more about IE languages
Gintis Kaminskas
The Baltic languages (Indo-European) are Lithuanian, Latvian and the now
extinct Prussian. (There were also others earlier.) There is some
confusion caused by the fact
that when speaking geo-politically, not linguistically, the Estonians,
Latvians and Lithuanians are all called "Balts" , because they live in
the "Baltic states".
Lithuanian and Latvian are members of the Baltic branch of the
Indo-European language family, but the Estonian language is not
Indo-European, it is closely related to Finnish and more distantly
related to a whole series of languages right across northern and Central
Asia, as far as Mongolia, Korea and Japan. (That's where the idiot
"WaRR" may get his "Mongolic" reference from, thereby showing that he
doesn't know the difference between
Lithuanian and Estonian, nor the difference between the language spoken
by a nation and its genetic make-up - two quite different things.)
There were indigenous fishermen living in coastal villages in Lithuania
and Prussia who spoke a language related to Finnish (or to be more
precise, related to Estonian, or to be even more precise, related to
"Liv", or "Livonian", an almost extinct indigenous language of Latvia.
(There are about 200 elderly speakers left. Language extinction was a
Soviet specialty. Back in 1950 the Politburo was hoping that by this
year (2000) there would only be a few hundred elderly speakers left of
any of the languages of any of the Soviet republics. They saw other
languages as a useless nuisance - just the way the Chinese do
now in the PRC.)
> The Celts (most scholars believe) came from the Carpathian
>Mountain region and spread out from there! In fact,
>most people from Continental Europe can claim Celtic blood!
100% correct. :-)
Gintis
au...@banknotes.com
"JOT" (to ride a horse) and "VINGIAIS" (curves) = "JOT VINGIAIS" (to ride a horse in curves?).
Eugene Holman
<ca...@interact.net.au> wrote:
> More from letters explaining the term "Baltic"
>
> The Baltic languages (Indo-European) are Lithuanian, Latvian and the now
> extinct Prussian. (There were also others earlier.) There is some
> confusion caused by the fact
> that when speaking geo-politically, not linguistically, the Estonians,
> Latvians and Lithuanians are all called "Balts" , because they live in
> the "Baltic states".
>
> Lithuanian and Latvian are members of the Baltic branch of the
> Indo-European language family, but the Estonian language is not
> Indo-European, it is closely related to Finnish and more distantly
> related to a whole series of languages right across northern and Central
> Asia, as far as Mongolia, Korea and Japan.
This is by no means certain. Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Livonian,
Vepsian, Saami (8 distinct languages), Mordvin (2 distinct languages),
Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Khanty, Mansi, and Hungarian, and more distantly
Nganassan, Enets, Nenets, and Selkup, are all definitely interrelated, but
that's it.
What are sometimes called the Altaic languages Mongolian, Turkic, and
Korean are almost certainly interrelated, while Japanese, a mixed
language with no unambiguously identifiable geneological links to any
language family, has a stratum of structure and lexicon derived from the
same source, even if it cannot be shown to be a direct descendent of any of
them.
> (That's where the idiot
> "WaRR" may get his "Mongolic" reference from, thereby showing that he
> doesn't know the difference between
> Lithuanian and Estonian, nor the difference between the language spoken
> by a nation and its genetic make-up - two quite different things.)
Precisely. Populations can shift languages within a generation or two.
Finland, for example, was 25 per cent Swedish speaking a century ago, now
it is 5.5 per cent Swedish speaking. Many people who are 100
Finnish-speaking today had one Swedish-speaking parent and two
Swedish-speaking grandparents and, at some point in the past, fennicized
their names: Forsman > Koskimies, Lindfors > Lehmuskoski, Lindberg >
Lehmusvaara, etc. Northern Latvia down to the Daugava River, once the
border between the Finnic-speaking and Baltic-speaking worlds, was
Finnic-speaking two thousand years ago. The last remnants of Finnic speech
survive in some of the words and pronunciations typical of northern Latvian
dialects (substratum influence) as well as in the speech of the 100 or so
people living in the handful of villages of the Kurzeme peninsula where
Livonian, a Finnic language, is still occasionally spoken.
> There were indigenous fishermen living in coastal villages in Lithuania
> and Prussia who spoke a language related to Finnish (or to be more
> precise, related to Estonian, or to be even more precise, related to
> "Liv", or "Livonian", an almost extinct indigenous language of Latvia.
> (There are about 200 elderly speakers left. Language extinction was a
> Soviet specialty. Back in 1950 the Politburo was hoping that by this
> year (2000) there would only be a few hundred elderly speakers left of
> any of the languages of any of the Soviet republics. They saw other
> languages as a useless nuisance - just the way the Chinese do
> now in the PRC.)
I think you are being unnecessarily harsh on Soviet language policy. It's
undoubtedly true that the Soviet officials had nothing against seeing
languages with small numbers of speakers die out, and they certainly did
eveything they could to promote the use of Russian as an all-union language
of interethnic communication. On the other hand, they did valuable and
lasting work providing many languages that were previously unwritten [such
as Mordvin] or had unsuitable orthographies [such as Uzbek] with viable
writing systems which formed the basis for the development of both local
language literacy and a national intelligentsia. In areas with small
languages but well-established literary traditions such as the Baltics,
Armenia, and Georgia the Soviets provided generous funds for theoretical
and practical linguistic research.
In Estonia, for example, it was only with Soviet funding that the resources
could be made available for the publication of the first Estonian
encyclopedia (the ENE) or of specialized dictionaries and monograpahs
dealing with the history, phonological evolution, and lexicon of obscure
dialects. Even if the authorities in Moscow and Tallinn eventually decided
not to actively support the teaching of Estonian to migrants, an excellent
- and to my knowledge the first ever - textbook of Estonian for foreigners
(other than Finns), _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka_ by E. Päll, was published
as early as 1953, and research in the methodology of teaching of Estonian
to foreigners continued to be developed all through the 1970s at Tartu
University. This eventually led to the publication of two very different
but effective textbooks of Estonian for Eussian speakers in the early
1980s: Helmi Leberecht's direct method _Räägime eesti keelt/My govorim
po-čstonski_(with tapes), and the more traditional, solid and, in an
edition revised to take the events of the past decade into account, still
popular _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka/Eesti keele őpik_ by A. Valmet, E.
Uuspőld, and E. Turu.
Soviet language policy was not exactly benevolent, as we all know.
Nevertheless, in the short and medium terms, at least, it was more tolerant
and supportive of linguistic diversity than the language policy which
accompanied nation building in the United States, the UK, Canada, Ireland,
or Australia. Even some of its more brutal chapters, such as the violent
creation of a Moldavian literary language out of the eastern Romanian
dialects of the areas of Romania annexed by the USSR during WW II, were
more generally supportive of local languages than of blanket imposed
russification. Overall, Soviet language policy bears many analogues to the
recent enlightened (for an English-speaking country) language policy in New
Zealand, which stresses the importance and dominance of English while
recognizing that Maori is also an important part of the nation's heritage.
It's a well known fact that the loss of the money available during the
Soviet period for linguistic and philological has, despite the generous
contributions made by the Soros Foundation to sponsor such projects as the
_Lithuanian Grammar/Lieuviu, kalbos gramatika_, edited by Vytautas
Ambrazas, meant a sharp reduction in the quality and quantity of
philological and linguistic research in the cash-strapped Baltic countries.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
jonhi...@my-deja.com
au...@banknotes.com wrote:
> And JOTVINGIAI as well. I wonder if JOTVINGIAI name was derived from
> "JOT" (to ride a horse) and "VINGIAIS" (curves) = "JOT VINGIAIS" (to
ride a horse in curves?).
Congratulations.
Probably from a word related to Lithuanian 'JOT' or the Latvian 'JAT'
and a Jatving term similar to the Latvian 'VINGRS' meaning 'agile'.
And this is exactly the trait that Jatvings were historically known
for; excellent cavalymen.
Jon Hill
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
jonhi...@my-deja.com
hol...@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:
> In article <39F0D188...@interact.net.au>, Gintis Kaminskas
> <ca...@interact.net.au> wrote:
>
> > More from letters explaining the term "Baltic"
> >
> > The Baltic languages (Indo-European) are Lithuanian, Latvian and
the now
> > extinct Prussian. (There were also others earlier.) There is some
> > confusion caused by the fact
> > that when speaking geo-politically, not linguistically, the
Estonians,
> > Latvians and Lithuanians are all called "Balts" , because they live
in
> > the "Baltic states".
Sure thing Gintis.
These things should be clear to anyone with half-a-brain. Which
explains Warr's position.
But I object to the term 'states'. We are more than states. We are
Republics, and I voted for a Latvian prime minister, not a governor.
We should all avoid using our former oppressors' terms which only lead
to our continued diminuation.
> > Lithuanian and Latvian are members of the Baltic branch of the
> > Indo-European language family, but the Estonian language is not
> > Indo-European, it is closely related to Finnish and more distantly
> > related to a whole series of languages right across northern and
Central
> > Asia, as far as Mongolia, Korea and Japan.
Yes. Politically; Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania = 'the Baltic nations'.
(Until the russian occupation of the rest of the 'Baltic', Finland was
also known as one of the Baltic nations.(Unfortunately, no one wants to
be identified with occupied nations.))
And linguistically; Lithuania and Latvia = 'the Baltic nations".
> This is by no means certain. Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Livonian,
> Vepsian, Saami (8 distinct languages), Mordvin (2 distinct languages),
> Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Khanty, Mansi, and Hungarian, and more distantly
> Nganassan, Enets, Nenets, and Selkup, are all definitely
interrelated, but
> that's it.
> What are sometimes called the Altaic languages Mongolian, Turkic,
and
> Korean are almost certainly interrelated, while Japanese, a mixed
> language with no unambiguously identifiable geneological links to any
> language family, has a stratum of structure and lexicon derived from
the
> same source, even if it cannot be shown to be a direct descendent of
any of
> them.
Hmmm, can it be that you are unaware of the Jomon culture? These Joman
were indisputably of Ainu origin. In other words the Ainu maintained an
overlordship over later arriving continental types.
And as for Ainu origins one need not look any further than the still
surviving 'bear cult' and its western equivalents.
> > (That's where the idiot
> > "WaRR" may get his "Mongolic" reference from, thereby showing that
he
> > doesn't know the difference between
> > Lithuanian and Estonian, nor the difference between the language
spoken
> > by a nation and its genetic make-up - two quite different things.)
>
> Precisely. Populations can shift languages within a generation or two.
But typically don't; until things like russian illegal immigrations
happen.
> Finland, for example, was 25 per cent Swedish speaking a century ago,
now
> it is 5.5 per cent Swedish speaking.
You are referring to the result of geo-politics and anti-colonialism
now, not natural liguistic migration. (which by the way refutes your
previous 'free floating' language affiliation theory of yesterday.)
> Many people who are 100
> Finnish-speaking today had one Swedish-speaking parent and two
> Swedish-speaking grandparents and, at some point in the past,
fennicized
> their names: Forsman > Koskimies, Lindfors > Lehmuskoski, Lindberg >
> Lehmusvaara, etc. Northern Latvia down to the Daugava River, once the
> border between the Finnic-speaking and Baltic-speaking worlds, was
> Finnic-speaking two thousand years ago.
This is not proven. The Baltic-Ugric cultural boundary was not
permanent nor impervious. Ugric influences, as evidenced by brush comb
pottery, *post date* earlier Kuronian pottery as well. As I stated
previously, Ugric presence within present day Latvian territory ebbed
and flowed from the north.
The millieu is further complicated by examples of peaceful co-existence
of Baltic and Ugric settlements proximally located... for centuries.
>The last remnants of Finnic speech
> survive in some of the words and pronunciations typical of northern
Latvian
> dialects (substratum influence) as well as in the speech of the 100
or so
> people living in the handful of villages of the Kurzeme peninsula
where
> Livonian, a Finnic language, is still occasionally spoken.
Just as Baltic settlers and speakers in southwest Finland gave rise to
the Finnish language.
Writing pro-russian dogmatic texts filled with retro-fitted socialist
interpretations is hardly a fitting substitute for a living language.
Don't be such a shmuk.
> In areas with small
> languages but well-established literary traditions such as the
Baltics,
> Armenia, and Georgia the Soviets provided generous funds for
theoretical
> and practical linguistic research.
Which is of course why they prohibited graduate studies in any of the
minority languages. Generous funds indeed. What is it Holman, 'one step
forward and one step back'?
> In Estonia, for example, it was only with Soviet funding that the
resources
> could be made available for the publication of the first Estonian
> encyclopedia (the ENE) or of specialized dictionaries and monograpahs
> dealing with the history, phonological evolution, and lexicon of
obscure
> dialects.
I am sure that the Estonians had equivalents before the russian invaded
and discarded pre-soviet editions. And I am sure that the Estonians
practiced and spoke those obscure languages before the russian imperium
interposed and necessitated a trip to the state library to read a book
about their previously spoken languages.
> Even if the authorities in Moscow and Tallinn eventually decided
> not to actively support the teaching of Estonian to migrants, an
excellent
> - and to my knowledge the first ever - textbook of Estonian for
foreigners
> (other than Finns), _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka_ by E. Päll, was
published
> as early as 1953, and research in the methodology of teaching of
Estonian
> to foreigners continued to be developed all through the 1970s at Tartu
> University. This eventually led to the publication of two very
different
> but effective textbooks of Estonian for Eussian speakers in the early
> 1980s: Helmi Leberecht's direct method _Räägime eesti keelt/My govorim
> po-čstonski_(with tapes), and the more traditional, solid and, in an
> edition revised to take the events of the past decade into account,
still
> popular _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka/Eesti keele őpik_ by A. Valmet, E.
> Uuspőld, and E. Turu.
How many of these materials does your company sell? ;)
> Soviet language policy was not exactly benevolent, as we all know.
> Nevertheless, in the short and medium terms, at least, it was more
tolerant
> and supportive of linguistic diversity than the language policy which
> accompanied nation building in the United States, the UK, Canada,
Ireland,
> or Australia.
Short term? 35,000 fewer speakers of Latvian in the first year of
russian occupation. And about that same number less during the first
year of German occupation. One the second through the fifth years of
russian occupation about 300,000 less Latvian speakers in Latvia.
Save us from russian benevolence and academic erudition.
> Even some of its more brutal chapters, such as the violent
> creation of a Moldavian literary language out of the eastern Romanian
> dialects of the areas of Romania annexed by the USSR during WW II,
were
> more generally supportive of local languages than of blanket imposed
> russification.
The 'divide and conquer benevolence' (why is it that you always attempt
to return by some back door?) of russia; portayed by you as support of
localities, is quite evident in the the Ossetan fiasco currently being
engineered by russia. Short term support of troublesome locals is *not*
equivalent to honest support of that local culture. Read history.
>Overall, Soviet language policy bears many analogues to the
> recent enlightened (for an English-speaking country) language policy
in New
> Zealand, which stresses the importance and dominance of English while
> recognizing that Maori is also an important part of the nation's
heritage.
Bullshit, Holman.
> It's a well known fact that the loss of the money available during the
> Soviet period for linguistic and philological has, despite the
generous
> contributions made by the Soros Foundation to sponsor such projects
as the
> _Lithuanian Grammar/Lieuviu, kalbos gramatika_, edited by Vytautas
> Ambrazas, meant a sharp reduction in the quality and quantity of
> philological and linguistic research in the cash-strapped Baltic
countries.
> Regards,
> Eugene Holman
Well then, ask the russian not to invade us again, for a while, and we
will more than make up the difference in a few months.
Eugene Holman
> In article <holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi>,
> hol...@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:
>
> But typically don't; until things like russian illegal immigrations
> happen.
In Germany, for example, the spread of Protestantism and the Luther Bible
resulted in Saxon, also known as Low German, being demoted from a
polyfunctional local language to the status of a patois and eventually to
that of the offbeat set of German dialects it has today. The history of the
Langue d'Oc in France is similar; northern French (Langue d'Ouďl), the
organ of the centralized government in Paris, ousted a once polyfunctional
local language. Artificially induced famines and consequent societal
disarray provided the framework within which the English succeeded in
convincing most of the people of Ireland to abandon their language within
the interval of two generations.
> > Finland, for example, was 25 per cent Swedish speaking a century ago,
> now
> > it is 5.5 per cent Swedish speaking.
>
> You are referring to the result of geo-politics and anti-colonialism
> now, not natural liguistic migration. (which by the way refutes your
> previous 'free floating' language affiliation theory of yesterday.)
Actually, it was the result of nationalism.
> > Many people who are 100
> > Finnish-speaking today had one Swedish-speaking parent and two
> > Swedish-speaking grandparents and, at some point in the past,
> fennicized
> > their names: Forsman > Koskimies, Lindfors > Lehmuskoski, Lindberg >
> > Lehmusvaara, etc. Northern Latvia down to the Daugava River, once the
> > border between the Finnic-speaking and Baltic-speaking worlds, was
> > Finnic-speaking two thousand years ago.
>
> This is not proven. The Baltic-Ugric cultural boundary was not
> permanent nor impervious. Ugric influences, as evidenced by brush comb
> pottery, *post date* earlier Kuronian pottery as well. As I stated
> previously, Ugric presence within present day Latvian territory ebbed
> and flowed from the north.
Agreed. On the other hand, the Finno-Ugrians were there first. The
proto-Balts moved into the sparsely populated area some 4,000 years ago.
They were, as you quite correctly point out, able to co-exist with the
indigenous Finno-Ugric population, and they eventually overwhelmed them
demographically due to their superior ability to produce food and thus
sustain larger populations.
>
> The millieu is further complicated by examples of peaceful co-existence
> of Baltic and Ugric settlements proximally located... for centuries.
As it still is in the case of the Livonian remnant.
> >The last remnants of Finnic speech
> > survive in some of the words and pronunciations typical of northern
> Latvian
> > dialects (substratum influence) as well as in the speech of the 100
> or so
> > people living in the handful of villages of the Kurzeme peninsula
> where
> > Livonian, a Finnic language, is still occasionally spoken.
>
> Just as Baltic settlers and speakers in southwest Finland gave rise to
> the Finnish language.
I would prefer to call them Balticized Finno-Ugrians. All the evidence I
have been able to marshall indicates that they were culturally Balticized,
but linguistically very Finno-Ugric. Since the originated in what is now
Estonia I would have to concede that they were "Baltic".
> >
> > I think you are being unnecessarily harsh on Soviet language policy.
> It's
> > undoubtedly true that the Soviet officials had nothing against seeing
> > languages with small numbers of speakers die out, and they certainly
> did
> > eveything they could to promote the use of Russian as an all-union
> language
> > of interethnic communication. On the other hand, they did valuable and
> > lasting work providing many languages that were previously unwritten
> [such
> > as Mordvin] or had unsuitable orthographies [such as Uzbek] with
> viable
> > writing systems which formed the basis for the development of both
> local
> > language literacy and a national intelligentsia.
>
> Writing pro-russian dogmatic texts filled with retro-fitted socialist
> interpretations is hardly a fitting substitute for a living language.
> Don't be such a shmuk.
That's not all they did. Works of world literature were translated into
them, and they began to produce texts of scientific and literary merit
which were translated into Russian and other languages. The first written
texts in most European languages were devoted to religious dogma, but that
didn't prevent other types of texts from emerging. Literary Uzbek and
Mordvin are still alive and well, but communism and attendant dogma have
been consigned to the dustbin of history.
> > In areas with small
> > languages but well-established literary traditions such as the
> Baltics,
> > Armenia, and Georgia the Soviets provided generous funds for
> theoretical
> > and practical linguistic research.
>
> Which is of course why they prohibited graduate studies in any of the
> minority languages. Generous funds indeed. What is it Holman, 'one step
> forward and one step back'?
Not true, at least for Estonian. Doctorates in Estonian language and
literature continued to be produced at Tartu University during the Soviet
period, typically in local-language and Russian versions, a resonable
requirement. in 1976 I was a guest at the laboratory for experimental (read
Estonian) phonetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. They published an
excellent journal containing the results of their research, Estonian papers
in Phonetics, in English with Russian summaries.
>
> > In Estonia, for example, it was only with Soviet funding that the
> resources
> > could be made available for the publication of the first Estonian
> > encyclopedia (the ENE) or of specialized dictionaries and monograpahs
> > dealing with the history, phonological evolution, and lexicon of
> obscure
> > dialects.
>
> I am sure that the Estonians had equivalents before the russian invaded
> and discarded pre-soviet editions.
No they didn't. Estonia was too small a language during the interwar period
to justify the publication of an encyclopedia. The ENE (Estonian Soviet
Encyclopedia) was heralded as the first encyclopedia ever in Estonian and,
all thinghs considered, it is still regarded as a pretty good reference
work.
> And I am sure that the Estonians
> practiced and spoke those obscure languages before the russian imperium
> interposed and necessitated a trip to the state library to read a book
> about their previously spoken languages.
There was a strong tradition of Estonian dialectology before the war, and
the Soviets funneled enough funds into it to allow the research tradition
to continue and new scholars to be trained. Note I'm not claiming that
everything the Soviets did was good, or that their motives were always
noble, but credit has to be given where credit is due. Estonian linguistic
and philological studies did well during the Soviet period, and they had
better funding than they do now.
> Even if the authorities in Moscow and Tallinn eventually decided
> > not to actively support the teaching of Estonian to migrants, an
> excellent
> > - and to my knowledge the first ever - textbook of Estonian for
> foreigners
> > (other than Finns), _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka_ by E. Päll, was
> published
> > as early as 1953, and research in the methodology of teaching of
> Estonian
> > to foreigners continued to be developed all through the 1970s at Tartu
> > University. This eventually led to the publication of two very
> different
> > but effective textbooks of Estonian for Eussian speakers in the early
> > 1980s: Helmi Leberecht's direct method _Räägime eesti keelt/My govorim
> > po-čstonski_(with tapes), and the more traditional, solid and, in an
> > edition revised to take the events of the past decade into account,
> still
> > popular _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka/Eesti keele őpik_ by A. Valmet, E.
> > Uuspőld, and E. Turu.
>
> How many of these materials does your company sell? ;)
We don't sell them because the rights to them were acquired by the
successor to the state-owned educational pubisher Valgus. Both of them are
still widely used in Estonia, and the _Uchebnik čstonskogo jazyka/Eesti
keele őpik_ by A. Valmet, E. Uuspőld, and E. Turu, completely updated and
printed in a more attractive fomat, remains a solid textbook of Estonian
for Russian speakers desiring to learn the language using the traditional
grammar-based method. For a list of the materials pertaining to learning
Estonian produced by our company (formerly David Scriptum, now Pangloss)
and others see http://www.eki.ee/keel/et999.html. We are, as you can see,
the market leader with respect to both number of titles and range of
specialization.
> > Soviet language policy was not exactly benevolent, as we all know.
> > Nevertheless, in the short and medium terms, at least, it was more
> tolerant
> > and supportive of linguistic diversity than the language policy which
> > accompanied nation building in the United States, the UK, Canada,
> Ireland,
> > or Australia.
>
> Short term? 35,000 fewer speakers of Latvian in the first year of
> russian occupation. And about that same number less during the first
> year of German occupation. One the second through the fifth years of
> russian occupation about 300,000 less Latvian speakers in Latvia.
>
> Save us from russian benevolence and academic erudition.
You are not talking about language policy. You are talking about foreign
occupation and war. Latvia lived for about forty years under a language
policy that was relatively supportive of Latvian, although many aspects of
it were contradicted by a demographic policy which was hostile to the
healthy development of the Latvian nation. The two should be kept distinct.
During the Soviet period important, non-politicized research in Latvian
linguistics and philology was done, such as the publication of an
unabridged, academy-type dictionanary of Latvian, and, most importantly,
two generations of scholars were trained to carry on the pre-Soviet
tradition of linguistic and philological studies.
> > Even some of its more brutal chapters, such as the violent
> > creation of a Moldavian literary language out of the eastern Romanian
> > dialects of the areas of Romania annexed by the USSR during WW II,
> were
> > more generally supportive of local languages than of blanket imposed
> > russification.
>
> The 'divide and conquer benevolence' (why is it that you always attempt
> to return by some back door?) of russia; portayed by you as support of
> localities, is quite evident in the the Ossetan fiasco currently being
> engineered by russia. Short term support of troublesome locals is *not*
> equivalent to honest support of that local culture. Read history.
Been there, done that, and don't disagree with you. My point was that
compared to the language policy which marked nation building in the USA,
the UK, or Australia, the USSR was, by and large, more supportive of local
indigenous languages, even if their long term objectives were probably not
much different from those of the aforementioned countries. It's not where
they were going, but how they were getting there that I have in mind.
>
> >Overall, Soviet language policy bears many analogues to the
> > recent enlightened (for an English-speaking country) language policy
> in New
> > Zealand, which stresses the importance and dominance of English while
> > recognizing that Maori is also an important part of the nation's
> heritage.
>
> Bullshit, Holman.
Not bullshit at all. A better example than New Zealand might have been
South Africa which, even during the darkest days of apartheid, supported
the largest indigenous languages Zulu and Xhosa, as well as research on and
the upgrading of smaller languages as Ndebele, Swati, and Tswana. The
medium-term goal of Soviet language policy was republic-language/Russian
bilingualism, not an unreasonable goal if you assume that the Soviet Union
had a right to exist and certainly more reasonable than the standard
English-only/no bilingual or dialect-based elementary education that we see
in the US.
>
> > It's a well known fact that the loss of the money available during the
> > Soviet period for linguistic and philological has, despite the
> generous
> > contributions made by the Soros Foundation to sponsor such projects
> as the
> > _Lithuanian Grammar/Lieuviu, kalbos gramatika_, edited by Vytautas
> > Ambrazas, meant a sharp reduction in the quality and quantity of
> > philological and linguistic research in the cash-strapped Baltic
> countries.
> > Regards,
> > Eugene Holman
>
> Well then, ask the russian not to invade us again, for a while, and we
> will more than make up the difference in a few months.
You know whose side I'm on, but I think it will take more than a couple of
months.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
Randy McDonald
>
> [deletia]
>
> Not bullshit at all. A better example than New Zealand might have been
> South Africa which, even during the darkest days of apartheid, supported
> the largest indigenous languages Zulu and Xhosa, as well as research on and
> the upgrading of smaller languages as Ndebele, Swati, and Tswana.
I'm just jumping in on the question of South African language policy.
The divisions between South African tribes are far more fluid than most
people think. Tribal intermarriage is quite common, and even the
boundaries between the languages spoken by the major South African
tribes of Bantu linguistic origin (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati, Tswana,
Penda, Sotho, Swazi, et cetera) were more arbitrary than anything else.
One could probably use the same criteria used to define Afrikaners and
Anglos as belonging to a single white nation to throw all of the black
South African groups into a single nation.
As industrialization and urbanization progressed, these tribal divisions
became increasingly irrelevant. Given a benevolent government, we might
have well seen by no the creation of a kind of pan-Bantu South African
language, and a mindset that viewed Xhosa, Ndebele, Tswana, and so on as
forming subsets of a South African black nation. Unfortunately,
apartheid-era South Africa was far from benevolent, and to an extent the
South African policy towards black languages can be seen as a policy of
divide-and-conquer.
> [deletia]
>
> Regards,
> Eugene Holman
_________________
Randy McDonald
mcdo...@isn.net
rmcd...@upei.ca
_________________
Eugene Holman
> Eugene Holman wrote:
> >
> > [deletia]
> >
> > Not bullshit at all. A better example than New Zealand might have been
> > South Africa which, even during the darkest days of apartheid, supported
> > the largest indigenous languages Zulu and Xhosa, as well as research on and
> > the upgrading of smaller languages as Ndebele, Swati, and Tswana.
>
> I'm just jumping in on the question of South African language policy.
>
> The divisions between South African tribes are far more fluid than most
> people think. Tribal intermarriage is quite common, and even the
> boundaries between the languages spoken by the major South African
> tribes of Bantu linguistic origin (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati, Tswana,
> Penda, Sotho, Swazi, et cetera) were more arbitrary than anything else.
> One could probably use the same criteria used to define Afrikaners and
> Anglos as belonging to a single white nation to throw all of the black
> South African groups into a single nation.
>
> As industrialization and urbanization progressed, these tribal divisions
> became increasingly irrelevant. Given a benevolent government, we might
> have well seen by no the creation of a kind of pan-Bantu South African
> language, and a mindset that viewed Xhosa, Ndebele, Tswana, and so on as
> forming subsets of a South African black nation. Unfortunately,
> apartheid-era South Africa was far from benevolent, and to an extent the
> South African policy towards black languages can be seen as a policy of
> divide-and-conquer.
>
You make a good point and South African lanuage policy has an analogy in
Soviet language policy in Central Asia. Rather than create a pan-Turkic
Cneral Asian language out of Azeri, Turkmenian, Uzbek, Kazakh, and
Kyrghizian, they developed five distinct lamnguages, emphasizing difference
rather than similarities. This was an implementation of the divide and
conquer strategy in addition into which use of the Cyrillic alphabet,
which, for Uzbek and Azeri replaced earlier Soviet-sponsored Latinizations,
reduced the possibility of any flirting with the Turkish of the Atatürk
republic. Interestingly enough, during the past decade Azeri has reverted
to the Latin alphabet, and there have been conferences about bringing its
norms more into line with those of standard Turkish.
Still, neither Soviet nor South African language policies were glottocidal
like the policies in Australia and most of the the United States were. In
both countries intelligentsias were trained to use the written languages
that had been created by competent linguistis, and serious work was done
investigating and documenting their structures, and expanding their
vocabularies and ranges of expressive resources. Uzbek, Mordvin, and
several dozen other lanuage sof the former Soviet Union were dialect
continua used over a wide area but seldom committed to writing in the year
1900. In the year 2000 they are fully functional modern languages.
Essentially the same can be said, mutatis mutandis for Xhosa, Zulu, and
several other indigenous lanuages of South Africa. As far as I know, this
cannot be said for any indigenous language of Australia or, with the
possible exceptions of Chocktaw, Cree, Crow, Dakota, Navaho, Hopi,
Hawaiian, and some varieties of Inuit, of the United States. Even though
some of these indigenous languages see some marginal use on Indian
reservations, almost all of their speakers are bilingual and little effort
has ever been made to educate an intelligentsia or train native specialists
Regards,
Eugene Holman
au...@banknotes.com
Just a brief note: military science/practice in Lithuanian schools was
taught in Russian language, ussian lang. classes started from 5st grade then shifted into 3rd and
then into 1st grade (!). After all my teacher told me that soon the System will be introducing
Russian language into teaching Mathematics, Geometry etc. ...so doesn't it seem to you like there
was gradual russification? It just that in 1990-91 USSR collapsed. If it did not by now we would
have half or all subjects in LT schools taught in Russian lingua.
Breast retards,
Audrius
P.S. Sorry for the errata. :)
au...@banknotes.com
Randy McDonald wrote:
>
> Eugene Holman wrote:
> >
> > [deletia]
> >
> > Not bullshit at all. A better example than New Zealand might have been
> > South Africa which, even during the darkest days of apartheid, supported
> > the largest indigenous languages Zulu and Xhosa, as well as research on and
> > the upgrading of smaller languages as Ndebele, Swati, and Tswana.
>
> I'm just jumping in on the question of South African language policy.
>
> The divisions between South African tribes are far more fluid than most
> people think. Tribal intermarriage is quite common, and even the
> boundaries between the languages spoken by the major South African
> tribes of Bantu linguistic origin (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati, Tswana,
> Penda, Sotho, Swazi, et cetera) were more arbitrary than anything else.
> One could probably use the same criteria used to define Afrikaners and
> Anglos as belonging to a single white nation to throw all of the black
> South African groups into a single nation.
>
> As industrialization and urbanization progressed, these tribal divisions
> became increasingly irrelevant. Given a benevolent government, we might
> have well seen by no the creation of a kind of pan-Bantu South African
> language, and a mindset that viewed Xhosa, Ndebele, Tswana, and so on as
> forming subsets of a South African black nation. Unfortunately,
> apartheid-era South Africa was far from benevolent, and to an extent the
> South African policy towards black languages can be seen as a policy of
> divide-and-conquer.
>
Eugene Holman
>
> Just a brief note: military science/practice in Lithuanian schools was
> taught in Russian language, Russian lang. classes started from 5st grade
then shifted into 3rd and
> then into 1st grade (!). After all my teacher told me that soon the
System will be introducing
> Russian language into teaching Mathematics, Geometry etc. ...so doesn't
it seem to you like there
> was gradual russification? It just that in 1990-91 USSR collapsed. If it
did not by now we would
> have half or all subjects in LT schools taught in Russian lingua.
>
> Breast retards,
>
> Audrius
>
> P.S. Sorry for the errata. :)
I don't deny that the long-term goal of the USSR was Russification of the
entire country, nor do I think it a bad idea that military science/practice
in Lithuanian schools was given in Russian. It would be dysfunctional for
the army of large country like the USSR to have several languages of
command and strategy.
The most positive aspect of USSR language policy that I can see, at least
compared to that of many English-speaking countries, is that it recognized
the right of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR to have and cultivate
their languages, and take some local pride in literature, science, and
other material produced in them. The medium-term goal was a quite
reasonable Russian/republic-language bilingualism, with the longer term
goal being to let those lanuages that were viable flourish while allowing
the less dynamicx ones to become marginalized. from what I have been able
to ascertain, even some of the smaller non-republican languages like
Gaugaz, Tatar, and Chuvash were actively supported and gained both native
speakers and local intelligentsias for the first time in their histories.
As far as I know, no native American or Australian language ever received
this type of support or underwent the type of growth that these and several
other languages revceived during the Soviet period.
Of course one aspect of this policy was the old divide and conquer. But the
results have been permanent, even if the USSR and the strong dynamic
towards russification are no more.
Regards,
Eugnee Holman
rmcd...@upei.ca
>From: hol...@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman)
>Subject: Re: more about IE languages
>Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 23:43:22 +0300
>In article <39F331...@isn.net>, mcdo...@isn.net wrote:
>[deletia]
>
>You make a good point and South African lanuage policy has an analogy in
>Soviet language policy in Central Asia. Rather than create a pan-Turkic
>Cneral Asian language out of Azeri, Turkmenian, Uzbek, Kazakh, and
>Kyrghizian, they developed five distinct lamnguages, emphasizing difference
>rather than similarities. This was an implementation of the divide and
>conquer strategy in addition into which use of the Cyrillic alphabet,
>which, for Uzbek and Azeri replaced earlier Soviet-sponsored Latinizations,
>reduced the possibility of any flirting with the Turkish of the Atatürk
>republic. Interestingly enough, during the past decade Azeri has reverted
>to the Latin alphabet, and there have been conferences about bringing its
>norms more into line with those of standard Turkish.
I think that Azerbaijan and Azeri culture is too divergent from Central Asian
Turkic culture for there to have ever been much of a rapprochement. Azeris
have traditionally been a Shi'ite nation on both sides of the former
Iranian/Soviet border and speak a language that could be portrayed as a
dialectal variant upon Turkish. Contrast that with the Sunni Uzbeks and
Turkmen, who speak languages far removed from Turkish and Azeri and who live
cheek-to-jowl with Shi'ite Kyrgyz and Kazaks.
Had Soviet policy so decided, it could have simply created a Turkestan SSR
including what is now the four Turkic republics of Central Asia, minus,
perhaps, the north of Kazakstan. Central Asians have certainly lived in
multiethnic polities before -- neither Khiva nor Bukhara had borders drawn on
ethnic lines, and all of the modern Central Asian states are heterogenous in
population.
>Still, neither Soviet nor South African language policies were glottocidal
>like the policies in Australia and most of the the United States were. In
>both countries intelligentsias were trained to use the written languages
>that had been created by competent linguistis, and serious work was done
>investigating and documenting their structures, and expanding their
>vocabularies and ranges of expressive resources. Uzbek, Mordvin, and
>several dozen other lanuage sof the former Soviet Union were dialect
>continua used over a wide area but seldom committed to writing in the year
>1900. In the year 2000 they are fully functional modern languages.
Well, maybe, but one shouldn't make comparisons between, say, Uzbek or even
Mordvin and Chuvash and Navajo. There are as many first-language speakers of
Uzbek as of Dutch, while both Mordvin and Chuvash have at least a million
first-language speakers. No Native American or Aboriginal language has
anywhere near that number of first-language speakers -- even Navajo only has a
quarter-million first-language speakers, and that's a historical record.
A better comparison would be found with the Siberian peoples, who live in
environmental and demographic circumstances not too far removed from those
that prevail in Australasia and North America.
>[deletia]
>
>Regards,
>Eugene Holman
Andrejs Makwitz
the
science/practice
> in Lithuanian schools was given in Russian.
No, but it is a bad idea for foreign armies to establish military
schools in the lands which they occupy for the sole purpose of
instructing military science/practice to the same people who will be
responsible for maintaining their own occupation.
> It would be dysfunctional for
> the army of large country like the USSR to have several languages of
> command and strategy.
It would have been fairly simple for the Soviet army to avoid a tower
of Babel in it's chain of command had it not spread itself so far and
wide that it needed to have non-Russian speaking officers.
> The most positive aspect of USSR language policy that I can see, at
least
> compared to that of many English-speaking countries, is that it
recognized
> the right of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR to have and cultivate
> their languages, and take some local pride in literature, science, and
> other material produced in them.
> The medium-term goal was a quiteThis is why Eugene so often earns the
wrath of us Balts.
> reasonable Russian/republic-language bilingualism, with the longer
term
> goal being to let those lanuages that were viable flourish while
allowing
> the less dynamicx ones to become marginalized. from what I have been
able
> to ascertain, even some of the smaller non-republican languages like
> Gaugaz, Tatar, and Chuvash were actively supported and gained both
native
> speakers and local intelligentsias for the first time in their
histories.
> As far as I know, no native American or Australian language ever
received
> this type of support or underwent the type of growth that these and
several
> other languages revceived during the Soviet period.
>
> Of course one aspect of this policy was the old divide and conquer.
But the
> results have been permanent, even if the USSR and the strong dynamic
> towards russification are no more.
>
> Regards,
> Eugnee Holman
This is why Eugene so often earns the wrath of us Balts. There are no
positive aspects of the USSR language policy. The USSR's language
policy was not designed to protect indigenous populations. It was
designed to protect the balance of power. Any benefits that were
earned were strictly a by product of the USSR's need to play one
segment of the population against the other. The other major factor was
that had the USSR immediately and overtly tried to destroy all remnants
of indigenous cultures they would have risked open rebelion all across
the USSR. The USSR decided to this subtly, subtly by Soviet terms at
least, and in relatively small steps. The end result of their language
policies, however, was never in doubt. The complete eradication of all
nationalist and ethnic markers that could be potential barriers to
Soviet identity.
Sincerely,
Andrejs Makwitz
Eugene Holman
<nakts...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> This is why Eugene so often earns the wrath of us Balts. There are no
> positive aspects of the USSR language policy.
And this is why I keep comung back for more. A state that lasts for
seventy-odd years can't be evil in everything that it does. You stated,
quite correctly, that the USSR had no business being where it was. I agree,
but it was, and that was a fact. Just as stroing an argument can be made
that the United States has no business being on the lands of the Hopis, the
Navahos, or the Hawaiians. [For those not familiar with Hawaiian history,
the manner in which that once independent kingdom was annexed to the United
States has many things in common with what happened in the Baltics in 1940]
> The USSR's language
> policy was not designed to protect indigenous populations. It was
> designed to protect the balance of power. Any benefits that were
> earned were strictly a by product of the USSR's need to play one
> segment of the population against the other.
We are working on difference premises. Your premise is that the USSR was an
illegal state, for which reason everything it did was illegal and evil. I'm
taking a *slightly* more realistic view that the USSR was political entity
like many others for which reason it could and did use the power at its
disposal to further its interests, like all political entities evil or less
so [since all political entities are instruments of coercion to some
degree].
> The other major factor was
> that had the USSR immediately and overtly tried to destroy all remnants
> of indigenous cultures they would have risked open rebelion all across
> the USSR. The USSR decided to this subtly, subtly by Soviet terms at
> least, and in relatively small steps.
This is my point. I agree with you that the long-term goal was the
russification of the country, just as the long-term goal of the US
government in 1800 was the anglophonization of the country. The Soviet
policy, compared to the American (or Australian) policies, was, as you say,
"subtle", and it produced results which outlived the USSR and will probbaly
be regarded by future historians as "good things". The same can hardly be
said of the American and Australian policies, which have resulted in
virtual total marginalization of indigenous languages and cultures - and,
ironically, a more English-speaking US or Australia than Russia is Russian
speaking.
> The end result of their language
> policies, however, was never in doubt. The complete eradication of all
> nationalist and ethnic markers that could be potential barriers to
> Soviet identity.
>
How does this objective differ from that of the much less "subtle" language
policies of the United States or Australia? Policies and attendant
attitudes which generate a big political stink everytime somebody suggests
something un-American (or un-Australian) like teaching primary school
children in their home language or dialect?
Regards,
Eugnee Holman
Andrejs Makwitz
In article <holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi>,
hol...@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:
> In article <8t1rp6$90p$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Andrejs Makwitz
> <nakts...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > This is why Eugene so often earns the wrath of us Balts. There are
no
> > positive aspects of the USSR language policy.
>
> And this is why I keep comung back for more. A state that lasts for
> seventy-odd years can't be evil in everything that it does. You
stated,
> quite correctly, that the USSR had no business being where it was. I
agree,
> but it was, and that was a fact. Just as stroing an argument can be
made
> that the United States has no business being on the lands of the
Hopis, the
> Navahos, or the Hawaiians. [For those not familiar with Hawaiian
history,
> the manner in which that once independent kingdom was annexed to the
United
> States has many things in common with what happened in the Baltics in
1940]
Never claimed that the USSR was evil in everything it did. In my case,
being exposed to it at the tender age that I was, an arguement can be
made that it had quite a few positive influences. It taught me
tolerance towards other nationalities and races and that social class
does not equal privilidge or ability. The problem is that because I
encountered those values at a tender age, I was only exposed to the
MYTH of the Soviet Union. In reality, the Soviet Union had less to do
with those ideals than your average kkk lodge. You, far too often, are
willing to defend the ideals, which the Soviet never reached and only
paid lip service to, for which the USSR claimed to stand for. Being a
devil's advocate is fine and dandy, but you are no longer of a tender
age and should know better. You have no problem with seeing the faults
of the arguements that the West uses to justify their empires, but when
it comes to the USSR, you seem more and more like the lefty version of
a died in the wool country club republican. "It's bad, but look at all
the good it did." I, just like your average Navaho, fail to buy the
reasoning.
> > The USSR's language
> > policy was not designed to protect indigenous populations. It was
> > designed to protect the balance of power. Any benefits that were
> > earned were strictly a by product of the USSR's need to play one
> > segment of the population against the other.
>
> We are working on difference premises. Your premise is that the USSR
was an
> illegal state, for which reason everything it did was illegal and
evil. I'm
> taking a *slightly* more realistic view that the USSR was political
entity
> like many others for which reason it could and did use the power at
its
> disposal to further its interests, like all political entities evil
or less
> so [since all political entities are instruments of coercion to some
> degree].
You often cite realpolitik as your reasoning. I don't buy it. The
problem is that you only apply realism to certain segments of the
equasion. The Soviet Union only did what it had to do, and that should
be understood and accepted. The Baltics are only doing what they have
to do, but they should take into account idealistic standards that no
other nation in the world subscribes to other than in their press
releases? What happened to this whole realpolitik thing?
> > The other major factor was
> > that had the USSR immediately and overtly tried to destroy all
remnants
> > of indigenous cultures they would have risked open rebelion all
across
> > the USSR. The USSR decided to this subtly, subtly by Soviet terms
at
> > least, and in relatively small steps.
>
> This is my point. I agree with you that the long-term goal was the
> russification of the country, just as the long-term goal of the US
> government in 1800 was the anglophonization of the country. The Soviet
> policy, compared to the American (or Australian) policies, was, as
you say,
> "subtle", and it produced results which outlived the USSR and will
probbaly
> be regarded by future historians as "good things". The same can
hardly be
> said of the American and Australian policies, which have resulted in
> virtual total marginalization of indigenous languages and cultures -
and,
> ironically, a more English-speaking US or Australia than Russia is
Russian
> speaking.
Eugene, for the 101st time. Stop with these ridiculous comparisons.
They do not fit. Are you ready to defend American and Australian
policies? Are you willing to agree that what was done to the
indigenous populations was just? Will you argue that the continuation
of such policies into the present day should be applauded? I doubt
it. Why are you then always willing to do so when it comes to the
Soviet empire?
> > The end result of their language
> > policies, however, was never in doubt. The complete eradication of
all
> > nationalist and ethnic markers that could be potential barriers to
> > Soviet identity.
> >
>
> How does this objective differ from that of the much less "subtle"
language
> policies of the United States or Australia? Policies and attendant
> attitudes which generate a big political stink everytime somebody
suggests
> something un-American (or un-Australian) like teaching primary school
> children in their home language or dialect?
Read the above for my response. You need to find a new hobby horse.
Henry Alminas
"Eugene Holman" <hol...@elo.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi...
- - Holmanese gabble deleted - -
Watching Holman debate these many years it becomes
quite evident that he has but one argument (pro-soviet)
which he uses each and every time. It runs something
like this:
Person A: The russkies did X and it was wrong.
Holman: Yes they did it but look at what the US, Encland, France
and Germany did ...gabble, gabble gabble... and what the gabble
translates to is that the US. etc. actually did much *worse* than
the russkies. It matters not one whit to Holman at what time in
history X was done nor the amount of X that was done - all is
equivalent. Remember now, he is defending a system that all
agree now was the most murderous in world history!
Best - - Henry
rmcd...@upei.ca
>From: hol...@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman)
>Subject: Re: more about IE languages
>[deletia]
>
>The most positive aspect of USSR language policy that I can see, at least
>compared to that of many English-speaking countries, is that it recognized
>the right of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR to have and cultivate
>their languages, and take some local pride in literature, science, and
>other material produced in them. The medium-term goal was a quite
>reasonable Russian/republic-language bilingualism, with the longer term
>goal being to let those lanuages that were viable flourish while allowing
>the less dynamicx ones to become marginalized. from what I have been able
>to ascertain, even some of the smaller non-republican languages like
>Gaugaz, Tatar, and Chuvash were actively supported and gained both native
>speakers and local intelligentsias for the first time in their histories.
>As far as I know, no native American or Australian language ever received
>this type of support or underwent the type of growth that these and several
>other languages revceived during the Soviet period.
I'm not sure about that. All of the linguistic minorites that you've named --
save the Gagauz, who are about as numerous as the Navajo, the most populous of
all of the Native American and Aborigine groups -- have populations of
first-language speakers numbering at least one million, more in some cases
such as Tatar. To an extent, you're comparing different types of
ethnolinguistic minorities.
A better comparison might be between Siberian tribal peoples, like the Yakuts,
the Buryats, the Tuvans, the Evenk, and the Chukchi, and Native American and
Aborigine tribes. All of these peoples have roughly comparable levels of
technology, with little use of agriculture prior to colonization, languages
that were mostly without any kind of script -- pictographic, ideogrammatic, or
phonetic -- and were subjected to extensive European immigration.
What's the situation like for Siberian tribal peoples?
>[deletia]
>
>Regards,
>Eugnee Holman
toon...@my-deja.com
>
> The Baltic languages (Indo-European) are Lithuanian, Latvian and the
now
> extinct Prussian. (There were also others earlier.) There is some
> confusion caused by the fact
> that when speaking geo-politically, not linguistically, the Estonians,
> Latvians and Lithuanians are all called "Balts" , because they live in
> the "Baltic states".
>
> Lithuanian and Latvian are members of the Baltic branch of the
> Indo-European language family, but the Estonian language is not
> Indo-European, it is closely related to Finnish and more distantly
> related to a whole series of languages right across northern and
Central
> Asia, as far as Mongolia, Korea and Japan. (That's where the idiot
> "WaRR" may get his "Mongolic" reference from, thereby showing that he
> doesn't know the difference between
> Lithuanian and Estonian, nor the difference between the language
spoken
> by a nation and its genetic make-up - two quite different things.)
Is that why Estonia is recreating itself and calling itself a Nordic
country? Will Latvia and Lithuania do the same?
> There were indigenous fishermen living in coastal villages in
Lithuania
> and Prussia who spoke a language related to Finnish (or to be more
> precise, related to Estonian, or to be even more precise, related to
> "Liv", or "Livonian", an almost extinct indigenous language of Latvia.
> (There are about 200 elderly speakers left. Language extinction was a
> Soviet specialty. Back in 1950 the Politburo was hoping that by this
> year (2000) there would only be a few hundred elderly speakers left of
> any of the languages of any of the Soviet republics. They saw other
> languages as a useless nuisance - just the way the Chinese do
> now in the PRC.)
Prussian is extinct. Isn't their any written sources of the language?
It was written in the Latin Alphabet and spoken around in the area
where Kaliningrad is.
> > The Celts (most scholars believe) came from the Carpathian
> >Mountain region and spread out from there! In fact,
> >most people from Continental Europe can claim Celtic blood!
>
> 100% correct. :-)
Don't forget about the tocharians.
jonhi...@my-deja.com
> In Germany, for example, the spread of Protestantism and the Luther
Bible
> resulted in Saxon, also known as Low German, being demoted from a
> polyfunctional local language to the status of a patois and
eventually to
> that of the offbeat set of German dialects it has today. ....
Too bad, I guess - but who cares? Go tell the germans.
> > > Finland, for example, was 25 per cent Swedish speaking a century
ago,
> > now it is 5.5 per cent Swedish speaking.
> >
> > You are referring to the result of geo-politics and anti-colonialism
> > now, not natural liguistic migration. (which by the way refutes your
> > previous 'free floating' language affiliation theory of yesterday.)
>
> Actually, it was the result of nationalism.
If geopolitical anti-colonialism is not nationalism, I don't know what
is. Thanks for supporting my position.
>> As I stated
> > previously, Ugric presence within present day Latvian territory
ebbed
> > and flowed from the north.
>
> Agreed. On the other hand, the Finno-Ugrians were there first.
Nope. Indigenous hunter gatherers were first. Balts were second from
last. And Finns were last. Uralic speakers were somwhere in between.
> > >The last remnants of Finnic speech
> > > survive in some of the words and pronunciations typical of
northern
> > Latvian
> > > dialects (substratum influence) as well as in the speech of the
100
> > or so
> > > people living in the handful of villages of the Kurzeme peninsula
> > where
> > > Livonian, a Finnic language, is still occasionally spoken.
No, the last remnants of Finnic survive as the Finnish languages.
> > Just as Baltic settlers and speakers in southwest Finland gave rise
to
> > the Finnish language.
>
> I would prefer to call them Balticized Finno-Ugrians.
And I would prefer to call them proven Baltic cultural and linguistic
settlers who provided the language necessary to give rise to all Finnic
languages.
>All the evidence I
> have been able to marshall indicates that they were culturally
Balticized,
> but linguistically very Finno-Ugric.
Well marshall forth what you will. Logic demands that they were Baltic
speakers when they arrived.
>Since the originated in what is now
> Estonia I would have to concede that they were "Baltic".
Your re-education continues well. Yes, they were culturally Baltic and
linguistically Baltic. Thanks for recognizing the previous 'Baltic'
linguistic nature of Estonia as well.
> That's not all they (soviets) did. Works of world literature were
translated into
> them, and they began to produce texts of scientific and literary merit
> which were translated into Russian and other languages.
Who cares what they scribbled? Not me. Most of it was pure crap. Most
of the rest was semi-crap. And all of it was censored and directed
towards the russification of all colonized areas.
(Did you know that a lot of 'western' readers actually believe some of
the crap that was manufactured?)
> The first written
> texts in most European languages were devoted to religious dogma, but
that
> didn't prevent other types of texts from emerging. Literary Uzbek and
> Mordvin are still alive and well, but communism and attendant dogma
have
> been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Jeez, the soviet russians published religious dogma?! Impressive;
"slava leninu".
> Not true, at least for Estonian. Doctorates in Estonian language and
> literature continued to be produced at Tartu University during the
Soviet
> period, typically in local-language and Russian versions, a resonable
> requirement. in 1976 I was a guest at the laboratory for experimental
(read
> Estonian) phonetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. They
published an
> excellent journal containing the results of their research, Estonian
papers
> in Phonetics, in English with Russian summaries.
> > I am sure that the Estonians had equivalents before the russian
invaded
> > and discarded pre-soviet editions.
>
> No they didn't. Estonia was too small a language during the interwar
period
> to justify the publication of an encyclopedia. The ENE (Estonian
Soviet
> Encyclopedia) was heralded as the first encyclopedia ever in Estonian
and,
> all thinghs considered, it is still regarded as a pretty good
reference
> work.
How many references to the ancient and eternal brotherhood of proto-
socialistic ties between the slavic and estonian brother nations, does
it contain? All proper soviet era publishing should be judged by this
criteria.
> > And I am sure that the Estonians
> > practiced and spoke those obscure languages before the russian
imperium
> > interposed and necessitated a trip to the state library to read a
book
> > about their previously spoken languages.
>
> There was a strong tradition of Estonian dialectology before the war,
and
> the Soviets funneled enough funds into it to allow the research
tradition
> to continue and new scholars to be trained.
Too bad that they also funneled potential their Estonian readership
into cattle cars.
>Note I'm not claiming that
> everything the Soviets did was good, or that their motives were always
> noble, but credit has to be given where credit is due.
I do - most every day!
> Estonian linguistic
> and philological studies did well during the Soviet period, and they
had
> better funding than they do now.
So what? Do you think that Estonians can recuperate from fifty years of
russian parasitism and linguistic colonization overnight?
> > How many of these materials does your company sell? ;)
>
> We don't sell them because the rights to them were acquired by the
> successor to the state-owned educational pubisher Valgus.
> > > Soviet language policy was not exactly benevolent, as we all know.
> > > Nevertheless, in the short and medium terms, at least, it was more
> > tolerant
> > > and supportive of linguistic diversity than the language policy
which
> > > accompanied nation building in the United States, the UK, Canada,
> > Ireland,
> > > or Australia.
> >
> > Short term? 35,000 fewer speakers of Latvian in the first year of
> > russian occupation. And about that same number less during the first
> > year of German occupation. One the second through the fifth years of
> > russian occupation about 300,000 less Latvian speakers in Latvia.
> >
> > Save us from russian benevolence and academic erudition.
>
> You are not talking about language policy. You are talking about
foreign
> occupation and war.
Oh! Russian occupations preclude linguistic considerations? Most
strange. What language is it that you are trying to rehab those
colonists to? What language are they speaking now?
>Latvia lived for about forty years under a language
> policy that was relatively supportive of Latvian, although many
aspects of
> it were contradicted by a demographic policy which was hostile to the
> healthy development of the Latvian nation. The two should be kept
distinct.
That's truely a *stupid* thing to say. We obviously didn't and don't
need a relatively accomodating language policy towards our native
language in our native land. What we really needed and need are road
signs instructing occupiers how to find their way home. And 'keep out'
signs equally well understood.
> It's not where
> they were going, but how they were getting there that I have in mind.
Well the Baltic citizens were leaving threir homes by russian cattle
cars and westward refugee columns, and their soviet replacements
arrived by various means; the first waves in red army divisions.
> > >Overall, Soviet language policy bears many ....
Your analogues are renowned for their decrepitude, Holman. Try selling
them elsewhere.
> Not bullshit at all. A better example than New Zealand might have been
> South Africa which, even during the darkest days of apartheid,
supported
> the largest indigenous languages Zulu and Xhosa, as well as research
on and
> the upgrading of smaller languages as Ndebele, Swati, and Tswana.
Well bully for them! Can we return to Baltic reality now?
>The
> medium-term goal of Soviet language policy was republic-
language/Russian
> bilingualism, not an unreasonable goal if you assume that the Soviet
Union
> had a right to exist and certainly more reasonable than the standard
> English-only/no bilingual or dialect-based elementary education that
we see
> in the US.
...I guess not.
Well, only the russians can tell you if the soviet union had a right to
exist. I would suppose that they gave an unqualified; "Da!"
As for a 'soviet republic', such a thing never existed; so we never
will know.
So. Can a russian-(geographically occupied national language)-
bilingualism exist in a nonextant soviet 'republic' in a 'reasonable'
way?
Hell NO, Holman!
> > Well then, ask the russians not to invade us again, for a while,
and we
> > will more than make up the difference in a few months.
>
> You know whose side I'm on, but I think it will take more than a
couple of
> months.> Regards, Eugene Holman
Months are nothing. Years mere dayflies,
Digital_Revenge
else and they finished just 10 years ago. That's what makes it so bad.
Dig.
Henry Alminas <halm...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Si1J5.112364$g6.51...@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com...
Eugene Holman
Alminas" <halm...@home.com> wrote:
> "Eugene Holman" <hol...@elo.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> news:holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi...
> > In article <8t1rp6$90p$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Andrejs Makwitz
> > <nakts...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
>
> - - Holmanese gabble deleted - -
>
> Watching Holman debate these many years it becomes
> quite evident that he has but one argument (pro-soviet)
Just how is pointing out the Russians and Americans have _both_ collected
large numbers of imperialist skeletons in their colests "pro-Soviet"?
> which he uses each and every time. It runs something
> like this:
>
> Person A: The russkies did X and it was wrong.
>
> Holman: Yes they did it but look at what the US, Encland, France
> and Germany did ...gabble, gabble gabble... and what the gabble
> translates to is that the US. etc. actually did much *worse* than
> the russkies. It matters not one whit to Holman at what time in
> history X was done nor the amount of X that was done - all is
> equivalent. Remember now, he is defending a system that all
> agree now was the most murderous in world history!
>
Russia/the Soviet Union was assembling a colonial empire using precisely
the smae methods at exactly the same time as England, France, and the US
were. Tye only significant difference is that the Russians, like the
Germans who began to follow the same model in the late 1930s, were doing
it to their neighbors who were at approximately the same level of
technological and societal development, while the English, French,
Poruguese, Americans, and Spanish were doing it in out of the way places
overseas to peoples they regarded - or learned to regard - as savages.
The Russians were subjugating the Lithuanians, Poles, and Chechens at
precisely the same time - during the latter half of the 19th century -
that the US was ethnically cleansing the Sioux, the Dakotas, the
Blackfoots, and the Ojibwas. The Russians lost some of their colonial
holdings consequent to WW I, but they regained some of them consequent to
arrangements made immediately before and during WW II, only to lose them
again in 1991. The US has been more fortunate in its colonial predations:
the surviving Indians remain, for the most part, on reservations, and
various bits of geopolitical pocket change obtained by subvering
governments, such as Hawaii, or warmongering, such as California, Texas,
Nevada, Arixzona, Arizona, New Mexico, Guam, and Puerto Rico remain firmly
in American possession.
Pointing this out is not in any way pro-Soviet or anti-American. If
anything, it is pointing out that the Russians/Soviets were, despite their
murderousness, were incompetent at a game at which the Americans have
shown themselves to be the unparalleled masters. The United States remains
the only imperialist empire to have remained intact. Calling attention to
the bloody predations which have resulted in palces as diverse as Oregon,
Washington, Texas, California, Colorodo, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and
Idaho becoming English-speaking and all-American during the past two
hundred years is enough to get one branded as "pro-Soviet" - or worse.
Henry also points to the time difference. However the United States did
the dirty to the government of Hawaii some twenty years before the end of
WW I, and some 40 odd years before the Soviets subverted the independent
Baltic governments. I don't see where the time difference is relevant.
Assembling colonial empires by conquering territory and subverting
governments was the thing to do in the 19th century, and the dynamic
carried over well into the 20th. Of course Balts bitch about having been
the objects of Russian imperial designs, but those writing from the US,
Canada, and Australia should not forget that they are writing from
countries which, a mere two generations before the Baltic countries were
subverted, were engaged in precisely the same activity, managing to do the
job much more competently than the Russians. The number of people killed
is not as important as the reason for their death: being in the way of an
imperialistic power that had no moral scruples about utilizing large-scale
ethnic cleansing to clear _Lebensraum_ for themselves.
Greetings from overcast Tallinn,
Eugene Holman
Henry Alminas
"Eugene Holman" <ar...@netexpress.ee> wrote in message
news:artem-28100...@192.168.0.6...
> In article <Si1J5.112364$g6.51...@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>, "Henry
> Alminas" <halm...@home.com> wrote:
>
> > "Eugene Holman" <hol...@elo.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> > news:holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi...
> > > In article <8t1rp6$90p$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Andrejs Makwitz
> > > <nakts...@my-deja.com> wrote:
- - repeated Holmanese gabble deleted - but for one interesting line - -
>The number of people killed
> is not as important as the reason for their death
A justification of genocide?
"Welcome to hell" Holman
Best - - Henry
Eugene Holman
Alminas" <halm...@home.com> wrote:
> "Eugene Holman" <ar...@netexpress.ee> wrote in message
> news:artem-28100...@192.168.0.6...
> > In article <Si1J5.112364$g6.51...@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>, "Henry
> > Alminas" <halm...@home.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "Eugene Holman" <hol...@elo.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> > > news:holman-ya02408000...@news.helsinki.fi...
> > > > In article <8t1rp6$90p$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Andrejs Makwitz
> > > > <nakts...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> - - repeated Holmanese gabble deleted - but for one interesting line - -
>
> >The number of people killed
> > is not as important as the reason for their death
>
> A justification of genocide?
>
> "Welcome to hell" Holman
>
No, welcome to HELsinki, where I am now, having just made the
Tallinn-to-Helsinki trip on a Ukrainian built hydrofoil
(http://www.lindaline.fi/lindaeng/lindaline/index.html).
You do not seem to be capable of comprehending the fact that the Russians
were doing _precisely_ what other imperialists were doing, the only
difference being that we are not in the habit of regarding Lithuanians as
'savages' like we do assorted African, American, and Australian
ethnicities. Nevertheless there are more similarities than differences.
Henry might be interested in one of the main news items in Estonia today: a
random knife-murder of a young (17) Russian by an Estonian
(http://www.epl.ee/artikkelp.php3?primary_id=92554):
A rough and ready translation of the first part of the article:
Eesti nooruk tappis kesklinnas vene poisi
Oliver Rand
Nime ütlemisest keeldunud Kirill Stepanovi koolikaaslasest sõber tõi eile
päeval Stepanovi mõrvapaika lilli ja ei suutnud pisaraid tagasi hoida. "Ta
oli väga sõbralik ning üldsegi mitte tülinorija," rääkis ta. "Küll aga
oskas ta enda eest seista ning kindlasti ei jäänud vastust võlgu, kui teda
solvati."
Tallinna südalinnas kolmapäeva hilisõhtul noahoobiga tapetud Kirill
Stepanovi lähedased süüdistavad politseinikke, kes ei suuda nende hinnangul
tagada kesklinnas turvalisust.
"Mulle tuli täieliku shokina, et kesklinnas võib midagi taolist juhtuda ja
politseid pole kusagilt appi loota," ütles Kirill Stepanovi (17) sõbranna
Jekaterina. Kolmapäeva õhtul kella üheteistkümne paiku oli ta Stepanoviga
Viru tänaval asuvast McDonaldsi kiirtoidurestoranist teel koju, kui Viru
Keskuse juures peatasid neid eesti noorukid.
*****************************
TRANSLATION, EH
A young Estonian killed a young Russian
Oliver Rand
One of the schoolmate friends of Kirill Stepanov, who refused to mention
her name, brought flowers yesterday the the place where Stepanov was
murdered and did not restrain her tears. "He was very friendly, and
certainly no troublemaker," she said. "But he was definately able to
defend himself and by no means would he come in second if insulted."
Those near to Kirill Stempanov, stabbed to death early Wednesday evening in
central Tallinn, accuse the police who, in their opinion, are unable to
guarantee that the city center is safe.
"It is a total shock to me that something like this can happen in the
center of the city, and that you cannot expect help from the police
anywhere," said Yekatrina (17), Kirill's girlfriend. On Wednesday around 11
PM she was on Viru Street with Stepanov on her way home from the McDonalds
fast food restaurant on the same street, when they were stopped by a group
of Estonian young people.
'''''''''''''''
Regards,
Eugene Holman
Eugene Holman
*****************************
TRANSLATION, EH
her name, brought flowers yesterday to the place where Stepanov was
murdered and did not restrain her tears. "He was very friendly, and
certainly no troublemaker," she said. "But he was definitely able to
Mike Davidchik
Eugene Holman wrote:
> Just how is pointing out the Russians and Americans have _both_ collected
> large numbers of imperialist skeletons in their closests "pro-Soviet"?
Dear Holmancipator:
The problem is one of the old propaganda technique of "equivocation." Both
countries have been involved in imperialism/colonialism so they are both
equally bad, right?
> Russia/the Soviet Union was assembling a colonial empire using precisely
> the smae methods at exactly the same time as England, France, and the US
> were.
This is not exactly true. The Europeans started much earlier than the U.S.
Your desire to equate subjugating primitive, traditional, and semi-modern
socities is misleading. Conquering the North American aborigines is hardly
the same as taking over Eastern Europe.
> Tye only significant difference is that the Russians, like the
> Germans who began to follow the same model in the late 1930s, were doing
> it to their neighbors who were at approximately the same level of
> technological and societal development, while the English, French,
> Poruguese, Americans, and Spanish were doing it in out of the way places
> overseas to peoples they regarded - or learned to regard - as savages.
This is a big difference. A lot took place between the 16th and 20th
Centuries.
>
>
> The Russians were subjugating the Lithuanians, Poles, and Chechens at
> precisely the same time - during the latter half of the 19th century -
> that the US was ethnically cleansing the Sioux, the Dakotas, the
> Blackfoots, and the Ojibwas.
It is pretty insulting to compare American Indians to the advanced
civilizations of Europe. Small un-related primitive bands of Iron Age
aborgines could not have possibly survived intact under any circumstances.
It is actually a great aspect of American imperialism that these cultural
groups are stronger today. There was never anything like an Indian
nation-state or empire, with any common or written language, towns,
technology, etc.
> The Russians lost some of their colonial
> holdings consequent to WW I, but they regained some of them consequent to
> arrangements made immediately before and during WW II, only to lose them
> again in 1991. The US has been more fortunate in its colonial predations:
> the surviving Indians remain, for the most part, on reservations, and
> various bits of geopolitical pocket change obtained by subvering
> governments, such as Hawaii, or warmongering, such as California, Texas,
> Nevada, Arixzona, Arizona, New Mexico, Guam, and Puerto Rico remain firmly
> in American possession.
You try to create the myth that there was something like an Indian country or
countries. There never was. The North American aborginals were being
subjugated by the Spaniards, French, British, etc., long before the U.S. got
into the picture. When one society is three or four centuries ahead of
another, what is bound to happen? The U.S. took Texas and California away
from the Mexicans, not the Indians. They took Guam, Puerto Rico, and
Philippines away from the Spaniards, not the locals.
>
>
> Pointing this out is not in any way pro-Soviet or anti-American. If
> anything, it is pointing out that the Russians/Soviets were, despite their
> murderousness, were incompetent at a game at which the Americans have
> shown themselves to be the unparalleled masters. The United States remains
> the only imperialist empire to have remained intact.
I would hesitate to call the U.S. an imperialist empire. It might have
participated in imperialism and colonialism in the 19th and early 20th
Centuries to keep the Europeans at bay. The principles of American democracy
keep the states together.
> Calling attention to
> the bloody predations which have resulted in palces as diverse as Oregon,
> Washington, Texas, California, Colorodo, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and
> Idaho becoming English-speaking and all-American during the past two
> hundred years is enough to get one branded as "pro-Soviet" - or worse.
This is revisionist and leftist American history. The isolated massacres of
Indians by the U.S. Army can hardly be compared with anything that the
European powers did.
>
>
> Henry also points to the time difference. However the United States did
> the dirty to the government of Hawaii some twenty years before the end of
> WW I, and some 40 odd years before the Soviets subverted the independent
> Baltic governments. I don't see where the time difference is relevant.
Hawaii was hardly a modern state. It is was question who would get the
Hawaiin Islands, the U.S., Britain, etc., not a question of whether any power
would get it.
>
>
> Assembling colonial empires by conquering territory and subverting
> governments was the thing to do in the 19th century, and the dynamic
> carried over well into the 20th.
The so-called "wog bashing" by European powers and the U.S. is hardly
comparable to what happened in the 20th Century.
> Of course Balts bitch about having been
> the objects of Russian imperial designs, but those writing from the US,
> Canada, and Australia should not forget that they are writing from
> countries which, a mere two generations before the Baltic countries were
> subverted, were engaged in precisely the same activity, managing to do the
> job much more competently than the Russians. The number of people killed
> is not as important as the reason for their death: being in the way of an
> imperialistic power that had no moral scruples about utilizing large-scale
> ethnic cleansing to clear _Lebensraum_ for themselves.
This is leftist American history. The number of people killed and what
the Americans did after subjugating these
backward peoples is very, very important indeed. Your use of the term,
ethnic cleansing, is very casual, and imprecise.
Mike Davidchik
Eugene Holman
> Eugene Holman wrote:
>
> > Just how is pointing out the Russians and Americans have _both_ collected
> > large numbers of imperialist skeletons in their closests "pro-Soviet"?
>
> Dear Holmancipator:
>
> The problem is one of the old propaganda technique of "equivocation." Both
> countries have been involved in imperialism/colonialism so they are both
> equally bad, right?
I did not say that. Imperialism was trendy between 1500 and the 1960s.
>
> > Russia/the Soviet Union was assembling a colonial empire using precisely
> > the smae methods at exactly the same time as England, France, and the US
> > were.
>
> This is not exactly true. The Europeans started much earlier than the U.S.
> Your desire to equate subjugating primitive, traditional, and semi-modern
> socities is misleading. Conquering the North American aborigines is hardly
> the same as taking over Eastern Europe.
I'm not here to be argumentative, but I would like to suggest that the
entire process of pushing the frontier westward, coupled with the doctrine
of Manifest Destiny, were about as imperialist as you can get.
> Conquering the North American aborigines is hardly the same as taking
over Eastern Europe.
Why? In both cases people were displaced from their homes and traditional
territories. In the case of Russia, it was more a continuation of a macho
tradition of testing the degree to which you or your neighbor could get in
each others nerves; in the case of the Americas, Africa, and Australia it
was the case of people actually sailing halfway around the world
specifically for the purpose of plunder, rape, and dispossession.
From a purely moral standard it seems to me that what the Europeans did to
technically less advanced non-Europeans was much worse. When Teutonic
Knights and Balts fought over territory there was a chance of the one who
lost a specific round prevailing next time around. They were, after all,
neighbors, and tended to learn from one another when not engaged in mortal
battle. When European invaders entered the New World they devoted
everything they had to killing and plunder. The indigenes never had a
chance.
> > The only significant difference is that the Russians, like the
> > Germans who began to follow the same model in the late 1930s, were doing
> > it to their neighbors who were at approximately the same level of
> > technological and societal development, while the English, French,
> > Poruguese, Americans, and Spanish were doing it in out of the way places
> > overseas to peoples they regarded - or learned to regard - as savages.
>
> This is a big difference. A lot took place between the 16th and 20th
> Centuries.
Indian Removal, a particularly vile form of ethnic cleansing that most
Americans would rather not think about, started during the 1830s. At the
same time Russians were doing much the same thing to Chechnyans; two
generations later the Poles and Lithuanians were, as had been the fate of
the Balts in the 18th century, getting their butts kicked.
> >
> > The Russians were subjugating the Lithuanians, Poles, and Chechens at
> > precisely the same time - during the latter half of the 19th century -
> > that the US was ethnically cleansing the Sioux, the Dakotas, the
> > Blackfoots, and the Ojibwas.
>
> It is pretty insulting to compare American Indians to the advanced
> civilizations of Europe.
Why? The American Indians had their own homes and their own cultures, some
of them, like that of the Navahos, quite developed. Level of development,
however, is not the issue. The issue os one of morality: does a power that
considers its culture to be more developed have the _moral_ right to cross
borders - or oceans - and raid, rape, and pillage less developed cultures?
What Russians did to Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Chechens, Poles,
Finns, and Evenkis is every bit as morally reprehensible as what Israelis
are doing to Palestinians or what American colonizers did to Apaches,
Blackfoots, Chocktows, or Dakotas.
> Small un-related primitive bands of Iron Age
> aborgines could not have possibly survived intact under any circumstances.
> It is actually a great aspect of American imperialism that these cultural
> groups are stronger today. There was never anything like an Indian
> nation-state or empire, with any common or written language, towns,
> technology, etc.
Towns and technology they had, and the southwest part of what is now the
United States was certainly withn the sphere of influence of the Aztec
empire.
> > The Russians lost some of their colonial
> > holdings consequent to WW I, but they regained some of them consequent to
> > arrangements made immediately before and during WW II, only to lose them
> > again in 1991. The US has been more fortunate in its colonial predations:
> > the surviving Indians remain, for the most part, on reservations, and
> > various bits of geopolitical pocket change obtained by subvering
> > governments, such as Hawaii, or warmongering, such as California, Texas,
> > Nevada, Arixzona, Arizona, New Mexico, Guam, and Puerto Rico remain firmly
> > in American possession.
>
> You try to create the myth that there was something like an Indian country or
> countries. There never was. The North American aborginals were being
> subjugated by the Spaniards, French, British, etc., long before the U.S. got
> into the picture. When one society is three or four centuries ahead of
> another, what is bound to happen? The U.S. took Texas and California away
> from the Mexicans, not the Indians. They took Guam, Puerto Rico, and
> Philippines away from the Spaniards, not the locals.
The point is that they took them away. The same argument could be made that
Russia took Latvia and Estonia from Sweden, not from the locals.
> > Pointing this out is not in any way pro-Soviet or anti-American. If
> > anything, it is pointing out that the Russians/Soviets were, despite their
> > murderousness, were incompetent at a game at which the Americans have
> > shown themselves to be the unparalleled masters. The United States remains
> > the only imperialist empire to have remained intact.
>
> I would hesitate to call the U.S. an imperialist empire. It might have
> participated in imperialism and colonialism in the 19th and early 20th
> Centuries to keep the Europeans at bay. The principles of American democracy
> keep the states together.
I have never claimed that American democracy did not have its good sides.
My only point is that the Balts, Chechens, and other assorted peoples that
can barely muster up two or three million souls have been pocket change to
larger and more aggressive countries with imperialistic predations. Level
of technological or race does not matter; the doctrine that the predator is
demographically larger by an order of magnitude does.
> > Calling attention to
> > the bloody predations which have resulted in palces as diverse as Oregon,
> > Washington, Texas, California, Colorodo, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and
> > Idaho becoming English-speaking and all-American during the past two
> > hundred years is enough to get one branded as "pro-Soviet" - or worse.
>
> This is revisionist and leftist American history. The isolated massacres of
> Indians by the U.S. Army can hardly be compared with anything that the
> European powers did.
>
I am sorry but I have to emphatically diagree. Invading homes and
tradtional territories, and instituting reigns of terror and ethnic
cleansing is criminal behavior. It doesn't matter if your victims are
neighbors that (vaguely) look like you and are on approximately the same
level of technological or cultural development or not. As we have seen,
this much lauded 'technological development' often means how many functions
your mobile phone has, how many varieties of junk food is available at your
local outlet, or how many ways you have mastered to commit mass murder.
> > Henry also points to the time difference. However the United States did
> > the dirty to the government of Hawaii some twenty years before the end of
> > WW I, and some 40 odd years before the Soviets subverted the independent
> > Baltic governments. I don't see where the time difference is relevant.
>
> Hawaii was hardly a modern state. It is was question who would get the
> Hawaiin Islands, the U.S., Britain, etc., not a question of whether any power
> would get it.
The same could be said for the post WW I Baltic states: geopolitical pocket
change.
> > Assembling colonial empires by conquering territory and subverting
> > governments was the thing to do in the 19th century, and the dynamic
> > carried over well into the 20th.
>
> The so-called "wog bashing" by European powers and the U.S. is hardly
> comparable to what happened in the 20th Century.
>
> > Of course Balts bitch about having been
> > the objects of Russian imperial designs, but those writing from the US,
> > Canada, and Australia should not forget that they are writing from
> > countries which, a mere two generations before the Baltic countries were
> > subverted, were engaged in precisely the same activity, managing to do the
> > job much more competently than the Russians. The number of people killed
> > is not as important as the reason for their death: being in the way of an
> > imperialistic power that had no moral scruples about utilizing large-scale
> > ethnic cleansing to clear _Lebensraum_ for themselves.
>
> This is leftist American history. The number of people killed and what
> the Americans did after subjugating these
> backward peoples is very, very important indeed. Your use of the term,
> ethnic cleansing, is very casual, and imprecise.
I'm sorry, Mike, but Indian Removal, which meant the wholesale destruction
of civilizations which, however technologically 'backwards' nevertheless
should have had the right to exist, was an instantiation of ethnic
cleansing pure and simple.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
Mike Davidchik
> I'm not here to be argumentative, but I would like to suggest that the
> entire process of pushing the frontier westward, coupled with the doctrine
> of Manifest Destiny, were about as imperialist as you can get.
Imperialism was not only directed against the primitive indigneous peoples. It
was directed against other Imperialists.
If the U.S. did not have Manifest Destiny, these areas would have gone to somebody
else...probably worse. I am sorry, but there is something to Social Darwinism,
although morally repugnant.
>
>
> > Conquering the North American aborigines is hardly the same as taking
> over Eastern Europe.
>
> Why? In both cases people were displaced from their homes and traditional
> territories. In the case of Russia, it was more a continuation of a macho
> tradition of testing the degree to which you or your neighbor could get in
> each others nerves; in the case of the Americas, Africa, and Australia it
> was the case of people actually sailing halfway around the world
> specifically for the purpose of plunder, rape, and dispossession.
I will agree that in the 16th to 19th Centuries, White Europeans believed it was
their duty to civilize the world. But, it was a mixed bag of good and bad. I
think that European countries vying for power was not always a simple case of
imperialism or colonialism. These guys had been killing each other for booty for
centuries. Fighting over territory is not always imperialism/colonialism.
>
>
>
> From a purely moral standard it seems to me that what the Europeans did to
> technically less advanced non-Europeans was much worse. When Teutonic
> Knights and Balts fought over territory there was a chance of the one who
> lost a specific round prevailing next time around. They were, after all,
> neighbors, and tended to learn from one another when not engaged in mortal
> battle. When European invaders entered the New World they devoted
> everything they had to killing and plunder. The indigenes never had a
> chance.
In the 19th Century, there were a lot of Americans who favored a humane treatment
of the Indians. But, they too realized that the status quo was impossible.
> Indian Removal, a particularly vile form of ethnic cleansing ...
> Americans would rather not think about, started during the 1830s.
> Pushing Indians out of their native lands might not have been moral by modern
> standards.. But, it was not necessarily a form of ethnic cleansing. If so, why
> bother setting up missions, reservations, schools, etc. You have to accept that
> some aspects of the North American Indian cultures also doomed them.
> Why? The American Indians had their own homes and their own cultures, some
> of them, like that of the Navahos, quite developed.
There are more Navajos today and they are living better than they did a hundred
years ago.
> however, is not the issue. The issue os one of morality: does a power that
> considers its culture to be more developed have the _moral_ right to cross
> borders - or oceans - and raid, rape, and pillage less developed cultures?
You talk in terms of a "right." There was no such concept at the time.
>
> What Russians did to Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Chechens, Poles,
> Finns, and Evenkis is every bit as morally reprehensible as what Israelis
> are doing to Palestinians or what American colonizers did to Apaches,
> Blackfoots, Chocktows, or Dakotas.
It is such today. But, you are using present day morality to view historic
events. Traditionally, "rights" are given to those who
support the established order.
>
>
> > Small un-related primitive bands of Iron Age
> > aborgines could not have possibly survived intact under any circumstances.
> > It is actually a great aspect of American imperialism that these cultural
> > groups are stronger today. There was never anything like an Indian
> > nation-state or empire, with any common or written language, towns,
> > technology, etc.
>
> Towns and technology they had, and the southwest part of what is now the
> United States was certainly withn the sphere of influence of the Aztec
> empire.
The entire Aztec Empire in Mexico was conquered by less than 500 Spanish soldiers.
The Inca Empire didn't even take that many. The Spaniards were in the U.S.
Southwest changing these tribes long before the U.S. existed. All of the more
advanced Indian tribes were on the decline for two or three centuries.
Agricultural practices and changes in the weather probably had a lot to do with
it.
>
> > You try to create the myth that there was something like an Indian country or
> > countries. There never was. The North American aborginals were being
> > subjugated by the Spaniards, French, British, etc., long before the U.S. got
> > into the picture. When one society is three or four centuries ahead of
> > another, what is bound to happen? The U.S. took Texas and California away
> > from the Mexicans, not the Indians. They took Guam, Puerto Rico, and
> > Philippines away from the Spaniards, not the locals.
>
> The point is that they took them away. The same argument could be made that
> Russia took Latvia and Estonia from Sweden, not from the locals.
The Plains and Southwest Indian tribes were usually nomadic.
> >
> > I would hesitate to call the U.S. an imperialist empire. It might have
> > participated in imperialism and colonialism in the 19th and early 20th
> > Centuries to keep the Europeans at bay. The principles of American democracy
> > keep the states together.
>
> I have never claimed that American democracy did not have its good sides.
> My only point is that the Balts, Chechens, and other assorted peoples that
> can barely muster up two or three million souls have been pocket change to
> larger and more aggressive countries with imperialistic predations. Level
> of technological or race does not matter; the doctrine that the predator is
> demographically larger by an order of magnitude does.
The bigger guy does NOT always win. We whipped the Brits.
>
>
> > > Calling attention to
> > > the bloody predations which have resulted in palces as diverse as Oregon,
> > > Washington, Texas, California, Colorodo, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and
> > > Idaho becoming English-speaking and all-American during the past two
> > > hundred years is enough to get one branded as "pro-Soviet" - or worse.
> >
> > This is revisionist and leftist American history. The isolated massacres of
> > Indians by the U.S. Army can hardly be compared with anything that the
> > European powers did.
> >
>
> I am sorry but I have to emphatically diagree. Invading homes and
> tradtional territories, and instituting reigns of terror and ethnic
> cleansing is criminal behavior.
It is too simple to lump all the history of imperialism/colonialism together and
call it ethnic cleansing and criminal behavior.
> It doesn't matter if your victims are
> neighbors that (vaguely) look like you and are on approximately the same
> level of technological or cultural development or not. As we have seen,
> this much lauded 'technological development' often means how many functions
> your mobile phone has, how many varieties of junk food is available at your
> local outlet, or how many ways you have mastered to commit mass murder.
I agree with you on the mixed blessings of modern technological and cultural
development. But, the basic issues here are not of race, ethnicity, nationalism,
etc. Don't presume that globalization is a basic tenet of the American culture.
> I'm sorry, Mike, but Indian Removal, which meant the wholesale destruction
> of civilizations which, however technologically 'backwards' nevertheless
> should have had the right to exist, was an instantiation of ethnic
> cleansing pure and simple.
These civilizations (actually, cultures) still exist. Indian cultural stuff is
no longer a cottage industry in the U.S. It is a major movement. Persons run
around cocktail parties bragging about how much Indian blood they might have. It
is an in-thing to be sympatico with the plight of the Indians and to say that it
was terrible what was done. But, nothing will be changed back, right?
Mike
>