Also, of course, why any attempt to find the essence of the world by parsing
the definitions of natural-language words is a fool’s errand, regardless of the
language.
<Grin>
John
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On Apr 15, 2019, at 10:45, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good observation John, the assumption of consistency between race, language
and culture is ... a somewhat naive one. That is why modern logic attempts to
specify domains of interpretation and application.
Virus-free. www.avast.com
On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 3:32 AM John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
How come these codes are divided in accordance with our contemporary
national boundaries (largely)?
For both language and genetics, specific explanations are complex. That
said, the assumption of consistency between race, language, and culture in a
geographically bounded area is an artifact of European Romanticism, the
foundation on which contemporary right-wing nationalism is constructed.
Ethnological and historical facts demonstrate unequivocally that this
assumption is nonsense. Human history is filled with wars and migrations
that result in mixtures of peoples, languages, and cultures united in
political entities of uncertain but always finite duration.
Languages like German, Norwegian and Swedish are differentiated as part of
nation-building projects. Languages like Hokkien, Hakka or Cantonese are,
while as different from each other as Germanic or Romance languages in
Europe, treated as “dialects” to subsume them in another nation-building
project.
Thus a bit of wit well known to linguists. “What is a language? A dialect
with an army.”
John
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