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ArchangeI posted:You don't want to be known as a regiment that is difficult to work with (incidentially, do Oberisten etc. get some sort of reputation on the mercenary market? "Thats Hans von Goonenstein, he's got an eye for cavalry work that one, but dear God does he overcharge you for one measly regiment "). quote:But bitching about culture is very much a thing in different circles - I remember reading a letter from a French aristocrat visiting extended family in Germany and complaining that German dinner etiquette was so horrible because there was toast after toast after toast and you always had to stand up and the food was poo poo and the wine sucked and oh it was horrible, they are barbarians, barbarians I tell you... HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 11:20 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:34 |
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^^^ A big part of it is also that the guys who struggled the most are either conscripts or volunteers who'd signed up to fight in an explicitly local thing like a Pals battalion (and the vast majority certainly of British regiments had strong local ties to their recruiting areas). How did your regiments get their blokes? Volunteers? Impressment? Bit of both? Did they have any kind of inherent regional identity? ^^^ Apologies for the break. I was getting excited about politics; that's what happens when you've always said "I'd get involved if my MP was the party leader but they'll never let him" and it comes to pass. 100 Years Ago Gallipoli is still reassuringly, hopelessly awful, which gives us an easy topic for a day with no new developments. Sir Ian Hamilton is trying to dodge an increasing number of political bullets heading his way (you ain't seen nothing yet, mate), medical officers are struggling with the moral dilemma of wanting to invalid everyone out of the trenches but needing to leave some men there to hold them, privates are just getting very depressed about the whole thing. Meanwhile, Herbert Sulzbach is usually a good candidate to provide balance on a depressing day, and today is no different as he enjoys a nice visit from a friend.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 12:18 |
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Trin Tragula posted:How did your regiments get their blokes? Volunteers? Impressment? Bit of both? Did they have any kind of inherent regional identity? ^^^ Regiments having regional identities is a thing but it isn't an inherent thing in Germany, it's a byproduct of how recruiting works. A captain will often raise troops in the place where he's from so he can call on feudal ties (if he's a noble) and personal ties to do it. However, a 17th century army--in contrast to an army even a century later--is constantly in flux. Guys leave as a matter of course: historians have written a lot more about 18th century desertion since 18th century military authorities care more about it and punish it, so it becomes an object of thought at the time as well as an inroad for historians to talk about the relationship between the state and its subjects. But 17th century armies have a whole lot more desertion. And these massive attrition rates are offset partially (never fully) by constant recruitment. So even though the Mansfeld Regiment has lots of people from Saxony, Brandenburg (which is next to Saxony) and Bohemia in it, a list of deserters also shows people from southern Germany, where the regiment passed through on the way to Italy, and one dude from Switzerland. (I'm looking at that list because I don't have their muster rolls yet.) Edit: Desertion is especially bad in bad times for an army, like after a defeat or if things just suck for them right then. Most of Gallas's missing dudes in Pomerania probably left to find better jobs rather than died. And that's how he lost an entire army overnight. Edit 2: According to Hero of Italy, guys will often enlist (and, if they think it's necessary, desert) together, in little groups of two or three. (The author can see this phenomenon because Italian rolls, like the ones I'm looking at, track place of origin.) It's probably not super likely you'd be the only guy from one particular place in a company--at the least, you'd always have someone to talk to. Like those Englishmen I found in that one Saxon company--there were like six of them, all pikemen, and they probably hung out together and fought standing next to one another. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 12:29 |
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I could be totally wrong, but I'm guessing the guys from your period who are rocking the multiple languages are more likely to be management/officers/etc? While presumably the rank and file might only speak German but that's ok because they only need to speak German since they're only talking to each other and maybe whichever peasant they're looting at the time, their bosses are the ones who deal with everyone else, and it's the same with the poilus in WW1.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 13:54 |
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feedmegin posted:I could be totally wrong, but I'm guessing the guys from your period who are rocking the multiple languages are more likely to be management/officers/etc? While presumably the rank and file might only speak German but that's ok because they only need to speak German since they're only talking to each other and maybe whichever peasant they're looting at the time, their bosses are the ones who deal with everyone else, and it's the same with the poilus in WW1. Edit: Rather, I have not yet seen any examples of anyone not being able to talk to other soldiers. Absence of evidence and all that. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 14:04 |
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I think Archangel is on to something but to elaborate a bit: With the construction of the modern nation state in the 18th-19th century (especially the 19th) you also have a major push towards creating a monolingual society. When central government becomes that important having everything in a single language of governance becomes a big deal. Eventually this gets swept up in increasingly strong national identities. The French are a perfect example of this. What we consider French today is really just the dialect that was dominant in central France and Paris. In the 19th century there was a huge push in the educational system to force children to learn that version of French to the detriment of Provencal/Savoyard/Bretan/etc. You have additional pressures as the bureaucracy becomes more and more important as a source of employment and income for the rising middle class. If you're a man from Gascony that wants his son to grow up and get a good job in government you sure as poo poo want him speaking Parisian French perfectly and really don't give two shits if he can understand 100% of what his grandmother is saying. In Hegel's time? Even languages that we consider extremely consolidated today were dialectic as gently caress and entire sub-regions had distinctly different languages. This is an era when you could drive from London to Cardiff and hear people speaking English, Cornish, and Welsh, and that's ignoring dialects of each. I have no proof of this, but I strongly suspect that being at least somewhat multi-lingual was much more common, even for your average John, Johann, or Jacques, than it was today simply because it was much more necessary and people grew up hearing a lot more of them. Think less people speaking in perfect foreign tongues about complex topics and more the roughly functional breed of multilingualism that you can hear in a lot of working class first generation immigrants. As an aside, it strikes me that the countries that still retain the strongest dialects are those where that process of centralization in the 19th century was either imperfect or started really late. Germany is the prime example of this in my mind and to this day it's extremely common to find Germans who speak both perfect High German but also a strong regional dialect that they grew up with - and anyone who says dialects are easy has never tried to understand an Ost Frissian.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 14:44 |
Cyrano4747 posted:I think Archangel is on to something but to elaborate a bit: How did this process evolve in England? Like, in Wales/Cornwall/Scotland there were attempts to marginalize native languages, but was there any effort in England to get people in the South East/West country/North to speak more like londoners?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:06 |
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No idea. I'm more familiar with how it played out in continental educational systems in the 19th c
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:08 |
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Also in my time the language of administration doesn't have to have anything to do with "ethnic identity" because nobody thinks your language should be organically related to your ethnicity in the same way 19th century Romantics do. (Some Czechs get mad about having to speak or listen to German, though, and resent the fact that most emperors never bother to learn Czech.) For instance, the language of Imperial administration and a bunch of Spanish government stuff in this century is Italian. Yeah, there are tons of Italians in the HRE's/Spain's army or civil service, but not nearly enough that that would have been everyone's first language. quote:...and anyone who says dialects are easy has never tried to understand an Ost Frissian. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:11 |
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nothing to seehere posted:How did this process evolve in England? Like, in Wales/Cornwall/Scotland there were attempts to marginalize native languages, but was there any effort in England to get people in the South East/West country/North to speak more like londoners? If you were from those places and wanted to get on in life/move up in the world/enter the professions, it was heavily in your interest to take elocution lessons and speak like a posho. (Not the same as 'like a Londoner', btw - look at Cockney, and indeed RP is more associated with the Home Counties than London proper). This is about class more than geography.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:12 |
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WW2 Data Back with another Japanese update, the 20mm Projectiles! What types did the IJN use? Which projectile is called the "Bag-Breaker" and why? Click to find out!
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 15:22 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:WW2 Data I just wanted to say this is appreciated by a gun geek like myself
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:21 |
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HEY GAL posted:Also in my time the language of administration doesn't have to have anything to do with "ethnic identity" because nobody thinks your language should be organically related to your ethnicity in the same way 19th century Romantics do. (Some Czechs get mad about having to speak or listen to German, though, and resent the fact that most emperors never bother to learn Czech.) Isn't Frisian the closest of all European languages to English? That's something I've heard and just confirmed with my degree in Wikipedia. I reckon as a thing British people have more or less lost the ability to learn foreign languages as a society since we're talking in my native tongue right now and I'm not being forced to look at Spanish until my eyes bleed. France has an interesting way of dealing with their languages. They have a college that rules on language prescriptively. They decide what the correct way is for French to be spoken and then decree it. Officially Email is not a word in French, they have something else. Nobody uses it, but that's the official ruling, because they don't want French to be "Anglicised" like German has been to an extent. I don't know much about unifying English into one language, but I recall seeing a series of maps that showed how Cornish was gradually stripped from the South Coast with around 25 miles of ground made with English every two decades, but I think this was more about making successive pushes through major cities than any constant effect through interconnection. And having read through about 50 pages of The Business of War today it goes into taking money from the locals to pay for things. I expect if accents got too difficult to understand it basically came down to talking to the peasants in the universal sign language of hold up a coin, however many fingers you want and then pointing or aiming your weapon at them. Hazzard fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:31 |
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Trin Tragula posted:^^^ A big part of it is also that the guys who struggled the most are either conscripts or volunteers who'd signed up to fight in an explicitly local thing like a Pals battalion (and the vast majority certainly of British regiments had strong local ties to their recruiting areas). How did your regiments get their blokes? Volunteers? Impressment? Bit of both? Did they have any kind of inherent regional identity? ^^^ Sir Ian Hamilton posted:Napoleon is the only man who has waged a world war in the world as we know it to-day. Napoleon said, I think it was on the famous raft, “Who holds Constantinople is master of the world.” I think I found the problem!
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:32 |
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Tevery Best posted:Like Cyrano said, e-mail them and just ask what your options are. Or, if you prefer, I can try calling them for you and asking some general questions. That would be nice. I'm not even sure where to start.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:56 |
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Plattdüütsch is hilarious in its close similarity to 'lower saxon' Dutch dialects. But it doesn't have much to do with Dutch Frisian IIRC.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 18:18 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:I have no proof of this, but I strongly suspect that being at least somewhat multi-lingual was much more common, even for your average John, Johann, or Jacques, than it was today simply because it was much more necessary and people grew up hearing a lot more of them. "Hey soldier! I gently caress your mouth!" The soldier understood enough to grab his sword and run after the guy. He was convicted of murder because he kept attacking the local even after the latter tried to hide, and after that point it wasn't a fight any more. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 18:30 |
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What was his punishment?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 18:42 |
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HEY GAL posted:So, there's a trial from the Mansfeld Regiment books where a dude was sitting on the stoop in front of his quarters and a local ran past and shouted "Ai! Soldate! Becce futui!" and it turns out half of that is not even italian but a dialect they speak in/near Busto Arsizio called Bustocce, only it was misspelled by the regimental secretary (it should be beché i think). The other half is perfect Latin. On the other hand, the teachers supervising both groups happened to be Latin teachers, and were conversant. When asked, our teacher said he could understand the Polish teacher fine, once he got used to the accent. It was eye-opening.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 18:58 |
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And that's why the first treaty between China and Russia was written in Latin.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:18 |
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Wasn't impressment fairly common in the navy? I thought that was half the point of all the beatings.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:25 |
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My brother told me about some conference he attended in which professors from all sides of Europe perfectly understood each-other talking in bad English, except for the English (e: as in, from England) professors who could barely understand a word of the pidginy English everyone else was using.
my dad fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:26 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Wasn't impressment fairly common in the navy? I thought that was half the point of all the beatings. Yeah, but sailors have actual employment options on any civilian vassal. I don't think there are many civilian jobs that require a high proficiency in threatening peasants with your sword while your buddy takes everything they own.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:57 |
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Oh my God, the pidgin English... I had a lecturer who was so bad at English, my literally hurt through the entire first lecture.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:57 |
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feedmegin posted:If you were from those places and wanted to get on in life/move up in the world/enter the professions, it was heavily in your interest to take elocution lessons and speak like a posho. (Not the same as 'like a Londoner', btw - look at Cockney, and indeed RP is more associated with the Home Counties than London proper). This is about class more than geography. Not exactly. English went through the same homogenization, in England, as many other languages did. There were definitely distinct dialects, and they were absolutely associated with specific places. The English that sought to replace them was definitely thought of as being from around London. My favorite British English dialect, like a lot of people's, is the Yorkshire dialect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_dialect
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 19:58 |
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Come on, you can't do that and not post the canonical Tykes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3cayRMnVb8
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:20 |
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golden bubble posted:Yeah, but sailors have actual employment options on any civilian vassal. I don't think there are many civilian jobs that require a high proficiency in threatening peasants with your sword while your buddy takes everything they own.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:22 |
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How much did mechanized printing affect that in the 19th century, it seems like not needing to replace all the type for each dialect would speed up the process and increase the output, making that newspaper cheaper to make.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:29 |
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Relatedly, is there evidence for English getting more homogenized since the internet? I do think in my experience British people are a lot more familiar with American terms, but that might just be anecdotal. Maybe TV is the bigger influence there anyway.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:32 |
Koramei posted:Relatedly, is there evidence for English getting more homogenized since the internet? I do think in my experience British people are a lot more familiar with American terms, but that might just be anecdotal. Maybe TV is the bigger influence there anyway. I believe some linguists did a paper on this and divergence has actually increased recently. Don't have a link handy however.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:52 |
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nothing to seehere posted:I believe some linguists did a paper on this and divergence has actually increased recently. Don't have a link handy however. Yeah I'm pretty confident I've seen a study or two saying American regional dialects have actually been growing stronger. I'll see if I can track it down in a bit. Koramei posted:I do think in my experience British people are a lot more familiar with American terms, but that might just be anecdotal. Maybe TV is the bigger influence there anyway. Anecdotal, but I can't really think of much media we get in America that is specifically set in parts of the UK other than England. So most Americans get a lot of RP mixed in with some other British dialects that we never learn to identify because we're not getting context. A Yorkshire accent is just going to be another variety of British English we can't name because there aren't a bunch of TV shows set in Yorkshire with people speaking in dialect. Meanwhile, I would assume most Brits could at least distinguish between general "Midwestern newscaster" American, varieties of Southern drawl, and the non-rhotic New England dialects. There are a lot of internationally popular TV shows set in NYC, for example. Also helps that our last few Presidents speak (in a broad sense) Southern dialects, too. Edit: My guess would be a combination of British English being more diverse (Americans are less likely to be exposed to many dialects, Brits are likely used to a wider variety of dialects) and the US not having a strong prestige dialect like RP. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 20:59 |
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Hazzard posted:
This actually goes back to the foundation of the Academie francaise in the 17th century. While I don't know if its initial intent was to suppress other languages it had a big role in that in the 19th century by defining what the official french was and pushing aside everything else. Then, as today, it was all about crafting a single national linguistic identity, only then it was more focused inward than outward. Now they're worried about anglicisms, then they wanted to ensure people in all corners of the hexigon spoke the same way as they did in Paris.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:06 |
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Animal posted:What was his punishment? Incidentally, the Germans behead upright, with the subject kneeling upright and the executioner swinging the sword parallel to the ground. It's supposedly a technically demanding move. Cyrano4747 posted:This actually goes back to the foundation of the Academie francaise in the 17th century. While I don't know if its initial intent was to suppress other languages it had a big role in that in the 19th century by defining what the official french was and pushing aside everything else. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Sep 14, 2015 |
# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:08 |
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Pellisworth posted:Anecdotal, but I can't really think of much media we get in America that is specifically set in parts of the UK other than England. So most Americans get a lot of RP mixed in with some other British dialects that we never learn to identify because we're not getting context. A Yorkshire accent is just going to be another variety of British English we can't name because there aren't a bunch of TV shows set in Yorkshire with people speaking in dialect.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:08 |
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my dad posted:My brother told me about some conference he attended in which professors from all sides of Europe perfectly understood each-other talking in bad English, except for the English (e: as in, from England) professors who could barely understand a word of the pidginy English everyone else was using. That's actually a basis for a trend developing in English teaching nowadays: no longer teaching perfect Received Pronunciation and giving up on a lot of small things nobody but natives would even notice, since 80% of your communication with English is not going to be with natives. Instead the idea is to put in a lot of practice on things that are shown to directly impact comprehension and to teach reactions to metalinguistic cues (i.e. how to explain to the other party the idea behind that word you're thinking about, but can't recall or don't even know the English equivalent of). As for early modern multilingualism, it definitely differed from what we have today, but it was also heavily dependent on where and who you were. For example, Polish nobles in the XVIth century tended to speak several languages, since they often studied in Italian or German universities. Polish burghers, meanwhile, were far more likely to be educated in Poland (even if they graduated a university), so they had a chance to know Latin and/or Greek if they were lucky, frequently spoke German (due to German settlement in cities), and, naturally, learned the languages of their trading partners (so typically Czech, Tartar, Turkish, German). A description from a French chronicle suggests that languages were far less important for the French: Jaques-Auguste de Thou on the Polish messengers petitioning Henry de Valois to take the throne posted:There was not a single one amongst them who would not speak Latin fluently, many translated themselves into Italian and German; some spoke our language so purely and beautifully you would swear they were born on the banks of the Seine rather than over the Vistula or the Danube; and this was quite a shame for our countrymen, who not only have no skills, but are also enemies of all skilfulness. Thus, when the guests asked them about anything, they answered with gestures, blushing with shame. Henry himself only spoke French and Italian, which was a big factor in how bad were his relations with his Polish court. Multilingualism became less common amongst the Polish nobility in the XVIIth century. With the development of Jesuit schools, "good enough" education became readily available in the country, while interest in other countries waned with the rise of Sarmatism. Polish also became a lingua franca in much of Eastern Europe, further decreasing the need to learn other languages. Also, story time: some years ago I was on a car pilgrimage (if you can call it that, I guess) across a lot of Western Europe. One day we were driving through southern France. It was late in the afternoon, and about time for the daily Mass. So we started looking for a church. But the area was so sparsely populated that we couldn't find a town, much less a church, and the fact that no-one in the group could speak French well enough to have the courage to ask for directions. Finally we drove into a little Provencal village, one with a square so small our car barely fit on it. The church was right there, so we walked in. It said the Mass should begin in twenty minutes or so, and the place was open. But there was nobody there, which surprised us. Still, the priest who was in charge of our group said he was going to perform a Mass one way or another, so he grabbed his stuff, went into the sacristy and started to get changed. The local parish priest came back something like five minutes before the service was supposed to begin. I guess you can imagine his surprise when he saw his tiny little temple overran with complete strangers from halfway across the continent, one of whom was getting ready to perform a Mass. I'd say it only grew bigger when our guy started to explain himself... in Latin. But they did manage to work it out.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:14 |
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nothing to seehere posted:I believe some linguists did a paper on this and divergence has actually increased recently. Don't have a link handy however. I find this highly dubious. Diachrony doesn't even work on that kind of time-scale so I can't even think of a reliable measurement. Also what are people trying to get across with "homogenization" in this context? Lack of variation? In what medium?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:27 |
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Dialects and accents blending, much more mutual intelligibility even with terms that were pretty unique to a certain dialect, stuff like that? The sort of stuff you expect when you have people from different backgrounds spending a lot of time together. I know next to nothing about linguistics so sorry if that wasn't clear. Tevery Best posted:That's actually a basis for a trend developing in English teaching nowadays: no longer teaching perfect Received Pronunciation and giving up on a lot of small things nobody but natives would even notice, since 80% of your communication with English is not going to be with natives. Instead the idea is to put in a lot of practice on things that are shown to directly impact comprehension and to teach reactions to metalinguistic cues (i.e. how to explain to the other party the idea behind that word you're thinking about, but can't recall or don't even know the English equivalent of). Oh wow have you got a source for this? I'd be interested in reading more about it. I wonder what countries it's applicable to as well, or where it's caught on. Even though functionally I can see how a more utilitarian English would be way more useful in most situations, I wonder how many people would be actively willing to learn (or in many situations, send their children off to learn) a more basic/'inferior' version of the language, since the end goal of sounding totally indistinguishable from a native speaker (even to the point of mimicking accents) seems to be important to a lot of ESL learners at least in my experience (Koreans). quote:learned the languages of their trading partners (so typically Czech, Tartar, Turkish, German) How important were Tatars in Poland? Was this all just post-Mongols or were there significant trade links even beforehand? Did Poland brush up against the steppe in Medieval times/ was there a big Tatar minority in Poland?
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:37 |
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HEY GAL posted:Incidentally, the Germans behead upright, with the subject kneeling upright and the executioner swinging the sword parallel to the ground. It's supposedly a technically demanding move. Some executioners were lynched by angry mobs if they failed with beheadings.
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:56 |
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Was at a flea market mostly intended for car nerds the other day, but there was the odd milsurp curiosity there too. Reflector gun sight for the Saab J 29F Tunnan. Had a receipt attached to it that said it had been surplused in December 1963 since the aircraft was junked. Box (unfortunately empty) for the IR camera in the Saab SF 37 Viggen (the photo recon version). 100 mm lens unit for one of the cameras in the Saab S 32C Lansen (recon version). Buncha various milsurp. Lots of fältmössa m/59 (the green cap - it's great), transport tubes for 8 cm mortar smoke rounds, gas masks, etc etc. I also picked up some field manuals, some of which I've scanned. I'll link them on the remote chance that someone might be interested. They have some illustrations that might be understandable even if you don't read Swedish. Field manual for a tank platoon, 1974 edition - might be interested if you care about the standard platoon widths when attacking and things like that. Tank gunnery manual, 1979 edition
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 22:03 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:34 |
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:*grabs enormous book with meticulously made genocide plans*
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# ? Sep 14, 2015 22:48 |