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What languages do you speak, are learning, or want to learn, and why?

MyDoor Part II...

You know, I am now in NYC and yesterday, July 4th, I went to Manhattan Chinatown (there are 4 here), and they had a huge Chinese Musical Theatre gathering in the big park there (in back of the "Tombs," the Manhattan House of Detention).

They truly have a fantastic culture (the Han). It is the only place on the planet where Jews have ever assimilated 100%! That is how in synch the cultures are, though when you think on it, it kind of defies understanding. Sure, we laud ancestors, elders, family and wisdom but then you look at the diets...Fried Brown Rat?

"Tonal Rules...": EXACTLY. I had a crappy enough time learning to conjugate French. Imagine trying to memourise tone! I am fascinated though as to how it ever developed to such an extent. What kind of underlying dynamic would prompt such a mechanism?

Well, that will give me something to explore.

"Macau.": I have not been back since Hand Over, and do not know if I really want to. You are right though, it has the whole "Colonialist" vibe.

"Kalash...": I have no problem seeing them as some sort of anomalous cultural and genetic holdover...But, I am also not so quick to dismiss Oral Historical Accounting as superficial (or otherwise) self aggrandisement.

Interestingly, you can find all kinds of groups in incredibly disaparate places claiming an association with Alexander.

I would love to see genomic work on the Kalash. I know about the early suppositions on a unque role but have not kept abreast on recent work and perhaps you might know of something more recent, something more concrete?

Geographically they are positioned correctly and etymology is a false path to follow in terms of cultural linkage. Great case in point being my wife's People. The Bisaya (Visayan) have an oral history placing them on Borneo until the European Middle Ages, and then travelling by outrigger into the Philippines during a tribal civil war on Borneo (near present day Brunei).

On Borneo today there is still a Bisaya Tribe. Lingustically there is absolutely no connection. So, you have academics shunting the oral history aside. However, colonialism and geographical barriers (distant sea islands) create plausabilities.

In the Visayan Islands of the Philippines, the Visayan Languages, like my wife's Cebuano, are perhaps more than 60% rooted in Spanish! On Borneo the Bisayan Language is innundated with Bahasa and other more standardised Malay languages of late import!

So...with the Kalash, yes they did until just a few years ago have a very remote existence but Alexander's Army, by the time it moved that far east was inclusive of many disparate ethnicities and groups. Sure, they do not speak Greek, but either do most people anywhere else on Alexander's March. Anyway, mysteries are great.

Reminds me of one Jam and I were talking about a few months ago, one you should like. The Roman 10th Legion assimilating into China, with villages of Han Chinese having blonde hair, blue eyes and liking Bullfighting!


There has been minimal genomic work THERE and it does NOT support the Roman Hypothesis, and yet there remain some very real questions. The only genomic work was performed by an official Chinese Govt. study and I am sure with your familiarity with the nation you do NOT need me to list the obvious problems there (Basin Mummies in Xiughur anyone?).

Then, the case of the Legion having left artifacts in what is now Uzbekistan! The Chinese Court Histories describing Phalanx Formations of European appearing military units lost in Chinese deserts? On and on and on so one just cannot tell.


Having a bonafide NON-Han presence in lands crucial to modern Chinese histiography is very problamatic for Beijing. I saw 1 of those Basin Mummies in Japan! 6 feet 4, blonde and weaing Celtic textiles, 4,000 years old!!!!!!!!

"The changing world and its lack of promise for ancient cultures and Peoples...": Yep. My wife's People, once again, great example. Even within 2 generations so much changes. I am seeing it with the "Hill Tribes" there as well. The big group in my district (Caraga) is the "Agusan Manobo" who live (mostly) in Agusan Marsh. My civil marriage "G-Dfather" is a Tribesman.

They live an incredibly precarious existence. Entire villages exterminated in the various insurrections, simple diseases like Cholera killing entire villages, Western Missionaries (damn I hate them to no end) bring Jesus to the "Savages." They do not even wish to speak their own language because of disdain from larger groups like my wife's.


"It is not so much 'Islam' as much as 'Wahabbi Islam' that is 'steamrolling' cultures under its homgegenous cultural expansionism.": Nooooooo. Wahabbism is not really any worse than any other School and indeed a whole lot better than many.

Look at the Deobandi. They are increasing exponentially off the chart (Taliban by the way are Deobandists) and while there ARE crossover attributes the Deobandi make the Wahabbi look like sock puppets when it comes to Anti-Western piss and vinegar.

Wahabbi is an Orthadox Movement. Its founder, Sheikh Wahabbi was violently against Sufi, against anything he saw as less than absolute in a connection to the Qur'an but this movement only began in the 1700s.

By the 8th Century Islam, and by proxy Arab Culture had dominated Morrocco to China, France to the Sahara and most everything within those parameters has been obliterated.

I should correct one earlier comment though: "Synchretism within Islam." There ARE such movements, the Alawi, the Druse, Alavi and so on but they are terribly persecuted (most of the time) and exist only by subterfuge. The 1 basic commanality they all share? The fundamental precept that one should never disseminate one's views in front of Muslims. Why? Because to do so equals death and obliteration.

Christianity also has its problems in this regard, the Inquisition et al. Still, anywhere Christianity has taken root, it is a minority in the face of its synchrestic offspring, which not only dominate demographically but are openly practiced.

(Edited for spelling)
 
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My Door Part III...

"Pre-Wahabbi Islam used to be more inclusive of native sensibilities...": This is not a simple subject, and of course I do not want to meander too far off into one of my Islamic Screeds...but...In the Islamic Advent, and for 4 Khalifa afterwards (Caliphs), Islam was a purely Arab and Jewish faith. Jews predominated in many parts of al Hajaz, the region in what is now Saudi Arabia where Muhammed received his Revelations.

So, begun By an Arab, who also accepted Jews. It was very Judaic UNTIL Muhammed realised he would never attract many Jews (for example prayer was towards Jerusalem BEFORE it was towards Mecca).

Yet, when they swept out of Arabia they only accepted Arabs as Muslims. For the first 4 Khalifa Arab soldiers were forbidden on marry non-Arab women and for generations after that prohibition was dissolved, there was a de-facto caste system that officialy discriminated against half-castes (less than full Arabs).

This actually caused 2 revolutions but anyway...

As Islam expanded it forbade any and all incorporation of local custom, language and religion. In a few truly scattered places like West Africa, SE Asia (Indonesia, Philippines) there WAS incorporation to a minimal degree BUT only because of their geographical isolation in the same way we see the Jewish "Conversos"* expanding along the fringes of the Spanish Empire as the Inquisition caught up to the frontier of the Realm.

*"Converso" is a Spanish term that means "Converted Person." In 1492 CE/AD Spain, at the behest of the Catholic Church, expelled all Jews. Some Jews, for various reasons, pretended to covert and usually would move to the frontier regions, Philippines, Mexico, Peru and so on.

As the Inquisition reached those places Jews would keep migrating to the newest frontier to stay one step ahead of the Executioners. The Spanish most often called these Jews by the label "Marrano," which means "Pig."

I mention the preceeding because like the Spanish Frontier, areas like present day Senegal, Ghana , Molluccas and Jolo were within the Islamic Realm but isolated enough so as to fall outside the scope of normality and accepted practice.

Islam though, like the Catholic Church, was violently ANTI-inclusive. Unlike the Church, Islam was for most of its existence, part of a well oiled machine.

In the Islamic Advent the lingua franca in Arabia (and the entire Mid-East) was Aramaic. Egyptians were Coptics. Minorities there followed Greek Religions (forms of mythological worship) as well as synchrestic faiths that combined Ancient Egyptian and Hellenist practices and beliefs. Yemen was mostly Jewish with 1 Christian kingdom. Afghanistan was Buddhist... Pakistan the same, as well as Hindu... Iran followed Zoroaster and had a vibrant Christian and Jewish component, and so on. Today?

I am a native Arabic speaker (as I repeatedly say) and when I trekked the Sahel, across Africa, I was able to speak from start to finish in my native language. To me that is no less sickening than to walk out of a Philippine jungle amd hear Akon blasting from a bamboo hut.

"Betel Nut Girls in Taiwan...": Hahahaha. Yep, what a place. In the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia it is dead or dying (I know up in Luzon the Hill Tribe in Sagada, the Irogot, still mess with it but I never saw the point. Black teeth, red drool. Go figure in Taiwan they associate it with sex. Hahaha.

Jam: Sigh.........Sufi is big in a few VERY isolated places. BEFORE the Soviet Era in Herat, in Afghanistan it was incredibly well entrenched but, again, Deobandi. Deobandists were the ones who blew up that Paki shrine you talked about not too long ago.

If you look at Central Asia, which is the real home of Sufi, even the Chechens, an entire nation that followed a Sufi Schol, have fallen in with the Deobandi. Sufi is endangered, though with its Western aficionados it will keep persevering.

Where as Wahabbi was founded as a movement to "cleanse" Islam of its non-Islamic influences, Deobandi was specifically founded to battle the West, a stated rejection of a culture and value system that its adherents find revolting. At the same time, it has grown to encompass many of the same values shared by Wahabbi, in that Sufi is seen as being the enshrinement of anti-Islamic values.

If you look at Uzbekistan today, its fascist dictatorship, propped up by oil and Western and Israeli arms, is all that is allowing the nation NOT to deplode.

Afghanistan? Cough....cough...Bamiyan...cough. Chechnya? (As Rachamim runs from the room screaming in laughter).

I would love to think that the positive within Islam might be able to shape things more than the negative but thus far history is saying otherwise.

The thing with Sufi Jam...It is not possible (despite what Western followers may dupe themselves intp believing), to
follow/study Sufi without first assimilating that it is integrally and irrevocably bound to Islam.

Saint worship? Shi'a through and through with the whole Imam Fetish. Ecstatic trance? You can find it in all forms of Islam albeit without the music.

(Edited for spelling)
 
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^ Well then we'll just have to disagree because I think what you say in this post is simply incorrect.

While the political elite (of whatever persuasion - be they prime ministers or leaders of terrorist cults) in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan may seem to show leanings toward extremism, the people themselves have been practising the same brand of syncretic Sufi version of Sunni (and in some areas, Shi'ite) Islam regardless of the delusions of those who rule them. Let's face it, the eurasian Steppe has seen empires come and go, and not much has changed because Nomads, as you are well aware having lived alongside Baduah, couldn't care less about the political borders of the land and who rules it. (I guess that makes central asian nomads annoying to Jews because they are perfectly teflon to any attempt for politicization, hahaha)

This may not be the case in Uzbekistan, whose single defining element of identity that separates it from Kazakhstan and even Qaraqalpakistan being its urbanized setting as opposed to Kazakh/Qaraqalpak nomadism, however it IS the case for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang, certain pockets in Russia and the Caucasus, and large parts of Afghanistan and Tajikistan (whose brand of spiritual Sufism even extends into Kashmir). Strictly speaking, Pakistan is more a part of the Indian subcontinent than Central Asia, so I'm not including it.

And while said followers may not all be official members of a recognized Sufi tariqah, they are as far from orthodox as you can get, and if you study their beliefs you'll find them derived invariably from one tariqah or another.

Yes, you cannot really get into Tasawwuf without being well-versed in Islam. I don't understand how this supposedly refutes what I said? You make it sound like Islam and Sufi-inclusiveness are incompatible, as if something based on Islam is necessarily evil. You also make it sound like Chechens are, as a group, bad news. Oh wait, that IS your ideological standpoint.

Quite honestly a lot of what you say is unsubstantiated.

And the Deobandi movement? It is not even close to being as influential as you make it out to be. In fact, my only exposure to it was literally as a footnote, having forgotten about it until you brought it up.

Let's face it Rachamim - you may be an authority on opiates and Israel, and I respect that... but it seems you are hardly an authority on either Central Asia or Tasawwuf, as your posting has just betrayed. So please stop trying to sound like you are. I mean, have you ever seen me speak authoritatively about, say, Ladino culture? No, because I know very little about it and I have the decency to admit it. And while I'd hardly call myself an authority on central asia or sufis, at least I don't make grandiose claims about them (that said, I'm comfortable enough to call myself a practitioner of the Sufi path).
 
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To practise what I preach, I quote to you from authoritative academic sources that happen to be on my bedside table at the moment:

"[The Sufis] formed communities that lived in cloisters known in Central Asia as khangahs... (which) could also include a mosque, acommodation for visitors and travellers, and a tomb or tombes of reverred shaykhs, often sayyids; pilgrimage to such shrines, ziyarat... came to constitute one of the central religious rituals practised by masses of the Muslim faithful.

(...)

From among the many Sufi tariqas that have spread all over the Islamic world, four are especially characteristic of Central Asia: the Qadiriya, Yasaviya, Kubraviya, and Naqshabandiya. Only one, the first, originated elsewhere - in Baghdad. ...The other three were founded in Central Asia by Cetral Asians."

From Svat Soucek's A History of Central Asia, Cambridge University Press 2000. (pp. 37-38). Emphasis added by myself, and omissions mostly consist of linguistic clarification for Arabic terms.

I want to note that the biggest of these movements, the Naqshabandiya, is perhaps the most tenaciously Sunni of all Sufi tariqas, tracing its lineage to Abu Bakr.

---

"Even Today, the sellers of wild rue in Afghanistan may offer their merchandise, which is to be burnd against the evil eye, with an invoxation of Shah Naqshaband. His order established connections with the trade guilds and merchants, and his wealth grew parallel to the growth of his spiritual influence, so that the followers and friends controlled the Timurid court and carefully watched over religious practises there."

From Annemarie Schimmel's The Mystical Dimentions of Islam, University of North Carolina Press, 1974 (pp. 365-366)

I can quote several other authorities, but I don't have the time to do so right now. Do note that both of the above are amongst the most respected scholars on the subjects of Central Asia and Sufism, respectively. True, Schimmel may not be Muslim-born, but she certainly knows more about Islam than any Muslims I've ever met.
 
I'd like to learn Japanese one day, because I think that Japan is cool :D

I'm not a big manga fan or anything, I just love so many things that come from there
 
I'm a native English speaker but also speak German. I'd be very interested in learning a Nordic language as well as either Italian or Portuguese!
 
I intend to learn Bahasa Indonesia in the next 6 months

can anyone recommend a good way to go about this ?

:)
 
^ The pimsleur audiobooks. Especially for something as simplistic as Bahasa Indonesia, where conversation makes up the bulk of the language.
 
If anyone is looking for resources http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx has audio + text for a number of languages.

Apparently it's public domain since it was made by the state department. I'm currently doing the Turkish one. I think they all might be a bit old, but helpful none the less. I'm not sure if they're all the same but the Turkish program supposes you have a bit of linguistic knowledge and goes through grammar fairly quickly. Anyways, it's free and can't hurt.
 
Rachamim: no worries, Jews are welcome here! That is, if you don't mind the ham hocks hanging in every window ;) No, but seriously I lived with an Israeli here in Spain for nearly a year and he never had a single issue...granted, he wasn't eating kosher at the time, nor advertising his heritage, but he wasn't hiding it either. I'd say the Spaniards hate Muslims, but Jews I've never heard anything bad here. Worst was an old women laughing at the yamulkes saying, "why would anyone wear a hat so SMALL???" lol
 
goatofthenever said:
If anyone is looking for resources http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx has audio + text for a number of languages.

Apparently it's public domain since it was made by the state department. I'm currently doing the Turkish one. I think they all might be a bit old, but helpful none the less. I'm not sure if they're all the same but the Turkish program supposes you have a bit of linguistic knowledge and goes through grammar fairly quickly. Anyways, it's free and can't hurt.
Click to expand...

Ooooh thanks a LOT!

Amharic! Very very glad to finally find some instruction in it, just to satisfy my curiosity for a far extreme of semitic languages that I never got to explore.

Chechnian - hopefully someday (link is broken :()

Also of interest is Sinhala, another hard-to-find language.
 
I'd like to bring my Spanish into full working order, and at this stage, for this I would need some kind of TV series in order to get used to understanding spoken Spanish.

The obvious answer would be soap operas, of which there is a plethora on the TV, but I would like something less brain numbing while still having SUBTITLES available. Could you give me any suggestions?

Estoy embarazada con tu hijo!
 
I'm currently learning to speak Latin, mostly for the fun of it and because it's nice to know the roots of the English language.
It's also so hard to learn that after you master it, any other language will be a piece of cake!
 
I would love to learn Latin. I think that it would be a great start for learning other languages and assist in understanding my native language much better
 
I've studied Latin and Greek at school but at that age I couldn't understand it's real life applications so I abandoned it, young and foolish...:\
Both ain't easy though.
 
English and decent Spanish. I am learning Russian again mostly because I have a few friends who I hang out with that speak it, I am part Russian as well so that is a factor also.
 
I am native russian speaker, learning english, want to abandon Russia for some english speaking country, like Australia
 
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