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My Imaginary GF posted:So the girlfriend and I are watching 'Hearbreak Ridge' tonight, and she asks me why we were in Korea. I dunno how to really answer her, are there any books we could read together that would help us understand more about why we were in Korea? The short version is Stalin gave the first Kim the green light to invade and thought the US/britain wouldn’t bother fighting over Korea. Mistake 1. The second mistake was refusing to deal with the UN because people weren’t recognizing the PRC as the real government of China so his people weren’t there to veto the security council resolution that led to a UN Intervention in it. To this day it’s the UN’s most significant conflict.
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Jun 14, 2018 12:06
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My Imaginary GF posted:So the girlfriend and I are watching 'Hearbreak Ridge' tonight, and she asks me why we were in Korea. I dunno how to really answer her, are there any books we could read together that would help us understand more about why we were in Korea? The US and the USSR occupied Korea after displacing the Japanese at the end of WWII. Each supported a government that went along with their respective ideologies. The US purposefully withheld armor, artillery, and other material from Syngman Rhee's government because they were afraid he would invade North Korea. Stalin did the opposite with the Kims.
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Jun 14, 2018 12:20
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Oh yeah, I'm aware of this but I meant something a little beefier. The russians (and I assume their predecessors) have a small flotilla in the caspian sea and field (float? is that right?) what they call artillery boats and they are toothsome as hell. The swiss have no need of this so it's all nonsense of course but a boy can dream. Along with my subs in the lakes.
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Jun 14, 2018 12:28
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Bonus round: As for why we were in North Korea, MacArthur was cocky after putting North Korean forces on the run/defensive, we changed our initial operational/strategic goals on the fly, and the US didn't understand that would be a trigger for Chinese intervention. So that whole march on Pyongyang thing was a bad idea.
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Jun 14, 2018 12:56
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Grouchio posted:Where could I find the best analysis and accounts regarding the Battle of the Frontiers? In French and German. English-language histories have an annoying habit of treating this vast several-army throwdown as but a mere sideshow and curtain-raiser to Our Boys going up to Mons (or, if you're slightly more enlightened, a curtain-raiser to the Marne); the only Frenchmen in the world are General Lanrezac and three comedy farmers, and when the Germans are addressed all the focus usually goes to the STRONK RIGHT VING being beastly to Belgians. The best you'll do for the French side of things is probably Robert A Doughty's Pyrrhic Victory; it's a rather dull but very necessary narrative about what the French generals and staff were thinking and trying to do. Personal accounts are very hard to come by because of the ridiculously high casualty rate and most of the fighting having been done by people who happened to be in the Army at the time; most of the personal accounts which have made it into English tend to do so because they have the obligatory emotional scenes of being called up on 1 August and leaving hearth and home to bash the Boche, except none of those people actually make it to the war before September or October at the earliest. Ian Sumner's "They Shall Not Pass" has about 12 pages on the Frontiers, including personal accounts, and is generally worth reading anyway, if only to make you annoyed at how much more of this must be out there but stuck in French where we can't read it. Something decent for the Germans is even harder to come by; even German-focused works still pay far more attention to Belgium and the Marne. There's probably something useful in Jonathan Boff's Haig's Enemy (which I haven't got round to yet), about Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria; he led the Sixth Army in Lorraine in August, and it's where he proved he knew enough to be allowed to actually command the army. That Jorn Leonhard Pandora's Box book is only of limited use because its focus is far more on a political than military history, e.g. he's not particularly interested in the details of Plan XVII or the German attack, just that such plans had been made, and executed in something of a hurry; and when he is interested in boots on the ground of course they're boots in Belgium. Holger Herwig's Marne 1914 has quite a bit about August, but just when I'm wanting him to get into some serious detail, he moves on because of course we need to keep moving towards the Marne, which after all is in the title. There is a book, Battle of the Frontiers, which claims to deal directly with what we're interested in. Unfortunately it's written by the ever-pungent Terence Zuber, most famous for conducting years-long flame wars on the Internet and the letters page of various journals on the theme of  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN THERE WAS NEVER SUCH A THING AS THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN ANYONE WHO EVEN THINKS THE WORDS SCHLIEFFEN PLAN IS TRYING TO TRADUCE THE GLORIOUS REPUTATION OF THE GREAT GENERAL STAFF (he's not totally wrong, but the pudding is so over-egged that it's basically scrambled eggs with batter). There's probably some useful stuff in there as long as you know what to bear in mind; Robert Doughty wrote a review which flags up the things to watch out for.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 13:36
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HorrificExistence posted:Likewise, It's important to note that language ideologies about a specific language being exceptional are really common and basically all false. Of course, the really melodramatic ones sometimes get turned into sarcastic digs. For example, https://twitter.com/AintItK/status/1006889119593533441 EDIT: Also to be clearer, it's usually with old fashioned stuff not in common use. It's also not exceptional, you can find the same thing in English or French or whichever language. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 13:56
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Three wolf moon.
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Jun 14, 2018 14:29
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https://twitter.com/posistress/status/1006990888411676672
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Jun 14, 2018 15:32
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Oh my god
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Jun 14, 2018 16:28
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mlmp08 posted:Bonus round: As for why we were in North Korea, MacArthur was cocky after putting North Korean forces on the run/defensive, we changed our initial operational/strategic goals on the fly, and the US didn't understand that would be a trigger for Chinese intervention. So that whole march on Pyongyang thing was a bad idea. There was also MacArthur's dealings with the ROC "government in exile" on Taiwan. From my understanding, MacArthur met with ROC leadership around the time of Inchon, claiming later that this was a "THOU SHALT NOT USE THIS AS AN EXCUSE FOR AN INVASION" visit from His divine self. The PRC leadership, however, believed that the opposite was true and he was planning to take his armies into China at the ROC's behalf.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:27
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aphid_licker posted:Oh my god Just think a decades time something worse than Reddit will be around.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:Just think a decades time something worse than Reddit will be around. that already exists, it's called gab, it's full of nazis, but fortunately they have fallen into the usual nazi pastime of accusing one another of being feds/in on the jewish plot
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Jun 14, 2018 18:37
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HEY GUNS posted:that already exists, it's called gab, it's full of nazis, but fortunately they have fallen into the usual nazi pastime of accusing one another of being feds/in on the jewish plot Yeah it's hilarious
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Jun 14, 2018 18:39
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Hilarious and or gross.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:43
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this always happens to any bunch of nazis, it owns communists split over doctrine only they care about, nazis do this and sometimes shoot one another if i were a cruel man i'd go in there and egg them on, but i;m not super subtle
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Jun 14, 2018 18:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:Hilarious and or gross.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:44
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Has it reached the point where some of them are actually ratting each other out to the Feds because they’re mad about having been accused of being a Fed/a secret Jew, or have we not yet reached peak Nazi rear end in a top hat pettiness yet?
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Jun 14, 2018 18:51
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Has it reached the point where some of them are actually ratting each other out to the Feds because they’re mad about having been accused of being a Fed/a secret Jew, or have we not yet reached peak Nazi rear end in a top hat pettiness yet? 
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Jun 14, 2018 19:08
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Comrade Gorbash posted:This last is sometimes true, more so with idioms rather than individual words, but it's because the authors of classic Japanese literature were typically corny as gently caress and made up fancy words for things so their works would look more dramatic. Usually by taking it from corny Chinese writers. I was thinking more about the people who are like "the Japanese word for passion means soo much more than the English one"  Stuff like this, that basically verges on "ancient Chinese secret" levels of orientalism.
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Jun 14, 2018 19:20
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HEY GUNS posted:no but we had a punchup at a trailer park over incestuous cheating
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Jun 14, 2018 19:22
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HorrificExistence posted:I was thinking more about the people who are like "the Japanese word for passion means soo much more than the English one" EDIT: I do really enjoy finding words that encapsulate concepts other languages haven't gotten around to putting in a neat package yet (e.g. schadenfreude or mono no aware) but those just turn into loan words. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 19:23
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Comrade Gorbash posted:EDIT: I do really enjoy finding words that encapsulate concepts other languages haven't gotten around to putting in a neat package yet (e.g. schadenfreude or mono no aware) but those just turn into loan words.
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Jun 14, 2018 19:26
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My Imaginary GF posted:So the girlfriend and I are watching 'Hearbreak Ridge' tonight, and she asks me why we were in Korea. I dunno how to really answer her, are there any books we could read together that would help us understand more about why we were in Korea? Your girlfriend is clearly a Chicom infiltrator, dump her immediately and report her distressing lack of patriotism to Hoover and his fine fellows in the FBI. 
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Jun 14, 2018 19:31
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HorrificExistence posted:I was thinking more about the people who are like "the Japanese word for passion means soo much more than the English one" And here I thought they developed these sorts of weird interrelationships between words exclusively for the purpose of making puns.
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Jun 14, 2018 19:34
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We're always told that every other language has ideas and concepts that "English has no word for" so what phrases or words does English have that they don't have words for in other languages
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Jun 14, 2018 19:45
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Sisu 
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Jun 14, 2018 19:56
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zoux posted:We're always told that every other language has ideas and concepts that "English has no word for" so what phrases or words does English have that they don't have words for in other languages There's also wasei-eigo, where they took English words and made a new word to describe a concept, but those words don't (or at least didn't) exist in English. Salaryman is an example that's come back to English, and points to that it's less "English has no word for this," because we definitely did have terms for the concept, but that it captured a particular shade of meaning English speakers recognized and liked havng a specific term for. EDIT: Here's a fun loan word run for Korean - don-gaseu is pork cutlet, which is a transliteration of tonkatsu from Japanese, which is a partial loan word created by mashing "ton," a reading of the kanji for pork, with "katsu" which is just "cutlet" rendered in katakana and truncated, and of course "cutlet" is a word English adopted from French (côtelette). Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 20:07
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zoux posted:We're always told that every other language has ideas and concepts that "English has no word for" so what phrases or words does English have that they don't have words for in other languages More like "don't have a single word for", but there are a lot, particularly considering how many non-English languages there are. For instance: "toe." That's "dedo del pie" or "finger of the foot" in Spanish (and similarly in French, I believe). Or "to dive" (in the sense of the Olympic competition). Something more like "tirarse al agua de cabeza" or "throw yourself into the water headfirst" in Spanish. Or "procrastination." http://www.slate.com/articles/life/procrastination/2008/05/procrastination_2.html
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Jun 14, 2018 20:08
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My Imaginary GF posted:So the girlfriend and I are watching 'Hearbreak Ridge' tonight, and she asks me why we were in Korea. I dunno how to really answer her, are there any books we could read together that would help us understand more about why we were in Korea? Korea: The First War We Lost by Bevin Alexander would be my recommendation.
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Jun 14, 2018 20:11
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zoux posted:We're always told that every other language has ideas and concepts that "English has no word for" so what phrases or words does English have that they don't have words for in other languages I've met a lot of Europeans who've been completely bamboozled by "drizzle". On the plus side, their confusion only lasts about five minutes, because then it starts to rain and they get to see for themselves what it is.
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Jun 14, 2018 20:16
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ulmont posted:More like "don't have a single word for", but there are a lot, particularly considering how many non-English languages there are. Yeah many languages don't differentiate fingers/hand, toes/foot.
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Jun 14, 2018 20:49
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HorrificExistence posted:Yeah many languages don't differentiate fingers/hand, toes/foot. You see something similar with clothes sometimes. “Gloves” in German is “Handschuhe” which literally comes out as “hand shoes.” Oddly enough they have a distinct word for socks so I have no idea why they went with hand shoes. Hand socks would make so much more sense.
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Jun 14, 2018 21:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:You see something similar with clothes sometimes. “Gloves” in German is “Handschuhe” which literally comes out as “hand shoes.” Maybe when they came up with the word the stereotypical glove in their mind was made of leather
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Jun 14, 2018 21:40
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squirrels in german are oak tree croissants
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Jun 14, 2018 21:42
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The examples that come to my mind are that Japanese doesn't distinguish rats/mice or bees/wasps, other than by having names for species thereof.
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Jun 14, 2018 22:14
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GotLag posted:The examples that come to my mind are that Japanese doesn't distinguish rats/mice or bees/wasps, other than by having names for species thereof. Or the colors green/blue from what I've been told.
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Jun 14, 2018 22:37
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Alkydere posted:Or the colors green/blue from what I've been told. color and language is actually a crazy big field of study. People have even mapped out the path languages take to develop colors, Going from white/black to red and eventually blue, yellow, purple ect. It's probably why Homer called the sea wine colored. The issue is a few languages don't even have color adjectives, but rather just use a comparison, i.e. "that dress is bird colored."
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Jun 14, 2018 22:43
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HorrificExistence posted:speaking of haha, i'm five minutes into the classic radiolab on this one because his post reminded me https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/
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Jun 14, 2018 22:44
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Mexican Spanish calls limes "limónes" and lemons "limónes amarillos" (yellow limes) which caused me no end of trouble when I was learning English. Then I found out large parts of the world actually say lima when theyre talking about limes and I don't know what the gently caress happened there. E: the Chinese and Japanese didn't differentiate between blue and green until relatively recently, does that count for this linguistic conversation? Don Gato fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 22:50
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On the subject of colors and milhist,quote:It would appear, from numerous observations, that soldiers are hit during battle according to the color of their dress in the following order: Red is the most fatal color; Austrian gray is the least fatal. The proportions are — red, twelve; rifle green, seven; brown, six; Austrian bluish-gray, five.
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Jun 14, 2018 22:58
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