[quote]Professor X wrote:
jp_dubya wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Which country in Africa? It is a pretty diverse pace.
I thought the whole country walked around butt naked carrying big vases on their heads. No?
If the plate lipped people got together with the vase head folks, what do you suppose Martha Stewart would do to complete the set? After bringing in the neck ring folks that is.
I think she’d liven up the place with few good 'ole drunk Irish people, some short Asian people who are good at math and can’t drive, and some American white guys who can’t jump and/or dance.[/quote]
now that would be a party. To culturally diversify the place, would all cultures be taught the white guy over bite? Can teach others to dance down, that is easy enough, but time would not be well spent trying to teach marauding whitey how to dance
This is a really cool concept. I’ve never thought of this.
Most of the poor and lower classes in the Spanish world also lack use of tense, when they speak it rarely leaves the immediate past or ventures into anything but the apparent future.
Spanish has a highly complex system of verb use, and can communicate range in the future and the past, as well as all sorts of theortical subjunctive forms.
But you’d be suprised if you were a Spanish speaker, that most people don’t even know the full use of their language.
[quote]Guerrero wrote:
Another problem is language. According to scholars, only the Indo-european languages have a fully developed use of ‘tense’. If language causes you to have little grasp of the future, you live in ‘eternal present’ and can’t plan for the future very well. You also have little concept of time. This may also be a reason why Africa never developed.
This is a really cool concept. I’ve never thought of this.
Most of the poor and lower classes in the Spanish world also lack use of tense, when they speak it rarely leaves the immediate past or ventures into anything but the apparent future.
Spanish has a highly complex system of verb use, and can communicate range in the future and the past, as well as all sorts of theortical subjunctive forms.
But you’d be suprised if you were a Spanish speaker, that most people don’t even know the full use of their language.
[/quote]
Isn’t that because for most of the hispanic world, the Spanish language was simply overlaid over their original “native” languages, such as Quechua, Maya, or Nahuatl, and that this poorest segment of the population would not be highly educated anyway?
It’s the same as Indonesia. Most of the people speak Indonesian as a second or third language, even though it’s the national language. Of course a Jakarta businessman will speak quite elegant and intricate Indonesian, but the poor Makassarese fisherman in Ujung Pandang will only speak the bare minimum “pasar melayu” (market Malay) that everyone else speaks to get by.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Without European colonisation, Africa would be far worse off today than it is. !
Speculation at best. I am sure many of you would love to think this is so, but your desire doesn’t make it true.
Certainly the former french colonies haven’t fared too well, to put it mildly - hard to imagine they would have been even worse off sans the colonization, though I suppose we don’t really have a counterfactual.
However, to the OP, I’d be careful about romanticizing Africa’s (a continent!) history/society prior to european/american intrusion. It was - like native america - no Eden. Rather, intense tribal warfare & the capture and use of slaves, particularly in mining, was more the norm - and prevalent far before the “adventurers in the Africa trade” arrived.
It is indeed very true that the continent is enormously wealthy in natural resources. I have read - though haven’t confirmed this - that Africa has so much arable land it practically could feed the entire world.
[/quote]
This is one of the most intelligent, informed, and unbiased statements about Africa that I have read on any message board.
[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
HH is just a troll…and a disingenous one at that.[/quote]
Nonsense. I’ve admitted that I love to troll. However, I like to do it in a nice and thoughtful manner, which encourages thinking. Its only the challenges in life that cause a person to grow. I love to challenge premises.
Now, what is it about Europe (and European languages) that allowed Europeans and their descendents to dominate the globe? What is IT that allowed this? China has far more people. Brahmin Hindus are far more educated. Africa has cultures going back to the very beginnings of mankind itself. Yet in 1912, you could fly the Union Jack on your caravan in Afghanistan and be unmolested. Why?
Headhunter, I still think that the advantages enjoyed by Western Europe were far more geographic than linguistic.
Didn’t I once recommend some Victor Davis Hanson books to you? Take a look at The Western Way of War and also Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Not a great book, but a good one.
Finally, although I’ve said this a dozen times, you simply must read Fates of Nations by Paul Colinvaux. It’s out of print, but it is worth looking for. Here’s a decent synopsis courtesy of Wiki.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Headhunter, I still think that the advantages enjoyed by Western Europe were far more geographic than linguistic.
Didn’t I once recommend some Victor Davis Hanson books to you? Take a look at The Western Way of War and also Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Not a great book, but a good one.
Finally, although I’ve said this a dozen times, you simply must read Fates of Nations by Paul Colinvaux. It’s out of print, but it is worth looking for. Here’s a decent synopsis courtesy of Wiki.
[/quote]
I should give Hanson’s WWoW a try. I know that although he made me feel a little guilty for buying his thesis, he did sell me on it in Carnage and Culture.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Headhunter, I still think that the advantages enjoyed by Western Europe were far more geographic than linguistic.
Didn’t I once recommend some Victor Davis Hanson books to you? Take a look at The Western Way of War and also Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Not a great book, but a good one.
Finally, although I’ve said this a dozen times, you simply must read Fates of Nations by Paul Colinvaux. It’s out of print, but it is worth looking for. Here’s a decent synopsis courtesy of Wiki.
[/quote]
I read the Wiki page and, sadly, it reminded me of an Obama speech.
Here’s my take: as computational knowledge expands, it most benefits those who are capable of applying it. A trader in the City of London has much more use for this than someone living in a ghetto in Glasgow. And the ability to form a concept is reliant upon the language of the user.
I would therefore contend that language is the limiting factor in how well a culture develops and, once the concepts are formed, how readily the information can be applied. A silicon chip means one thing to the person in the City and quite another to the ghetto-dweller. It means something else to an illiterate and innumerate villager living along the banks of the Gambia.
In so far as biology determines the development of language, then the books you recommend would be worth a look. However, I tend to think Orwell was correct in his attachment of importance to language: “Newspeak is Ingsoc, Ingsoc is Newspeak.”
"A quick look at Thesaurus.com indicates that Dr. Kipfer did a lot more than just fix an �??incorrect�?? link in Lexico�??s database. There�??s a screen shot of the previous �??weaker�?? entry at the Jezebel link above, and you�??ll have to go there to see it for yourself, because if you go to Thesaurus.com today and enter in the word �??weaker,�?? you get�?� nothing.
No entries at all. No synonyms, no antonyms, no Tiny Tims. There�??s nothing at all listed under the word, except a query as to whether you�??ve misspelled it (and you haven�??t).
As Eddie Murphy once said in an entirely different context, �??Well, that�??s peculiar.�?? Let�??s look around for a few other words, eh? How about�?� malefactor. Only three synonyms are listed today, and no other useful information, but if one goes looking in Google�??s cache for the same word, one finds a multitude of options that have now vanished into the ether(net).
How about a few more? Try comparing today�??s Thesaurus.com entry for, say, omnipotent (there�??s nothing there, the word isn�??t even recognized) to the Google cache version, where there�??s a whole page full of stuff. You can see similar rather astonishing edits for reprobate (cached version here), inamorata (cached version here) and inimitable (cached version here).