|
Xiahou Dun posted:I thought I saw The Historical Linguist Signal on the clouds. This is an awesome answer and I agree my question was poorly worded. If I change it to something like "at what point could I have a spirited debate about a relatively complex topic" this seems like the right answer? Also "it depends" of course because there are english speakers now who I can't understand (Scots) That said this has me all curious about this "Great Vowel Shift" but I'm not smart enough to parse all of the high end linguistics stuff...are there any academically valid clips of people speaking that type of old/middle english that you'd recommend? Milo and POTUS posted:Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone. There's still nothing better than a shotgun for shooting things that are fairly close to you. Modern shotguns are even more useful...in addition to spraying shot they can fire things like breaching rounds and "nonlethal" rounds that rifles can't shoot. Every doorbusting mission in Iraq had at least a couple of shotguns in the kit. ...I tried to use a breaching round once and my shoulder was sore for days afterwards edit - they were really common in Vietnam also. I think in general people think that firefights happen at much further distances than they do.
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 08:52 |
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone. bewbies posted:edit - they were really common in Vietnam also. I think in general people think that firefights happen at much further distances than they do. To wit: More reliable values could be found in the experience of the First Australian Task Force (1ATF) during the Vietnam war, with (mean) values of 187 shots per casualty for the 7.62 mm SLR and 232 shots per casualty for the M16 in the context of day patrol. Nearly 80% of those engagements took place at ranges shorter than 30 m, not really long range, and still the average hit probability was around 0.5% Emeric Daniau, Towards a " 600 m " lightweight General Purpose Cartridge, part I, v2017 (There's also the M576 40mm grenade, which the US developed to let the squad grenadier have a weapon for self-defence. It's a 40mm shell loaded with 20 00-buckshot pellets, turning the M79 grenade launcher into big-bore break-action shotgun.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:48
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:48
|
|
|
bewbies posted:edit - they were really common in Vietnam also. I think in general people think that firefights happen at much further distances than they do. Popular media would tell you shotguns are only effective at ranges of a foot or two, which probably has more to do with it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:49
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Popular media would tell you shotguns are only effective at ranges of a foot or two, which probably has more to do with it. That gives them substantially less reach than a rifle, but if it's within 90 feet of you, you can pretty reliably ruin its day.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:52
|
|
|
bewbies posted:This is an awesome answer and I agree my question was poorly worded. If I change it to something like "at what point could I have a spirited debate about a relatively complex topic" this seems like the right answer? Also "it depends" of course because there are english speakers now who I can't understand (Scots) As a linguist, not a historian, I think you'd bumble into a weird bubble (I'm basically assuming you're The Doctor for the purposes of this thought experiment) where societal problems would come up pretty fast. So if we abstract away from that... Ow my brain hurts still. You're basically asking something like "What if I became Swedish?". Like I'm a professional linguist with a tiny bit of background in the area. I might be able to get by maybe kind of if I'm lucky. You'd probably be proper hosed 200 years ago. (This is ignoring the fact that we'd probably both make some kind of terrible social error we had no way of knowing about much later.) As to the Great Vowel Shift. I don't have any cute videos off hand but if you remind me I can look for some. I've never really liked any of them because they're kind of garbage. Ummm.. Okay.. Make the sound in the word "beak" a couple of times. Then contrast it with the sound when you say "book". Do you kind of feel how one is more front and the other more back? Please continue until you feel it. (We know this because of complex imagery but I'm trying to get you to feel something.) Yeah that also exists for high and low. In the Great Vowel Shift, to vastly over-simplify, all that poo poo basically rotated. High front became mid front became low front etc. (I am straight up lying but this is a simplification of a lot of poo poo.) Honestly, and I'm not a subspecialist in this area (I usually work with Chinese) but anyone who said they figure it out totally, I would be very suspicious of. Dead language phonology is loving hard.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 04:57
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:There were StG 44 production lines in Occupied Yugoslavia, and when Yugoslavia was liberated, these remained in Yugoslavian hands. The StG 44 was the service rifle of the Yugoslavian paratroopers until 1983. They'd licensed their own version of the AKM in 1970. It could just be organizational inertia, but Yugoslavia spent thirteen years issuing StG 44s to their most elite troops and AKMs (M-70) to the rank-and-file. That explains a lot about why StG44s just pop up sometimes in Yemen and Syria.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 06:16
|
|
|
what is the difference between a rifle pit and a foxhole? what did ACW breastworks look like?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 06:29
|
|
|
golden bubble posted:That explains a lot about why StG44s just pop up sometimes in Yemen and Syria. There's a fair chance the Syrian ones are of Czechoslovakian origin, since Czechoslovakia also captured a large number of StGs, received the plurality of the 102,000 Soviet-captured ones, and seems to even have produced it after WWII for a short period(?). A lot of these were sent to Syria as aid in the 60s. The StG 44 is not, as these things go, a rare gun: about 446,000 were produced in total (of which maybe 20,000 might be post-war manufacture?); it just has a reputation for being rare because a) it's always rare compared to, say, the millions and millions of Kar 98ks used during WWII, and b) it's exceedingly rare on the US import market, since the Eastern Bloc wasn't in the habit of selling the US captured automatic weapons.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 06:52
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:
What do you think of this reading of Canterbury Tales? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GihrWuysnrc I'm not sure how much of the Great Vowel Shift had occurred during Chaucer's day, and of course its hard for me to judge the accuracy of these reconstructions. The comments at least suggest its by a real academic. It mostly comes out as nonsense at first but once you catch on to the difference in vowels it definitely becomes a lot easier to understand. Squalid fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Dec 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 07:24
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:I mean it's not rural but I suggest Americans itt search for 'Rab C Nesbitt' on YouTube and see how it goes for you. Yes, he is speaking modern English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k7VoFiagfs MacBoomhauer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 07:45
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:There's a fair chance the Syrian ones are of Czechoslovakian origin, since Czechoslovakia also captured a large number of StGs, received the plurality of the 102,000 Soviet-captured ones, and seems to even have produced it after WWII for a short period(?). A lot of these were sent to Syria as aid in the 60s. IIRC a lot of Yugoslav ones got sold to Libya and with Gaddaffi being Gaddaffi and the post-Gaddaffi era being an absolute mess they could be just about anywhere by now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 09:25
|
|
|
Squalid posted:Yeah, the introduction to my edition of Canterbury Tales said all of his comedic characters had various absurd regional accents, all played up for effect like Apu from the Simpsons or something. All interpreted through Chaucer's own weird local dialect of course. Of course I couldn't notice it at all which is a pretty good indication of just how shaky my grasp of his language really is. Few pages back but the Reeve’s tale has the easiest to find accents in it, both the students speak oop northun. Yorkshire still uses thilke and thee - whenever I go back up home I always half expect everyone to have ditched th for ţ. Edit: I managed to teach myself to read Middle English fairly well including the weird older stuff, but so far my attempts to learn old English are like banging my head on a brick wall. Goddamn impenetrable Anglo Saxon gibberish! lenoon fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Dec 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 11:55
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:I mean it's not rural but I suggest Americans itt search for 'Rab C Nesbitt' on YouTube and see how it goes for you. Yes, he is speaking modern English.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 12:59
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Hegel, the BBC has a podcast on Thirty Years War. What do you think?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 12:59
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:Just like if I was doing this to a German speaker, I wouldn't pick my Bavarian or HEY Gal's Swamp German, but East Friesian. there are no swamps on the czech border! now if we want to get very hairsplitty, the major dialect the people i know speak is Saxon but my hauptmann and his family speak Erzgebirgisch, which is as far as i know unrelated to Saxon but spoken right next to it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 13:06
|
|
|
I am convinced that today, Johan Banér would have probably been a pretty good general for Assad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 15:21
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:I am convinced that today, Johan Banér would have probably been a pretty good general for Assad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 15:23
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone. Shotguns were far easier to use as a bong than M-16s, which may account for some of their popularity post-Tet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_mcFEMNAi4
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 15:44
|
|
|
The benefits of a shotgun in close combat are twofold: 1. It's easier to make a hit (while not the video game-style spread that blasts three people at once, you're trying to hit a target with a fist-sized cluster of projectiles rather than a bullet less than 8mm in diameter). 2. When you do hit something, the effect of buckshot tends to be devastating against an unarmored target and the chances of meeting a VC or NVA fighter. Shotguns are excellent for close range work and jungle or urban warfare where engagement ranges are under 50 yards. They were also lighter than the M14 and L1A1, which would further encourage you to carry one until you got something like an M16.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 17:04
|
|
|
still cannot believe that we were the only belligerent in ww1 that invented the trench shotgun the brits hunt too and they make some lovely shotties, why didn't they think of it
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 17:36
|
|
|
Eh, why bother when you can just make more grenades, thats what did most of the trench-clearing work.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 17:40
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:still cannot believe that we were the only belligerent in ww1 that invented the trench shotgun Shotguns are unsporting and a war crime! We must ban them so that only civilized methods of war may be used, like mustard gas.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 17:44
|
|
Don Gato posted:Shotguns are unsporting and a war crime! We must ban them so that only civilized methods of war may be used, like mustard gas. They are also needlessly loud. British Trench raiders like get up close and quiet when they can. And when they cannot well out come the bombs.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 18:02
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:still cannot believe that we were the only belligerent in ww1 that invented the trench shotgun I think it was a unique feature of the United States because of its very recent colonial and frontier history. At the time of World War I, there were still rural parts of the United States that were basically living the exact same life as the 1870s. Shotguns are a uniquely American weapon because for most of its history the country had militia and other civilian combatants who would have to use their hunting weapons for warfare, including in frontline combat in a major war just 50 years before World War I. Likewise, police and other civil defense groups often used shotguns because they provided more firepower in a rough frontier town than a handgun, whereas the idea of a "rough frontier town" was foreign to an Englishman. Conversely, Europeans seemed to view shotguns as purely hunting and sporting weapons. There's good reason why almost all of the early effort at repeating shotguns was American. An American showing up to battle with a shotgun was basically like an old farmer trying to shoo you off his land. Except it turned out that shotguns were really good at the kind of warfare that World War I turned into.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
Don Gato posted:
Again pages/weeks back, but gotta second the recommendation of this book. My wife took a border lit class from the author years back, he's got some other good fiction work set in the same geographical area if you're interested. But yeah, really lays out a stark view of the American West. I've done dozens of cross-country flights to California, and there really is just so much beautiful nothingness out there.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 18:38
|
|
books I've ever read.
|
HEY GUNS posted:still cannot believe that we were the only belligerent in ww1 that invented the trench shotgun I think there's actually a much, much simpler answer to this. In the 1910s, the vast majority of shotgun shell hulls were made of paper. And they really, really didn't stand up well in trench warfare conditions. If you had managed to keep the shells dry then the guns worked great. But if they got wet, everything went to poo poo because the hulls would expand and then start to disintegrate, rendering the weapon useless. Clearing that up was hard - you've got broken live shells in the magazine, and you sure as hell can't deal with it at the front. It shows up in combat reports - front line American units quickly sour on their weapons and most of them end up on rear duty. The AEF did decide to order brass shelled ammo, despite the expense. Where that made it into the field, the guns performed very well, though not much of it made it to Europe before the end of the war. So why did the US go and find the solution to the paper hull problem when the Brits didn't? I suspect it has less to do with national character and more to do with timing. By the time the Brits would have been looking into acquiring shotguns to clear trenches, they would have already been well acquainted with front line conditions. In that situation the expense of getting the shotguns and supplying the more expensive brass shells, which almost certainly would have meant shifting resources away from other ammunition production, would not have been particularly attractive on a cost-benefit comparison. Meanwhile the US had already purchased and issued their shotguns, in part because they didn't quite grok how nasty a physical environment the trenches were. That misunderstanding shows up in a lot of American decisions, so it's not unique to the shotguns. So they started with a sunk cost they were trying to make good on. It also would have been easier for the US to shift production around - both in terms of having more capacity for it in general, and not having to worry as much about the problems of setting up production the UK (and the rest of the Entente) routinely ran into when contracting American companies. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:03
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Conversely, Europeans seemed to view shotguns as purely hunting and sporting weapons. There's good reason why almost all of the early effort at repeating shotguns was American. An American showing up to battle with a shotgun was basically like an old farmer trying to shoo you off his land. Except it turned out that shotguns were really good at the kind of warfare that World War I turned into.  https://mashable.com/2016/02/01/siege-sidney-street/?europe=true#1LCZaEkw28q3 used exactly as we would have used shotguns during the same time
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:04
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:if it's within 90 feet of you, you can pretty reliably ruin its day.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:29
|
|
Bad Angus! Bad!
|
Chillbro Baggins posted:Yeah, at long pistol range (say, 25 feet/8m) the pellets in a load of 00 buckshot are still mostly touching each other, putting a 1" hole in your target. And each of them is roughly on par with a .30 or .32 caliber pistol bullet, so you've got effectively an entire magazine from a pocket pistol hitting the target simultaneously.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:35
|
|
|
bewbies posted:That said this has me all curious about this "Great Vowel Shift" but I'm not smart enough to parse all of the high end linguistics stuff...are there any academically valid clips of people speaking that type of old/middle english that you'd recommend? No idea how academically valid this is, but from time to time the Globe hooks up with people who try to do original pronounciation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04 from 1min since timelink isn't working for some reason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Dec 7, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:44
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:not necessarily, these are british riot cops in 1911 during the "sidney street siege" Just a heads up, this was kind of a rarity for the police at the time that siege is one whole 'oh gently caress oh gently caress OH gently caress' moment for them. They had to call in the army for back up eventually.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:54
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:Just a heads up, this was kind of a rarity for the police at the time that siege is one whole 'oh gently caress oh gently caress OH gently caress' moment for them. They had to call in the army for back up eventually. Also, they're using double-barreled hunting or sporting guns decades after repeating shotguns had been invented. That's not the sign of a prepared force. According to Wikipedia, they were even issued .22 gallery rifles when they needed to be armed and normally didn't carry even a handgun.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 19:57
|
|
|
Milo and POTUS posted:Was watching a clip of platoon and think I saw a shotgun. Were they in common use in Vietnam? Seems almost any rifle of that generation would have the benefit of better range and accuracy and even in a "put lots of lead downrange" competition even on semi auto they could probably keep pace with a shotgun by volume alone. Good for clearing out tunnels iirc?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 20:33
|
|
|
The American fondness for shotguns is to a significant degree cultural, it seems, considering US cops still like their shotties when Europe has mostly gone for MP5's and assorted carbines for support weapons or whatever the cop term for it abroad is.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 20:51
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Also, they're using double-barreled hunting or sporting guns decades after repeating shotguns had been invented. That's not the sign of a prepared force. I mean, yes? Famously. To this day. We like it that way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 20:51
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Good for clearing out tunnels iirc? Sawed-off shotguns were used, but pistols were more popular.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 20:56
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:The American fondness for shotguns is to a significant degree cultural, it seems, considering US cops still like their shotties when Europe has mostly gone for MP5's and assorted carbines for support weapons or whatever the cop term for it abroad is. There's been a movement to AR-15s after the North Hollywood shootout in 1997. The cops ended up facing two robbers wearing body armor and rifles illegally modified to full auto and found that pistols and shotguns were utterly useless. They ended up commandeering gun shop rifles and waiting for the SWAT team to show up; one robber shot himself in the head (either suicide or an accident), the other bled to death after being shot repeatedly in the legs under a truck. Shotguns are still common, but rifles are getting there.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 21:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 08:52 |
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:The American fondness for shotguns is to a significant degree cultural, it seems, considering US cops still like their shotties when Europe has mostly gone for MP5's and assorted carbines for support weapons or whatever the cop term for it abroad is. US cops mostly carry M4 carbines now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2018 21:36
|
|
