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HookShot posted:My aunt's boyfriend has lived in the Paris area for ten years and speaks like 4 words of French, even by your definition France is "functionally multilingual" It's always been baffling to me that this type of person exists. Learning a new language is...good. You should do it even if you never move once in your entire life.
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Aug 31, 2016 15:34
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I don't really fault people for not learning another language if they don't move but it's supremely arrogant to move to another country and not do it, especially when it's just something like French (I'm assuming his aunt's boyfriend is European/American). Unless you're like 60+ and moving in with your kids in Mexico/Chinatown or whatever, then I guess I can understand Koramei fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 15:38
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cheerfullydrab posted:I always hate people who refer to "the 'stans", or make jokes about how, to them, every country that ends with "stan" is one big undifferentiated mass. But why? Most of the 'stans share several things in common; as you might expect for countries that share a linguistic naming convention. I know quite well the differences between the two of them, but I refer to them as a group all the time. Basically an informal way of saying Central Asia.
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Aug 31, 2016 15:39
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There are just so many of these people. They're ignoring the chance to better themselves, ultimately making things harder for themselves, just to avoid momentary discomfort or embarrassment. And I wonder if the latter is even true in a country like France, I can't imagine you'd get very far with just English, never mind any other non-French language.
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Aug 31, 2016 15:43
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Count Roland posted:But why? Most of the 'stans share several things in common; as you might expect for countries that share a linguistic naming convention. I know quite well the differences between the two of them, but I refer to them as a group all the time. Basically an informal way of saying Central Asia. What are these commonalities and do they also share those with Hindustan, Dagestan, Kurdistan and Tatarstan
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Aug 31, 2016 16:02
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Count Roland posted:But why? Most of the 'stans share several things in common; as you might expect for countries that share a linguistic naming convention. I know quite well the differences between the two of them, but I refer to them as a group all the time. Basically an informal way of saying Central Asia. How are Pakistan and Kazakhstan similar?
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Aug 31, 2016 16:03
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Koramei posted:I don't really fault people for not learning another language if they don't move but it's supremely arrogant to move to another country and not do it, especially when it's just something like French (I'm assuming his aunt's boyfriend is European/American). Phlegmish posted:It's always been baffling to me that this type of person exists. Learning a new language is...good. You should do it even if you never move once in your entire life. Agreed. He's Australian/English, and I think it's partly historical dislike of the French, partly laziness. Apparently he tried when he first got there and got tired of people not understanding him so he gave up. Although to be fair my French uncle also lived in London for two years (as a chef working in a French restaurant with other French people) and learned just enough English to lean across the table and call my aunt's boyfriend and my husband "savages" and then go back to our French conversation.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:05
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I've only ever heard people use "the Stans" to refer to the former Soviet Republics (i.e. Not Afghanistan and Pakistan)
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Aug 31, 2016 16:16
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cheerfullydrab posted:How are Pakistan and Kazakhstan similar? Pakistan is kinda the outlier amongst them of course, I don't really mean Pakistan when I refer to 'stans, not usually Afghanistan either. And certainly not the non-nation ones like Tartarstan or Kurdistan. Still, they're majority Muslim, and both have spent a lot of time united under various empires. Versions of the Persian empire going back millennia, Tamerlane's conquests and so forth. Most of this stops at the Hindu Kush mountains so it only vaguely applies to Pakistan. The Central asian 'stans go a lot further in sharing this Persian heritage in the form of related languages, traditions etc. Most of the peoples there are a mix of Turkic and Persian going back a long ways. These are a lot more tightly knit, having frequently been part of the same state (or under the same boot). Of course there's a ton of things that make them different too.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:28
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Let me tell you how majority Christian nations Jamaica and Russia are the same thing.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:41
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cheerfullydrab posted:Let me tell you how majority Christian nations Jamaica and Russia are the same thing. Dude now you're just being reductive.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:44
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They both have laws against 'homosexual propaganda' and a history of wars with Georgia.
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Aug 31, 2016 16:44
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Rumda posted:Dude now you're just being reductive. It's really not. I can totally understand why people conflate them but it is simply being lazy and nothing more so you might as well at least admit to that if you're gonna do it rather than trying to justify it by calling them indistinguishable. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have about as much a cause to be lumped together as Friesland and Iceland do.
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Aug 31, 2016 17:06
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Would it be better to just sound archaic and talk about 'Turkestan'?
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Aug 31, 2016 17:17
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Guavanaut posted:They both have laws against 'homosexual propaganda' and a history of wars with Georgia. I'll bite. When was Jamaica ever at war with either of the Georgias?
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Aug 31, 2016 17:28
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Ofaloaf posted:Would it be better to just sound archaic and talk about 'Turkestan'? I guess when people talk about the Stans I think of it in a Soviet context and when they'd say something like Turkestan it implies before Russian dominance of the region. Better (and simpler) though is to just say Central Asia
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Aug 31, 2016 17:31
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Kopijeger posted:I'll bite. When was Jamaica ever at war with either of the Georgias? And sure, technically in both of those cases neither Georgia nor Jamaica were able to declare war by themselves, but the comparison doesn't work otherwise. 
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Aug 31, 2016 17:40
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Rumda posted:Dude now you're just being reductive. This, in a discussion about calling a whole passel of countries "The 'Stans".
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Aug 31, 2016 17:47
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Koramei posted:I guess when people talk about the Stans I think of it in a Soviet context and when they'd say something like Turkestan it implies before Russian dominance of the region. Count Roland posted:Basically an informal way of saying Central Asia. Why is 'stans so offensive, but naming a region not? They both serve to lump countries together. What about the Anglosphere, or Sub-saharan Africa, or the Caucuses? We all routinely lump nations together for convenience- only spergs think this is the equivalent of saying all the countries in the group are exactly the same.
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Aug 31, 2016 18:18
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Count Roland posted:Why is 'stans so offensive, but naming a region not? They both serve to lump countries together. What about the Anglosphere, or Sub-saharan Africa, or the Caucuses? We all routinely lump nations together for convenience- only spergs think this is the equivalent of saying all the countries in the group are exactly the same. It just particularly rubs me the wrong way, and this is the pedantry thread.
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Aug 31, 2016 18:40
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Byzantine posted:It's also why it's pretty stupid when other New World inhabitants get all bitchy about us using "American". In my country, when someone wants to make a point, they call you people "états-uniens". It's super awkward, since the adjective "américain" is perfectly fine, but it does jump out at you in just the right way. It's even in the style guide of our best newspaper.
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Aug 31, 2016 18:58
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cheerfullydrab posted:It just particularly rubs me the wrong way, and this is the pedantry thread. True enough.
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Aug 31, 2016 19:20
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Count Roland posted:Why is 'stans so offensive, but naming a region not? They both serve to lump countries together. What about the Anglosphere, or Sub-saharan Africa, or the Caucuses? We all routinely lump nations together for convenience- only spergs think this is the equivalent of saying all the countries in the group are exactly the same. Since the suffix is so commonly taken to mean "generic dirthole". And you get people explicitly saying the places are all the same/ incomprehensible. Like the words Kyrgyz and Tajik. They're really not complicated if you actually stop to look at them, but people don't care to try. To be fair, if the Caucuses had a whacky nickname I think the same could apply there. People of European descent generally don't care to learn much about places outside of Europe, especially parts of the former USSR.
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Aug 31, 2016 19:26
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Koramei posted:It's really not. I can totally understand why people conflate them but it is simply being lazy and nothing more so you might as well at least admit to that if you're gonna do it rather than trying to justify it by calling them indistinguishable. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have about as much a cause to be lumped together as Friesland and Iceland do. Really so a group of countries with intertwined sociopolitical histories in the same geographic area being collectively referred to is the same as claiming two countries opposite sides of the world with influences and people from separate continents are identical just because they both have European backgrounds.
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Aug 31, 2016 22:21
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Countries on opposite sides of the world with intertwined sociopolitical histories, yeah. Jamaica and Russia are different and it's worthwhile to take the time to learn to distinguish them. The same is also true of the Central Asian republics.
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Aug 31, 2016 22:30
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Koramei posted:To be fair, if the Caucuses had a whacky nickname I think the same could apply there. People of European descent generally don't care to learn much about places outside of Europe, especially parts of the former USSR. But people in the Caucasus are literally Caucasians!
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Aug 31, 2016 22:37
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Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ Byzantine fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 22:42
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Koramei posted:Countries on opposite sides of the world with intertwined sociopolitical histories, yeah. It's the magnitude though. People (people of greater than American newscaster intelligence at least) weren't saying they are identical just that they occupy a distinct geographical region and have enough shared history and shared peoples that a region can be defined. Byzantine posted:Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ Not exacally there are Iranian and Turkic peoples but the borders as you'd expect aren't drawn according to ethnic identities, there are more Tajiks in Samarkand than Uzbeks, ( although according to Wikipedia a lot of census fudging happened during Soviet times so a lot of the Tajiks are classified as Uzbeks) Rumda fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 22:53
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Pretty sure Tajiks are just Persians who don't get to live in Iran thanks to geopolitics. Soviets did mess with the borders to keep the Ferghana Valley divided which was lovely. I thought about it more and I realized I don't like people saying "the 'stans" because it is as the other guy said, saying that they're incomprehensible and foreign and undifferentiated. If it was Tajikland, Kazakhland, etc., I don't think anybody would call them "the lands". There aren't that many actual sovereign states that end in "land", those Central Asian former Soviet countries would be the largest grouping. Please, please, I beg you, don't make me use the word "otherize" because it's awful.
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Sep 1, 2016 01:44
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Byzantine posted:Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ Iraq and Syria were made out of existing Ottoman provinces.
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Sep 1, 2016 01:47
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cheerfullydrab posted:I thought about it more and I realized I don't like people saying "the 'stans" because it is as the other guy said, saying that they're incomprehensible and foreign and undifferentiated. If it was Tajikland, Kazakhland, etc., I don't think anybody would call them "the lands". There aren't that many actual sovereign states that end in "land", those Central Asian former Soviet countries would be the largest grouping. I do get what you're saying, but I think you might be overthinking it. There's a section of highway near here that's referred to in conversation and in traffic reports as "the avenues", because all of the exits in that area are streets with names like 1st Avenue, 9th Avenue, 17th Avenue, etc. This isn't some incomprehensible foreign territory, a lot of us live there. Sometimes a nickname is just a nickname.
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Sep 1, 2016 01:56
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Byzantine posted:Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ All nations are imagined
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Sep 1, 2016 02:03
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computer parts posted:Iraq and Syria were made out of existing Ottoman provinces. Constantinople is in Europe.
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Sep 1, 2016 02:10
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Byzantine posted:Constantinople is in Europe. No, it's Istanbul.
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Sep 1, 2016 02:11
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computer parts posted:No, it's Istanbul. He's playing up his username for comedic effect.
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Sep 1, 2016 02:15
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computer parts posted:No, it's Istanbul. That's nobody's business but the Turks'.
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Sep 1, 2016 02:16
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Byzantine posted:Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ People of the "appropriate" nationality were often physically moved around to be in them during Soviet times, to create a situation where they were really quite national-based. Even still, there's a lot of blurring of where the borders are versus the national borders. There was additional sorting going as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and many people moved a few dozen miles across the borders because they were worried about being in the wrong country when i independence finally happened.
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Sep 1, 2016 02:23
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Byzantine posted:Are the ex-Soviet *stans actually nation-state countries? I always kinda figured them to be like Syria/Iraq/Jordan, Pakistan/India/ Sort of. It depends on what part exactly. In some cases there are clear ethnic divisions, in some cases the Soviets falsely reclassified ethnicities to make them fit the borders, like the people along the Oxus River, in some cases they just made up statistics for ethnicity, like the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is mostly politically determined, the urban population in SE Uzbekistan is mostly Tajik to this day, and the rural population in lowland SW Tajikistan mostly Uzbek
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Sep 1, 2016 02:54
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Ethnic identity in central Asia is complicated and one cannot necessarily assume it aligns clearly with language. Languages of Central Asia prior to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. While the Persian dialect spoken in Tajikistan is quite similar to that used in Iran, the vast majority of Tajiks are Sunni in contrast to Shia Persians. These differences can translate into major differences in identification despite use of the same language. (See also: English:Irish) If we zoom into Afghanistan we can see some of the segmentation among Persian speakers.  Further, identity can be highly segmented even within the outwardly homogeneous ethnicities like Uzbek and Turkmen. The Central Asian Republics were a constant headache for Soviet leaders as they were constantly riven by complex tribal intrigue, even within language groups.  Note that establishing the exact relationships between clans within a horde is notoriously difficult, affiliation and hierarchy is prone to rapid change and errors by western researchers. However the general pattern of segmentation has been retained. These divisions have serious consequences. One of the causes of the Tajik Civil war was the uneven disbursement of patronage, with President Nabiev's Khodjenti Clan and allies controlling access to state resources and civil service jobs.
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Sep 1, 2016 03:10
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Also as far as languages are concerned, most of the primary languages of the countries aren't really too mutually intelligible and belong to completely different branches of the overarching Turkic language family (with the exception of Tajik). Uzbeks speak a Karluk language, Kazakh languages are in the Qypçaq group with Kyrgyz, Turkmen is an Oghuz language. They all might have loan words, but they aren't mutually intelligible, even within their own language groups.
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Sep 1, 2016 04:43
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