished for speaking the old tongue, etc.
The Dutch have happily added English as a useful extension to their
language, but Nederlands is still the language of daily life,
child-raising, socializing, community activity, etc. (Except where it's
Friesian, or, in a few places, a form of German. Everyone learns Dutch
in school, but some still use their own language in their own
communities -- which the government tolerates, even though it must be
inconvenient.)
>Think of the spread of Arabic,
I don't know anything about that. I'm afraid it makes me think of
coversion to Islam by the sword.
> or the replacement of Greek with Turkish in Anatolia.
Again, I know nothing about that. Perhaps you can fill me in.
>If a local language
> disappears, the victim of a stronger culture, so be it.
Which is it, a victim of brute strength, or willing adoption? I don't
think you can have it both ways. If the Chinese invaders suppressed
English, that's bad, but if the Arabs dominate the local nomads, that's
just c'est la vie?
Of course, there are invasions that lead to intermarriages and
cooperation, and invasions that don't. Makes a big difference.
>
> > If I remember correctly, you have Louisiana connections, as I do. Do you
> > have any first-hand knowledge of how French was stamped out there in the
> > 20th century? My impression is that this clash of cultures was quite
> > hard on my father's generation. (Later, I was read, people tried to
> > revive the Cajun French, making it fashionable again, but the chain was
> > broken.)
>
> Would your father's generation be the same as my generation?
Oh, I don't think you're his age. He was born in 1921, the generation
that fought in WWII. For his generation, French was forbidden in school,
and English was held out as being the language of the future, of modern
scientific life, of progress, of good jobs. (French represented poverty
and all backwardness.) He said he could understand his relatives when
they spoke French, but he would never speak it. He joined the Navy and
got away from the bayou and sugar cane as soon as he could, and only
rarely went back to visit.
It's fairly normal to be rootless and nomadic in US life, and I don't
want to oversentimentalize the extended family and village life and all
that -- but sometimes I wonder what we're missing.
>I don't think Cajun French is dead. I'll be in New Orleans in a couple
>of weeks for Mardi Gras, and I'll ask. I have a suspicion that my
>cousin, who is himself 1/4 Cajun, won't know.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands
Robert Lieblich
[ ... ]
> Not always. It's common experience in the US that the first generation born
> here speaks the parents' language only poorly and the next generation speaks
> it not at all. Do any of the native-English-speaking Americans here feel
> impoverished because their families lost the ancestral German, Italian, or
> whatever?
My parents were of the first US-born generation in their families.
Both spoke fluent Yiddish and equally fluent English -- native
quality in both cases (or so I have been told as to their Yiddish;
their English I could judge for myself). I have written before of
my disappointment that they, like most Jewish parents of that era,
made a conscious decision NOT to teach their children Yiddish.
There is much great literature in that language, and the Orthodox of
Israel may yet succeed in reviving it as a supplement to Hebrew.
Knowing Yiddish would have made it much easier for me to learn
German -- I tried in college but never got past a smattering.
"Improverished" may be too strong a word, but yes, I very much
regret that they did not teach me Yiddish in parallel with English.
[ ... ]
--
Bob Lieblich
Well, you asked
CyberCypher
I agree with Bob. I wish my mother had not made a conscious decision
to not speak Italian to her parents. Her older brothers and sisters
all spoke it. I would have liked to learn it. My grandmother's
English was quite poor and littered with Italian expressions. I'm
pretty sure that my mother told my grandmother that she didn't want
her to teach me and my sister Italian or to even speak to us in
Italian.
My father's parents were also monolingual. I lost a lot of time
having to learn German from scratch in high school and lost the
opportunity of being able to speak the language with family members.
My number 2 son is fluent in three languages already, and I'm happy
about that. His language abilities will serve him well when he gets
to middle school and above, and when he finally decides on his life's
work.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.
John Varela
> >Think of the spread of Arabic,
>
> I don't know anything about that. I'm afraid it makes me think of
> coversion to Islam by the sword.
>
> > or the replacement of Greek with Turkish in Anatolia.
>
> Again, I know nothing about that. Perhaps you can fill me in.
>
> >If a local language
> > disappears, the victim of a stronger culture, so be it.
>
> Which is it, a victim of brute strength, or willing adoption? I don't
> think you can have it both ways. If the Chinese invaders suppressed
> English, that's bad, but if the Arabs dominate the local nomads, that's
> just c'est la vie?
>
> Of course, there are invasions that lead to intermarriages and
> cooperation, and invasions that don't. Makes a big difference.
The Arabs invaded populous lands that had their own languages and strong
cultures and traditions, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the old languages
disappeared with a few exceptions like the Coptic spoken by the Christian
minority in Egypt. Nowadays these Arabic speakers consider themselves to be
Arabs, even though their ancestors were in fact Egyptions, Assyrians or
whatever.
Similarly, you won't hear much Greek spoken in the former capital of the
Byzantine Empire. Though these people all speak Turkish, they don't look at
all like descendents of Central Asian nomads. The Turks disappeared into the
population but their language superseded Greek.
I believe omething similar happened in Hungary as well.
These were instances of vigorous new cultures moving in and sweeping up the
population to adopt the new culture, including its language.
The Grammer Genious
> The Arabs invaded populous lands that had their own languages and strong
> cultures and traditions, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the old languages
> disappeared with a few exceptions like the Coptic spoken by the Christian
> minority in Egypt. Nowadays these Arabic speakers consider themselves to be
> Arabs, even though their ancestors were in fact Egyptions, Assyrians or
> whatever. <...>
Not exactly. When Egyptians talk among themselves about "the
Arabs", they're not including themselves. They're proud of their
part in Arab culture and they love their Arabic language, but
they also know that they are the people who built the pyramids
and that they had a vibrant, world-class culture when the Arabs
were still culturally peripheral.
\\P. Schultz
John Varela
<Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote:
> My parents were of the first US-born generation in their families.
> Both spoke fluent Yiddish and equally fluent English -- native
> quality in both cases (or so I have been told as to their Yiddish;
> their English I could judge for myself). I have written before of
> my disappointment that they, like most Jewish parents of that era,
> made a conscious decision NOT to teach their children Yiddish.
Since we are dealing with anecdoatal evidence here, I'll provide a few.
I had a coworker who was from New Delhi and his wife was a French Canadian.
When their first child was born he said their plan was that he would speak
only Hindi to the child, his wife would speak only French, and the child would
learn English from caregivers and other children. A few years later I asked
him how his experiment was going and he said, with a wave of his hand, "Oh, we
gave that up a long time ago."
In my own case, my father was a native Spanish speaker but my mother was a
monolingual English speaker. Since my father had no adult to speak Spanish
with at home, he only spoke it at work (he was in the export-import business
with Latin America). As far as I know he never tried to teach me, probably
because like my Hindi friend he found it too much of a bother, especially
since the other adult in the house couldn't participate.
Another anecdote. Some 25 years ago I was trying to staff a project in a
Spanish-speaking country and wanted a bilingual secretary to work here in the
US. Most of the applicants were US born of Latin American parents, who had
learned their Spanish at home. They all spoke "kitchen Spanish", by which I
mean that, all their education having been in English, their Spanish
vocabulary was limited. A test I used was to have them translate a few
sentences including the phrase "...this office approves..." Invariably
"office" was translated as "oficina", which means the place where people work,
instead of "despacho", which means office in the sense intended. I finally
hired a speaker of kitchen Spanish--she could still answer the phone--and sent
all my correspondence in English.
Don Aitken
<OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>The Arabs invaded populous lands that had their own languages and strong
>cultures and traditions, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the old languages
>disappeared with a few exceptions like the Coptic spoken by the Christian
>minority in Egypt. Nowadays these Arabic speakers consider themselves to be
>Arabs, even though their ancestors were in fact Egyptions, Assyrians or
>whatever.
>
>Similarly, you won't hear much Greek spoken in the former capital of the
>Byzantine Empire. Though these people all speak Turkish, they don't look at
>all like descendents of Central Asian nomads. The Turks disappeared into the
>population but their language superseded Greek.
>
>I believe omething similar happened in Hungary as well.
>
>These were instances of vigorous new cultures moving in and sweeping up the
>population to adopt the new culture, including its language.
The current view seems to be that English replaced the Celtic
languages in England through much the same process.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
R H Draney
>
>I recall a Greek PhD student all of whose university education had
>been conducted in English. Her English was passable, but distinctly
>foreign and a bit hesitant, and she struggled a bit with everyday
>fluency. One day she was asked what her Greek family and friends
>thought about her PhD work. She replied that they knew nothing about
>it, since she was unable to talk about it in Greek. Although a native
>Greek speaker, she simply didn't have the vocabulary to do it.
I have much the same problem describing what I do at work to anyone not in the
same business...the entities with which I deal on a daily basis are arcane and
incomprehensible without at least two years of immersion in the environment in
which they dwell...fortunately, my employer has thoughtfully passed around a
form for me to sign where I pledge that I will not discuss any of those entities
with any person not employed by my company, and they in turn pledge that they
will not give me a reference (even unto confirming that I once worked there) if
I should leave for another job....r
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:07:21 UTC, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> > >Think of the spread of Arabic,
> >
> > I don't know anything about that. I'm afraid it makes me think of
> > coversion to Islam by the sword.
> >
> > > or the replacement of Greek with Turkish in Anatolia.
> >
> > Again, I know nothing about that. Perhaps you can fill me in.
> >
> > >If a local language
> > > disappears, the victim of a stronger culture, so be it.
> >
> > Which is it, a victim of brute strength, or willing adoption? I don't
> > think you can have it both ways. If the Chinese invaders suppressed
> > English, that's bad, but if the Arabs dominate the local nomads, that's
> > just c'est la vie?
> >
> > Of course, there are invasions that lead to intermarriages and
> > cooperation, and invasions that don't. Makes a big difference.
>
ethnicity is psychological (or socio-pschological).
it's "in the head", and various cultures attach varying degrees of
importance to one aspect, such as language, ancestry, birth place or
other cultural artifact.
> The Arabs invaded populous lands that had their own languages and strong
> cultures and traditions, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the old languages
> disappeared with a few exceptions like the Coptic spoken by the Christian
> minority in Egypt. Nowadays these Arabic speakers consider themselves to be
> Arabs, even though their ancestors were in fact Egyptions, Assyrians or
there are some who may think otherwise, but this is the predominant
view, and arab nationalism as formulated places primary importance to
language. it is certainly the official view that Egyptians are arabs
("the Arab Republic of Eygpt"), but they reconcile it with the fact
that their ancestors are from Ancient Egypt, and they are proud o fit.
simialrly for other parts of the Arab world. but there is also a
"localist" movement among soem intellectuals.
John Varela
> >These were instances of vigorous new cultures moving in and sweeping up the
> >population to adopt the new culture, including its language.
>
> The current view seems to be that English replaced the Celtic
> languages in England through much the same process.
Although, getting back on topic, it is interesting that French did not
supplant English, it merged with it. More or less.
Donna Richoux
> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:37:35 UTC, Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
> > >These were instances of vigorous new cultures moving in and sweeping up the
> > >population to adopt the new culture, including its language.
> >
> > The current view seems to be that English replaced the Celtic
> > languages in England through much the same process.
I've seen the comparison made, that the local Celts had about as much
impact on the Anglo-Saxon language and culture as the American Indians
did on the English settlers. That is, very little, beyond some
placenames.
>
> Although, getting back on topic, it is interesting that French did not
> supplant English, it merged with it. More or less.
And before it, Latin merged with the native languages of France, Spain,
Portugal... I have no idea how you'd prove it, but I have this sense
that the French have always been more open to mixing with other races
and cultures than have the English or northern Europeans.
Didn't those Norman invaders pretty much marry the daughters of the
local Anglo-Saxon squires? Within a few generations, anyway. Unlike,
say, the earlier Dane invasion, which kept to itself? Had not the Norman
French been welcomed and assimilated by the French French a couple of
centuries before?
Just as another personal example, my New England ancestors are solidly
English, English, English all the way, as if the colony didn't accept
anyone from anywhere else for two centuries. Yet, on the Louisiana
French side, during a time only slightly later, we know of a
Scots-Irish, a German, and a Spanish ancestor who married into the Cajun
families.
I've only heard a little about the effect Old Norse had on Old English
when the Danes settled in England. "The Story of English" does describe
how the contact between the two languages appeared to simplify some of
English grammar.
Well, where I think this is headed is that history is complex, the
relationship between any two cultures is complex, and we probably have
to look at each on a case-by-case basis, and not by sweeping
generalizations about strength and weakness and assimilation.
And I hate to harp on it, but one side's "vigorous/sweeping/adoption"
could be the other sides "massacre/brutality/repression," if they were
only around to tell the their side.
Is "History is a tale told by the victors" or anything similar, an
actual quotation from someone, or an old proverb, or a modern proverb? I
don't find it at Bartleby's Quotations.
Bob Cunningham
Richoux) said:
[...]
> Is "History is a tale told by the victors" or anything similar, an
> actual quotation from someone, or an old proverb, or a modern proverb? I
> don't find it at Bartleby's Quotations.
Alex Haley. From _Encarta Book of Quotations_:
History is written by the winners.
Interview, _The David Frost Television Show_
(April 20, 1972)
It seems like something that should have been said earlier,
but I haven't found it in the _Oxford Book of Quotations_ or
in _Bartlett's Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition_.
Bob Cunningham
Google gives me "about 2160" hits on "history is written by
the winners", and "about 40,600" on "history is written by
the victors".
Ben Zimmer
Versions of the saying with "victors" rather than "winners" were
circulating well before 1972. From Proquest:
Mideast Debate
New York Times, May 27, 1956. p. 100
At the end of Giraudoux' "Tiger at the Gates," when the
Trojan war is about to break out and the destruction of
Troy is on the celestial planning boards, Cassandra
says, in her disenchanted way, "The Trojan poet is dead;
now the Grecian poet will have his word." History was
always written by the victors.
Where Lies the Truth of It All?
New York Times, Feb 7, 1965. p. BR3
To be sure, as all historians know, history is (at least
for a time) "written by the victors."
Sara Lorimer
> John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > Do any of the native-English-speaking Americans
> > here feel impoverished because their families lost the ancestral German,
> > Italian, or whatever?
>
[snip]
> Do I feel impoverished... I don't spend a lot of time wishing the past
> was different than it was, but sometimes I do feel a sort of wistful
> longing, wondering what we have gotten ourselves into, and what we've
> lost without knowing.
I have the impression that you have kids, Donna, or at least one. Just
out of curiosity -- what languages are you teaching them, living in
furrin parts as you do?
--
SML
ess el five six zero at columbia dot edu <http://pirate-women.com>
John Varela
> John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > Although, getting back on topic, it is interesting that French did not
> > supplant English, it merged with it. More or less.
>
> And before it, Latin merged with the native languages of France, Spain,
> Portugal... I have no idea how you'd prove it, but I have this sense
> that the French have always been more open to mixing with other races
> and cultures than have the English or northern Europeans.
You sure couldn't support that claim by the actions of the French in the last
century, what with their Academy and their ordenateurs (sp?) instead of
computers and all.
> Just as another personal example, my New England ancestors are solidly
> English, English, English all the way, as if the colony didn't accept
> anyone from anywhere else for two centuries. Yet, on the Louisiana
> French side, during a time only slightly later, we know of a
> Scots-Irish, a German, and a Spanish ancestor who married into the Cajun
> families.
Are you sure your ancestors were Cajuns and not Creoles? The Cajuns lived in
the swamps and marshes, and were rustics. The Creoles lived in the city and
considered themselves superior to the Cajuns. In the mid 20th century, people
were proud of Creole ancestry but Cajun ancestry was something to be ashamed
of. (Later, of course, Cajun became chic.) If your ancestry has all those
other nationalities, it seems likely that all those people got together in a
city like New Orleans or Baton Rouge, not in some remote town like Thibodeaux.
By the way, you do know the story of how the Spanish became part of New
Orleans Creole culture, don't you? In the late 18th century Louisiana
belonged to Spain. The French colonists didn't much like the Spanish to whom
their country had been sold. When the American Revolution started, Spain,
like France, went to war with England. The young Spanish Governor of New
Orleans, Bernardo de Galvez, after whom Galveston is named, led an expedition
and reconquered West Florida from the English. The French colonists figured
that anyone who beats up on the English can't be all bad, and thereafter they
permitted the Spanish officers to visit their daughters, and the rest is
history.
> I've only heard a little about the effect Old Norse had on Old English
> when the Danes settled in England. "The Story of English" does describe
> how the contact between the two languages appeared to simplify some of
> English grammar.
Hasn't it been claimed that in fact English is a pidgin?
Dr Robin Bignall
The last bit sounds like the British Secret Service, and signing the
Official Secrets Act. Are you a spy by profession? (Use a one-time pad to
encode the answer!)
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England
Ross Howard
A just-in-case Google on "history" + "victors" instead of "winners"
brings up this:
"The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the
survivors."
-- Max Lerner
I can find no date for that, but he was born 20 years before Haley, I
see.
But whichever of the two actually said it first, I agree it's
surprising if it is indeed so recent; it sounds like it ought to have
been first said by Cicero or someone.
--
Ross Howard
Donna Richoux
Definitely rustic, for the most part, Thibodeaux being one of the very
towns, the even smaller Lockport being the site of the ancestral Richoux
farm. Sure, "swamp and marsh," though they would say "bayou," the Bayou
LaFourche, which was a tame and tidy canal when I saw it. Most of the
French ancestors that I've traced back that far were Acadian (Cajun)
descent (that is, from the French colony in Maine & Canada), although as
it happened, the original Richoux went directly from Orleans, France, to
New Orleans. I don't remember any details on how exactly those other
nationalities settled and met the others, but my impression is that even
though the rural community was French-speaking, it permitted and even
welcomed other nationalities to farm there. That's not so strange in
itself, pioneer towns in, say, Nebraska had mixtures of nationalities --
but there, ethnic divides lasted longer, I think; Bohemians tending to
marry other Bohemians, not New England Yankees, and so on.
What you bring up is the attitude of the city people towards the country
people, and the discrimination against the Cajuns. Class discrimination,
which I'm sure played a role in the elimination of French in the early
20th c. -- as I said, it was considered the cause of poverty and
backwardness. I wonder when it was the Creole class gave up its French
-- fear of poverty could hardly have been their reason.
And, like I say, I don't want to over-romanticize this -- my father
*did* escape poverty and acquired a good education (GI Bill) by going
along with the game. Probably a lot of English people in the UK who
deliberately shed their lower-class and regional accents, or made sure
their children did, benefitted, too.
>
> By the way, you do know the story of how the Spanish became part of New
> Orleans Creole culture, don't you? In the late 18th century Louisiana
> belonged to Spain. The French colonists didn't much like the Spanish to whom
> their country had been sold. When the American Revolution started, Spain,
> like France, went to war with England. The young Spanish Governor of New
> Orleans, Bernardo de Galvez, after whom Galveston is named, led an expedition
> and reconquered West Florida from the English. The French colonists figured
> that anyone who beats up on the English can't be all bad, and thereafter they
> permitted the Spanish officers to visit their daughters, and the rest is
> history.
My Spanish ancestors are the one I want to trace next. If what I found
is true, they appear to have lived for generations on the Canary
Islands. That's unusual.
I apologize for inflicting genealogical info on the group, as I know
that it's usually only interesting to those most directly affected.
Bob Cunningham
<bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> said:
[...]
> Versions of the saying with "victors" rather than "winners" were
> circulating well before 1972. From Proquest:
In pursuit of the meaning of "Proquest" I've found that --
like online _OED_ -- it's a database that I can get to with
my public-library card.
But I didn't get the hits you quoted. Using the search
string 'history "written by the" AND (victors OR winners)'
and setting the date option to "before 12/31/2001", I get 23
hits, the oldest of which is from the Washington Post and is
dated June 3, 1990. The found string in that hit is
But then, history, as they say, is written by the
victors.
I'm curious to know what search string you used to get your
1956 hit?
Maybe your Proquest and my public-library Proquest are not
the same.
Richard Maurer
A just-in-case Google on "history" + "victors" instead of "winners"
brings up this:
"The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the
survivors."
-- Max Lerner
I can find no date for that, but he was born 20 years before Haley, I
see.
But whichever of the two actually said it first, I agree it's
surprising if it is indeed so recent; it sounds like it ought to have
been first said by Cicero or someone.
[end quote] >>
There is this
"History is the propaganda of the victors." - Ernst Toller,
German poet and dramatist (1893-1939).
Said to have been said in 1935.
There is also a reported African proverb
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt
shall always glorify the hunters.
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Zimmer
You need to switch from the "ProQuest Newspapers" database to the
Historical Databases. On the search page click on "Databases selected"
to get to the database page. Then deselect "ProQuest Newspapers",
scroll down to "Historical Databases", and select whatever titles are
listed. The version of Proquest that I'm accessing has APS Online
(periodicals from 1740-1900), Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles
Times, New York Times, Wall St Journal, and Washington Post archives.
Also, you should use the Advanced Search screen to search the entire
text of articles (Basic Search only does citations and abstracts).
While you're at it, you should also see if you have access to the
(London) Times Digital Archive: <http://infotrac.galegroup.com/menu>.
That's actually more user-friendly because when you click on a page
image the search terms are highlighted (unlike Proquest, where you have
to skim through till you find the terms you're looking for, unless you
use OCR software to convert the PDF to text).
Donna Richoux
I find several attributions now to Walter Benjamin, German philosopher
and literary critic, 1892-1940 (he died while fleeing the Gestapo). No
one has pointed to an exact line and source yet, but he appeared to talk
about the idea a lot. Since he wrote in German, the variety of phrasing
we see may be from differing translations.
Here's one bit of testimony:
http://www.coe.int/T/E/Com/Files/interviews/20030704_Interv_Payot.asp
Question: Daniel Payot, you are Professor of the
Philosophy of Art at the Marc Bloch University in
Strasbourg, which has jointly organised the Council
of Europe Summer University. You spoke on the theme
"Is history always written by the victors?" Why did
you choose that subject?
Daniel Payot: The idea came to me directly from a
German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, who wrote on
the subject in 1940, questioning the meaning of
history in particularly troubled times. He put
forward the very pessimistic idea, reflecting his
grave concern, that the way in which we perceive
history always reflects a reconstruction of history,
and that there are inequalities between those who
make history. He believed that those who made
history were those who had an interest in relating
it, and that they cast themselves in a favourable
light. These are the people Walter Benjamin
described as the victors. It's an interesting
opinion, but one that can be challenged. He refers,
for example, to the Roman Empire. How do we now view
what happened in Rome in the times of the Empire? Do
we have access to all viewpoints? Take, for example,
the Gallic Wars: we are familiar with them mainly
through Julius Caesar, whereas we don't know the
views of all the peoples Caesar mentions. Nowadays
we have means of remedying the situation and it is
not historically inevitable that we should have only
the dominant viewpoint. We are now capable of
reconstructing the other side of the story and
giving a voice to those who were unable to make
themselves heard.
The 1940 work mentioned must be Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen (Theses
on the Philosophy of History / 1939, published posthumously).
J. W. Love
>I apologize for inflicting genealogical info on the group,
>as I know that it's usually only interesting to those most
>directly affected.
Have you posted anywhere a list of your New England surnames, so we might
discover if we're cousins?
Luca
>John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I've seen the comparison made, that the local Celts had about as much
>impact on the Anglo-Saxon language and culture as the American Indians
>did on the English settlers. That is, very little, beyond some
>placenames.
>>
>> Although, getting back on topic, it is interesting that French did not
>> supplant English, it merged with it. More or less.
Since French was more or less restricted to the aristocracy, the law,
the well-educated and perhaps haute cuisine (the upper-class domain) and
was never really spoken by the common people, it only gradually entered
Old English to form what would later be called Middle English
(dialects). And even nowadays, you can still make out how words from
either origin mark class/register in English: for many things you can
choose between a name of Germanic or Latin/French origin. The Germanic
ones tend to be the simpler and more everyday expressions while those of
French origin are often more sophisticated and more common in academic
writing. broken vs. defunct
So, unsurprisingly, the fact that the Conquerors from Normandy spoke
French didn't have much of an impact on the people outside of the
aristocracy/cleric circles. It was more of a linguistic influence over
the course of roughly 100 years. iirc.
Just my 2 cents.
Luca
Pat Durkin
"Richard Maurer" <rcpb1_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:01c3f22c$dd46e6c0$41ca480c@default...
> << [Ross Howard]
> A just-in-case Google on "history" + "victors" instead of "winners"
> brings up this:
>
> "The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
> rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the
> survivors."
> -- Max Lerner
>
> I can find no date for that, but he was born 20 years before Haley, I
> see.
>
> But whichever of the two actually said it first, I agree it's
> surprising if it is indeed so recent; it sounds like it ought to have
> been first said by Cicero or someone.
> [end quote] >>
>
>
>
> There is this
> "History is the propaganda of the victors." - Ernst Toller,
> German poet and dramatist (1893-1939).
> Said to have been said in 1935.
>
>
> There is also a reported African proverb
> Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt
> shall always glorify the hunters.
Voltaire:
History is a pack of tricks we play on the dead.
(I am not sure of the correct wording, "bag of lies, bag of tricks" et
cetera.)
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Can Homer be translated so as to preserve the precise tone Homer
> intended?
I'd say no, but I suspect that that includes translations into Modern
Greek. I'd guess that it's been centuries, perhaps millenia, since
anybody who hasn't made a specific study of that era of the language,
has been able to appreciate it in anything approximating the way the
original audiences did.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There's been so much ado already
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |that any further ado would be
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |excessive.
| Lori Karkosky
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Donna Richoux
I will reply by e-mail.
Simon R. Hughes
> I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
> preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
> read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
> lives of those who don't?
So you think that every should speak the language that has the
most political power at the moment? Or do you just want to stop
public spending on the project?
Language diversity is something worth looking after, in the same
way that culinary diversity is worth looking after, in the same
way that musical diversity is worth looking after, in the same
way that sporting diversity is worth looking after. It's called
human culture, John.
And ancient Greek is already a dead language, by the way; Homer
has already been lost the the vast majority of us. Imagine if the
language had completely died *before* anyone had been able to do
a second-rate translation (the only kind of literary translation
there is). What other epics are Out There, waiting for discovery?
These kinds of things matter to a goodly number of us, hence the
public spending and political resistance to American English.
--
Simon R. Hughes
Betray every terrorist you know:
<http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm>
Simon R. Hughes
> On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 21:48:01 GMT, "John Varela"
> <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
>>preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
>>read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
>>lives of those who don't?
>
> Much of the great Irish poetry is available, I'm told, only in the
> original Irish. I think that alone is enough reason to continue to
> teach it, at least at the university level. Can Homer be translated so
> as to preserve the precise tone Homer intended? Can anyone be?
No, literature is always different in translation.
But what do you mean by "Homer"? The earliest manuscript sources
date from the middle ages, already some 2000 years after anyone
first wrote the epics down. There is no authoritative source,
just a few relatively recent manuscript versions of the oral
poems. In fact, "Homer" might have been several people, some even
women.
But imagine if the language had died out before the poems had
been committed to a written form.
> I am
> very glad I speak English and don't have to read Shakespeare in, say,
> French, lovely as that language is.
Indeed; and I will forever be happy that I am able to read Ibsen
in the original, rather than have to reply on the available
godawful English translations (hyphenate as you will).
--
Simon R. Hughes
Shop those pesky terrorists next door:
<http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm>
Donna Richoux
> Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> > John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Do any of the native-English-speaking Americans
> > > here feel impoverished because their families lost the ancestral German,
> > > Italian, or whatever?
> >
> [snip]
>
> > Do I feel impoverished... I don't spend a lot of time wishing the past
> > was different than it was, but sometimes I do feel a sort of wistful
> > longing, wondering what we have gotten ourselves into, and what we've
> > lost without knowing.
>
> I have the impression that you have kids, Donna, or at least one.
One.
>Just
> out of curiosity -- what languages are you teaching them, living in
> furrin parts as you do?
What we speak at home is English. My daughter learned Dutch by being in
Dutch schools all this time. I help her with her French sometimes; I
actually think the French I learned in school in California was taught
in a better way than the French taught in school here. She also had a
couple of years of German in school.
I don't think I should say much more about this, as I try to respect my
family's privacy and keep them out of the newsgroup as much as possible.
--
Best - Donna Richoux
Donna Richoux
> "John Varela" <OLDl...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
> >On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 01:38:02 UTC, Robert Lieblich
> ><Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >> My parents were of the first US-born generation in their families.
> >> Both spoke fluent Yiddish and equally fluent English -- native
> >> quality in both cases (or so I have been told as to their Yiddish;
> >> their English I could judge for myself). I have written before of
> >> my disappointment that they, like most Jewish parents of that era,
> >> made a conscious decision NOT to teach their children Yiddish.
>
> >Another anecdote. Some 25 years ago I was trying to staff a project in a
> >Spanish-speaking country and wanted a bilingual secretary to work here in
> >the US. Most of the applicants were US born of Latin American parents,
> >who had learned their Spanish at home. They all spoke "kitchen Spanish",
> >by which I mean that, all their education having been in English, their
> >Spanish vocabulary was limited. A test I used was to have them translate
> >a few sentences including the phrase "...this office approves..."
> >Invariably "office" was translated as "oficina", which means the place
> >where people work, instead of "despacho", which means office in the sense
> >intended. I finally hired a speaker of kitchen Spanish--she could still
> >answer the phone--and sent all my correspondence in English.
>
> I recall a Greek PhD student all of whose university education had
> been conducted in English. Her English was passable, but distinctly
> foreign and a bit hesitant, and she struggled a bit with everyday
> fluency. One day she was asked what her Greek family and friends
> thought about her PhD work. She replied that they knew nothing about
> it, since she was unable to talk about it in Greek. Although a native
> Greek speaker, she simply didn't have the vocabulary to do it.
That reminds me of a quote from Dryden that I was planning to post to
another thread (the one about whether English prescriptivists actually
argued that English should conform to Latin rules, or whether this was
just a charge leveled by their critics). H.W. Fowler in "A Dictionary of
Modern English Usage" quoted Dryden as saying,
"I am often put to a stand in considering whether
what I write be the idiom of the tongue, . . . &
have no other way to clear my doubts but by
translating my English into Latin."
Fowler goes on to speculate what this meant for prepositions at the end
of sentences, but I wonder if Dryden simply meant that for certain
subjects, he simply could think about the subject more clearly in Latin
than in English...
More context? I see that James Russell Lowell quoted more of the same
passage in a Gutenberg text:
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext05/7ambk10.txt
That [Dryden's] style was no easy acquisition (though, of course,
the aptitude was innate) he himself tells us. In his dedication of
"Troilus and Cressida" (1679), where he seems to hint at the
erection of an Academy, he says that "the perfect knowledge of a
tongue was never attained by any single person. The Court, the
College, and the Town must all be joined in it. And as our English
is a composition of the dead and living tongues, there is required
a perfect knowledge, not only of the Greek and Latin, but of the
Old German, French, and Italian, and to help all these, a
conversation with those authors of our own who have written with
the fewest faults in prose and verse. But how barbarously we yet
write and speak your Lordship knows, and I am sufficiently sensible
in my own English.[27] For I am often put to a stand in considering
whether what I write be the idiom of the tongue, or false grammar
and nonsense couched beneath that specious name of _Anglicism_, and
have no other way to clear my doubts but by translating my English
into Latin, and thereby trying what sense the words will bear in a
more stable language."
It looks to me like he is concerned more here with sense, meaning, or
logic than with trifling grammatical idiom. There hadn't been much
scholarly prose *in English* before his time (1631-1700), so some of the
words and phrases needed just didn't exist or weren't well known.
Bob Cunningham
mock inappropriate subject lines by using garbage lines
intentionally.
In war, we take our allies where we can get them.
Donna Richoux
> "Richard Maurer" <rcpb1_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:01c3f22c$dd46e6c0$41ca480c@default...
> > << [Ross Howard]
> > A just-in-case Google on "history" + "victors" instead of "winners"
> > brings up this:
> >
> > "The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
> > rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the
> > survivors."
> > -- Max Lerner
Maddening how the Web is full of people repeating each other's
(purported) quotes, and none of them saying which piece of writing it
came from.
Let's see, Max Lerner
born 1902, Minsk, Russia, died 1992, New York, N.Y. ... original
name Mikhail Lerner. American educator, author, and syndicated
columnist who was an influential spokesman for liberal political
and economic views. Lerner immigrated to the United States with
his parents in 1907...
My guess is that this is a post-WWII formulation of the concept, not
pre-war, because of the way "survivors" carries a different impact. But
that's just a guess.
> >
> > I can find no date for that, but he was born 20 years before Haley, I
> > see.
> >
> > But whichever of the two actually said it first, I agree it's
> > surprising if it is indeed so recent; it sounds like it ought to have
> > been first said by Cicero or someone.
> > [end quote] >>
> >
> > There is this "History is the propaganda of the victors." - Ernst
> > Toller, German poet and dramatist (1893-1939).
I found the above repeated word-for-word a number of places. No one
mentioned where Toller said it.
> > Said to have been said in 1935.
Aha, according to a web biography, Toller had been expelled from Nazi
Germany by then and was in London. His autobiography "I Was a German"
was published in New York and London in 1934, and he continued to write
articles for English publications. In 1936 he went to New York where he
wrote plays and screenplays until his suicide in 1939. So I'd guess the
1935 date would refer to one of the articles.
So now we have Max Lerner, Ernst Toller and Walter Benjamin as possible
sources.
> > There is also a reported African proverb Until lions have their
> > historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.
Nice. Someone quotes it at a 2001 African leadership conference:
Drowned out by what they term "Wall Street's Western-accented
bray," Africa and Malaysia are resorting to one of the engines of
globalization -- the Internet -- to create a news service that
gives an alternative view of events in their countries. ...
"When there are no historians of lions, history will glorify the
hunters," said an adviser to Sudanese President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir, who identified himself as Suleiman.
>
> Voltaire:
>
> History is a pack of tricks we play on the dead.
>
> (I am not sure of the correct wording, "bag of lies, bag of tricks" et
> cetera.)
Someone in the Humanist Discussion Group posted, about that:
This is from a letter (*Voltare's Correspondence edited by Theodore
Besterman,* vol. xxxi, Gen`eve, 1958, p. 47-48, no. 6456) addressed
to Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville by Voltaire on 9 f`evrier
1757. It begins:
"Mon cher et ancien ami je souhaitte que le fatras dont je vous ay
surcharg/e vous amuse. J'ay vu un temps o`u vous n'aimiez gu`eres
l'histoire. Ce n'est apr`es tout qu'un ramas de tracasseries qu'on
fait aux morts. . . ."
Checking the historical dictionaries, "ramas" meant a collection, and
"tracasserie" could mean a malicious process, chicanery, or bad
incident. Maybe idiomatically it added up to "a pack of tricks we play"
but I don't know.
John Varela
<a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> Thus spake John Varela:
>
>
> > I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
> > preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
> > read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
> > lives of those who don't?
>
> So you think that every should speak the language that has the
> most political power at the moment? Or do you just want to stop
> public spending on the project?
Did I say that? Do you read "fail to understand the motive for preserving
languages just for the sake of preserving them" as meaning that "every[one]
should speak the language that has the most political power at the moment"?
If so, I don't know how you got from hither to hence.
The world is full of languages that are dying a natural death. My reaction is
So what? If they no longer fulfill a purpose, if their speakers can't get
their offspring to learn the languages, then let the languages die.
Natural selection and all that.
> Language diversity is something worth looking after, in the same
> way that culinary diversity is worth looking after, in the same
> way that musical diversity is worth looking after, in the same
> way that sporting diversity is worth looking after. It's called
> human culture, John.
You lose me there. You'll have to explain how language diversity is parallel
to the other diversities you cite. Besides which there are several varieties
of musical diversity whose extinction would not bother me in the least.
> And ancient Greek is already a dead language, by the way; Homer
> has already been lost the the vast majority of us. Imagine if the
> language had completely died *before* anyone had been able to do
> a second-rate translation (the only kind of literary translation
> there is). What other epics are Out There, waiting for discovery?
There's a whole bunch of Linear A waiting your attention.
> These kinds of things matter to a goodly number of us, hence the
> public spending and political resistance to American English.
The above statement is wholly unrelated to my comment.
John Varela
> Sure, "swamp and marsh," though they would say "bayou," the Bayou
> LaFourche, which was a tame and tidy canal when I saw it.
My cousin's grandfather was from Labadieville, which is on Bayou LaFourche
about halfway between Thibodeaux and Napoleonville. You can't get much deeper
into Cajun territory than that.
John Varela
> What you bring up is the attitude of the city people towards the country
> people, and the discrimination against the Cajuns.
I should have mentioned that the Creoles considered themselves superior not
only to the Cajuns but to the Americans as well. Early arrivers have a habit
of doing that. (The reversal of that pattern in Texas notwithstanding.)
Donna Richoux
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:33:39 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> > Thus spake John Varela:
> >
> > > I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the
> > > sake of preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures:
> > > how many people read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly
> > > impoverished are the lives of those who don't?
> >
> > So you think that every should speak the language that has the
> > most political power at the moment? Or do you just want to stop
> > public spending on the project?
>
> Did I say that? Do you read "fail to understand the motive for preserving
> languages just for the sake of preserving them" as meaning that "every[one]
> should speak the language that has the most political power at the moment"?
> If so, I don't know how you got from hither to hence.
>
> The world is full of languages that are dying a natural death. My reaction is
> So what? If they no longer fulfill a purpose, if their speakers can't get
> their offspring to learn the languages, then let the languages die.
>
> Natural selection and all that.
Would you care to make a full sentence out of that -- what about
natural selection? I ask because natural selection is an explanation of
why species of animals and plants flourished or went extinct -- not why
one human tribe conquered another. Attempting to apply those principals
to humans is called "social Darwinism," and will engender long and nasty
flame-war threads.
I think you don't want to go on record as saying that any time one
society conquers and eliminates another, that is good, the fittest have
survived, might makes right, etc, etc.
But as you say, we all have to accept that some languages *have* died
and more will. There's nothing we can do about that, in the conduct of
our day-to-day lives. Lucky for us we appear to be on a winning team, at
least for our lifetimes. But we can avoid being heartless about those
who are part of a threatened minority.
The point you seem to miss, and I was trying to head there earlier, is
that language and culture are intrinsically tied, and there are good
things about any culture that will be lost when all its speakers and
cultural participants die off. Certain attitudes, preserved wisdom,
technological methods, that sort of thing. (Every culture also believes
a lot of silly things, which will not be missed.)
Botanist Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team has spent his life
in the South American rainforests: first, learning some of the endless
plant knowledge from the elders, the shamans; then, setting up a program
paying the elders to teach to younger apprentices, and paying the
apprentices so they could afford to take the time to learn and record
the knowledge. None of this could be done without knowing the language
those shamans speak, and those tribal societies are vanishing quickly.
(The bonus for us city folk, if I have to spell it out, is that these
programs will quite likely lead to useful medicines.)
Mickwick
>I have no idea how you'd prove it, but I have this sense
>that the French have always been more open to mixing with other races
>and cultures than have the English or northern Europeans.
>
>Didn't those Norman invaders pretty much marry the daughters of the
>local Anglo-Saxon squires? Within a few generations, anyway. Unlike,
>say, the earlier Dane invasion, which kept to itself? Had not the Norman
>French been welcomed and assimilated by the French French a couple of
>centuries before?
Strange stuff, Donna. Squires giving up their daughters? Danes keeping
to themselves? The Normans welcomed and assimilated by the French
French?
I don't know where to begin.
The simple answer to the Norman question is 'No'. The complicated answer
would be 'No' too, for all sorts of reasons, but I don't want to do a
lot of digging to back things up so I'll just ask:
What do you mean by 'French'?
More to follow, perhaps.
--
Mickwick
Mickwick
>> > > > Is "History is a tale told by the victors" or anything similar,
>> > > >an actual quotation from someone, or an old proverb, or a
>> > > >modern proverb? I don't find it at Bartleby's Quotations.
[...]
>The 1940 work mentioned must be Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen (Theses
>on the Philosophy of History / 1939, published posthumously).
Walter Benjamin was a Marxist and 'vae victis' ('woe to the vanquished')
seems to have been a favourite Marxist lament. Googling with [vae-victis
marxist] produces dozens of interesting results - though none that I
perused yielded a quote as clearly expressed as Alex Haley's.
However, when pursuing another track I came across M(ikhail). N.
Pokrovsky (1868-1932), Lenin's court historian. He is said to have said
that history is 'politics projected into the past'. (This was a Good
Thing as far as Pokrovsky was concerned.)
Then there's Arthur Koestler, who abandoned Communism in 1937 and in
1941 explained why:
Woe unto the defeated,
whom history treads
into the dust.
-- _Darkness at Noon_
Incidentally, alt.quotations repeatedly quotes variations of 'History is
written by the winners' without questioning their/its provenance. (I
think. All of the posts there seem to be about 100 lines long.)
--
Mickwick
Donna Richoux
> In alt.usage.english, Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> >I have no idea how you'd prove it, but I have this sense
> >that the French have always been more open to mixing with other races
> >and cultures than have the English or northern Europeans.
> >
> >Didn't those Norman invaders pretty much marry the daughters of the
> >local Anglo-Saxon squires? Within a few generations, anyway. Unlike,
> >say, the earlier Dane invasion, which kept to itself? Had not the Norman
> >French been welcomed and assimilated by the French French a couple of
> >centuries before?
>
> Strange stuff, Donna.
Sorry. I suppose my knowledge of times that far back is about as sketchy
as what a lot of Brits know about US history. Amplifying my ignorance
without doing any digging myself:
>Squires giving up their daughters?
Who did all of the arriving Normans marry, then? They weren't all monks.
Did entire families arrive and they only married from other France-born
Norman families, or did they not start marrying into the land-owning
Anglo-Saxon families? We know they did, eventually, but how long did it
take?
>Danes keeping
> to themselves?
The Danelaw -- the drawing of a boundary, you stay on your side, we'll
stay on our side, prevent more conflict. Am I wrong? I've seen the line
on a map. They couldn't have spent 100% of their time fighting the
Anglo-Saxons, but intermingling didn't work, that's what I remember. I
see I may have left the idea of "settlers" out of my earlier sentence --
any ethnic group that is there for several centuries and still keeps its
identity, that's what I'm talking about. I have the impression that that
community continued speaking their own language, Old Norse, for a long
time, until -- well, I don't know when. A few packed up and went home,
didn't they, and the rest must have been assimilated by the English.
When? The Norman years?
>The Normans welcomed and assimilated by the French
> French?
>
> I don't know where to begin.
>
> The simple answer to the Norman question is 'No'. The complicated answer
> would be 'No' too, for all sorts of reasons, but I don't want to do a
> lot of digging to back things up so I'll just ask:
>
> What do you mean by 'French'?
>
> More to follow, perhaps.
When the Normans invaded France, obviously there was conflict, but then
didn't they get (were given) the area of Normandy, as a sort of peace
settlement, and they merged their language with the French of the time?
I mean, I know it was distinct from the French in more central regions,
but it was still French. They didn't form a separate little
Norse-speaking kingdom.
I really should look that up because I don't know that era well enough,
and I forget when people stopped being Franks and Frankish and started
being the French of France.
John Varela
> John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
languages die.
> >
> > Natural selection and all that.
>
> Would you care to make a full sentence out of that -- what about
> natural selection? I ask because natural selection is an explanation of
> why species of animals and plants flourished or went extinct -- not why
> one human tribe conquered another. Attempting to apply those principals
> to humans is called "social Darwinism," and will engender long and nasty
> flame-war threads.
>
> I think you don't want to go on record as saying that any time one
> society conquers and eliminates another, that is good, the fittest have
> survived, might makes right, etc, etc.
Quit putting words in my mouth. I am plainly saying that if a language has no
more people who want to speak it then it should be permitted to go extinct.
The extended meanings are products of your imagination.
> But as you say, we all have to accept that some languages *have* died
> and more will. There's nothing we can do about that, in the conduct of
> our day-to-day lives. Lucky for us we appear to be on a winning team, at
> least for our lifetimes. But we can avoid being heartless about those
> who are part of a threatened minority.
Who's threatening anybody?
> The point you seem to miss, and I was trying to head there earlier, is
> that language and culture are intrinsically tied, and there are good
> things about any culture that will be lost when all its speakers and
> cultural participants die off. Certain attitudes, preserved wisdom,
> technological methods, that sort of thing. (Every culture also believes
> a lot of silly things, which will not be missed.)
If the members of a culture choose to abandon it and assimilate into another
culture then who are we to stop them?
> Botanist Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team has spent his life
> in the South American rainforests: first, learning some of the endless
> plant knowledge from the elders, the shamans; then, setting up a program
Elder != shaman, although one person might be both.
> paying the elders to teach to younger apprentices, and paying the
> apprentices so they could afford to take the time to learn and record
> the knowledge. None of this could be done without knowing the language
> those shamans speak, and those tribal societies are vanishing quickly.
> (The bonus for us city folk, if I have to spell it out, is that these
> programs will quite likely lead to useful medicines.)
What prevents the knowledge from being transmitted through another language?
Michael West
> Pat Durkin <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>
>> "Richard Maurer" <rcpb1_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:01c3f22c$dd46e6c0$41ca480c@default...
>>> << [Ross Howard]
>>> A just-in-case Google on "history" + "victors" instead of "winners"
>>> brings up this:
>>>
>>> "The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
>>> rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the
>>> survivors."
>>> -- Max Lerner
>
> Maddening how the Web is full of people repeating each other's
> (purported) quotes, and none of them saying which piece of writing it
> came from.
Here's an apparent source in a 1944 essay by George Orwell.
Needs verification, though. Certainly sound slike him.
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/02_04_44.html
"History is written by the winners."
--
Michael West
Michael West
> Maddening how the Web is full of people repeating each other's
> (purported) quotes, and none of them saying which piece of writing it
> came from.
>
I've also found the following, attributed to Plato,
in two variants:
"Who tell the stories also rule society"
and
"Those who hold the power also tell the stories."
--
Michael West
Donna Richoux
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:39:58 UTC, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
>
> > John Varela <OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> languages die.
> > >
> > > Natural selection and all that.
> >
> > Would you care to make a full sentence out of that -- what about
> > natural selection? I ask because natural selection is an explanation of
> > why species of animals and plants flourished or went extinct -- not why
> > one human tribe conquered another. Attempting to apply those principals
> > to humans is called "social Darwinism," and will engender long and nasty
> > flame-war threads.
> >
> > I think you don't want to go on record as saying that any time one
> > society conquers and eliminates another, that is good, the fittest have
> > survived, might makes right, etc, etc.
>
> Quit putting words in my mouth.
If you will look again, you will see that I said "I think you don't..."
etc. It's a hard sentence to construct, a sentence that conveys some
ideas that neither you nor I hold, and easily misunderstood. (I started
with "I don't you want..." but decided that was worse.) Sorry for
getting off on the wrong foot.
>I am plainly saying that if a language has no
> more people who want to speak it then it should be permitted to go extinct.
> The extended meanings are products of your imagination.
Whether "no more people want to speak it" is a more difficult question
than it would look like at first glance. What it meanas to "permit"
something "to go extinct" is also a big question, and the "should" is
your judgement.
I'd agree that it would be silly to promote some dead or essentially
dead language in an artificial, Esperanto-ish way, making a lot of
children learn it who have no use for it. Although maybe sometimes
that's had a lasting effect, like Irish Gaelic. Maybe because it wasn't
"essential dead" but merely declining? I'm sorry we've lost our Irish
participants for their viewpoints on this. Perhaps some others here can
speak of the effects of deliberate school promotion of waning languages.
But there are other things that concerned observers could do, like
making their best efforts to document the words and grammar of a
language while there are known speakers of it. Then when other fragments
turn up, some sense can be made of them.
There are other actions that governments take that have the effect of
encouraging, tolerating, or suppressing a minority language. I know that
people are writing about the politics of this.
My point here is that even "permitting" something to go extinct takes
more than one form. It's a complex issue. By the way, do you have the
same laissez-faire attitude about wild animals? Are you happy to
"permit" the tigers and condors and so on to go extinct, because after
all the fittest species will survive naturally? On to a world of rats,
pigeons and cockroaches...
>
> > But as you say, we all have to accept that some languages *have* died
> > and more will. There's nothing we can do about that, in the conduct of
> > our day-to-day lives. Lucky for us we appear to be on a winning team, at
> > least for our lifetimes. But we can avoid being heartless about those
> > who are part of a threatened minority.
>
> Who's threatening anybody?
Facing death is a threat, don't you think? You and I agree some
languages will die; I described those who speak such a language that
faces extinction as "threatened." I don't mean their lives are
threatened, necessarily, though violent means such as mass executions,
war, harassment, forced sterilization, etc., are certainly ways to
reduce the number of speakers of a language. I meant their language and
culture and history are threatened. Which is plenty.
There seems to be an emotional aspect here that escapes you, relating to
the grief of loss. To see one's own language and culture die can
actually be a grievous thing, which is why some people see the old lady
you started off with as a symbol of tragedy. You say you don't see why
anybody should care about that loss, which is what I see as being
heartless. If someone were to grieve over the death of a child, it would
not be right to say, "Who cares, they have so many others," or "They
should have taken better care of it" or any other unfeeling remark. No
one can personally feel grief over the death of every child in the
world, but we can respect the fact that families are entitled to grieve
over their own losses, because we know what those feelings are like. And
the serious prospect of loss is nearly as upsetting as actual loss.
> > The point you seem to miss, and I was trying to head there earlier, is
> > that language and culture are intrinsically tied, and there are good
> > things about any culture that will be lost when all its speakers and
> > cultural participants die off. Certain attitudes, preserved wisdom,
> > technological methods, that sort of thing. (Every culture also believes
> > a lot of silly things, which will not be missed.)
>
> If the members of a culture choose to abandon it and assimilate into another
> culture then who are we to stop them?
Yes, true, in some cases. But sometimes they are not given a real
choice. Their old way of life is forbidden them, and to survive, they
are driven to another, such as moving to a big city in hopes of earning
enough to live on.
>
> > Botanist Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team has spent his life
> > in the South American rainforests: first, learning some of the endless
> > plant knowledge from the elders, the shamans; then, setting up a program
>
> Elder != shaman, although one person might be both.
Yes, I know. Careless phrasing.
>
> > paying the elders to teach to younger apprentices, and paying the
> > apprentices so they could afford to take the time to learn and record
> > the knowledge. None of this could be done without knowing the language
> > those shamans speak, and those tribal societies are vanishing quickly.
> > (The bonus for us city folk, if I have to spell it out, is that these
> > programs will quite likely lead to useful medicines.)
>
> What prevents the knowledge from being transmitted through another language?
The shamans, the ones who inherited and accumulated the knowledge about
the plants, only speak their own language (or possibly other local
languages), and the knowledge is all in their heads. Someone has to
speak their language to get this from them, and someone has to be
bilingual to translate that into an outside language. It would be
unrealistic to expect an old person to suddenly acquire fluency in some
(to them) distant and obscure language like English, just to teach a
visiting botanist. In the usual course of affairs, the shamans would
have had apprentices learning alongside them for decades, but the
effects of the 20th century disrupted that. They've grown old and there
has been no one to pass the oral tradition along to.
Don Aitken
<mbw...@Remove.bigpond.com> wrote:
That column is online at several other places, including
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/e/e_aip_1.htm . I think
I have actually read it in printed form - probably in the "Collected
Essays, Journalism and Letters". So I'm pretty sure it's genuine. That
doesn't prove that Orwell originated the phrase, of course.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
Michael West
True. I know he would have given the attribution
if he thought he was borrowing, but then again it
is possible that he knew he was borrowing but couldn't
find the source in time to meet his deadline and
decided not to mention it.
--
Michael West
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 23:48:31 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
> Richoux) said:
>
> [...]
>
>> Is "History is a tale told by the victors" or anything similar, an
>> actual quotation from someone, or an old proverb, or a modern
>> proverb? I don't find it at Bartleby's Quotations.
>
> Alex Haley. From _Encarta Book of Quotations_:
>
> History is written by the winners.
>
> Interview, _The David Frost Television Show_
> (April 20, 1972)
>
> It seems like something that should have been said earlier,
> but I haven't found it in the _Oxford Book of Quotations_ or
> in _Bartlett's Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition_.
Poking around Amazon, in Rose's _Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb
Project_, on page 55, he writes
The disreputable character of Heisenberg's own review [of David
Irving's 1968 _The German Atomic Bomb_] emerges in the final
paragraph, where he denounces the hostile Allied view of the
German official version as a species of victor's justice. "After
a great war, history is written by the victors and legends develop
which glorify them."
I don't know when the review was written, but it seems likely that it
was before 1972, and some of the surrounding context implies that it
was in the 1960s. (Amazon only lets you go two pages in either
direction from a quote.)
I see another book, an _Aesop's Fables_ that gives "History is written
by the victors" as the moral of "The Man and the Lion", but that
doesn't seem to be the canonical moral, which is "One story is good,
till another is told."
John Miller's _Revolution: Faces of Change_, quotes "an unknown
speaker at Villa's funeral" as saying "History is written by victors,
but legends are written by the people. For that reason the name of
Francisco Villa has remained enshrined forever in the heart of the
poor." Francisco "Pancho" Villa died in 1923. Of course, this was
probably said in Spanish, but the form makes it sound as though it was
a common saying even back then.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If to "man" a phone implies handing
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |it over to a person of the male
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |gender, then to "monitor" it
|suggests handing it over to a
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |lizard.
(650)857-7572 | Rohan Oberoi
Simon R. Hughes
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:33:39 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
>> Thus spake John Varela:
>>
>>
>>> I fail to understand the motive for preserving languages just for the sake of
>>> preserving them. Even languages that have great literatures: how many people
>>> read Homer in the original these days, and how greatly impoverished are the
>>> lives of those who don't?
>>
>> So you think that every should speak the language that has the
>> most political power at the moment? Or do you just want to stop
>> public spending on the project?
>
> Did I say that? Do you read "fail to understand the motive for preserving
> languages just for the sake of preserving them" as meaning that "every[one]
> should speak the language that has the most political power at the moment"?
> If so, I don't know how you got from hither to hence.
>
> The world is full of languages that are dying a natural death. My reaction is
> So what? If they no longer fulfill a purpose, if their speakers can't get
> their offspring to learn the languages, then let the languages die.
>
> Natural selection and all that.
Why do languages die?
1. The speakers die out through:
a. Pestilence
b. Conflict
2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
global scale) replaces the native language
The project to preserve language diversity is inextricably linked
to the political project to curb the effects of political and
cultural imperialism (accidental or wilful). When you say that
you fail to understand, you imply that the reasons have been
explained to you. If you fail to grasp the reasons, assuming
you're not thick (and I don't believe you are), then it implies
that you see nothing wrong with the cultural imperialism (my
description) I have outlined. The extreme consequence is that you
wouldn't mind if everyone speaks American English at some point
in the future.
>> Language diversity is something worth looking after, in the same
>> way that culinary diversity is worth looking after, in the same
>> way that musical diversity is worth looking after, in the same
>> way that sporting diversity is worth looking after. It's called
>> human culture, John.
>
> You lose me there. You'll have to explain how language diversity is parallel
> to the other diversities you cite. Besides which there are several varieties
> of musical diversity whose extinction would not bother me in the least.
You're not the only person in the world. There are a good number
of people who would be bothered by the extinction of their native
cuisines (including American regional cuisines) to the advantage
of McDonald's, for example.
How is language diversity not parallel to the other expressions
of culture I mentioned? If no one listened to Mozart any more, or
the Beatles, or Johnny Cash, should we let their names fall from
our collective memory? Isn't there something worthy of
preservation in their expressions of culture? Should we let
Shakespeare die the death because school children don't see the
value in his work?
>> And ancient Greek is already a dead language, by the way; Homer
>> has already been lost the the vast majority of us. Imagine if the
>> language had completely died *before* anyone had been able to do
>> a second-rate translation (the only kind of literary translation
>> there is). What other epics are Out There, waiting for discovery?
>
> There's a whole bunch of Linear A waiting your attention.
That's the first time I have heard of that. After a little
Googling, I am fascinated. Probably not enough to do much about
it, but I await the results of those deal with them.
>> These kinds of things matter to a goodly number of us, hence the
>> public spending and political resistance to American English.
>
> The above statement is wholly unrelated to my comment.
If you insist, but I hope you will at least entertain the
possibility that it is related, albeit implicitly.
--
Simon R. Hughes
I'm doing my bit:
<http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm>
Donna Richoux
>
> > tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) said:
> >
> >> Is "History is a tale told by the victors" or anything similar, an
> >> actual quotation from someone, or an old proverb, or a modern
> >> proverb? I don't find it at Bartleby's Quotations.
[snip]
> I see another book, an _Aesop's Fables_ that gives "History is written
> by the victors" as the moral of "The Man and the Lion", but that
> doesn't seem to be the canonical moral, which is "One story is good,
> till another is told."
I don't turn up confirmation of something I heard somewhere, but I
believe the early versions of the fables did not print separate morals
at the conclusion of each story. So it would not be much use trying to
track down what the oldest versions of the fables said, even if that was
possible.
I do see the story you mean; as shown at http://www.AesopFables.com/ :
The Man and the Lion
A MAN and a Lion traveled together through the forest. They soon
began to boast of their respective superiority to each other in
strength and prowess. As they were disputing, they passed a statue
carved in stone, which represented "a Lion strangled by a Man."
The traveler pointed to it and said: "See there! How strong we
are, and how we prevail over even the king of beasts." The Lion
replied: "This statue was made by one of you men. If we Lions
knew how to erect statues, you would see the Man placed under the
paw of the Lion."
One story is good, till another is told.
On the translation, the website introduction says:
Most were translated into English by Rev. George
Fyler Townsend (1814-1900) and Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914) the rest are from Jean De La Fontaine in
French and translated to English by several good
internet souls.
Checking the Online Books Page edition of "Aesop's Fables Translated by
George Fyler Townsend," I see that that is the same, word for word,
including that moral.
Bartleby.com has a version of Aesop retold by Joseph Jacobs, 1854-1916.
It has:
The Lion and the Statue
A MAN and a Lion were discussing the relative
strength of men and lions in general. The Man
contended that he and his fellows were stronger than
lions by reason of their greater intelligence. "Come
now with me," he cried, "and I will soon prove that
I am right." So he took him into the public gardens
and showed him a statue of Hercules overcoming the
Lion and tearing his mouth in two. 1
"That is all very well," said the Lion, "but
proves nothing, for it was a man who made the statue."
"WE CAN EASILY REPRESENT THINGS AS WE WISH THEM TO BE."
>
> John Miller's _Revolution: Faces of Change_, quotes "an unknown
> speaker at Villa's funeral" as saying "History is written by victors,
> but legends are written by the people. For that reason the name of
> Francisco Villa has remained enshrined forever in the heart of the
> poor." Francisco "Pancho" Villa died in 1923. Of course, this was
> probably said in Spanish, but the form makes it sound as though it was
> a common saying even back then.
All I can find are three different mentions of the fact that Pancho
Villa's friends and supporters were not at the funeral:
Villa was buried the day after his death on
Saturday, July 21, 1923. Thousands of citizens from
Parral followed his coffin to the cemetery, which
was drawn by two black horses. There was a military
guard and a band, both of which demonstrated the
honor due him as a former general.
Sadly, none of Villa's men or his closest friends
were at his funeral. They were at Canutillo, armed
and ready for an attack by the government troops.
Donna Richoux
[snip]
> Why do languages die?
>
> 1. The speakers die out through:
> a. Pestilence
> b. Conflict
> 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
> in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
> global scale) replaces the native language
Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
speak US English as children?
I repeat what I said before: The Dutch have *added* English to their
repertoire, but Dutch remains very much the first language of the
society. The Friesians have added Nederlands (and English) to *their*
repertoire, but they still speak Friesian to each other.
Would you expand on the "Norwegian in Norway" reference? Is this a
reference to the Lapps? Do their native languages persist, and are you
aware of any steps the Norwegians took to discourage its use?
Adding languages is different, in nature, from subtracting them.
Politics and economics can cause people to learn a new language, but it
takes something more negative to make them stop using their old one.
(Like, having no one around any more to speak it with.)
John Varela
I've snipped most of your post because I see this becoming endless and would
just as soon either wrap it up or take it to email.
I'll just point out again that what the OP said was "India should stop
supporting or promoting the native languages and really push English."
I have been working in that context. When I talk about letting a language die
I mean take it off of life support.
> There seems to be an emotional aspect here that escapes you, relating to
> the grief of loss. To see one's own language and culture die can
> actually be a grievous thing, which is why some people see the old lady
> you started off with as a symbol of tragedy. You say you don't see why
> anybody should care about that loss, which is what I see as being
> heartless.
You're attributing an attitude to me that I never expressed. In the post to
which you refer, I said, "What I had in mind was the recurring articles in US
newspapers about some ancient who is the last living speaker of some
AmerIndian language. The article is always sympathetic, and indeed one can
feel for the person who sees her (it's always a woman) language dying with
her. But in a larger view, there is little lost. Her descendents don't seem
to care, or they would have learned the language."
Bob Cunningham
Richoux) said:
> Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > Why do languages die?
> >
> > 1. The speakers die out through:
> > a. Pestilence
> > b. Conflict
> > 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
> > in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
> > global scale) replaces the native language
>
> Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> speak US English as children?
I can name a place and time where all the children in a U.S.
neighborhood spoke English while their parents spoke Dutch,
the children could understand when the parents spoke Dutch
to them, but the children could speak almost no Dutch.
It seems to me in one generation English was replacing Dutch
in those families.
The place was a dairy-farming area in Norwalk, California;
the time was the summer of 1934.
I think the language was Friesland Dutch.
Some words I remember learning were "moy" for "nice", "melk"
for "milk", and "koo" for "cow".
Simon R. Hughes
> Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> Why do languages die?
>>
>> 1. The speakers die out through:
>> a. Pestilence
>> b. Conflict
>> 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
>> in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
>> global scale) replaces the native language
>
> Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> speak US English as children?
The Philippines, where English has achieved co-official status.
> I repeat what I said before: The Dutch have *added* English to their
> repertoire, but Dutch remains very much the first language of the
> society. The Friesians have added Nederlands (and English) to *their*
> repertoire, but they still speak Friesian to each other.
One of the motives of the various language academies around
Europe is resisting the cultural influence of the English
language. Most of that influence comes from US media. Yes, the
short term is the simple importing of English words, phrases, and
modes of thought; but the long term, if unchecked, is language
change that the various authorities consider undesirable.
> Would you expand on the "Norwegian in Norway" reference? Is this a
> reference to the Lapps?
The Saami ("Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
native-Americans "indians") were long oppressed by the ethnic
Norwegians.
> Do their native languages persist,
There were a good number of dialects in the good old days. Four
or so have survived the persecution, I think, thanks mostly to
their having written forms (this is something I have only
recently begun learning about, hence my insecurity on this).
> and are you
> aware of any steps the Norwegians took to discourage its use?
Part of the oppression consisted in banning Saami languages.
Saami children were forced to learn Norwegian at school, punished
for speaking their own languages, and even, in extreme cases,
taken away from their homes, if their parents resisted the
policy. This kind of thing was going on into the 1970s.
There is, however, still a lot of prejudice in the Saami regions
among those who consider themselves ethnic Norwegians (they're as
Saami as everyone else around them, but will not admit it).
> Adding languages is different, in nature, from subtracting them.
> Politics and economics can cause people to learn a new language, but it
> takes something more negative to make them stop using their old one.
> (Like, having no one around any more to speak it with.)
History has shown, I think, that adding a politically strong
language leads to the decline of the politically weaker one.
Language and politics are inseparable.
Donna Richoux
[quoting his earlier post]
> indeed one can feel for the person who sees her (it's always a woman)
> language dying with her.
All right, you did express sympathy, I missed that. Sorry to make you
out to be heartless.
Donna Richoux
Oh, okay, if you point to places *within the US* then it's easy. I think
Simon had in mind *other* places, as he said "on a global scale."
Tony Cooper
>
>Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
>raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
>speak US English as children?
Yes. The United States. It's very common for immigrants to do so.
My DIL, for example, will raise their son on US English even though
her native language is Russian. Her friends, who are both Russian,
will raise their daughter speaking US English.
--
The Web Bloodhound: http://home.earthlink.net/~tony_cooper213/icanbeglitzy.html
Donna Richoux
> Donna Richoux wrote:
> > Maddening how the Web is full of people repeating each other's
> > (purported) quotes, and none of them saying which piece of writing it
> > came from.
> >
>
> I've also found the following, attributed to Plato,
> in two variants:
>
> "Who tell the stories also rule society"
A CNN story of Sept. 12, 2000, shows Clinton using that one in a speech,
attributing it to Plato. With a "Those" in front.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
This is, in some ways, the newest of issues, and in
some ways the oldest of issues. Plato said,
thousands of years ago, "Those who tell the stories
rule society."
Someone else, a writer named Dr. Jack Sheehan, says it's in Plato's
_Republic_. I'm glad to have that much of a tip, because there are over
40 works by Plato at the Online Books Page.
However, I checked two versions of _Republic_ that are on-line for both
of these statements (above and below), and neither was in either. It
could be a variation in translation, of course. Plato does talk about
the importance of stories in education and shaping public opinion.
> and
> "Those who hold the power also tell the stories."
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Bob Cunningham
<tony_co...@mungedyahoo.com> said:
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:23:16 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
> wrote:
> >Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> >raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> >speak US English as children?
> Yes. The United States. It's very common for immigrants to do so.
I wonder if it isn't more common for immigrant parents to
never learn to speak US English well, but to have children
who speak it as well as any native American. The parents
don't raise the kids *"in US English"*. The kids learn to
speak English from their peers, and are likely to have to
unlearn things they may have learned about English from
their parents.
I think it's safe to say that almost anyone who didn't speak
English as a child will be forever unable to speak it well
and so will not be qualified to teach their offspring to
speak it well. (I can defend that statement best if you
allow me to define "child" and "speak English well".)
I know adults in Southern California, immigrants from Latin
American countries, who have been in the US for decades and
may already have become US citizens, but have difficulty
making themselves understood in English, while their
children -- who may have come to the US as pre-teens
speaking no English -- are as fluent in English as my
grandchildren are.
> My DIL, for example, will raise their son on US English
> even though her native language is Russian. Her friends,
> who are both Russian, will raise their daughter speaking
> US English.
I would maintain a sharp distinction between Donna's
"raising their children in US English" and your "raise their
daughter speaking US English". The former would require the
parents to know English well; the latter could be done if
the parents know no English.
Bob Cunningham
> Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > Why do languages die?
> >
> > 1. The speakers die out through:
> > a. Pestilence
> > b. Conflict
> > 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
> > in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
> > global scale) replaces the native language
>
> Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> speak US English as children?
I can name a place and time where all the children in a U.S.
Tony Cooper
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 23:12:09 GMT, Tony Cooper
><tony_co...@mungedyahoo.com> said:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:23:16 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
>> wrote:
>
>> >Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
>> >raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
>> >speak US English as children?
>
>> Yes. The United States. It's very common for immigrants to do so.
>
>I wonder if it isn't more common for immigrant parents to
>never learn to speak US English well, but to have children
>who speak it as well as any native American. The parents
>don't raise the kids *"in US English"*. The kids learn to
>speak English from their peers, and are likely to have to
>unlearn things they may have learned about English from
>their parents.
I think there are examples of both. In some cases, it's the peer
group that holds the child back from learning English.
It's a generality, but I think the larger the community of a
particular immigrant group, the more likely that the parents and the
children will not become fluent in English. It's too easy to exist in
their own neighborhood with only their native language.
"Immigrant" is a bit awkward here. The largest "immigrant" group here
is from Puerto Rico. They aren't really immigrants.
>I think it's safe to say that almost anyone who didn't speak
>English as a child will be forever unable to speak it well
>and so will not be qualified to teach their offspring to
>speak it well. (I can defend that statement best if you
>allow me to define "child" and "speak English well".)
Your first defense should be that of "well". Again, I'd reference my
DIL who speaks English as "well" as anyone I've ever heard. There's a
slight accent, but the words seem to come out in the right order. My
grandson might end up saying "fud" instead of "food", but that doesn't
take away from "well".
>> My DIL, for example, will raise their son on US English
>> even though her native language is Russian. Her friends,
>> who are both Russian, will raise their daughter speaking
>> US English.
>
>I would maintain a sharp distinction between Donna's
>"raising their children in US English" and your "raise their
>daughter speaking US English". The former would require the
>parents to know English well; the latter could be done if
>the parents know no English.
>
That sharp distinction is a bit blurry to me. I fail to see why a
child's parents have to know English well to raise a child that speaks
English well. The parents are by no means the only influence.
Michael West
>
> However, I checked two versions of _Republic_ that are on-line for
> both of these statements (above and below), and neither was in
> either. It could be a variation in translation, of course. Plato does
> talk about the importance of stories in education and shaping public
> opinion.
>
>> and
>> "Those who hold the power also tell the stories."
I've done some searches, too, with digital versions
of Plato (in English of course), and I don't find anything
that matches the Clinton quote.
As you say, Plato goes on at length about what kinds of
stories should be permitted in his ideal republic. It seems
that if he'd had his way, the Homeric stories would have
been seriously damaged: he'd have removed all the humour
and passion and eveything that makes them fun to read. I
suppose he would have liked Virgil's Aeneas, who is
humourless and about as entertaining as an hour with
Fulton J Sheen. But I digress.
We seem to have no very good answer to the mystery.
--
Michael West
John Varela
<a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> "Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
> native-Americans "indians"
Calling "native-Americans" "indians" is undesirable in only some circles.
The US Government still has a Bureau of Indian Affairs, largely staffed by
Indians. http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html
The Smithsonian Institution is completing the last major building that will
fit on the National Mall: the National Museum of the American Indian
http://www.nmai.si.edu/
See also http://www.likesbooks.com/indian2.html
John Varela
wrote:
> I wonder if it isn't more common for immigrant parents to
> never learn to speak US English well, but to have children
> who speak it as well as any native American.
Hell, we had a neighbor kid who spoke English like a native; his father was a
diplomat in the German Embassy.
Bob Cunningham
<OLDl...@earthlink.net> said:
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:06:11 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> > "Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
> > native-Americans "indians"
> Calling "native-Americans" "indians" is undesirable in only some circles.
The indigenous peoples of America are Native Americans.
That's not the same as native Americans, of which I am one,
having been born in America, albeit of ancestors from the
British Isles who came here in the 19th century.
The difference between "native American" and "Native
American" has been discussed in AUE in past years. See
Google Groups.
Oliver Cromm
> Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
> Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> speak US English as children?
>
> I repeat what I said before: The Dutch have *added* English to their
> repertoire, but Dutch remains very much the first language of the
> society. The Friesians have added Nederlands (and English) to *their*
> repertoire, but they still speak Friesian to each other.
Your view is correct for the cases you cite, but Dutch and Frisian are
strong languages on a global scale.
People have everyday conversations in a lot of languages, but in many of
them, you can't have a newscast, in many more, you can't read a book,
have a school education or work in a company, in the majority of the
world's languages, you can't have a university education. So more and
more languages are of restricted use, and sometimes people don't care
about speaking them once they leave their home village. Sometimes even
parents see no use for their children learning them. Effects like this
weakened Lower German in Germany a lot, for example; most variants of
Frisian in Germany are already lost.
And in several countries around the globe, people may speak their own
language at home, but they have their complete education in English. I
met people from India, Indonesia and the Philippines who went to
English-speaking schools from primary school. Such people might not be
able to write a one-page essay in their mother tongue.
> Adding languages is different, in nature, from subtracting them.
Yes, adding languages to the world is impossible.
> Politics and economics can cause people to learn a new language, but it
> takes something more negative to make them stop using their old one.
> (Like, having no one around any more to speak it with.)
Or having no one around to talk about anything you are interested in,
like fashion, pop music or pizza. I was recently asked by a German man
in his 80s, "What is pizza?" A Nigerian grandma might not dare, or care
to ask.
Oliver C.
Charles Riggs
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 03:12:59 GMT, "John Varela"
><OLDl...@earthlink.net> said:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:06:11 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
>> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
>> > "Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
>> > native-Americans "indians"
>
>> Calling "native-Americans" "indians" is undesirable in only some circles.
>
>The indigenous peoples of America are Native Americans.
The indigenous* people, if there were such, were cavemen. It's amazing
how many people are confused on this point. The people some refer to
as 'Native Americans' generally refer to themselves as Indians, not as
'Native Americans'. Most I've met are proud to be members of the tribe
they belong to and don't consider Indian a dirty word as some
misguided White Eyes do.
>That's not the same as native Americans, of which I am one,
>having been born in America, albeit of ancestors from the
>British Isles who came here in the 19th century.
Whatever century and country your ancestors were from you're a US
citizen if born in the US or in certain other areas under specified
conditions spelled out by US or international law. The rest were
naturalized, which is equally fine.
>The difference between "native American" and "Native
>American" has been discussed in AUE in past years.
A lot of hooey not worth bothering about.
*indigenous
ˇ adj. originating or occurring naturally in a particular place;
native.
--
Charles Riggs
My email address: chriggsŚatŚeircomŚdotŚnet
Charles Riggs
<OLDl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 01:19:14 UTC, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net>
>wrote:
>
>> I wonder if it isn't more common for immigrant parents to
>> never learn to speak US English well, but to have children
>> who speak it as well as any native American.
>
>Hell, we had a neighbor kid who spoke English like a native; his father was a
>diplomat in the German Embassy.
I've met many Dutch people who speak it *better* than most natives.
Few under 40 are on an English language par with, say, C**per anyway,
not to say he should be blamed for the milieu he was brought up in.
Evidently the Dutch have a good school system, at least as far as
foreign language studies go. I've also known Germans who speak it
impeckerably.
Simon R. Hughes
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:06:11 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>
>> "Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
>> native-Americans "indians"
>
> Calling "native-Americans" "indians" is undesirable in only some circles.
>
> The US Government still has a Bureau of Indian Affairs, largely staffed by
> Indians. http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html
>
> The Smithsonian Institution is completing the last major building that will
> fit on the National Mall: the National Museum of the American Indian
> http://www.nmai.si.edu/
>
> See also http://www.likesbooks.com/indian2.html
Excuse the ignorance of a furry foreigner. The Saami dislike
being called Lapps.
Javi
Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl> typed:
>
> My Spanish ancestors are the one I want to trace next. If what I found
> is true, they appear to have lived for generations on the Canary
> Islands. That's unusual.
Why unusual? Canary islands inhabitants had to emigrate, since the islands
were poor and could not support a large population. After the Spanish
conquest in the 14 and 15th centuries, receiving inmigrants from mainland
Spain and other European countries, the population grew so much that in the
18th and 19th centuries Canary islands had a high rate of emigration. South
America was their favourite destination, both it is not rare that some ended
in Louisiana.
--
Saludos cordiales
Javi
The right of the people to keep and arm bears shall not be infringed.
Donna Richoux
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:23:16 +0100, Donna Richoux wrote:
>
> > Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> >
> > Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> > raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> > speak US English as children?
> >
> > I repeat what I said before: The Dutch have *added* English to their
> > repertoire, but Dutch remains very much the first language of the
> > society. The Friesians have added Nederlands (and English) to *their*
> > repertoire, but they still speak Friesian to each other.
>
> Your view is correct for the cases you cite, but Dutch and Frisian are
> strong languages on a global scale.
Yes, that's true, but I don't think Simon could point to any tinier
languages that have been *replaced* by US English, either. (Except for
the obvious case of immigrants to the US).
However, in regards to your point, I think what's interesting to think
about is that Frisian *might* be a much tinier or extinct language, if
the Dutch had chosen to strong-arm it out of existence, instead of
permitting it to flourish. There's any number of steps they *could* have
taken to discourage people from using Frisian, if they had wanted -- and
maybe they did for a while, I don't know. It would have been very
tempting for Dutch bureaucrats to say, "That linguistic minority is a
threat to national unity" and "an administrative inconvenience" and "an
expensive luxury" and so on. And wound up with militant extremists,
perhaps.
I think other countries could learn something about the practical issues
involved in allowing a minority language to persist and grow, instead of
trying to eliminate it, by looking at whatever it was the Dutch did do,
as well as other countries that function with linguistic diversity.
(Those poor Swiss!)
>
> People have everyday conversations in a lot of languages, but in many of
> them, you can't have a newscast, in many more, you can't read a book,
> have a school education or work in a company, in the majority of the
> world's languages, you can't have a university education. So more and
> more languages are of restricted use, and sometimes people don't care
> about speaking them once they leave their home village. Sometimes even
> parents see no use for their children learning them. Effects like this
> weakened Lower German in Germany a lot, for example; most variants of
> Frisian in Germany are already lost.
>
> And in several countries around the globe, people may speak their own
> language at home, but they have their complete education in English. I
> met people from India, Indonesia and the Philippines who went to
> English-speaking schools from primary school. Such people might not be
> able to write a one-page essay in their mother tongue.
It's interesting to me how willing Dutch academics are to do all their
work in English. They've been through this before with Latin, and then
with French being the language of scholarship (and I suppose German for
certain things). I don't know if those times alternated with a sort of
"Dutch Renaissance" when people rediscovered the joys of working in
their own language, but I bet it might have.
>
> > Adding languages is different, in nature, from subtracting them.
>
> Yes, adding languages to the world is impossible.
I was looking at the individual level. But surely you would say that new
languages have been added to the world's picture from time to time -- in
gradual ways.
>
> > Politics and economics can cause people to learn a new language, but it
> > takes something more negative to make them stop using their old one.
> > (Like, having no one around any more to speak it with.)
>
> Or having no one around to talk about anything you are interested in,
> like fashion, pop music or pizza. I was recently asked by a German man
> in his 80s, "What is pizza?" A Nigerian grandma might not dare, or care
> to ask.
You kinda lost me on that last point. You're thinking of a Nigerian
grandma in Nigeria, speaking with her fellow Nigerians? And "p-i-z-z-a"
as some sort of loanword, uttered in her hearing, without any meaningful
referent? Why wouldn't she ask, if she cared at all?
A: Granny, when we went into the big city, we ate pizza!
B: What's that?
Donna Richoux
> Thus spake Donna Richoux:
>
> > Simon R. Hughes <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> Why do languages die?
> >>
> >> 1. The speakers die out through:
> >> a. Pestilence
> >> b. Conflict
> >> 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
> >> in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
> >> global scale) replaces the native language
> >
> > Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
> > raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
> > speak US English as children?
>
> The Philippines, where English has achieved co-official status.
Wouldn't that be more of a widespread second language, a "language of
official business"? We saw that in discussions of Singapore, I think it
was. What I'm trying to get at here is the role of the first language,
the mother tongue.
Thanks for the information on the Saami.
[snip]
> History has shown, I think, that adding a politically strong
> language leads to the decline of the politically weaker one.
If "politically strong" means "uses its power to ban the other language,
and disrupt the minority community," okay. I'd still like to see an
example of one that declined all on its very own, not with a hefty push
of government force.
Again, I'm not not talking about immigrants scattered throughout the US.
But very large colonies, yes. I never have learned when and why the
Pennsylvania Dutch dropped their own language, for example.
Skitt
> Simon R. Hughes wrote:
>> Thus spake Donna Richoux:
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>>> Why do languages die?
>>>>
>>>> 1. The speakers die out through:
>>>> a. Pestilence
>>>> b. Conflict
>>>> 2. A politically stronger language (like Spanish and Portuguese
>>>> in South America, Norwegian in Norway, and US English on a
>>>> global scale) replaces the native language
>>>
>>> Replaces? Can you name anyplace around the globe where people are
>>> raising their children in US English, parents who did not themselves
>>> speak US English as children?
>>
>> The Philippines, where English has achieved co-official status.
>
> Wouldn't that be more of a widespread second language, a "language of
> official business"? We saw that in discussions of Singapore, I think
> it was. What I'm trying to get at here is the role of the first
> language, the mother tongue.
It is hard to establish the rank of English versus any of the native
languages of the Philippines. In the Metro Manila area schools teach all
subjects in English, but there is also a class teaching Tagalog. In homes,
the rich speak English, but the lower classes use Tagalog or one of the
other major languages native to the Philippines.
Out in the provinces, though, I believe that the language of instruction is
Tagalog, with English being taught as a second language subject. It is not
unusual to meet people in the provinces that neither speak, nor understand
English.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Mickwick
>Mickwick <mick...@use.reply.to> wrote:
>> In alt.usage.english, Donna Richoux wrote:
>> >I have no idea how you'd prove it, but I have this sense
>> >that the French have always been more open to mixing with other races
>> >and cultures than have the English or northern Europeans.
>> >
>> >Didn't those Norman invaders pretty much marry the daughters of the
>> >local Anglo-Saxon squires? Within a few generations, anyway. Unlike,
>> >say, the earlier Dane invasion, which kept to itself? Had not the Norman
>> >French been welcomed and assimilated by the French French a couple of
>> >centuries before?
>>
>> Strange stuff, Donna.
>
>Sorry. I suppose my knowledge of times that far back is about as sketchy
>as what a lot of Brits know about US history.
As we're apologising, I'll apologise for the lack of clarity in my
response. My post didn't do a very good job of indicating what I found
strange. The strangeness was such that I was incapable of putting it
into words at the time. But here goes ...
> Amplifying my ignorance without doing any digging myself:
>
>>Squires giving up their daughters?
>
>Who did all of the arriving Normans marry, then? They weren't all monks.
>Did entire families arrive and they only married from other France-born
>Norman families, or did they not start marrying into the land-owning
>Anglo-Saxon families? We know they did, eventually, but how long did it
>take?
Not very long. That question was a jocular objection to your jocular use
of 'squires'. It was a first, flailing attempt to pin the tail of
deconstruction on the donkey of strangeness, if you will. (I know you
meant 'squire' in the 'country gent' sense but, in passing: Pre-Conquest
England wasn't feudal so there wouldn't have been any squires in the
literal sense - squires of the shield-bearing variety.)
The strangeness I found in your post was not so much rooted in any
ignorance as in a confusion of terms. I'm sure you know as much about
that period as I do but, after implying that the modern French aren't
Northern Europeans (which they aren't in some ways), you give as an
example of non-Northern Frenchness the, er, Normans - the Northmen,
cousins of the Northern antiassimilationists (allegedly) of the Danelaw.
I also sense a lack of clarity on your part about whether you mean
noblemen or commoners (the ruling classes of all the named groups
employed inter-group marriage as a political tool) but I might be wrong
about that.
>>Danes keeping to themselves?
>
>The Danelaw -- the drawing of a boundary, you stay on your side, we'll
>stay on our side, prevent more conflict. Am I wrong? I've seen the line
>on a map. They couldn't have spent 100% of their time fighting the
>Anglo-Saxons, but intermingling didn't work, that's what I remember. I
>see I may have left the idea of "settlers" out of my earlier sentence --
>any ethnic group that is there for several centuries and still keeps its
>identity, that's what I'm talking about. I have the impression that that
>community continued speaking their own language, Old Norse, for a long
>time, until -- well, I don't know when. A few packed up and went home,
>didn't they, and the rest must have been assimilated by the English.
>When? The Norman years?
I don't know when assimilation can be said to have been complete. The
Danelaw existed for less than a hundred years (last bit reconquered 955)
but the Danes played a part in England for much longer than that. There
were constant new arrivals, so the process must have been continuous and
uncompletable until the supply of fresh Danes dried up. (1041?)
Apparently, the Danes kept pretty much to themselves in Ireland but not
in England, where (plebeian) intermarriage seems to have been common.
This is interesting:
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba23/ba23feat.html
And not just because of this extract:
In central and eastern England, it seems both migrant and local
populations were prepared to integrate and reforge new community
identities, albeit under the influence of the dominant political
powers. A degree of linguistic similarity may have fostered both
political and kin-based assimilation, and this may have assisted
the decline of the Scandinavian languages, which appear to have
dwindled away after only a few generations even in the most
heavily settled areas.
>>The Normans welcomed and assimilated by the French
>> French?
[...]
>> What do you mean by 'French'?
>When the Normans invaded France, obviously there was conflict, but then
>didn't they get (were given) the area of Normandy, as a sort of peace
>settlement, and they merged their language with the French of the time?
>I mean, I know it was distinct from the French in more central regions,
>but it was still French. They didn't form a separate little
>Norse-speaking kingdom.
No, they seem to have adopted the local version of Latin quite quickly.
>I really should look that up because I don't know that era well enough,
>and I forget when people stopped being Franks and Frankish and started
>being the French of France.
The kingdom of France was founded in 843 ( I think) but it didn't mean
very much until the 12th century.
And that's my objection to 'Had not the Norman French been welcomed and
assimilated by the French French a couple of centuries before?'. The
Northmen set up raiding bases in what would become Normandy at least
fifty years before France existed in any sense at all, and even when
France finally arrived it was a very weak entity, little more than a
sham hierarchy of fancy titles. The king was nominally at the top but
the real wealth and power remained in the hands of the same old
bully-boys, titled or otherwise. Temporal allegiances would have been
very local and probably not very voluntary, especially for the peasants.
So how much would the non-Scandinavian inhabitants of Normandy have
considered themselves French, or even West Frankish? Not very much, I
suspect.
The Christian identity was probably far more important. The Northmen
didn't convert until 911 (part of the deal that gave them their
dukedom). So if you had said 'Had not the pagan Normans been welcomed
and assimilated by the Christian Franks 150 years before?' I might have
...
What? Agreed? Nooo. 'Welcoming and assimilating'? What choice did the
local people have? Or the French kings, for that matter?
But I ramble.
--
Mickwick
Charles Riggs
<a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>Thus spake John Varela:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:06:11 UTC, "Simon R. Hughes"
>> <a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>>
>>> "Lapp" is undesirable these days, like calling
>>> native-Americans "indians"
If the American Indians don't find it an undesirable name why should
anyone else? If an Indian, by the way, I might get somewhat indignant
when someone didn't capitalize 'Indian', but I'm sure I'd get over it.
>> Calling "native-Americans" "indians" is undesirable in only some circles.
By people going in circles, I'd say.
>Excuse the ignorance of a furry foreigner. The Saami dislike
>being called Lapps.
That's cool. How many of us have ever heard of the Saami? Better to be
called something than never to be mentioned or thought of. When they
get around to doing something noteworthy or something that hits the
World Report, we may get around to recognizing them as Saami. Until
that time, they are Lapps. ('How unfeeling', says Simon. 'That's how
it is', says I. Cruel world, innit?)
>Simon R. Hughes
>I'm doing my bit:
<http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm>
Have you received any rewards from them yet?
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>Out in the provinces, though, I believe that the language of instruction is
>Tagalog, with English being taught as a second language subject. It is not
>unusual to meet people in the provinces that neither speak, nor understand
>English.
Shocking! I wouldn't ha thought it could happen.
Simon R. Hughes
Political power does not necessarily mean the exertion of
physical or legal force. There is an informal political power in
a language. A language has political power if it is associated
with success, wealth, economic or material progress, etc. People,
wanting to better themselves, will then naturally gravitate
towards its use, which will lead to a politically weaker language
declining.
> Again, I'm not not talking about immigrants scattered throughout the US.
> But very large colonies, yes. I never have learned when and why the
> Pennsylvania Dutch dropped their own language, for example.
--
Simon R. Hughes
No, the ungrateful bastards.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Pat Durkin <durk...@nothome.com> wrote:
>> Voltaire:
>>
>> History is a pack of tricks we play on the dead.
>>
>> (I am not sure of the correct wording, "bag of lies, bag of tricks" et
>> cetera.)
>
> Someone in the Humanist Discussion Group posted, about that:
>
> This is from a letter (*Voltare's Correspondence edited by Theodore
> Besterman,* vol. xxxi, Gen`eve, 1958, p. 47-48, no. 6456) addressed
> to Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville by Voltaire on 9 f`evrier
> 1757. It begins:
>
> "Mon cher et ancien ami je souhaitte que le fatras dont je vous ay
> surcharg/e vous amuse. J'ay vu un temps o`u vous n'aimiez gu`eres
> l'histoire. Ce n'est apr`es tout qu'un ramas de tracasseries qu'on
> fait aux morts. . . ."
>
> Checking the historical dictionaries, "ramas" meant a collection, and
> "tracasserie" could mean a malicious process, chicanery, or bad
> incident. Maybe idiomatically it added up to "a pack of tricks we play"
> but I don't know.
Checking Seldes's _The Great Quotations_ (a nice collection, but
maddeningly hard to use to actually find anything), he quotes Voltaire
in _Jeannot et Colin_ as saying "Ancient histories, as one of our wits
has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon".
Strangely, Seldes attributes the line itself ("What is history but a
fable agreed upon?") to Napoleon, who was nineteen when Voltaire died.
Disraeli has a similar sentiment (unfortunately without a citation):
All great events have been distorted, most of the important causes
concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all
who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented that the result
is a complete mystification. If the history of England be ever
written by one who has the knowledge and the courage, the world
would be astonished.
And, of course, there's Henry Ford's succinct "History is bunk" (from
testimony given at a 1919 libel case).
Checking the _Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_, Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881) wrote (_Frederick the Great_) "History is a distillation
of rumour". William Stubbs wrote in an 1871 letter,
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries
History is a pack of lies.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Well, if you can't believe what you
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |read in a comic book, what can you
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |believe?!
| Bullwinkle J. Moose
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
John Varela
<a57998.no...@yahoo.no> wrote:
> Excuse the ignorance of a furry foreigner.
I hope you didn't take that as a putdown, becuase it wasn't intended that way.
I just wanted to correct a common misconception.
John Varela
> It is hard to establish the rank of English versus any of the native
> languages of the Philippines. In the Metro Manila area schools teach all
> subjects in English, but there is also a class teaching Tagalog. In homes,
> the rich speak English, but the lower classes use Tagalog or one of the
> other major languages native to the Philippines.
Is Spanish dead in the Philippines? It once occupied the niche now occupied
by English, did it not?
Skitt
> "Skitt" wrote:
>> It is hard to establish the rank of English versus any of the native
>> languages of the Philippines. In the Metro Manila area schools
>> teach all subjects in English, but there is also a class teaching
>> Tagalog. In homes, the rich speak English, but the lower classes
>> use Tagalog or one of the other major languages native to the
>> Philippines.
>
> Is Spanish dead in the Philippines?
Not entirely. There are still many Spanish-speaking people there.
> It once occupied the niche now occupied by English, did it not?
Yes, that's true.
Ben Zimmer
>
> John Varela wrote:
> > "Skitt" wrote:
>
> >> It is hard to establish the rank of English versus any of the native
> >> languages of the Philippines. In the Metro Manila area schools
> >> teach all subjects in English, but there is also a class teaching
> >> Tagalog. In homes, the rich speak English, but the lower classes
> >> use Tagalog or one of the other major languages native to the
> >> Philippines.
> >
> > Is Spanish dead in the Philippines?
>
> Not entirely. There are still many Spanish-speaking people there.
The 1990 census found a paltry 2,658 Spanish speakers, but perhaps that
only counts first-language speakers. The census also listed 292,630
speakers of Chavacano, a Spanish-based creole spoken primarily in
Zamboanga City.
Bob Cunningham
<OLDl...@earthlink.net> said:
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 20:26:12 UTC, "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > It is hard to establish the rank of English versus any of the native
> > languages of the Philippines. In the Metro Manila area schools teach all
> > subjects in English, but there is also a class teaching Tagalog. In homes,
> > the rich speak English, but the lower classes use Tagalog or one of the
> > other major languages native to the Philippines.
> Is Spanish dead in the Philippines? It once occupied the niche now occupied
> by English, did it not?
When I was in Manila shortly after Hiroshima, I asked around
a lot, hoping to find someone who spoke Spanish. I found no
one who admitted to having any knowledge of it at all.
I did find a bookstore in a remote neighborhood where I
bought some paperback Spanish novels.
I was going through a phase when I thought a way to acquire
a larger vocabulary was to read Spanish novels with the help
of a dictionary. I would read a page circling the words I
didn't know, then look them up, then read the page again.
I labored completely through _The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse_ that way. When I finished, I went back to the
beginning and found that the words I had circled were still
the ones I didn't know.
I might explain that I had lots of spare time. When the
bomb dropped, we had been on our way to Manila with a
shipload of equipment intended for the invasion of Japan.
When the surrender occurred, we sat at anchor in Manila Bay
for a few months, presumably while the powers that were
decided what to do with our cargo.
About Tagalog, the only words I remember are "pom pom". A
friend told me that if you wanted prostitutorial services,
all you had to do was get into a rickshaw and say "Pom pom
girls". I didn't have any first-hand experience with it, of
sourse.
Come to think of it, maybe that wasn't Tagalog. I was told
the rickshaw pullers understood it, though.
Hmm ... Sixty years after hearing the words used, I've
finally got ten around to looking them up for the first time
in a dictionary. _Webster's Third New International
Dictionary_ has the entry "pom-pom girl" with the definition
"pickup, prostitute". They give no etymology for it.
Skitt
Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have written "many". My wife, a Filipina from
Manila, speaks fairly good Spanish, but only as her third language.
Martin Ambuhl
> Hmm ... Sixty years after hearing the words used, I've
> finally got ten around to looking them up for the first time
> in a dictionary. _Webster's Third New International
> Dictionary_ has the entry "pom-pom girl" with the definition
> "pickup, prostitute". They give no etymology for it.
MWCD11 does not have "pom-pom girl," nor does it under "pom-pom" have
anything suggesting "pickup, prostitute." Its definition (2) for
"pom-pom"[1] conforms to the meaning I would expect (note the etymology):
[MWCD11, reset]
pom-pom[1] /noun/
[alteration of pompon (1873)]
1 : an ornamental ball or tuft used especially on clothing, caps, or costumes
2 : a handheld usually brightly colored fluffy ball flourished by cheerleaders
Leading us to:
pompon /noun/
[French, from Middle French pompe tuft of ribbons (1751)]
1 : POM-POM 1
2 : a chrysanthemum or dahlia with small rounded flower heads
SOED5 has for the headword "pom-pom" only (an expanded form) of MWCD11's
"pom-pom"[2]
[SOED5]
pom-pom, noun & interjection.
/"pQmpQm/
L19.
[Imit., from the sound of the discharge.]
A. noun.
1. Any of various automatic quick-firing guns, orig. a Maxim, now esp.
one of a group of anti-aircraft guns on a ship. L19.
2. The repetitive beat of a simple popular tune or poem. M20.
B. interjection. Repr. a repetitive sound, esp. the beat of a simple
popular tune or poem. E20.
but approaches the MWCD11 "pom-pom"[1] s.v. "pompon", senses 2 & 3:
[SOED5]
pompon, noun1.
/"pQmpQn, qpVpV (pl. same)/
Also (in senses 2, 3) pompom /"pQmpQm/, (in sense 1) pompoon. M18.
[French, of unkn. origin.]
1. A bunch of ribbon, feathers, flowers, silk threads, etc., formerly
worn by women in the hair, or on the cap or dress. obsolete exc. Hist. M18.
2. A variety of chrysanthemum, dahlia, or cabbage rose, bearing small
globular flowers. M19.
3. An ornamental ball of wool, silk, ribbons, etc., on a woman's hat, a
slipper, etc.; the round tuft on a sailor's cap, on the front of a shako,
etc. L19.
S. Crane The blue sailor bonnets with their red pom-poms.
D. Welch There were green baize curtains with little pompoms around the
edge.
• pomponed /"pQmpQnd/ adjective decked with pompons M18.
OED2 has treatment similar to SOED5, except "pom-pom" is in the headword
entry ("pompon, pom-pom"), the senses are differently ordered (SOED5's [3]
is OED2's [1]), and the citations are fuller, including this:
1977 /Time/ 4 Apr. 42/2
He has rigged it with 100,000 steel darts, which, if detonated at just
the right moment, can wipe out everybody in the stadium, down to the
last pompon girl.
--
Martin Ambuhl
Bob Cunningham
<exw...@earthlink.net> said:
[...]
> About Tagalog, the only words I remember are "pom pom". A
> friend told me that if you wanted prostitutorial services,
> all you had to do was get into a rickshaw and say "Pom pom
> girls". I didn't have any first-hand experience with it, of
> sourse.
We were in Cebu for a while after we left Manila. One word
I remember from a Cebu dialect was pronounced "hoe BOKE".
It meant "drunk".
Bob Cunningham
Pat Durkin
"Martin Ambuhl" <mam...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:nY9Yb.7081$hm4....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
>
> OED2 has treatment similar to SOED5, except "pom-pom" is in the headword
> entry ("pompon, pom-pom"), the senses are differently ordered (SOED5's [3]
> is OED2's [1]), and the citations are fuller, including this:
> 1977 /Time/ 4 Apr. 42/2
> He has rigged it with 100,000 steel darts, which, if detonated at
just
> the right moment, can wipe out everybody in the stadium, down to the
> last pompon girl.
>
Sounds like the dirigible hijacked by a terrorist/assassin in the novel
"Black Sunday" (I think that was the name. The year sounds about right.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000AUHOA/002-0803300-8336812?v=glance
I had to check on Google, because I thought it was a professional and not a
college football game stadium.
Well, I was thinking of the book, but I see this is a DVD of the movie made
from the book.
Bob Cunningham
<mam...@earthlink.net> said:
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
> > Hmm ... Sixty years after hearing the words used, I've
> > finally got ten around to looking them up for the first time
> > in a dictionary. _Webster's Third New International
> > Dictionary_ has the entry "pom-pom girl" with the definition
> > "pickup, prostitute". They give no etymology for it.
> MWCD11 does not have "pom-pom girl," nor does it under "pom-pom" have
> anything suggesting "pickup, prostitute."
Yes, that's true.
It's to be expected that a _Collegiate_ will not be as
comprehensive as an unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary,
like the one I quoted.
Google gives some relevant hits. For example, at
http://tinyurl.com/28znp it says
In US military slang, "pom-pom" = "sex"/"prostitute" is
probably still in use. This MAY be originally from the
Philippines; I see it in a Cebuano dictionary,
= "prostitute".