Haida and Na-Dene

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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mèþru
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by mèþru »

Can we please all stop with the phrase "rape baby"? Rape doesn't belong in a discussion about ancient linguistic history. It's gross.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Salmoneus »

It would indeed be nice if people could tone down the disgusting, rampant misogyny, which doesn't really seem relevant to the topic.

On topic: no, Finnish is not a "Swedish-Russian creole". That's insane.
Also: no, Uralic would not be the "oldest" branch of the Indo-Uralic family, that's not how languages, branches, families or binary division work.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Travis B. »

Salmoneus wrote:It would indeed be nice if people could tone down the disgusting, rampant misogyny, which doesn't really seem relevant to the topic.

On topic: no, Finnish is not a "Swedish-Russian creole". That's insane.
Also: no, Uralic would not be the "oldest" branch of the Indo-Uralic family, that's not how languages, branches, families or binary division work.
That's what I wanted to say.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by WeepingElf »

There is no way one contemporary language can be "older" than another. When linguists say that a language was "older" than another, they mean that it was spoken in a more distant past, as in "Proto-Afroasiatic is much older than Proto-Indo-European". When non-linguists speak of "older" languages, they usually mean one or more of the following:

1. The language has a longer literary tradition, as in "Greek is older than Latin".
2. The language is more conservative, as in "Icelandic is older than English".
3. The language has been longer in its present location than others, as in "Celtic is older than English".

These three are often conflated. For instance, I more than once met the claim that Irish was an especially archaic IE language, which it patently isn't - as everyone here probably knows, Irish, like all the Insular Celtic languages, has warped quite far from the typology of PIE. Usually, the motivation for such formulations is nationalism. In order to avoid this, many linguists tend to say "deeper" instead of "older" when it comes to the time depths of language families, as in "Proto-Afroasiatic is much deeper than Proto-Indo-European".
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Frislander »

I think in this instances we take "older" to mean "first branch to split off from the rest of the family", as in "Anatolian is the oldest branch of Indo-European".
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by WeepingElf »

Frislander wrote:I think in this instances we take "older" to mean "first branch to split off from the rest of the family", as in "Anatolian is the oldest branch of Indo-European".
Fine. I missed this possibility. Yet, in a family with just two branches - Indo-European and Uralic - one cannot say that one or the other branched off earlier.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by KathTheDragon »

I think here he's trying to juxtapose Uralic with the individual branches of IE, as if that were valid like it is for Anatolian. And it isn't valid because whatever PIU might have looked like, there was clearly a lot of independent development between it and PIE (that is, independent from the development between PIU and Uralic), while Anatolian didn't split off from PIE that long before the entire group disintegrated.

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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Vlürch »

WeepingElf wrote: No serious linguist considers Finnish the "rape baby" of any IE language!
That may be true, but unfortunately many Finns (and Russians and Swedes) do (or at least enough for me to have come across some several times (although admittedly less than those who know that Finnish isn't Indo-European; generally, though, it's so-called "nationalists" that insist Finnish is either Germanic or Slavic), and it could be that it's been the same few people on more than one occasion on different sites, I guess... but still, the idea that Finnish is somehow related to Germanic or Slavic languages more than due to centuries of influence seems widespread, especially if all the people who talk about the supposed Slavic or Scandinavian "heritage" of Finns are also referring to the language).
mèþru wrote: Can we please all stop with the phrase "rape baby"? Rape doesn't belong in a discussion about ancient linguistic history. It's gross.
I won't stop using it because that's exactly the term that would be used if it was an actual baby. So, using it metaphorically makes perfect sense.

And although it's not relevant right now in this context, rape can belong in a discussion about ancient history because people have always raped and that has been a problem in many different cultures since natives were often raped by invaders, etc. I'm 90% sure people nowadays rape less than at any time in the past, too...
Salmoneus wrote: misogyny
How is using the term "rape baby" in reference to a crazy pseudo-"nationalist" theory about Finnish being a creole/so heavily influenced by Swedish and Russian that it's no longer "pure" misogyny? Literally everything is misogyny now, apparently, except actual misogyny. And why is it that seemingly all people who're into languages in any way always get offended by everything no one else gets offended by except Tumblr feminists who also say it's racist to learn foreign languages? Is there a single person with an interest in linguistics or conlanging who doesn't want to stop people from using words they don't like? :?
Salmoneus wrote: On topic: no, Finnish is not a "Swedish-Russian creole". That's insane.
Exactly, but somehow it's a common belief among Finns, Swedes and Russians... well, not common as in the majority view, but common as in there being a lot of people who believe it. Finns for "nationalistic" reasons, Swedes and Russians for anti-Finnish reasons. Both leftists and rightists buy into it and even people who have no political interests whatsoever, who just genuinely don't know any better because at least in the case of Finns some just don't know the first thing about either language beyond their influence on Finnish.

And yeah, I do consider myself a nationalist to some degree. That's not incompatible with me being a liberal leftist, though, but I'm sure I'll get called a far-right racist or something like always... :roll:

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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Salmoneus »

Vlürch wrote:
mèþru wrote: Can we please all stop with the phrase "rape baby"? Rape doesn't belong in a discussion about ancient linguistic history. It's gross.
I won't stop using it because that's exactly the term that would be used if it was an actual baby.
Only by a psychopath.

And no, you don't need me to explain to you why rape jokes are misogynist.

But let's try a different approach: If you can't at least pretend to act like a decent human being, maybe you should consider your taking your "it's my right to be as odious as I want" attitude to a different board, before you get banned from this one.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Vlürch »

Salmoneus wrote:
Vlürch wrote:
mèþru wrote: Can we please all stop with the phrase "rape baby"? Rape doesn't belong in a discussion about ancient linguistic history. It's gross.
I won't stop using it because that's exactly the term that would be used if it was an actual baby.
Only by a psychopath.

And no, you don't need me to explain to you why rape jokes are misogynist.

But let's try a different approach: If you can't at least pretend to act like a decent human being, maybe you should consider your taking your "it's my right to be as odious as I want" attitude to a different board, before you get banned from this one.
Ok... I genuinely don't understand why, but I'm sorry. I've also literally never heard any other term used for that, but I won't use it here because clearly it's not appropriate then. People have called me a psychopath before online, but I actually am TOO empathic according to literally every single therapist I've ever seen (and I've seen many throughout my life), to the point where it causes me extreme anxiety and depression. You're making me feel like wanting to try to kill myself again because this is so absurd like being harassed for words when we probably agree politically on 90% of things if you're a liberal leftist (I don't knwo if you are but somehow nowadays liberal leftis are the ones who want to stop people from using words they don't like when it always was right-wing conservateis beofre so I assume, sorry if I'm wrong), and I honestly can't even understand what the problem is, but I've realised that I literally can't kill myself so I won't even try anymore. I'm sorry...

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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by Salmoneus »

Vlürch wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
Vlürch wrote:
mèþru wrote: Can we please all stop with the phrase "rape baby"? Rape doesn't belong in a discussion about ancient linguistic history. It's gross.
I won't stop using it because that's exactly the term that would be used if it was an actual baby.
Only by a psychopath.

And no, you don't need me to explain to you why rape jokes are misogynist.

But let's try a different approach: If you can't at least pretend to act like a decent human being, maybe you should consider your taking your "it's my right to be as odious as I want" attitude to a different board, before you get banned from this one.
Ok... I genuinely don't understand why, but I'm sorry. I've also literally never heard any other term used for that, but I won't use it here because clearly it's not appropriate then.
If this is genuinely a question about decency (and English): the usual way to describe children conceived as a result of rape is... not to describe them that way, because it's none of your business, and using every opportunity to further humiliate and traumatise rape victims is generally not seen as a polite thing. [For this reason, I have literally never heard the term "rape baby" outside of the discourse of internet scumbags]. The polite term for a child conceived as a result of rape is "a child", because the circumstances of their conception are not important anyway, and certainly none of your business. If a person was conceived as a result of their mother being raped, this is likely to be an emotive issue for them, not to mention an extremely private one, and not your place to remind them of. When it is really necessary to specifically refer to people who were conceived as a result of rape - and this situation SFAICI only occurs in the context of discussions of fairly recondite legal smallprints - then a term like "person who was conceived as a result of rape" is as neutral and non-derogatory as possible. More generally, the combination of a) emotionally or politically sensitive subject matter, b) highly private subject matter, and c) jocular, slang or otherwise low-register informal vocabulary will almost always be offensive and deprecated in polite company.

Completely gratuitously taking that offensive language and then pointlessly using it to describe something unrelated for no clear reason other than intentional offensiveness is a whole other level of arseholeness. In this case, if you mean that Finnish is thought to be a creole, use the word "creole"; using the phrase "rape baby" instead of "creole" makes you both more offensive and less understandable.
You're making me feel like wanting to try to kill myself again
*rolls eyes*
Obviously nobody wants you to kill yourself. But while we're doing "how to act like a person" lessons here: nobody is impressed by martyrdom-signalling, particularly in such trivial contexts. It doesn't gain you sympathy, it just makes you look manipulative - and cliché. And a teenager.
because this is so absurd like being harassed for words
You are not being harassed. You are being disagreed with. If I were harrassing you, I would be following you throughout the board, following you to other parts of the internet, sending you emails, telling other people bad things about you, and so on; on this board, I'd be using my moderator powers to, say, edit your posts to say things that demean you, or to repeatedly temp-ban you. Is any of this happening? No. You said something on one thread, and I said one thing in response, on that thread. That's disagreement, not harrassment. The only reason the exchange has continued beyond that is because you have chosen to argue with me about what I said. That's not me harassing you.
when we probably agree politically on 90% of things if you're a liberal leftist
My political opinions have got nothing to do with the issues at hand - neither with your behaviour, nor with your linguistic theories.
Having said that, I don't think I've ever seen you say anything remotely liberal, so maybe you might want to reconsider your affiliations.
(I don't knwo if you are but somehow nowadays liberal leftis are the ones who want to stop people from using words they don't like when
Again, "ranting about the international liberal conspiracy to stop you being an arsehole to people" doesn't gain you any sympathy points outside of far-right forums. If you have a problem with something someone says to you, address it - don't just blame the imaginary liberal conspiracy. It makes you look silly.

From this point, I'll turn the discussion over to the other mods.
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Re: Haida and Na-Dene

Post by linguoboy »

I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread at this point. If you wish to resume discussing linguistic topics, you'll find a continuation of the discussion here: http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f ... &start=125.

Vlürch, if you need further explanation of why it's inappropriate to continue using offensive terms after being specifically asked not to by a moderator, please contact one of the mods directly via PM.

If anyone else has questions regarding this intervention or general questions regarding implementation of the board rules, please PM us or start a new open discussion thread in None of the Above.

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