Alt Left: Fate Versus Necessity or Free Will Versus Determinism: Why Moby-Dick Is One of the Greatest Books of the Last 200 Years

The three greatest novels in the English language in the last 170 years are the following:

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Ulysses, by James Joyce. Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon.

I’ve read the first and the last and only read a tiny bit of the second. However, I have read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man twice, and I’ve also read Dubliners, his collection of short stories. Both are highly recommended. I’ve dipped into Finnegans Wake, but it makes no sense to me, sorry. Nevertheless a copy sits on my shelf for the last 40 years, mocking me for being too stupid to understand it.

Of the first, I have also read Bartleby the Scrivener, a novella. Highly recommended.

Of the third author, I have also read three of his other novels V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Vineland. I’ve also read a collection of short stories called Slow Learner, a nonfiction piece called A Journey into the Mind of Watts, and a couple of book reviews.

If you have read anything by any of these three authors or have anything to say about any of them, feel free to let us know in the comments.

If you want to know why Moby Dick makes the list, simply consider this passage below, which also has echoes in much of Pynchon’s writing. It’s pretty incredible that he was writing like this in 1851. I can now understand much more of what he was getting at than when I first read this. As a hint, replace “necessity,” the 19th Century use of which correlates to our determinism.

I suppose Wikipedia should explain it pretty well, but fate, mixed with a notion of genetics, biology, universal culture, the constancy and cycles of history, human nature itself, and Natural Law, or the laws of God on this planet, all play a role. Positioned against determinism is the wild card of free will, about which endless discussions flow, mostly about just how much of it we have anyway.

The nature/nurture debate comes in here too, but nature can be as determined as biology, though I object to the strong determinist theory about life events.

All sorts of different events effect all sorts of different people in all sorts of different ways, often having to do with your culture. For instance, we now have behaviors which for 9

Now, this behavior, which never damaged a single human ever, is seen to be, in a deterministic sense, completely damaging in the same way to all who undergo it, and furthermore, the damage is permanent and lifelong. This behavior that was considered harmless when I was growing up 40 years ago is now thought to cause horrendous damage. Whole industries are set up to deal with the fake damage caused by this harmless behavior.

Humans are not real complex.

You tell people an experience is completely normal, and most will think of it as such, even if it is traumatizing.

You take the same behavior and tell the same people that is now terribly damaging for the rest of your life, and you now produce millions of people with fake damage from a harmless behavior.

Now this damage is quite real, but we must note that the person only got damaged because you told them it was damaging! The person experienced the behavior, thought little of it, the behavior was uncovered, everyone around the person screamed about what a terrible and traumatic crime had been done to them that would cause them horrible damage, and the person simply decided of their own free will to create damage in themselves. But even this is somewhat determined because it’s determined by society, as the free will with which they created their own damage was in a sense determined by society.

True free will is a wild card and does not exit. It says I can walk out into the world and do anything I am capable of and have people react the way I want them to. That won’t happen now, and it never would have in the past. Further, many of the things I think I should be good at, I’m not good at anymore, probably because my behavior has become determined as a result of whatever biology and experience has done to my brain, which has created a rather limiting brain that is pretty limited in the behaviors it can pull off and get away with. I’m hamstrong by genes and biology. I don’t have free will at all. I can’t do what I want.

Anyway, this is something like what Melville was getting at here, a long 170 years ago, and it shows why his book makes my best three list for the last 200 years:

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat.

As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.

There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.

Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance – aye, chance, free will, and necessity – no wise incompatible – all interweavingly working together.

The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course – its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries.

To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvelous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1951)

The Destruction of the Langues d’Oil Was a Deliberate Project

I got this from a paper on Academia. We see many typical arguments here against the use of dialects and sub-languages of the main prescriptive official language – that speaking them indicates that one is rural, uneducated, backwards, stupid, and not modern, cool, hip, urban, intelligent, and educated. Hence this process of wanting to dissociate with the old backwards ways and associate with the new modern ways continues today.

I was involved for a bit with a German woman in the US. She spoken Hessian, which is actually a separate language under the rubric of High German or Standard German. It is spoken in the Hesse, a wine-growing region in the central-west. She still spoke Hessian, but she told me it was not popular for the reasons above – it meant you were backwards, stupid and uneducated.

She also said something interesting about mutual intelligibility.

We see also the unifying effect of the Jacobin French Revolution, one of the most progressive revolutions the world had seen up until that time. In fact the American and French revolutions were modeled on each other. This was a progressive, modernizing revolution the likes of which had never been seen before. Egalite, liberte, and fraternite – Equality, freedom, and fraternity. It was also quite anti-religious, giving rise to something called laicism or extreme secularism in France.

The idea was to unify all Frenchmen under a single language. The local patois in addition to the other languages non-related to French such as Flemish, Basque, Catalan, the various Occitan and Arpetin languages, Breton, Alsatian, Moselle Franconian, etc. were seen as impeding in particular the fraternite or assimilitory aspects of the Revolution. They also kept people backwards, stupid and perhaps even promoted inequality and lack of freedom, both of which were associated with the ancien regime.

We also see how the local patois were tied into the land, the landscape, the stars, the times of day, the seasons, the foods, the plants and animals, the very lifeblood of the people. To uproot the patois would be to destroy people’s intimate connection with all of these things.

As all of these earthly connections were considered the realm of savagery – after all, the modern man was to liberate himself from the natural world and rule over or move beyond it – the civilization versus savagery motif also came into play. As you can see, lack of patois was seen as due to healthier lives, better food and water, more human interaction, and more money and higher level of civilization. Patois was associated with poor food and water, even poor weather, lack of sociability, poverty, and lack of integration into the monied economy.

As you can see, the development of capitalism in France also played a role here. The rural areas were to be forced into the capitalist mode whether they wanted to or not.

In epistemological terms the aim of Modernity is unequivocally to do away with the Old World, and the French Revolution provided precisely that opportunity. In order to align nature with productive forces, existing environmental regulations had to be done away with at the end of the 18th century (Chappey & Vincent, 2019, p. 109).

Not coincidentally it was also at that same period, from 1790 on, that the Revolutionary governments of France sought to survey the use of ‘patois’ in order to uproot them and replace them with the language of Reason (Certeau, Julia, & Revel, 1975) or at least a revolutionary version of it (Steuckardt, 2011). In line with the Ideologues’ project, this linguistic project was devised to gain knowledge and use this knowledge to transform (and improve) living conditions in the country.

So next, language.

Nowhere is the pre-modern vernacular connection between language and what we now call ‘nature’ better expressed than in a response given to Grégoire’s 1790 survey on patois by the Société des Amis de la Constitutions of Perpignan, in the Catalan-speaking part of France. Asked about how to eradicate the local patois, they retorted:

To destroy it, one would have to destroy the sun, the freshness of the nights, the kind of foods, the quality of waters, man in its entirety. (Certeau et al., 1975, p. 182).

Conversely, in a 1776 account of life in Burgundy, Rétif de la Bretonne accounted for the lack of patois in the village of Nitry in contrast with surrounding areas by resorting to natural explanations: purer air, better grains producing better bread, dairy products, superior eggs, and animal flesh. All those elements were then correlated with the practice of commerce, which brought inhabitants in contact with other localities and generated the need to speak politely (Certeau et al., 1975, pp. 277–278).

In the next village of Saci [where patois was apparently still spoken] one mile away, however, stagnant waters caused the air to be “devouring,” and the local inhabitants to be “heavy, ruminative, and taciturn” (ibid. 278).

In France, the patois are forms of non-language that index a state of wilderness and superstition and point to the savage (Certeau et al., 1975, Chapter 8) – forms of knowledge and practices which were to be uprooted pointing to an absence of a rational outlook on the world and a lack of industriousness (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2016) and lust for more money over time.

In that particular view, the patois are immediately transparent forms of language: they are isomorphous with nature and with emotions. Along with the ways of life of their speakers and mores, they are susceptible to description in the natural science sense of the term: mere mechanical facts to be described (Certeau et al., 1975, p. 154). In this representation, mores are opposed to civilization (ibid. 155), rurality to urban life, and patois to language; access to language is thus tantamount to access to civilization.

The German “Dialects” or Sublanguages of German: Reports of Their Death Are Premature

I was involved with a German woman a while back who came from a part of Germany called Hesse. I asked about Palatinian, the language directly to the south spoken in and around Frankfurt in the Rhine River Valley. I asked if she could understand them, and she said,

If they don’t want you to understand them, you won’t understand them!

This shows how speakers of closely related dialects and languages can adjust their speech to become more or less intelligible to each other based on whether they wish to be either understood or not understood.

Many people in Germany say there are no more dialects or sublanguages and that everyone can understand everyone. I beg to disagree. For instance, an informant from a village 10 miles north of Frankfurt said that if he spoke the dialect of his village (technically simply a dialect of the Palatine language Frankfurtisch spoken in Frankfurt) in the city of Frankfurt, he will not be understood! In order to be fully understood, he would either have to speak Frankfurtisch Proper, the language of the city, or Hochdeutsch, the official language of the country.

If even dialects within “dialects of German” 10 miles away from each other can’t understand each other, I really doubt that the dialect situation in Germany is dead and they can all understand each other!

Dutch Onomatopoeic Animal Words

James Schipper: Here are some Dutch verbs that refer to the noises that animals make. Let’s see how many you can guess.

1 –  balken
2 –  hinniken
3 –  loeien (oe is pronounced oo)
4 –  brullen
5 –  knorren
6 –  piepen
7 –  blaten
8 –  blaffen
9 –  kakelen
10 – krijsen
11 – grommen
12 – zoemen
13 – koeren
14 – mekkeren
15 – kraaien
16 – keffen
17 – janken
18 – huilen
19 – klokken
20 – snateren

It’s pretty obvious that you remove -en for “sound an animal makes” when you are trying to take apart the word. Look at the part of the word to the left of -en.

I’m hardly getting any.

1. Dog 6. Chicken 7. Sheep

That’s it. That’s all I get.

Alt Left: Slang Words for Gay and Unmasculine Men

Pejorative Slang Words for Homosexual Men

Faggots are “sticks.” Like bundles of sticks as in the fasces bundles that the Romans had. From faggots meaning sticks to fag meaning a “stick” = “cigarette” because a cigarette is shaped like a stick is a logical semantic progression.

I don’t know how faggot and fag for cigarette went to male homosexual though. I used to have a book called The Dictionary of American Slang that might answer that question.

Queer went to male homosexual because this behavior was seen as odd or twisted.

Bent is a British term for male homosexual along the same lines – that their behavior was “twisted” or “bent” away from the norm.

Fruit went to male homosexual because it has feminine connotations as in fruity.

Homo is an obvious shortening of the word homosexual.

Poof comes from poofter, a British term for a male homosexual. I am not sure what it means although the word itself sounds feminine.

Slang Words for Unmasculine Heterosexual Men

Wuss, pussy, sissy, mangina, soyboy, soy (adjective), girlyman, girl, woe-man, cuck, wimp, etc. all imply an unmasculine man but generally not a homosexual per se. The general connotation is an unmasculine heterosexual man. Those words are used by masculine straight men towards other men they wish to shame and call unmasculine for whatever reasons. It’s generally a way of policing masculinity, which is something I don’t necessarily object to although I don’t exactly engage in it myself because I don’t care if men are unmasculine as long as they leave the rest of us men alone.

Pussy is a word for female genitalia that got generalized into a slur against men who act like women. By associating him with female genitalia, you are calling him a woman.

Sissy may have derived from the word sister. Implies a man who acts like a woman, like your sister.

Mangina is a play on the word vagina, apparently implying a man with a vagina.

Soyboy and soy are references to the estrogenic qualities in soybeans, although it’s uncertain whether soybeans have the reported feminizing effect on men that they are rumored to have. Perhaps they do. So they’re saying he’s a man with too much estrogen who’s been rendered unmasculine in this way, in other words, a feminized man.

Girlyman is a combination of the words girly and man. Girly implies acting like a girl or a woman. The implication is a man who is acting like a woman.

Woe-man takes the word man and adds a “woe” onto it, turning the word man into the word woman. It’s saying he’s not a man. He’s really a woman.

Wimp is a word of unknown provenance. There was a man named “Wimpy” in the old Popeye cartoons, but I believe he was a big, strong guy. Perhaps it was meant to be ironic. The word sounds like the word limp, implying a limp penis or a man who is impotent and unable to have sex with a woman. Perhaps it is limp with a w replacing the l, the w as a stand-in for the word woman.

Cuck is from cuckold, a man whose wife is cheating on him with another man. In Shakespeare’s times, it was said that a man like this had “horns,” and a popular insult was to put a pair of horns by putting the index and middle fingers up over the man’s back of a man’s head when he was not looking. Apparently this is a reference to being a goat, and a goat somehow meant a man who is getting cuckolded. There are jokes in Shakespeare about this referring to men who “have horns.” Perhaps the word horny meaning sexually aroused also somehow derived from this word. It was a severe insult and boiled down to fighting or even killing words.

This is reflected in the supreme insult cabron, a Spanish word meaning a male goat from cabra = goat. It is an extreme insult to call a man a cabron, fighting or even killing words. It is also used by Spanish speaking women to mean bastard, sonofabitch, scumbag, asshole, lowlife, etc. generally referring to a masculine man who doesn’t treat women real well and is a bastard or is mean to women.

I remember a Spanish speaking woman once got furious at me after we had sex. Apparently we had engaged in a sex act that she didn’t want to engage in, and she was furious about that. No, I didn’t ask her if she wanted to do it. I just did it LOL. She acted like she wanted to hit me, and it seemed she was holding everything back from punching me. She was calling me “Cabron!” and she almost spit out the word when she said it.

I told my Spanish speaking friend at the local store that I was a good person, but I wasn’t a good person when it came to women because I didn’t treat them real well. I really do love women more than anything else in the whole world, and then on the other hand, I admit don’t treat them very well. He smiled, laughed, and shrugged his shoulders, acting like this was just fine. He referred to this behavior as being a “cabron” = a “bastard to women.” So it has that connotation too, the opposite, instead of a weak man who is cuckolded by his woman with stronger men, the meaning also is a masculine man who is “a bastard to women.”

I don’t like to attack men for being unmasculine because I’ve experienced quite a bit of abuse along those lines myself, and plus I don’t really care if men are masculine or not. That’s their business. Generally speaking it’s better to be masculine because women absolutely demand it (they are far worse about it than men), and you are hurting yourself by not manning up, but it’s not really my problem. Besides there are quite a few unmasculine men out there and perhaps for many of them it’s normal, natural behavior. I’m going to join in with the bullies and beat them for not manning up. They’re going to get pummeled their whole lives by women over this anyway. Why add insult to injury for the poor guys.

I only use those words towards straight men who are the enemies of the men who are working with the feminists to try to fire us from our jobs, destroy our careers and throw us in jail or prison for the crime of trying to get laid or God forbid actually getting laid. No real man tries to stop another man from getting laid. That’s so cucked and gay.

Real men don’t cockblock other men and white knight for women. That girlyman behavior. What are you, a girl? That’s the main question here. The feminists never would have gotten away for their all out War on Straight Men if it wasn’t for so many straight male sissies who helped them. Just pathetic the way so many “men” have sold out their brothers and gone over to the side of the women. In the War of the Sexes, you’re generally supposed to support your own gender, especially where it is being wronged. You don’t go over to the enemy.

Repost: Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

On the Phrase “Jerry Rigging” (And a More Racist Equivalent Phrase)

Polar Bear: There’s such a thing as Black stability. I went to college with a postal worker and had multiple black coworkers that remind me of the same black guy. Simple men that were easy to get along with.

More like Black practicality to me  rather than stability. But practicality itself is rather stabilizing, no? Black people are pragmatic. They have common sense. That’s one thing I really like about Black people.

You know that phrase called jerry-rigging? Well, another name for that is nigger-rigging. I know, racist. But people around me (My peers, not my parents and their friends – are you kidding?!) have been using that word my whole life in reference to their own actions, so I’m not even sure if it’s an insult.

I mean is it really a racist insult? A White person says he nigger-rigged something. Ok? That means…what? It means he’s acting like a nigger, right? That’s why I’m not even sure it’s all that racist. It’s sort of Whites calling themselves niggers, which doesn’t seem all that racist.

Incidentally, we Whites do call ourselves and each other niggers. It’s a lot more acceptable than calling Black people that word. I just called my friend a nigger or called myself a nigger? How is that racist? I mean it’s an insult when you use it against a Black…when you use it against a White, what does it even mean?

It’s like straight guys calling  each other fags, which is a lot more common nowadays than calling gay men that. How is that hatred of gays? I just called my friend a fag as a joke. That means I hate gay guys? Come  on.

Anyway, back to the subject.

Even people who almost never called Black people niggers would use that phrase nigger-rigging.

“How did you fix it?”

“Oh, I just kinda nigger-rigged it. It’s good for now at least anyway.”

Usually chuckles follow because that word is always sort of funny for some reason.

To nigger-rig or to jerry-rig (let’s switch to jerry-rigging – enough with uncomfortable words) something means a cheap, adaptive, half-assed yet workable and ultimately ingenious sort of a half-fix that is “good for now” but is not a long-term solution for the problem. It’s just a cheap, temporary fix.

It’s not a half-assed fix because you are lazy. It’s half-assed because you don’t have the materials on hand to fix it properly. But it’s a temporary fix that “works for now.” There is also a hint of ingenuity, inventiveness, cleverness, and adaptability in it. Which is why, despite the racism, the phrase is ultimately a compliment to Blacks.

Black people perhaps historically being often short on the money and materials needed to do a proper fix on something would then master the art of jerry-rigging (hence the version with the slur) not out of laziness but out of the necessity of the moment. Necessity being the mother of invention after all. Why do it? Because you don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, that’s why.

What I like about the idea of the association of Blacks with jerry-rigging is that it suggests that Blacks are inventive, clever, adaptive, and ingenious in a sense (in a practical, not world-class inventor) way. And if you know Black people well, you know that is indeed a characteristic of them. Jerry-rigging isn’t good for long-term fixes. What’s it good for? Short-term fixes which are needed for…what? How about survival? Black people know how to survive. I’ll give them that.

How the Word Berserk Came to Be

The word berserk comes from two Danish brothers named Berserk who lived on an island off the coast of Denmark back in the ~1600’s or maybe even later. They lived there for some time, murdering everyone who visited the island in the most horrible ways and maybe even eating them to boot. This went on for a while, and at some point, a group of people undertook an expedition to the island and killed the brothers.

The brothers’ name became a word, Berserker, in the Danish language for anyone or anything that seemed out of control and maniacal.  At some point, it got borrowed into English as berserk with the same meaning.

The Languages of Sweden

Ethnic nationalists in Sweden got several full-fledged language removed from the Swedish section of Ethnologue by petitioning the ISO committee at SIL, the organization that gives out new language codes. I can’t believe they fell for this, but SIL is not really that smart when it comes to individual languages and they are easily swayed by slick liars.

In Sweden for instance, there are at least six different languages and probably more.

Scanian or Skåne in Southeast Sweden is a separate language – it’s actually the same language as Bornholmian in Northeast Denmark which is also a separate language. Swedes have told me that the harder forms of Scanian are not fully intelligible with Swedish.

Jämtish in Jämtland in Southwest Sweden is a separate language – actually the same language as Trøndersk in Southeast Norway. Jamtish lacks full intelligibility with Swedish. It’s closer to Norwegian, but the Norwegian lect with which it is a part is not comprehensible at all to Norwegians.

Gutnish on the isle of Gotland is a completely separate language – closer to Old Norse and modern Icelandic than to Swedish. One Swedish man said he lived on Gotland, and after eight years, he still couldn’t understand the old farmers.

Dalecarlian in Dalarna in the west is surely several different languages – Elfdalian in Älvdalen being the best known, and even Swedish linguists confess that this is a separate language. Even Wikipedia admits that a lot of the Dalecarlian dialects are not intelligible with Swedish.

The Swedes in Finland speak a completely different language called Österbotten that is full of Finnish borrowings. I have heard that Swedes cannot understand this language well.

So “Swedish” then is at least six separate languages and probably more as a number of the Dalecarlian dialects can’t even understand each other.

  • Swedish Proper
  • Scanian (closer to Danish)
  • Jamtish (closer to Norwegian)
  • Dalecarlian (same as Jamtish)
  • Gutnish (ancient, closer to Icelandic)
  • Österbotten or Finnish Swedish

However, the Swedish government, probably worried about separatism, refuses to go along with this and insists that all of these are dialects of Swedish. To be fair, there is indeed a separatist movement in Scania, but I’m not sure how popular it is.

Which Version Is Correct: SJWs or SJW’s

Jason: In a discussion about SJWs:

SHI: On Queera and a few other sites, they will often write that word as SJW’s. Isn’t that an object of preposition? Looks like SJW-era grammar rules to me, since I’m seeing it used so frequently. Also on Reddit.

Can’t we think up some faggy insulting name for Reddit and Redditors? I’m really want to troll those fucks so hard.

It is not an object of a proposition. These are two different ways of pluralizing nouns in all caps. No one understands how to do this and many morons are over-correcting are putting apostrophe’s on non-proper lower case nouns and obviously take no apostrophes: “melon’s for sale.”

What can I say? Your average 100 IQ person is just not that smart. As George Carlin said, “Think of how stupid the average person is. That person has an IQ of 100. Now imagine that half the population is even dumber than that!”

With all upper case nouns, there are two ways of pluralizing them, without an apostrophe and with one: SJWs or SJW’s.

You can do either with all pluralized nouns written in all upper case. Idiot Internet loudmouths like to scream that the version with the apostrophe (SJW’s) is wrong, and the new trend does seem to be without the apostrophe (SJWs). They’re wrong. I believe the apostrophe version is older and was first and the non-apostrophe version is newer and favored, but the older version with the apostrophe is still correct.

Of course, as an old-fashioned, increasingly socially conservative stick in the mud, near-old fogey and semi-Luddite, I continue to defiantly use the old method with the apostrophe. And like a typical old fashioned conservative jerk, I hate the new version, think it’s sloppy, and regard people who use it as idiots.

Of course, I’m also sort of an asshole, so I am of course deliberately using the old version to the troll the whole damn world, piss off Normies and loudmouths, and watch them squirm in self-righteous retarded ignorance while they scream that right is wrong, and I’m a dumbfuck for believing this, except of course right isn’t wrong. I mean a 6 year old could tell you that. Just shows you 6 year olds know a lot more than a lot of self-styled ivory tower eggheads.

A Bit on the Celtic Languages: Welsh, Cornish, and Manx

@SHI comments on this post.

SHI: A Welshman fluent in his native tongue must be the saddest person around.

Why would a Welshman be sad? 2

SHI: I believe the last native Cornish speaker died sometime in the 19rh century.

Cornish supposedly died out in the late 1700’s. The last speaker was said to be a woman,  a  fishmonger or seller of fish. But incredibly enough, it actually looks like it lingered on all the way into the early 20th Century or maybe later. A recent article I read said that actually Cornish never really died and has always been with us.

SHI: Manx must be doing well though. A separate island breeds isolation and preservation.

Manx died out in 1974, but it’s been revived lately too with 2,500 speakers. Some speakers are even raising their kids in Manx! There are now ~35 native speakers who grew up speaking Manx!

There is a Manx-native school too. The last speaker was Ed Mandrell, a fisherman who died in 1974. He was the last native speaker of Manx, not the last speaker of Manx. At the time that Mandrel died, there were ~300 second language speakers who could speak it more or less fluently but were not native speakers. So Manx actually never even went away! That second language speakers learned it as students.

Mandrell speaking in 1964. He’s talking to Brian Stowell, who learned Manx when he was older. However, Stowell is still alive and he is one of the best modern Manx speakers out there, with a large vocabulary.

That English accent of Mandrell’s is a kicker. It sounds very much like Scots, the English-like language still spoken in parts of Scotland. It’s actually not English at all. It’s a separate language and English and Scots have ~4

There are speakers in the comments saying that they speak Irish, and they can understand a lot of his Manx. Manx was created after all by a movement of Irish speakers to the Isle of Man. One commenter says it sounds a lot like Ulster Irish, his dialect of Irish.

Test: Anthony Burgess List of the 99 Greatest Modern Novels 1940-1983

Anthony Burgess’ list of the best novels in the English language from 1940-1983.

Burgess is British, so there is a bias here in favor of British novelists and against Irish, Canadian, Australian, and to a lesser extent, American novelists. I am not as up on British novelists as I am on American novelists, so this is probably part of the problem here in a lot of these books I am not familiar with.

The first yes/no statement is whether I have heard of the book. The second yes/no statement is whether I have read the book.

This is how I did. See how you can do. You don’t have to tally them all up like I did here. Feel free to discuss any of the listed books or authors below if you are familiar with them or heave read them.

1940 Party Going, Henry Green YES NO After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley YES NO Finnegans Wake, James Joyce YES NO (OWN, PART) At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien YES NO

1941 The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene YES NO For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway YES YES (FORMER OWN) Strangers and Brothers (to 1970), C. P. Snow NO NO The Aerodrome, Rex Warner YES NO

1944 The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary YES NO The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham YES NO

1945 Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh YES NO

1946 Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake YES NO

1947 The Victim, Saul Bellow YES NO Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry YES NO

1948 The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene YES NO The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer YES NO No Highway, Nevil Shute YES NO

1949 The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen YES NO Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley YES NO Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell YES YES (FORMER OWN) The Body, William Sansom NO NO

1950 Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper NO NO The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg YES NO (OWN)

1951 A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975), Anthony Powell YES NO The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger YES YES (FORMER OWN) A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969), Henry Williamson NO NO The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk YES NO

1952 Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison YES NO The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway YES YES (FORMER OWN) Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor YES NO Sword of Honor (to 1961), Evelyn Waugh NO NO

1953 The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler YES YES (FORMER OWN) The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy YES NO

1954 Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis YES YES (FORMER OWN)

1957 Room at the Top, John Braine NO NO The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960), Lawrence Durrell YES NO The London Novels (to 1960), Colin MacInnes NO NO The Assistant, Bernard Malamud YES NO

1958 The Bell,, Iris Murdoch YES NO Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Alan Sillitoe NO NO The Once and Future King, T. H. White YES (OWN, PART)

1959 The Mansion, William Faulkner YES NO Goldfinger, Ian Fleming YES NO

1960 Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley NO NO The Balkan Trilogy (to 1965), Olivia Manning YES NO

1961 The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett NO NO Catch-22 Joseph Heller, YES YES (FORMER OWN) The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes NO NO Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White NO NO The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson NO NO

1962 Another Country, James Baldwin YES NO An Error of Judgement, Pamela Hansford Johnson NO NO Island, Aldous Huxley YES NO The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing YES YES (FORMER OWN) Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov YES NO

1963 The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark YES NO

1964 The Spire, William Golding YES NO Heartland, Wilson Harris NO NO A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood YES NO The Defense, Vladimir Nabokov YES NO Late Call, Angus Wilson NO NO

1965 The Lockwood Concern, John O’Hara NO NO Cocksure, Mordecai Richler NO NO The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark YES NO

1966 A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe YES NO The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis YES NO Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth YES NO The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer NO NO The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy NO NO

1967 The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan YES NO

1968 The Image Men, J. B. Priestley NO NO Pavane, Keith Roberts NO NO

1969 The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles YES NO Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth YES YES (FORMER OWN)

1970 Bomber, Len Deighton YES NO

1973 Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn NO NO Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon YES YES (OWN)

1975 Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow YES YES (FORMER OWN) The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury NO NO

1976 The Doctor’s Wife, Brian Moore NO NO Falstaff, Robert Nye NO NO

1977 How To Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong YES NO Farewell Companions, James Plunkett NO NO Staying On, Paul Scott NO NO

1978 The Coup, John Updike YES NO

1979 The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard NO NO Dubin’s Lives, Bernard Malamud YES NO A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul YES NO Sophie’s Choice, William Styron YES NO

1980 Life in the West, Brian Aldiss NO NO Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban YES NO How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge NO NO A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole YES YES (FORMER OWN)

1981 Lanark, Alasdair Gray YES NO Darconville’s Cat, Alexander Theroux YES NO The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux YES NO (MOVIE) Creation, Gore Vidal NO NO

1982 The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies YES NO

1983 Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer YES NO

I am familiar with 66 out of the 99 books or 2/3 of them. It doesn’t seem real great, but I bet if you asked 100 people, my score would be better than almost all of them.

So I’m not familiar with 1/3 of the best books from 1935-1985, which is a bit pathetic. But if you asked 100 people again, my score is probably better than almost all of them.

I have read 12 out of the 99 books or 1

But I also read 25 novels, partly read four others and 10 cases of short story collections and nonfiction written by the authors above that did not make the list. So I read 39 books that did not make the list by the authors above.

In quite a few cases, I am familiar with the author but not his books or at least not that particular book. There seem to be 89 authors listed above of those 99 books. The numbers don’t line up because some writers have more than one work up there. I have heard of 74 of the top 89 novelists of 1940-1983, or 8

For some of these authors, I have read some of their works but not others.

William Faulkner Light in August

Aldous Huxley Brave New World The Doors of Perception

James Joyce short stuff Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man Ulysses (few pages)

Ernest Hemingway short stuff The Sun Also Rises Across the River and into the Trees

George Orwell short stuff

J. D. Salinger Nine Stories Franny and Zooey Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

Flannery O’Connor short stuff

Evelyn Waugh The Loved One

Kingsley Amis Jake’s Thing

Ian Fleming You Only Live Twice (few pages)

Joseph Heller Something Happened

James Baldwin short stuff

William Golding Lord of the Flies

Vladimir Nabokov short stuff Lolita Bend Sinister

Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (few pages)

John Barth short stuff The Sot-Weed Factor

Thomas Pynchon short stuff V. The Crying of Lot 49 Slow Learner Vineland

Brian Moore The Green Berets

Erica Jong Fear of Flying

John Updike short stuff Hugging the Shore To the End of Time (50 pages)

Norman Mailer short stuff Cities of the Night An American Dream

Alt Left: The Meaning of the Word “Uppity”

Alpha: “Uppity” is Jason’s word, but I take it to mean arrogant or self-important. Trump does think he’s better than other people. He bragged about his behavior toward women, saying that when you’re a star “they let you do it.” He declared, wrt America’s problems, “only I can fix it.”

He’s told us that if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue he wouldn’t lose any votes. He has declared that “Article II” of the Constitution allows him to do anything he wants. He refers to himself as “your favorite President.”

You say that’s all narcissism, not uppityness. Doesn’t matter to me one way or another.

Yes, that is narcissism, not uppityness. Another word for narcissist is blowhard, jerk, overbearing, douchebag, braggart, full of himself, arrogant, ass, etc.

If uppity means narcissism then sure Trump is uppity. I just think it means something other than that. It implies that someone doesn’t know his place – that someone of relatively low status is trying to pretend that he has higher status and that this is therefore insulting to the persons of higher status he is interacting with.

You know the history of word – an uppity nigger who doesn’t know his place might be Black person standing up to White person about some sort of injustice the White are perpetrating on the Black.

Or a woman who doesn’t know her place in the patriarchy and is getting out of line, talking back to male superiors.

The Black and the woman both need to be put back in their places by the Whites and the men.

In these cases, the uppity person is really a hero going up against oppressors who think they are superior.

The word is ugly and I don’t think we should use it. It has an ugly anti-Black racist history, and we should just junk it except to refer to the old use of it.

I would use uppity to describe women who viciously attack male strangers for no good reason. Or kids who openly and outrageously defy adults. Neither is acceptable to me.

A male stranger can attack me viciously. Fine, now it’s mano a mano, man to man.

If a female stranger attacks me, it’s infuriating. The first thought in my mind is that I want to kill her. I’m not going to do it of course because I have controls, but that’s the feeling. It’s unfair for female strangers to attack us men. I can fight back against a man, but I’m not allowed to fight back against a woman, or a kid for that matter. A kid doing the same is equally outrageous. I probably wouldn’t want to kill the kid but maybe I might want to slap him upside the head.

I still wouldn’t use the word in either case though except sarcastically. That’s due to its racist pedigree. The word’s contaminated and it’s hardly good for anything anymore.

Just my two pfennig.

The Linguistic Crack-up of America and France: Coming Soon

A great comment on the coming linguistic breakup of the USA and France. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it’s fascinating nevertheless.

Francis Meville: English is a genocidal language, of course. I have some good news for you, though. That language is about to suffer an defeat that will be as surprising and fast as the fate awaiting the American nation proper, which won’t survive four more years of Trump. How so? As you know America, or rather Murrica, is being engulfed in a maelstrom of obscurantism as never experienced during the Middle Ages proper.

Murrica is being indoctrinated into the rejection of everything French as essentially evil, this being facilitated by France’s being governed by a president who plainly hates every French for a different reason.

Another aspect of this rejection is unfortunately the fact that such an opinion is not entirely mistaken right now, as the late French Republic is specializing in being the international refuge haven of figures like Epstein and the world teacher of fake Left deconstructionism at the service of world capital.

As you know there are more words of more or less French origin in English than of Anglo-Saxon or other Nordic origin and also more of them in English than there remain in modern French, the French language having been severely culled of a great part of its vocabulary during the Era of Enlightenment.

A movement is developing right now in Trumpland to remove from American English all words known to be of more or less French origin and also of learned classical Latin and Greek origin, as the classical European culture is denounced as something that should be phased out together with humanism and democracy.

When they could not find real Anglo-Saxon root words to replace them (something impossible as phonetic evolution would have made many such root words sound all alike), they would rather resort to Klingon or Hebrew.

They won’t succeed in that linguistic utopia of restoring Anglish of course, but they will succeed in dividing the American English language into two unbridgeable halves as the Second Civil War develops (there is no future for the US after Trump, and California will be the first state to secede) and do their best to teach the young a form of language making them incapable of accessing works written during the humanistic era.

Blue State America will take the opposite direction, rejecting all English words that sound too populist in favor of polysyllabic jargon of the kind loved by the fake Left. Both languages do not differ too much as regards their real daily usage in the beginning but have completely incompatible official terminology as regards their legal use.

Moreover not all Blue States will agree on the same kind of ideal sophisticated English to use so as to distinguish from the Morlock kind of language that will become the norm in Murrica.

People of California will try their best to distinguish from East Coast intellectuals they despise through the use of gender-neutral forms and other transformations deliberately planned to prevent books from other generations to be understood by the young, while the East Coast will stick to old school sophisticated expression.

England will be subject to the same phenomenon. English there will divide among that of the Brexiters and that of the Remainers, though Brexiter English will not be Murrican at all.

British English being already very divided by social class and regional jargons, the divide will come easy: there will be simply no longer any Queen’s English as a norm of reference to be striven to by all, and Britishers of Pakistani and Indian origin will do their best to distinguish between each other by a very different kind of English too.

India as you know speaks English quite well for one sole reason mostly, employment in telephone service for Western clientele, and they will have to adapt to a rapidly fracturing English with the result various Indian castes and regions specializing in varieties of English less and less mutually intelligible.

The resulting mess will have the consequence that English will cease to be any guarantee of good communication with colleagues worldwide in any domain, especially as regards pronunciation and terminology, each splinter of the Anglophone society trying to redefine the whole language according to their ideology.

Zionist Jews will speak and use modern Hebrew only, so as not to be heard by outsiders. In addition, it will require goys to come to the Jews’ language if they want some chance to be talked to (and even then not to be welcomed). The reverse will not be true any longer, as the Jews all drift rightwards, they will also fall more and more prey to their most rabid rabbis that will do their best to bring them back into ghetto life conditions.

Another factor differentiating Jews from goys will be that the US Ultra-Right will speak Murrican only as a second language while the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Paraders will rather use Californian Google English.

Nevertheless, in practice the new fashionable non-Jewish language among Jews will be Russian, which will gain in prestige for scientific communication. Actually the greater body of the Anglosphere will be very rapidly crumbling all over America like a decomposing corpse due to America’s abandonment by its very soul, which is Zionist Israel.

Ten or twelve years will suffice to break up the English language into linguistic fiefdoms less mutually intelligible than those of modern Arabic. Actually it will be far worse because there will be absolutely no agreement on a classical norm to teach to anyone, whereas dialect-speaking Arabs also know at least some Quranic Arabic and can access the literary language through official media.

Learning one variety or another of English just won’t procure any great advantage as regards communications any more than learning Dutch or Urdu.. With four more years of Trump, America will become the laughingstock of the world and the very symbol of idiocracy, and when the country enters full-scale irreversible civil war, it will become a negative symbol of status.

People will just be ashamed to speak their language and consider that written English as we knew it is a dead language to be mastered as such by foreigners – to be read and written without much caring about how to speak it. Moreover, even as a written language, English is considered to be particularly ambiguous compared to others and not a great advantage for expressing scientific thought.

The French language will also know a similar fate as France enters civil war due to malignant multiculturalism. Old Classical French will become ridiculed and morally condemned as language of bad ideas to be eradicated by all parties involved (including the white nationalists). A new modern genderless norm will become obligatory while each region returns to some form of langue d’oil

Though by a strange turn of things, French will still be conserved in its classical form in several parts of Northern and Black Africa. The reason once more being the same as in the US.

That is that the soul of the modern form of the French language has actually been Jewish since the Era of Enlightenment in a tremendous and obdurate effort not to be constrained by Christian thought, and when the Jewish soul entity suddenly no longer wants to have anything to do with you even as a subservient body, you crumble and decompose.

Spanish despite its multiplicity of accents and regional varieties will still refer to a common Castilian norm and therefore become the new serious language even in the US for the reason that it has never been the linguistic body of a Jewish soul but always quite the opposite.

Quite like Spanish, German, whose fate has already been detached forever from that of the Jewish entity for the various reasons we know of (the Nazi episode and also the fact that German Jews always used to have their own variety of the Jewish soul), will not undergo such a mortal break-up.

Anyway it is in its written official form, German is a language as artificial as modern standard Arabic, to be learned at school by all Germans, not in family.

But modern English has a Jewish soul due to the fact that it formed in great part thanks to Calvinist Reformation which was a movement where the believers fancied themselves as kinds of Old Testament Jews being restored. French also has a Jewish soul due to the fact that with Royal France defined itself as the Roman Church’s Elder Daughter.

Hence modern free-thinking modernistic France had to define itself logically as Israel’s Elder Adoptive Daughter just to gain the right to free debate and high culture on equal standing with Latin. But what has been happening up to now is the gradual death of the former Aufklärung Jewish culture under the triumph of Netanyahu’s anti-cultural anti-humanist Zionism and also of scientific transhumanism to a lesser degree.

The soul to which English referred as a body was to be quickly departed into some other dimension, as the body just decomposes and very quickly.

The apparent cause of the break up will be first, a malignant White Nationalism doing their best to vomit everything too French-sounding and identifying with Vikings rather than with the American Founding Fathers as the founders of their identity, and second, utter self-hate from the part of the French proper, generating in return anti-populist reaction from the coastal chattering classes.

English as a Genocidal Language Attacking Other Tongues Spoken in the Anglosphere – USA

English has had a genocidal affect on the other languages spoken here, but many non-English languages still survive and some are quite thriving.

Pennsylvania Dutch is still quite alive with 300,000 native speakers. I think is is just a dialect of Rhenish German. It’s actually two separate languages and they can’t understand each other.

There are many other languages in the US that have been taken out by English. Most of the Indian languages spoken here have been driven extinct or moribund by English. A few like Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, Mohawk, Pueblo, some Alaskan languages, a couple of Indian languages of the US South, are still doing well.

Most of the others are in bad to very bad shape, often moribund with only 10 or fewer speakers, often elderly. Many others are extinct. However, quite a few of these languages have had a small number of middle aged to elderly speakers for the last 25 years, so the situation is somewhat stable at least at the moment.

Almost all Indian languages are not being  learned by children. But there are still children being raised speaking Cherokee, Navajo, Pueblo, Mohawk, and some Alaskan and Southern US Indian languages. Navajo is so difficult that when Navajo children show up at school, they still have  problems with Navajo. They often don’t get the  language in full until they are twelve.

However, there are revitalization efforts going on with many to most Indian languages, with varying amounts of success. Some are developing quite competent native speakers, often young people who learn the language starting at 18-20. I know that Wikchamni Yokuts has a new native speaker, a 23 year old man who learned from an old who is a native speaker. In California, there is a master apprentice program going on along these lines.

There are a number of preschool programs where elders try to teach the  languages to young children. I am not sure how well they are working. There are problems with funding, orthographies and mostly apathy that are getting in the way of a lot of these programs.

There are many semi-speakers. For instance in the tribe I worked with, many of the Indians knew at least a few words, and some of the leadership knew quite a few words. But they could hardly make a sentence.

Eskimo-Aleut languages are still widely spoken in Alaska. I know that Inuktitut is still spoken, and  there are children being raised in the language. Aleut is in poor shape.

Hawaiian was almost driven extinct but it was revived with a revitalization program. I understand that the language still has problems. I believe that there are Hawaiian medium schools that you can send your child to. There may be only ~10,000 fluent speakers but there are many more second language speakers with varying fluency.

There are actually some European based languages and creoles spoken in the US.  A noncontroversial one is Gullah, spoken on the islands of South Carolina. There may be less than 5,000 speakers, but the situation has been stable for 30-35 years. Speakers are all Black. It is an English creole and it is not intelligible with English at all.

There is at least one form of French creole spoken in Louisiana.  There is also an archaic form of French Proper called Continental French that resembles French from 1800. It has 2,000 speakers. Louisiana French Creole still has ~50,000 speakers. People worry about it but it has been stable for a long time. Many of the speakers are Black.

Texas German is really just a dialect of German spoken in Texas. There are only a few elderly speakers left.

There are a few Croatian languages spoken in the US that have diverged dramatically from the languages back home that they are now different languages. The status of these languages vary. Some are in good shape and others are almost dead. One of these is called Strawberry Hill Gorski Kotar Kaikavian spoken in Missouri. It is absolutely a full separate language and is no longer intelligible with the Gorski Kotar Kaikavian spoken back home.

There are other European languages spoken in the US, but they are not separate from those back home. Most are going out.

There are many Mandarin and especially Cantonese speakers in the US.

There are many Korean speakers in the US, especially in California.

There are a fair number of Japanese speakers in the US, mostly in California.

There are many speakers of Khmer, Lao, Hmong, and Vietnamese in the US. Most are in California but there are Hmong speakers in Minnesota also.

There are quite a few speakers of Arabic languages in the US. Yemeni, Syrian, and Palestinian Arabic are widely spoken. There are many in New York City, Michigan and California.

There are also some Assyrian speakers in  the US and there are still children being raised in Assyrian. Most are in California.

There are quite a few Punjabi and Gujarati speakers in the US now. We have many Punjabi speakers in my city.

There are quite a few Urdu speakers here. Most of all of these speakers are in California.

Obviously there are many Spanish speakers in the US. English is definitely not taking out Spanish. They are mostly in the Southwest, Florida, and New York City, but they are spreading out all across the country now.

There are a few Portuguese speakers in the US. All also speak English. They are mostly in California but some are back east around Massachusetts.

The Sicilian Italian spoken in the US by Italian immigrants is still spoken fairly widely to this day. It has diverged so much from the Sicilian back home that when they go back to Sicily, they are not understood. This is mostly spoken in large cities back east.

There are quite a few Armenian speakers in the US and children are still being raised in Armenian. Most are in California.

There are some Persian speakers in the US, but not a lot. Most of these are in California too.

All of these languages are the same languages as spoken back home.

English as a Genocidal Language Attacking Other Tongues Spoken in the Anglosphere – Ireland and the UK

Yes, English has devastated most of the native languages of the Anglosphere, talking here about Ireland and the UK.

Welsh is still very much alive, spoken by 2

Irish Gaelic is in fairly good shape. It will survive to the end of the century as will Welsh. There are still children being brought up in Irish. Irish is undergoing a renaissance with a lot of literature being published. Keep in mind it is an official language of Ireland. All Irish have to take 12 years of Irish in school but they don’t learn much and you ask them to speak a sentence in Irish 20 years later and they struggle. The way it is taught is quite inferior.

Scots Gaelic is in very bad shape with only 7,000 speakers but there are also second language speakers and I believe it is still spoken as a native language out on the islands. Gaelic is now an official language of Scotland.

Scots, very closely related to English but not English, is much more widely spoken by ~2

Cornish has been revived and there are 1,000 second language speakers. They can’t agree on an orthography and this is the subject of endless fights.

Manx went extinct maybe 50-75 years ago when a famous elderly last speaker died. He must have had no one to talk to. How sad. However, 2,500 people on the  Isle of Man have learned Manx as a second language and are now Manx speakers.  A few of them are even raising  their children in Manx, so we may soon have Manx native speakers again.

 

A Look at the Altaic Question, a Current Controversy in Linguistics

               Turkic    Tungusic*        Written Mongolian
1P sing.:
 
nominative      ban      bi               bi
oblique stem    man-     min-             min-
2P sing.:
nominative      san      chi    (<*ti)    si
oblique stem    san-     chiin- (<*tin)   sin-
(e.g. Evenki and Manchu)

The Altaic argument is one of the biggest controversies in current linguistics. It is said that Linguistics has decided that Altaic does not exist. Actually, the field has not decided that at all. The consensus in the field is that Altaic is still an open question. In other words, they are fighting about it. The field is split up into Pro-Altaicists and Anti-Altaicists. It’s not true that the field has decided in favor of the Anti-Altaicists. The Antis say that there is no such thing as Altaic. The Pros said that Altaic exists, and here is the evidence. The consensus instead rejects both positions and says we don’t know if Altaic exists or not. There is a big difference between we don’t know if it exists (maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t) and it doesn’t exist. One statement is uncertainty and the other statement is negative. According to Anti-Ataicists, every time a human can’t make up their mind about something yes or no, they actually are saying no. No they’re not! They’re not saying yes or no. They are rejecting both positions and saying instead that they are undecided. What the Anti-Altaicists are doing is akin to saying everyone who answers undecided on a political candidate poll is actually saying that want to vote against the person! The entire basis of political polling would change. The Anti-Altaicists are typically quite vicious, while the other side is not. The safe position is Anti-Altaicism, so a lot of wimpy linguists too scared to stand up and fight have sought refuge in the negative position. Furthermore, Linguistics is like an 8th grade playground. Some positions are openly ridiculed. Pro-Altaicism is openly ridiculed, and taking that position is seen as prima facie evidence that a linguist is a crank, an idiot or a fool. I would imagine that if you told a hiring committee that you believed in Altaic, it would be harder to get hired than if you took the negative stand. And I could imagine that being pro-Altaic might keep you from getting tenure. Not only are the Antis vicious (all of them are vicious, bar none), but many of them are complete idiots and fools, as seen above in the preposterous conflation of uncertain opinions with negative opinions above. The fools on Bad Linguistics Reddit are evidence of this. They all hate Altaic because they are wimps who are too afraid of a fight, so they take a safe position. They bashed me for saying Altaic was real, saying it was evidence of what a kook and crank I am, when in fact, Altaic exists is a completely acceptable position to take. Many famous linguists have supported Altaic in the past, and a number of top linguists currently support it. Anti-Altaic papers are often vicious from an academic paper standpoint. In academic papers, you are supposed to be restrained and keep your strong opinions to yourself. Not so with anti-Altaicists. They are over the top insulting and ridiculing towards Altaicists. Altaicists have accumulated quite a bit of evidence in support of their position. The pronouns above prove Altaic for me. All I have to do is look at those pronoun sets (and there are other pronouns that also line up precisely like above) and I know it’s real. This is what Joseph Greenberg means when he says that proving whether language families exist and reconstructing proto-languages are two different things. You figure out a language family by simple inspection. Greenberg uses the mass comparison method, and it has worked very well for him for African languages. His Amerindian languages proposals have not been well accepted, but it’s clear that there is a large family called Amerind. There is 1st person m and second person n all through the family, occurring ~450 times. Personal pronouns are rarely borrowed, and entire personal pronoun sets are almost never borrowed (Piraha did borrow all of its pronouns, but Piraha is bizarre in many ways). Joanna Nichols, a current spokesperson for the conservative Linguistics Establishment as good as any other (and a fine linguist to boot) states that the current consensus is that there is no such thing as Amerind and that those 450 similar pronouns are all cases of borrowing. Wow! Personal pronoun sets (not just one pronoun but an entire paradigm) were borrowed 450 times in the Americas! That’s one of the most idiotic statements that one could make, but this is the current consensus of linguistic “science.” Dumb or what? A much better position would be to say that Amerind is uncertain (maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t), as the negative position is preposterous and idiotic right on its face. Nichols has also stated that all of the Altaic pronouns were borrowed. That’s even more idiotic because unlike in the Americas, entire large pronoun paradigms exist in Altaic where they do not exist in Amerind. Paradigms, especially pronoun paradigms, are almost never borrowed, and paradigm evidence is considered excellent evidence of genetic relationship. English good, better, best is the same paradigm as German gut, besser, besten. That’s an odd way to set up comparatives, and the fact that that comparative set lines up perfectly is what is known as a paradigm. That one paradigm right there ought to be enough to prove the relatedness of English and German, even leaving out all other massive evidence for relatedness. Greenberg says that after you decide that languages form a family, then you set about using the comparative method of reconstructing proto-languages, finding sound correspondences and whatnot. The current conservative or reactionary position of the field is that first you reconstruct the proto-languages and then and only then can you prove a language family. That’s absurd. They’re in effect doing everything ass backwards. Incidentally, long ago Edward Sapir agreed with Greenberg that language families were proven first by inspection and only later did reconstruction take place. Sapir also came up with the Amerind hypothesis decades before Greenberg. Sapir is quoted as saying:

Getting down to brass tacks, how are you going to prove Amerind 1st person m and second person n other than genetic relatedness? – Edward Sapir, 1917?

Who was Edward Sapir? Only one of the greatest linguists in history. I can look right there at that pronoun paradigm set and tell you flat out that those three language families are related. It’s not possible that all of those languages borrowed all of those pronouns. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen. It’s beyond the realm of statistical probability. A statement that is outside the realm of statistical probability is considered to be for all intents and purposes nonfactual. Ask anyone Statistics major. Not only has Proto-Altaic been reconstructed at least in a tentative and initial form, but there are regular sound correspondences running through all of the comparative lexicon of the three proto-languages: Proto-Turkic, Proto-Tungusic and Proto-Mongolian. Regular sound correspondences are another thing we look for. It would mean that every time you have VlV in Language A, you have VnV in Language B (V = vowel). We then say that Language A l -> Language B n. Regular sound correspondences are considered to be excellent evidence of genetic relatedness. In fact, an entire etymological dictionary of Altaic has been produced, reconstructing a lot of Proto-Altaic lexicon along with the cognates in the daughter languages. This dictionary runs to over 1,000 pages, and it is a true work of art in the social sciences. The entire etymological dictionary has been rejected out of hand by the Anti-Altaicists. However, they have not directly attacked or tried to prove many of the etymologies wrong. They simply looked at it, said it’s junk, laughed at it and ridiculed it, and moved on. This conservative or even reactionary mood has been the norm in Historic Linguistics for decades now. The field has become very stick in the mud about this. However, in much of the rest of Linguistics, especially Sociolinguistics, Language Acquisition, and Applied Linguistics, the field has reached consensus on many a silly thing that makes little to no sense at all other than that it sounds very Politically Correct. Linguistics being a social science, PC and SJW Cultural Left culture has infected the field in an awful way. You must understand that Cultural Left views did not just appear in a few select social sciences. Instead this ideology swept through the entire social sciences, sparing not a one. In terms of a March Through the Institutions for this ideology, it was akin to a rapid hostile takeover. Cultural Left and SJW views are now mandatory in Linguistics. If you refuse to go along, you will not get hired or get tenured. If your reputation is too bad, you may not be able to publish in academic journals or books. Alas, my field has been poisoned with this Cultural Left toxin or venom like all the rest of them!

A Few Words on Language Endangerment

Carlos Lam: Congrats! However, isn’t language death a rather standard occurrence among societies?

It is, but we linguists don’t really like it. It is quite a debate going on, but the bottom line seems to be that ethnic groups and speaker groups have the right to ownership of their languages. We worry that a lot of speaker groups are being pressured into blowing up their languages prematurely. We like to study these languages and we are not real happy about seeing them vanish into the horizon. On the other hand, is cultural death a natural thing too? Both cultural death and language death are occurring at rates far beyond the normal background rates. English and some of the other major languages are like weapons of mass destruction in taking out languages. You really want a world with one language and one culture? I don’t. The best position seems to be that speakers have the right to decide the fate of their languages. If speakers wish to continue speaking their languages, then governments and linguists should help them to preserve and continue to develop their languages. Quite a few groups do not seem to care that their languages are going are extinct or they are even driving or drove their languages extinct, and they have the full right to do so. In these cases, we will simply do salvage linguistics. There are many salvage linguistics projects going on in the world today. You won’t get very far with linguists arguing that language death is a good thing. Most people don’t think so. Occurring at the same time as language death is a lot of language revitalization. Even fully dead languages are being resurrected from the grave. Also in addition to language death, we are creating new languages all the time. In this piece, I created a total of net 13 new languages. And new languages are occurring on their own. To give you an example. A group of Crimean Tatars moved from Crimea to Turkey about 200 years ago in the course of the Crimean War. They have been speaking Crimean Tatar in Turkey ever since, for 200 years now. But in that time, Crimean Tatar in Turkey and Crimean Tatar in Ukraine has diverged so much that Turkish Crimean Tatar is now, in my opinion, a fully separate tongue from the Ukrainian language. This is because in Turkey, a lot of Turkish has gone into Turkish Crimean Tatar which is not well understand in the Ukraine. And in the Ukraine, a lot of Russian has gone in which is not well understood in Turkey. Hence, Crimean Tatar speakers in Turkey and Ukraine can no longer understand each other well. To give you another example, there are many Kazakh speakers in China. However, Kazakh speakers in China can no longer understand Standard Kazakh broadcasts from Kazakhstan because so many Russian loans have gone into Standard Kazakh that it is no longer intelligible with Chinese Kazakh speakers. I learned this too late for my paper, otherwise I would have split Chinese Kazakh off as a separate language. There are many cases like this. Further, many languages are being discovered. Sonqori, Western Khalaj, Todzhin, Duha, Dukha and Siberian Tatar are just a few of the new languages that I created. Khorosani Turkic was split into three different languages. Dayi was subsumed into one of the Khorosani Turkic languages. Altai was split from one into five separate languages, but the truth is that it is six languages, not five. Salar was split into Western Salara and Eastern Salar. Ili Turki was eliminated becuase it does not even exist. It is simply a form of Uighur. Kabardian and Balkar, Tatar and Bashkir, Kazakh and Kirghiz were some languages that were eliminated and subsumed into single tongues such as Tatar-Bashkir, Kazakh-Kirghiz, and Kabardian-Balkar. And on and on. Languages and of course dialects are dying all the time, but new languages are being created by humans and by linguists as we continue our splitting projects. Many lects referred to as dialects are more properly seen as separate languages. Chinese is at least 450 separate languages, only 14 of which are recognized. German may be up to 130 separate languages, only 20 of which are recognized. There are quite a few more languages to be created out there, but there is a lot of resistance to splitters like me from more conservative linguists and especially from linguistic nationalists. For while Chinese may well be over 1,000 languages, the Chinese government is anti-scientifically insistent that there is but one Chinese language and maybe 2,000 “dialects,” most of which are probably separate languages. The German government is quite resistant to the idea that there is more than one form of German, though I believe Bavarian and Swiss German have official status in Austria and Switzerland.

Racist Post of the Day

From this post:

Ms: Same for niggardly or tar baby. You still have dindu, though.

Yes. Waiter: “These Blacks always leave niggardly tips!” Boss: “Racist! You’re fired!” Waiter: No! You don’t understand! Not niggerly tips, niggardly tips! Boss: I’m calling the SPLC! Waiter: “WTF did you flunk English 10?” Interesting tidbit: The word “niggardly” apparently comes from the Old English word, nig, “stingy”, 1300, Middle English. Possibly borrowed from Scandinavian nygg, “stingy”, which may be from Old Norse nigla, “to make a fuss about small matters. -ard, Middle English “pejorative”. So nig + ard,  “stingy” + “lowlife”. Niggard, “stingy lowlife,” niggardly, “acting like a stingy lowlife, miserly, tight, cheap, stingy, etc.” I didn’t know nig meant stingy. I always thought it meant something else.

Is English a Scandinavian Language?

Philip Andrews writes:

It is surprising how little attention is paid to the influence of the Danelaw on the English language. no one in Old English academia seems to want to touch it. It’s a Norwegian article that has claimed English is a Scandinavian language. Anglo-Saxon and the Early post-Norman Conquest English church put the dampers on the Scandinavian influence. Even the story of the Norman Conquest’ reads quite differently in the Norse Saga version to how it comes through the AS Chronicle. AS lost most of its grammar to the Norse of the Danelaw. That’s why English has not the inflection system of Continental Germanic but rather that of Norse. I’m happy to think of English as Norse in grammar and Syntax but mostly Latin-French in vocabulary. About 60 Personally I question the old story of the Normans being ‘Northmen’. Another AS/Norman manipulation. It was 1,000 years ago but the Normands were in what is now France earlier. Records 1,000 years ago as now were subject to political manipulation. Why did William go to the Pope for a Blessing for a Crusade? Because he was intent on driving the pagan Vikings out of England and Christianizing the place under Norman tutelage. Hence the Harrying of the North. Yorkshire is still far more ‘Norse’ than any other part of England. Listening to people north of Watford speak English and you’re listening to Norse accents speaking English. With Norse words in dialects. If William hadn’t come with mounted archers (from the East) he could never have defeated the Vikings. Much of English history abroad (empire etc.) equates to versions of Viking raiding. Old Norse habits die hard.

I don’t really agree with this, but it is an interesting idea anyway. I did some research on this question recently. England was settled by the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. There is a Low German language called Anglish which is spoken in an areas of the far north of Germany called Schlesweig-Holstein. Anglish is apparently the remains of the Low German language spoken by the Angles. This is a peninsula that connects Germany with Denmark. The southern half of the peninsula is Germany, and the north half is Denmark. Anglish is not readily intelligible with any other Low German language, even those nearby. The Saxons were found a bit to the south, but I believe that they also came from this peninsula. And it is interesting that in this part of Germany, especially around Fleisburg on the border, the dialect of Low German that they speak is more or less intelligible not with Danish but with a Danish dialect called South Jutnish that is so divergent that in my opinion, it is a separate language from Danish. Danish speakers have poor intelligibility of South Jutnish. From the Net:

Sønderjysk is often seen as very difficult for other speakers of Danish even other Jysk or Jutnish dialects to understand. Instead of the normal Danish stød, it has tonal accents like Swedish. Many of the phonemes are also different, including velar fricatives much like in German. It also has the definite article before the noun, as opposed to the standard Danish postclitic article. South Jutlandic is surely a separate language.

So in this part of Germany, there are Low German lects that are actually intelligible with Danish lects. So here is where “German” and “Danish” are nearly transitional. However, Standard German and Standard Danish are not intelligible with each other at all. Nevertheless, German speakers can pick up Danish and other Scandinavian languages pretty easily. And South Jutnish itself is interesting in that Jutnish was one of the languages spoken by one of the tribes that invaded England, the Jutes. So one of “Anglo-Saxon” tribes that invaded England actually spoke something like “Danish.” South Jutnish itself is said to be quite a bit like English, especially the older forms of English. There are stories about speakers of the pure Scots language spoken in Scotland going to the South Jutnish area and being able to converse with South Jutnish speakers.Scots can be thought of as English  from 500 years ago because Scots split from English about 500 years ago. So in this case we have West Germanic and North Germanic speakers who are able to actually converse. There is also a suggestion based on the fact that North Germanic South Jutnish is intelligible with whatever odd West Germanic Low German lect is spoken near Fleisburg that South Jutnish itself may be nearly German-Danish transitional. A few take-home points: the “Anglo-Saxons” actually something a lot more like Low German than Standard German. Low German and Standard German are separate languages and German speakers cannot understand Low German. And the “Anglo-Saxons” also spoke something like “Danish” in the form of Jutnish. Also all of these Low German lects that made up “Anglo-Saxon” came from the far north of Germany where “German” and “Danish” start to nearly blend into each other or better yet where West Germanic and North Germanic are almost transitional. In addition to the evidence coming from the Danelaw area of England where actual Danish speakers settled, it appears that the Scandinavian or North Germanic influence in English is more with Danish than with any other Scandinavian language. However, 2/3 of the Anglo-Saxon components were actually from West Germanic Low German lects which are not readily intelligible with any Danish, not even with South Jutnish. It is often said that the closest language to English is West Frisian, spoken in the northwest of the Netherlands. This is a Germanic language that is close to Dutch. In fact, some say that West Frisian itself is straight up from Old Saxon, which is the language that the Saxons of the Anglo-Saxons spoke. A man who is able to speak Old English went to the West Frisia area of the Netherlands and spoke to an old farmer there who spoke good West Frisian. They were actually able to hold a conversation in English from 1,000 years ago and West Frisian of today. West Frisian of course is a West Germanic language. However, if you look into the mater a bit more, the language that is closest to English is the endangered North Frisian, with 6 North Frisian, which actually may be up to five separate languages, is also spoken in that same peninsula of far northern Germany that Anglish, Saxon and Jutnish were spoken in. However, it is spoken on the east coast of the peninsula whereas Anglish and Saxon were spoken more to the west. So once again with North Frisian and English we see one more connection with this far northern part of Germany that borders on Denmark. Yet North Frisian is a West Germanic language, not a North Germanic Scandinavian language. A language called Ingeavonic was spoken long ago in this region, and some put “Anglo-Frisian” in a West Germanic node under Ingeavonic. For a long time there was something called the North Sea Fisherman’s lect that originated in this same part of Germany but over on the west coast by Fleisburg rather than on the east coast by the North Frisian language. It was said that fishermen from all over the North Sea from the nations of Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Norway and Sweden spoke this lingua franca or trade language. This North Sea Fisherman’s language is said to have looked a lot like Ingaevonic.

Is Old High German Close to Old Persian?

I am going to republish this older piece that has been called into question. Supposedly this language is totally made up. However, that is almost certainly not true, although I am looking into it at the moment. A Croatian professor even wrote a 27,500 word dictionary of this language. I am enclosing here 97 different references that discuss this language in the hopes that this puts an end to the Gan-Veyan controversy once and for all.

Beatrix writes:

Robert, is it true that 1,000 yrs ago a German & a Persian spoke basically the same language?

No, it is not true at all that Old German and Old Persian were the same language 1,000 years ago.

However there are some Croatian dialects such as Archaic Islander Čakavian spoken on the islands off the coast of Croatia that are quite similar to Persian or Iranic. They are actually closer to Kurdish and Zazaki though. They are actually completely separate languages, as the lexical similarity with Croatian is only

These ancient tongues are the remains of the pre-Slavic languages spoken in this area before the Slavs came. The language that these tongues are closest to is called Liburnian. The Liburnians inhabited that region thousands of years ago. Liburnian is an ancient Indo-European language.

I did a study on one of those old languages, an Archaic Islander Čakavian tongue called Gan-Veyãn. I obtained a short dictionary of Gan-Veyãn and went through half of it from M-Z counting up my estimates of where the roots seemed to have originated. The results were remarkable and are listed in order with the language with the most roots first and the language with fewest roots last.

  • Indic
  • Persian
  • Avestan
  • Hittite
  • Akkadian
  • Basque
  • Tocharian
  • Sumerian
  • Lithuanian
  • Aramaic
  • Hurrian
  • Etruscan
  • Gothic
  • Russian
  • Ukrainian
  • Celtic
  • Kurdish
  • Armenian
  • Latin
  • Arabic
  • Mittani
  • Apian
  • German
  • Geez

I will go down the list now and describe these languages.

Indic means all of the Indo-European or IE languages related to Hindi.

Persian is well known.

Avestan is best seen as the oldest form of Proto-Persian. This is the language from which all of the Iranic languages derived.

Hittite is an ancient IE tongue formerly spoken in Turkey.

Akkadian is a language isolate formerly spoken in Iraq by the people of that name who had a kingdom there.

Basque is the well known language isolate and pre-IE language spoken in northeastern Spain. Although it formally has no relatives, I would say it is related to NE Caucasian languages like Chechen. In fact the placename Iberia has deep connections to the land of Georgia.

Tocharian is an ancient IE language formerly spoken by Caucasian people who lived in what is now Xinjiang in far Western China where the Uyghurs now live.

Sumerian is an ancient tongue, a language isolate formerly spoken in the Sumerian Kingdom in Iraq.

Lithuanian is interesting because for some reason it is one of the most archaic living IE languages.

Aramaic of course is the language of Jesus spoken in the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran and Turkey. It is still spoken by Assyrian Christians in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey to this day.

Hurrian is an ancient IE language like Hittite formerly spoken in Turkey.

Etruscan is an ancient language isolate formerly spoken in Italy.

Gothic is the ancient Germanic language of the Visigoths who lived not only in Germany but also in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Russian and Ukrainian are well-known. This ancient language may have roots close to these two Slavic languages because in a way Russian and Ukrainian can be considered archaic Slavic languages, since they are heavily based on Old Church Slavonic, a liturgical language that originated in Northeastern Greece with roots close to Old Slavic or even Proto-Slavic.

Kurdish is the well-known Iranic language of the Kurds.

Armenian is a living language, but it is rather archaic as IE languages go.

Latin is well-known and these islands were part of the Roman Empire for a while.

Arabic is well-known and quite a few languages along the European coast of the Mediterranean Sea have some Arabic in them.

Mittani is a language isolate formerly spoken around Northern Iraq and Iran that nevertheless seems to have some relationship with Indo-Iranian languages.

Apian is an ancient IE language formerly spoken in Italy.

German is well known. How German words got into this mystery language is a head-scratcher, but Croatia itself is quite close to Germany as a former part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had German as an official language.

Geez is the ancient language of the Ethiopian and Egyptian Coptic Christians which was thought to be long dead. However, a family in Cairo was recently discovered who spoke Geez at home.

References

Anonymous. 1988. Verbânske Štatûti 1388 (Glagoljica + Prijevod). Krčki Zbornik 10: 1-173. Povijesno Društvo Otoka Krka.

Antonio, Ive, 2000. L’ Antico Dialetto di Veglia. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

Barač, L. I Sur. and 10 co-authors. 2003. Y-Chromosomal Heritage of Croatian Population and its Island Isolates. Eur. J. Human. Genet. 11: 535-542.

Bartoli, M.G. 1906. Das Dalmatische, I (Glossare und Texte), Ii (Grammatik und Lexikon). Vienna: Schriften der Balkankomission, 5: 316 + 468; reprinted as Holder, A. 2000. 2nd Ed. Il Dalmatico. Rome: Rome Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

Batović, Š. 1982. Kultura Starih Liburna 12: 1-40. Rijeka: Dometi.

Bolonić M. & Žic-Rokov, I. 1977. Otok Krk Kroz Vijekove. Zagreb: Kršćanska Sadašnjost.

Bolonić, M. 1980. Otok Krk, Kolijevka Glagoljice. Zagreb: Kršćanska Sadašnjost.

Bonifačić, N. R. Undated. Zidine Zvonimirove I Jurandvorski Ulomci. Krčki Zbornik 1: 181-200. Split.

Božanić, J. 1983. Komiška Ribarska Epopeja. Čakavska Rič 11: 83-181. Split.

Božanić, J. 1996. Iskustvo Vremena Komiških Ribara. Čakavska Rič 24: 7-94. Split.

Božanić, J. (ed.). 1995-2004. Čakavska Rič, pp. 22–32. Književni Krug.

Brajković, V. & Mardešić, P. 1972-1989. Pomorska Enciklopedija, Knj. I.-Viii. Zagreb: Leksikografski Zavod.

Brusić, Z. 1989. Kasnoantička Utvrdjenja Na Otocima Krku i Rabu. Izdanja Hrvatskog Arheološkog Društva 13: 111-119. Zagreb.

Dorčić, V. 1961. Bašćanska Mornarica Prije Prvog Svjetskog Rata. Anali Jadranskog Instituta 3.

Dorčić, V. 1970. Prezimena i Nadimci U Baški Na Krku. Krčki Zbornik 1: 475-480. Krk.

Dorčić, V. 1980. Mjesto Gdje Je Nadjena Bašćanska Ploča. Pazin: Istarska Danica.

Dorčić, V. 1995. Nekoliko Podataka O Narodnim Običajima U Baški. Krčki Zbornik 33:2. Krk.

Faber, A. 1987. Osvrt Na Neka Utvrdjenja Otoka Krka Od Prethistorije Do Antike i Srednjeg Vijeka. Prilozi 3-4: 113-140. Zagreb: Institut Za Povijesna Istraživanja.

Fisher, J. 1975. Lexical Affiliations of Vegliote. Fairleigh Dickinson. New Jersey: Rutherford Univ. Press.

Fishman, J. A. 2000. Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? (A 21st Century Perspective). Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Fučić, B. 1957. Bašćanska Ploča Kao Arheološki Predmet. Vajsov Zbornik 6:8, 247-262. Slovo.

Fučić, B. 1971. Jurandvorski Ulomci. Krčki Zbornik 3: 157-175. Povijesno Društvo Krk.

Geić, D. & Šilović, M. S. 1994. Rječnik Trogirskog Cakavskog Govora. Muzej Grada Trogira.

Greppin, J. 1991. The Survival of Ancient Anatolian and Mesopotamian Vocabulary until the Present. J. Near East Studies 50: 203-207.

Guberina, P. 1962. Da Li Je Veljotska Diftongizacija Romanska? Rad Jazu 327: 41-55.

Hamm J., Hraste M., & Guberina P. 1956. Govor Otoka Suska. Hrvatski Dijalektološki Zbornik 1: 7-214. Zagreb.

Hamm, J. 1957. Cakavizam i Njegova Geneza. Iz Problematike Čakavskih Govora I. Radovi Instituta Jazu 3: 21-38. Zadar.

Hamm, J. 1960. Cakavci i Romani. Radovi Historijskog Instituta Jazu 6:7, 65-80. Zadar.

Hraste, M. 1961. Cakavizam Na Istočnoj Obali Jadranskoga Mora. Firenze.

Japundžić, M. 1995. Tragom Hrvatskog Glagolizma. Zagreb.

Kostial, I. 1913. Čakavska “Duhovna Bramba” Iz Bašćanske Drage. Vjesnik Staroslavenske Akademije U Krku, 68-71. Krk.

Kranjčević, M. 2003. Ričnik Gacke Čakavšćine. Otočac: Čakavski Sabor Pokrajine Gacke.

Kustić, N. 2003. Cakavski Govor Grada Paga S Rječnikom. Zagreb: Društvo Pažana.

Lesica, I. 1989. Jela Otoka Krka. Krčki Zbornik 20: 1-119. Povijesno Društvo Krk.

Lovrić, A. Ž. 1969: Prilog Poznavanju Onomastike Senjskog Arhipelaga. Hidrografski Godišnjak 16: 125-143, 3 tables + 2 maps. Split.

Lovrić, A. Ž. & Mileković, M. H. 1996. Antičke Epske Legende Na Ranohrvatskom Prajeziku Krčkih Gorštaka (Vêyska Zaÿk). Ognjište 7: 166-174. Karlovac.

Lovrić, A. Ž. & Tomašić, F. 1996. Veyske Pučke Pjesme Brdskih Sela Na Otoku Krku. Hrvatski Književni List 30:5, p. 39. Zagreb.

Lovrić, M. & Tomašić, F. 1996. Legende U Veyskom Govoru Brdskih Sela Na Otoku Krku. Posebni Pretisak Iz Čakavske Riči: 90-96. Split: Književni Krug.

Lovrić, A. Ž. & Mileković, M. H. 1997. Ranohrvatski Prijevod Bašćanske Ploče U Veyskoj Cakavšćini. Hrvatski Književni List 31:6, 13-14. Karlovac.

Lovrić, M. 1998: Podrijetlo Liburna i Njihovo Etnokulturno Naslijedje U Hrvata. Ognjište 9: 175-187. Karlovac.

Lovrić, A. Ž. & Lovrić, M. 1998: Astralna Kultura I Bogatstvo Starohrvatskog Zvizdoslovja. Ognjište 9: 224-247 and three maps. Karlovac.

Lovrić M., Malinar H. & Rac, M. 1999: Zagonetka Krčke Korintije (Uri-Kvorÿta), Najveće Neistražene Gradine Na Jadranu. Ognjište 10: 295-306, Karlovac.

Lovrić, A. Ž. & Mileković, H.M. 1999. Ranohrvatski Jezik I Njegovi Pradialekti. Hrvatsko Slovo 194: 12-13 and one map. Zagreb: Društvo Hrvatskih Književnika.

Lovrić, A. Ž. 1999. Krivotvorba Bosančice i Bašćanske Ploče. Hrvatsko Slovo 202, p. 13. Zagreb: Društvo Hrvatskih Književnika.

Lovrić, A. Ž., Rac, M. & Mileković, M.H. 2002. Diversity of Old-Croatian Names for Seaweeds and Maritime Nature in the Adriatic Islands. Natura Croatica 11:4, 455-477. Zagreb: Nat. Hist. Mus.

Lukežić, I. 1990. Čakavski Ikavsko-Ekavski Dijalekt. Rijeka: Izdavački Centenary.

Lukežić I. & Turk M. 1998. Govori Otoka Krka. Libellus II:2, 1-325. Rijeka.

Magašić, M. I Surad. 1976. Bašćansko Područje, Smjernice Razvoja. Krčki Zbornik 8. Povijesno Društvo Otoka Krka.

Magašić, M. I Sur. 2003. Bašćanske Besede. Općina Baška.

Malecki, M. 1929. Cakawizm Z Uwzglednieniem Zjawisk Podobnych Z Mapa. Krakow: Prace Pau 14.

Malecki, M. 1929. O Podzial Gwar Krku, Z Mapa. Prace Filologiczne 14: 563-581. Krakow. Reprinted in 1963 as Prijevod: O Podjeli Krčkih Govora, S Kartom. Filologija 4: 223-235. Zagreb.

Malinar H. I Sur. 1998. Krčka Korintija (Uri-Kuorÿta), Najveća Neistražena Gradina Na Jadranskim Otocima. Monograph: Old-Iranian Origin of Croats, pp. 473-487 + one map. Tehran: Iranian Cultural Center.

Matoković, B. 2004. Ričnik Velovaroškega Splita. Split-Zagreb: Vlastita Naklada.

Mayer, A. 1957-1959. Die Sprache der Alten Illyrier (I. Wõrterbuch Der Illyrischen Sprachreste, Ii. Etymologie und Grammatik der Illyrischen Sprache). Vienna: Schriften Der Balkankommission 15.

Meyer, K. H. 1929. Untersuchungen Zur Čakavština der Insel Krk. Leipzig: Slavisch-Baltische Quellen und Forschungen 3.

Milevoj, M. 1992. Gonan Po Nase (Rječnik Labinskog Govora). Labin: Matthias Flacius Illyricus.

Milevoj, M. 1994. Vadin Po Nase (Rječnik Labinskog Govora). Labin: Matthias Flacius Illyricus.

Miotto, L. 1991. Vocabolario del Dialetto Veneto-Dalmata, Ed. 2. Trieste: Lint.

Moguš M. 1966. Današnji Senjski Govor. Senjski Zbornik 2: 5-152. Senj.

Moguš, M. 2002. Senjski Rječnik. Senj: Hazu I Matica Hrvatska.

Mohorovičić, A. (edit.). 1987. Rapski Zbornik. Zagreb: Jazu.

Mohorovičić, A. & Strčić, P. (ed.). 1988. Bašćanska Ploča, I I Ii. Zagreb-Krk-Rijeka: Zbornik Reprinta.

Muljačić, Ž. 1966. Lo Cakavizmo alla Luce della Linguistica Contrastiva. Die Welt der Slaven 11:4, 367-379. Wiesbaden.

Murgić S. I Sur. 1999. Predslavenski Tragovi Antičkih Hrvata U Istri i Na Krku. Zbornik Bujština 99: 6-18. Zadar: Matica Hrvatska Umag.

Murgić S. I Sur. 1999. Poredba Predslavenskih Pradialekata U Hrvatskoj (Ćiribirci i Veyanne). Monograph: Old-Iranian Origin of Croats, pp. 235-252. Tehran: Iranian Cultural Center.

Mužić, I. 1997. Slaveni, Goti I Hrvati Na Teritoriju Rimske Provincije Dalmacije. Zagreb: Dominović 5 Izdanje.

Piasevoli, A. 1993. Rječnik Govora Mjesta Sali Na Dugom Otoku (Oliti Libar Saljski Besid). Zadar: Matica Hrvatska.

Prioli, M. 1603. Visitatio Apostolica Dalmatiae D. Vegliensis Anno 1603. Miscellanea Vii: 100-101. Vatican City: Archivio Vaticano.

Prister, L. 1980. Vela I Mala Luka. Bilten Baška 2:2, p. 17. Rijeka: Tipograf.

Ragužin, A. 1998. Glasovita Župa Baška, I-Ii. Krk.

Roki-Fortunato, A. 1977. Lîbar Vĩškiga Jazìka. Toronto: Libar Publ.

Rošić, Đ. B. 2002. Linguistic Identity of the Dialect of Fiume. Toronto: Doctoral Dissertation.

Seršić, S. 1995. O Narodnim Običajima U Bašćanskoj Dragi. Krčki Zbornik 33: 259-264.

Skok, P. 1950. Slavenstvo i Romanstvo Na Jadranskim Otocima, I-Ii. Zagreb: Posebna Izdanja Jazu.

Sokolić-Kozarić, M. 2003. Rječnik Čakavskog Govora Novog Vinodolskog. Rijeka-Novi Vinodolski.

Stipčević, A. 1974. Iliri (Povijest, Život, Kultura). Zagreb: Školska Knjiga.

Strohal, R. 1913. Dijalekt Grada Vrbnika Na Otoku Krku U Prošlim Vjekovima Usporedjen S Današnjim. Rad Jazu 199: 67-152.

Strčić, P. (ed.) 1993. Narodni Običaji Otoka Krka. Krčki Zbornik 32-33, 1-424. Povijesno Društvo Otoka Krka.

Suić, M. 1956. Granice Liburnije Kroz Stoljeća. Radovi Jazu 2: 273-297. Zadar.

Sulojdžić A. I Sur. 1992. Govori Otoka Krka, Uvod U Antropološka Istraživanja. Filologija 20-21, 1992-1993. Zagreb.

Šimunović, P. & Olesch, R. 1979-1983. Čakavisch-Deutsches Lexikon, I–Iii. Cologne and Vienna: Bõhlau Verlag.

Šimunović, P. 1986. Istočnojadranska Toponimija. Split: Logos.

Štefanić, V. 1937. Opatija Sv. Lucije U Baški i Drugi Benediktinski Samostani Na Krku. Zagreb: Croatia Sacra 1936: 1-86.

Štefanić, V. 1944. Narodne Pjesme Otoka Krka. Zagreb: Hrvatski Nakladni Zavod.

Štefanić, V. 1960. Glagoljski Rukopisi Otoka Krka. Zagreb: Jazu.

Tentor, M. 1909. Der Čakavische Dialekt der Stadt Cres. Archiv fũr Slawische Philologie 30: 146-205. Berlin.

Tentor, M. 1913. Najstariji Hrvatski Glagoljski Brevijar. Vjesnik Staroslavenske Akademije 1913:2, p.33. Krk.

Tentor, M. 1950. Leksička Slaganja Creskoga Narječja i Slovenskoga Jezika Protiv Vukova Jezika. Razprave Sazu 1: 69-72. Ljubljana.

Tolk, H. V. I Sur. and nine co-authors. 2000. Mt-DNA Haplogroups in the Populations of Croatian Adriatic Islands. Coll. Anthropol. 24: 267-279.

Tomašić, F. 1997. Srednjovjeke Pučke Pjesme U Ranohrvatskom Govoru Gan-Veyãn Iz Otoka Krka. Ognjište 8: 217-227. Karlovac.

Tomičić, Ž. 1989. Arheološka Svjedočanstva O Ranobizantskom Vojnom Graditeljstvu Na Sjevernojadranskim Otocima. Prilozi Odjela Za Arheologiju 5-6: 29–53. Zagreb: Institut Za Povijesna Istraživanja Sveučilišta U Zagrebu.

Turčić, B. 2002. Sedmoškojani, Prvi Čokavski Rječnik. Rijeka: Adamić.

Ursini, F. 1987. Il Lessico Veneto-Dalmata del Novecento (Sedimentzioni Culturali sulle Coste Orientali Dell’adriatico). Venice: Atti e Memorie del Società Dalmata Xv.

Vajs, J. 1908. Hlaholske Kodexy Ve Vrbniku Na Ostrove Krku. Praha: Časopis Musea Kralovstvi Českeho Lxxxvi.

Vančik, B. 1997. Svi Puti Vode K Čakavštini. Ognjište 8: 204-216. Karlovac.

Velčić, N. 2003. Besedar Bejske Tramuntane. Beli-Rijeka: Čakavski Sabor-Adamić.

Vidović, R. (ed.). 1971-1994. Čakavska Rič Br. 1–21, Split: Matica Hrvatska.

Vidović, R. 1977-1993. Pomorska Terminologija i Pomorske Tradicije (Rječnik I–Iii.). Čakavska Rič 7:2, 99-156; 10: 145-180; 21:1, 23-41. Split: Matica Hrvatska.

Vidović, R. 1984. Pomorski Rječnik. Split: Logos.

Vinja, V. 2000-2004. Jadranske Etimologije I-Iii. Zagreb: Hazu i Školska Knjiga.

Yošamýa, Mitjêl I Sur. 1998. Podrijetlo Liburna i Njihovo Etnokulturno Naslijedje U Hrvata. Ognjište 9: 175-187. Karlovac.

Yošamýa, Mitjêl. 1999. Veyski Prazemljopis Svijeta i Jadrana (Iskon I Nestanak Starohrvatskog Mjestopisa). Ognjište 10, 185-196. Karlovac.

Yošamýa, Mitjêl I Sur. 1999. Predslavenske Legende Indoiranskog Podrijetla Na Starohrvatskim Pradialektima. Monograph: Old-Iranian Origin of Croats, pp. 353-366. Tehran: Iranian Cultural Center.

Yošamýa, Z. 2001. Zavjera Šutnje O Kvarnerskoj Jazovki (U Jami Kričavno Na Krku Pobijeni Otočani i Ličani). Politički Zatvorenik 112/113: 20-21. Zagreb (Srpanj-Kolovoz).

Yošamýa, Z. & Mileković, M. H. 2001. Podrijetlo, Značenje I Sudbina Starodalmatskog Jezika. Bujština: 247-255. Matica Hrvatska Umag.

Yošamýa, Mitjêl. 2004. Bascânski Besidãr. Zagreb: Itg.

Yošamýa, Mitjêl I Sur. 2005. Gan-Veyãn, 27,500 Besêd Rječnici Istočnog Kvarnera (Gan-Veyãn and Cakavism of Baška). Zagreb: Torra Editûra Itg.

Žic, I. 2001. Vrbnik Na Otoku Krku, Narodni Život i Običaji. Rijeka: Adamić.

Judith Mirville on English Spelling Reform

Judith Mirville,commenter, weighs in on English spelling reform. I really love this person’s wild prose.

It would be far easier to force Americans into Anglish, that is to say, English as it would have looked liked had William the Conqueror’s invasion of England never taken place. Or better still had The Normans themselves feared more for words of French, Latin and Greeks origin to give ideas of Greek democracy, Roman law and French sensuality to their subjects, than for their own Anglo-Saxon parlance to produce Robin Hoods. And seen in Anglo-Saxon a language having remained closer to their own forebears’ that the French-like one they had been forced to adopt in Normandy proper for political reasons.

I am now surrounded by people who are so intent on seeing Greece stifled with more economic sanctions, and are so resentful against that country for having given the world the idea of democracy (whatever the efforts I deploy to prove that their accusation to that effect is downright false: no other city than ancient classical Athens did more to vindicate the notions of Heaven-willed human inequality and human powerlessness as well as to make the quest of sheer contempt towards the downtrodden the noblest aim in life of all), that they have asked me, as an amateur linguist, to devise Greekless versions of English, French and other Western languages.

The World elites seem dead intent on suppressing the very notion of humanism not only as a form of benevolence towards fellow humans but also in the older Renaissance sense of the word meaning open-mindedness through knowledge of classical languages and cultures.

To that effect they have tried several times to disfigure etymological orthography in many languages, but the Anglo-Saxon egregor could never be convinced to accept what other European languages submitted to under the pretext of making school learning easier. So the thing to do with English is to bring it back to a purely Barbarian one so to speak, where scientific, political and other specialized terms would derive only from Germanic or Scandinavian roots through Nordic and Indic, not Greek-inspired metaphors, with the exception of a few monosyllables easy to seam into the fabric, such as joke, graph, rate…

The only rather proximate language I know of to be nearly devoid of Renaissance-inspired terms compounds is Arabic, safe for a few dozens no more of Greek words such as philosophy, democracy, geography that are half-heartedly accepted as temporary linguistic manpower so to speak, more to be humiliated as pariah words denoting concepts that will remain always alien and to be considered as foreign propaganda concepts than to render real communication service, it is the language now closest to the anti-humanistic ideal fostered by the world elites, a language where the higher level of cultural reference always refers to dogma, scripture, and military strategy at the service of predation, never to history or to former cultures of open-mindedness and research, a language where any notion of historical or political consciousness sounds like pollution by foreign intruders.

Hebrew hasn’t made such a meritorious effort and is half-Western, half-Oriental to the point it is now called an Euromitic language rather than a Semitic one (I rather say an emetic one, for modern Hebrew is downright ugly, vulgar, unwieldy, and unfit for information rendering, it is doomed to become rapidly a modern low-grade Westernized Arabic dialect like Casablanca Moroccan bound to flow into Globish).

The changes I would bring or bring back to English would be the following:

First of all, to make back English into a full-fledged Germanic language the passive form with “to be” should get replaced with “to get” as the most correct form, as is more or less the popular tendency.

German has the marvelous auxiliary verb “werden”, unfortunately the English cognate “worth” (“wirth”, “werth”) is worn out phonetically, but hadn’t it been for the late Latin style awkward French model with be (for it being ambiguous between perfect and present meaning and therefore less used in conversation for clarity’s sake) it would have been the medio-passive form of get, to git, I gat, which should be reestablished as the most regular form (many ghetto people already use git plus participle to form passives and do form it more frequently that active forms).

All Latin words such as allusion should be rebuilt for that instance as onplay, and Greek ones such as misogyny should be clearly understood as for that instance bitch-hunting, but forgotten medieval-sounding words should also be introduced to bring to the new language a more lurid and barbaric aspect as is the case with video games.

Social class distinctions as there are in Japanese should be implemented, by more regular and stringent rules than nowadays in class-conscious Britain four or five levels of status should be defined for each concept.

The ghetto and lower middle class people should be left out more or less with their vulgar parlance provided it be purged from forbidden elements, but the higher classes applying for qualified jobs should be given or imposed the luxury version of the language with a syntax imitated more or less from Icelandic minus the declensions, so as to smack of a perpetual Dungeons and Dragons game.

The highest version of it together with many terms should be forbidden of use by the lower ranks. Women should also be given a different version of the language, as well as different rules for pronunciation and this can be marketed through feminism before it be too late for these girls when they realize they have closed themselves back into gunaikeions smacking of Old Constantinople.

Of course I am speaking like some psychopathic nerd who would have been given the job to redesign English like is done with a computer programming language threatened with obsolescence and also, as a frustrated non-Anglo, with the afterthought of curbing the world-wide imperialistic prevalence of that language through ridiculous and gratuitous ideological impediments, with the most probable practical effect of breaking it for good into one thousand impoverished broken dialects no longer capable of intercommunication and yielding to a more civilized civilization language to come, I just want to give the American Republicans the neuroleptic dosage of obscurantism they need no longer to be able to use Monsanto’s products, I want them to become exactly like Haitian sorcerers in the middle run in the name of Jewish and Aryan racism not for real.

It must be noted as you showed it yourself that High German as has been imposed as Germany’s common language is a very artificial and quite recent and very ideological creation, with among others the objective to get the language rid of as many foreign coinages as possible, as if it were to become the new classical language owing nothing to any foreign one.

This objective has misfired as since the defeat of 1945 German is being flooded with English importations and with Greek and Latin terms again that come through English.

It is time for English itself to embark upon that kind of task, and the German experience that could have been successfully completed had the Nazis won over is the proof that it can work with a sufficiently fanatical regime acting at the behest of corporations dead intent on bringing back obscurantism and cut everybody, especially the new bailiff class, from the literary works of the free-thinking past.

What If English Was Spelled Phonetically?

Can you read this?

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c,” “y” and “x”–bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez–tu riplais “ch,” “sh,” and “th” rispektivli.Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Comparison of Inflected Verb Forms in English, Swedish, German and Finnish

Below is an Internet joke about the Finnish language. It shows how Swedish and German are both more complicated than English and in addition, how German is more complicate than Swedish. And of course, Finnish is wildly more complex than them all. You would think that Finnish dictionaries must be Hell, but that’s not the case. Generally only the root is listed, and the inflections are not. It is the same in English dictionaries where only run is listed and runs, ran, and running – the inflections, are not.

Of course, all of the forms below are not separate words for dog. Instead they mean things that would be expressed by a phrase in English such as with a dog, to a dog, from a dog, of a dog, for a dog, in a dog, dog’s. After that, there are the same forms with possessive suffixes such as with my dog, to your dog, from his dog, of their dog, for our dog, in her dog, its dog’s. And finally there are forms that attach to the possessive case forms such as My dog?, Even with your dog?, and Even without our dog.

“English: A dog. Swedish: What? English: The dog. English: Two dogs. Swedish: Okay. We have: En hund, hunden, Två hundar, hundarna. German: Wait, I wan’t to try it too! English: No, go away. Swedish: No one invited you. German: Der Hund. English: I said go away. German: Ein Hund, zwei Hunde. Swedish: Stop it! German: Den Hund, einen Hund, dem Hund, einem Hund, des Hundes, eines Hundes, den Hunden, der Hunden. Finnish: Sup. English: NO. Swedish: NO. German: NO. Finn, you go away!! Finnish: Koira, koiran, koiraa, koiran again, koirassa, koirasta, koiraan, koiralla, koiralta, koiralle, koirana, koiraksi, koiratta, koirineen, koirin. German: WHAT? Swedish: You must be kidding us! English: This must be a joke Finnish: Aaaand… koirasi, koirani, koiransa, koiramme, koiranne, koiraani, koiraasi, koiraansa, koiraamme, koiraanne, koirassani, koirassasi, koirassansa, koirassamme, koirassanne, koirastani, koirastasi, koirastansa, koirastamme, koirastanne, koirallani, koirallasi, koirallansa, koirallamme, koirallanne, koiranani, koiranasi, koiranansa, koiranamme, koirananne, koirakseni, koiraksesi, koiraksensa, koiraksemme, koiraksenne, koirattani, koirattasi, koirattansa, koirattamme, koirattanne, koirineni, koirinesi, koirinensa, koirinemme, koirinenne. English: Those are words for a dog??? Finnish: Wait! I didn’t stop yet. There is still: koirakaan, koirankaan, koiraakaan, koirassakaan, koirastakaan, koiraankaan, koirallakaan, koiraltakaan, koirallekaan, koiranakaan, koiraksikaan, koirattakaan, koirineenkaan, koirinkaan, koirako, koiranko, koiraako, koirassako, koirastako, koiraanko, koirallako, koiraltako, koiralleko, koiranako, koiraksiko, koirattako, koirineenko, koirinko, koirasikaan, koiranikaan, koiransakaan, koirammekaan, koirannekaan, koiraanikaan, koiraasikaan, koiraansakaan, koiraammekaan, koiraannekaan, koirassanikaan, koirassasikaan, koirassansakaan, koirassammekaan, koirassannekaan, koirastanikaan, koirastasikaan, koirastansakaan, koirastammekaan, koirastannekaan, koirallanikaan, koirallasikaan, koirallansakaan, koirallammekaan, koirallannekaan, koirananikaan, koiranasikaan, koiranansakaan, koiranammekaan, koiranannekaan, koiraksenikaan, koiraksesikaan, koiraksensakaan, koiraksemmekaan, koiraksennekaan, koirattanikaan, koirattasikaan, koirattansakaan, koirattammekaan, koirattannekaan, koirinenikaan, koirinesikaan, koirinensakaan, koirinemmekaan, koirinennekaan, koirasiko, koiraniko, koiransako, koirammeko, koiranneko, koiraaniko, koiraasiko, koiraansako, koiraammeko, koiraanneko, koirassaniko, koirassasiko, koirassansako, koirassammeko, koirassanneko, koirastaniko, koirastasiko, koirastansako, koirastammeko, koirastanneko, koirallaniko, koirallasiko, koirallansako, koirallammeko, koirallanneko, koirananiko, koiranasiko, koiranansako, koiranammeko, koirananneko, koirakseniko, koiraksesiko, koiraksensako, koiraksemmeko, koiraksenneko, koirattaniko, koirattasiko, koirattansako, koirattammeko, koirattanneko, koirineniko, koirinesiko, koirinensako, koirinemmeko, koirinenneko, koirasikaanko, koiranikaanko, koiransakaanko, koirammekaanko, koirannekaanko, koiraanikaanko, koiraasikaanko, koiraansakaanko, koiraammekaanko, koiraannekaanko, koirassanikaanko, koirassasikaanko, koirassansakaanko, koirassammekaanko, koirassannekaanko, koirastanikaanko, koirastasikaanko, koirastansakaanko, koirastammekaanko, koirastannekaanko, koirallanikaanko, koirallasikaanko, koirallansakaanko, koirallammekaanko, koirallannekaanko, koirananikaanko, koiranasikaanko, koiranansakaanko, koiranammekaanko, koiranannekaanko, koiraksenikaanko, koiraksesikaanko, koiraksensakaanko, koiraksemmekaanko, koiraksennekaanko, koirattanikaanko, koirattasikaanko, koirattansakaanko, koirattammekaanko, koirattannekaanko, koirinenikaanko, koirinesikaanko, koirinensakaanko, koirinemmekaanko, koirinennekaanko, koirasikokaan, koiranikokaan, koiransakokaan, koirammekokaan, koirannekokaan, koiraanikokaan, koiraasikokaan, koiraansakokaan, koiraammekokaan, koiraannekokaan, koirassanikokaan, koirassasikokaan, koirassansakokaan, koirassammekokaan, koirassannekokaan, koirastanikokaan, koirastasikokaan, koirastansakokaan, koirastammekokaan, koirastannekokaan, koirallanikokaan, koirallasikokaan, koirallansakokaan, koirallammekokaan, koirallannekokaan, koirananikokaan, koiranasikokaan, koiranansakokaan, koiranammekokaan, koiranannekokaan, koiraksenikokaan, koiraksesikokaan, koiraksensakokaan, koiraksemmekokaan, koiraksennekokaan, koirattanikokaan, koirattasikokaan, koirattansakokaan, koirattammekokaan, koirattannekokaan, koirinenikokaan, koirinesikokaan, koirinensakokaan, koirinemmekokaan, koirinennekokaan. Swedish: Breath!! German: Whattaaa? English: Okay, now you’re just making things up! Finnish: And now the plural forms…..”

What Is Plattdeutsch?

Beatrix writes:

‘Alt Hoch Deutsch’ (Old High German) sounds a bit like the Plattdeutsch my older Mennonite relatives spoke. But they left West Prussia for the Ukraine in 1802.

Plattdeutsch is a Low German language, and yes, it is an East Low German language with roots in far northeastern Germany and Prussia across the border into what is now Poland. It is close to Pomeranian, a dying East Low German language formerly spoken in that area that died out with the ethnic cleansing of the Germans there after WW2.

It is not intelligible with Standard German or really with any other German language, including other Low German languages. Low German is a completely different language from Standard German. German speakers cannot understand it at all.

Dutch speakers can actually understand Low German languages better than Germans can. That is because in some ways they are quite close to Dutch even though one is Old Franconian and the other is Old German. But there are also German “dialects” that are straight up from Franconian also, especially those spoken in northwest Germany near the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. There are dialects (or really languages in that area that are quite difficult to characterize as either:

German Dutch Neither

I am thinking specially of the languages spoken where German, the Netherlands and Belgium all come together around Kerkrade, Aachen and Stolberg.

Comparison of Old German with Modern German

Althochdeutsch

Ik gihorta dat seggen, dat sih urhettun ænon muotin Hiltibrant enti Hadubrant untar heriun tuem. Sunufatarungo iro saro rihtun, garutun se iro gudhamun, gurtun sih iro suert ana helidos, ubar hringa, do sie to dero hiltiu ritun.

Modern German Language

Ich hörte (glaubwürdig) berichten, dass zwei Krieger, Hildebrand und Hadubrand, (allein) zwischen ihren beiden Heeren, aufeinanderstießen. Zwei Leute von gleichem Blut, Vater und Sohn, rückten da ihre Rüstung zurecht, sie strafften ihre Panzerhemden und gürteten ihre Schwerter über die Eisenringe, die Männer, als sie zu diesem Kampf ritten.

Alothochdeutsch was the first form of the |German language and it can be called Old German. It existed from 500-1000 CE. It is probably somewhat analogous to Old English, but I doubt if the two languages would have been intelligible. The passage above is from 900, written about the same time as Beowulf was written.

It is truly amazing how much German has changed. Old German for all intents and purposes is a completely different language. The two languages look nothing alike at all and there is no way that modern Germans would understand a passage spoken in Old German. In that sense they are analogous to the relationship between English and Old English.

The modern German language called Hochdeutsch or High German is based on the language that Martin Luther used in his Bible translation. Luther was from Saxonia and the language he used was an Upper Saxon dialect modified to make it intelligible to as many Germans as possible.

Presently Standard German is a mix of Upper Saxon and Thuringian spoken with a Northern German accent. No one ever spoke this way naturally as part of their dialect from their home region. For hundreds of years, Hochdeutsch was only a written language. Various German writers used variations of it to try to make their written German as intelligible to as many Germans as possible.

Only around 1800 did Hochdeutsch begin to be used as a spoken language. At this time it began to be taught in schools and for a long time, German students learned it as a what amounted to a foreign language, their first language being whatever German dialect was spoken in their region.

In the 20th Century, Hochdeutsch began to be a common first language for many Germans who grew up speaking it either alongside their regional dialect or instead of the dialect. It was also during the past century that Hochdeutsch began t supplant many German dialects. The truth is that many German dialects are not dialects at all but instead they are full blown language in terms of both intelligibility and structure. Ethnologue lists 20 different German dialects as separate languages and the truth is that there are many more than that.

Linguistic/National Question

In what countries is the language spoken in the capital different from the language spoken by the majority of people in the rest of the country? As you can see, there is more than one country where this is the case.

Some cases from the past include

Austria-Hungary, where the capital Vienna spoke High German but most of the people spoke Czech, Slovak, Venetian, Slovenian, or Serbo-Croatian.

In Ireland, before English became popular in the early 1800’s, most people around the capital spoke English, while the majority of the population spoke Irish.

I found nine countries, two in Europe, two in Southeast Asia, two in South Asia, one in Oceania, one in the Caribbean, and one in Africa.

Hop to it!

Croatia, 1846

There probably wasn’t really any such thing as “Croatia” back then, but anyway, let us discuss what was happening in the territory we currently refer to as the nation of Croatia.

  • What was the official language (Slavic)?
  • What were the two other languages that were widely spoken everyone or nearly everyone along with the official one (both Slavic)?
  • What was the language most commonly spoken by educated people, especially in cities? For instance, if you went into a bookstore in Zagreb, the books would mostly be in this language (non-Slavic)?
  • What was the language of science and the ultra-elites? As an example of how this language was used, what was the official language for the Croatian Parliament? (non-Slavic)?
  • What was the official religion?

Five questions, five whole questions, now hard could it be?

Have fun kids!

Robert Burns, "Tam O Shanter"

This poem was written in and is being read in a language called Scots, which is not a dialect of English as many people think. Scots split off from English in ~1500, or 500 years ago. This is approximately what two languages sound like when they have been split apart for 500 years. I listened to this, although I can make out some words and even phrases here and there, honestly, I do not have the faintest idea what he is talking about, and I am missing most of this language. I can hear ~2

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)