NationStates

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:The category doesn't make any sense, though. I could maayybe see Japanese and Chinese grouped together due to Japanese using the hanzi/kanji from Chinese, and if we're okay with archaic forms, Vietnamese could be included as well. Thai and Korean should be miscellaneous, though, because they don't have many similarities with the others apart from some loanwords and being in a similar wide-ranging geographic region.

The Sinosphere doesn't make sense? According to whom? We use that term in the social sciences all the time (along with the Indosphere). As I said, I was not trying to place the languages into linguistic categories (unless that was appropriate), just into categories which made sense to me.

If accuracy can be improved at the expense of nearly nothing, I'd say it's a better idea to improve the accuracy, but whatever floats your linguistically vague boat.

The categorization is useful for my purposes. You keep on bringing up linguistic. As I said, I was not always using linguistic categories.

Well, it might be slightly less confusing if you included the languages of all the countries in this proposed "Sinosphere," which I presume would include Cambodia with Khmer, Burma with Burmese, Laos with Lao, and perhaps Hong Kong's Cantonese Chinese. As it stands, you appear to have sprinkled a random assortment of East and Southeast Asian languages and called it good. You have said that you chose the languages that you could find, but it still seems rather arbitrary to an observer unaware of this. Additionally, you used linguistic categories like Germanic and Uralic (under the name Finnic-Uralic, which doesn't make sense either), so you're being rather inconsistent.

Painisia wrote:Is Strasserism basically antisemitic anti-capitalism?

Left-corporatism with profits split equally between state, workers and managers, the breakup of large estates, banking reform, welfare state, an end to European militarism, integrative nationalism (including the Jews who could either assimilate, become resident foreigners or go to a Jewish state), cooperation and free trade between a Europe of free sovereign nations for collective security against dominance by the United States or Soviet Union.

For more info, read Germany Tomorrow.

Can I get paid every time I do this summary.

Dumb Ideologies wrote:

Painisia wrote:Is Strasserism basically antisemitic anti-capitalism?

Left-corporatism with profits split equally between state, workers and managers, the breakup of large estates, banking reform, welfare state, an end to European militarism, integrative nationalism (including the Jews who could either assimilate, become resident foreigners or go to a Jewish state), cooperation and free trade between a Europe of free sovereign nations for collective security against dominance by the United States or Soviet Union.

For more info, read Germany Tomorrow.

Can I get paid every time I do this summary.

I think the part about the Soviet Union miiiiiight be a little outdated.

Cekoviu wrote:

Dumb Ideologies wrote:
Left-corporatism with profits split equally between state, workers and managers, the breakup of large estates, banking reform, welfare state, an end to European militarism, integrative nationalism (including the Jews who could either assimilate, become resident foreigners or go to a Jewish state), cooperation and free trade between a Europe of free sovereign nations for collective security against dominance by the United States or Soviet Union.

For more info, read Germany Tomorrow.

Can I get paid every time I do this summary.

I think the part about the Soviet Union miiiiiight be a little outdated.

Yes, well Otto's been a bit busy rotting lately to do a rewrite so fans rather have to take his works and go with them to fit contemporary circumstances. Less of a problem than for the Marxists, of course. Most of all I like the combination of a productive and competitive economy that is not liberal capitalist with an integrative nationalism, focus on building domestic industry, and strong sense of cultural identity. I don't stick 100% with what he says and I'm not 100% convinced on the necessity of a separate class of managers in the long-term and would prefer the state to use some of its profits to support and fund new worker-owned businesses to move in gradualist fashion towards a more explicitly market socialist direction.

In a similar way to how some of those heavily influenced by Marxist thought but not explicitly card-carrying communists might call themselves "Marxian", I'm probably more "Strasser-lite" or "neo-Strasserist" than Strasserist. Hence the "semi-ironic" in the sig.

Now I'm going to bed so please divert any further questions to my TG box, where they will be shredded and thrown out for the neighbourhood cats to play with.

Dumb Ideologies wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:I think the part about the Soviet Union miiiiiight be a little outdated.

Yes, well Otto's been a bit busy rotting lately to do a rewrite so fans rather have to take his works and go with them to fit contemporary circumstances. Less of a problem than for the Marxists, of course. Most of all I like the combination of a productive and competitive economy that is not liberal capitalist with an integrative nationalism, focus on building domestic industry, and strong sense of cultural identity. I don't stick 100% with what he says and I'm not 100% convinced on the necessity of a separate class of managers in the long-term and would prefer the state to use some of its profits to support and fund new worker-owned businesses to move in gradualist fashion towards a more explicitly market socialist direction.

In a similar way to how some of those heavily influenced by Marxist thought but not explicitly card-carrying communists might call themselves "Marxian", I'm probably more "Strasser-lite" or "neo-Strasserist" than Strasserist. Hence the "semi-ironic" in the sig.

Now I'm going to bed so please divert any further questions to my TG box, where they will be shredded and thrown out for the neighbourhood cats to play with.

I personally find much of what Strasser says as you've described it agreeable aside from forced assimilation and nationalism. Were it not for those things, I might seriously consider taking up his cause.

Cekoviu wrote:Well, it might be slightly less confusing if you included the languages of all the countries in this proposed "Sinosphere," which I presume would include Cambodia with Khmer, Burma with Burmese, Laos with Lao, and perhaps Hong Kong's Cantonese Chinese. As it stands, you appear to have sprinkled a random assortment of East and Southeast Asian languages and called it good. You have said that you chose the languages that you could find, but it still seems rather arbitrary to an observer unaware of this. Additionally, you used linguistic categories like Germanic and Uralic (under the name Finnic-Uralic, which doesn't make sense either), so you're being rather inconsistent.

I wasn't trying to put together an encyclopedia. Aside from that, I was only able to choose languages in which I could find a word for extremist.

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:Well, it might be slightly less confusing if you included the languages of all the countries in this proposed "Sinosphere," which I presume would include Cambodia with Khmer, Burma with Burmese, Laos with Lao, and perhaps Hong Kong's Cantonese Chinese. As it stands, you appear to have sprinkled a random assortment of East and Southeast Asian languages and called it good. You have said that you chose the languages that you could find, but it still seems rather arbitrary to an observer unaware of this. Additionally, you used linguistic categories like Germanic and Uralic (under the name Finnic-Uralic, which doesn't make sense either), so you're being rather inconsistent.

I wasn't trying to put together an encyclopedia. Aside from that, I was only able to choose languages in which I could find a word for extremist.

In that case, you're missing some languages (according to Google Translate):

I can keep going if you'd like.

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:The category doesn't make any sense, though. I could maayybe see Japanese and Chinese grouped together due to Japanese using the hanzi/kanji from Chinese, and if we're okay with archaic forms, Vietnamese could be included as well. Thai and Korean should be miscellaneous, though, because they don't have many similarities with the others apart from some loanwords and being in a similar wide-ranging geographic region.

The Sinosphere doesn't make sense? According to whom? We use that term in the social sciences all the time (along with the Indosphere). As I said, I was not trying to place the languages into linguistic categories (unless that was appropriate), just into categories which made sense to me.

Strictly speaking, the Sinosphere would be considered a cultural region and a sprachbund rather than a language family. Also, Thailand is often considered part of the Indosphere.

What are we talking about?

Bienenhalde wrote:

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:
The Sinosphere doesn't make sense? According to whom? We use that term in the social sciences all the time (along with the Indosphere). As I said, I was not trying to place the languages into linguistic categories (unless that was appropriate), just into categories which made sense to me.

Strictly speaking, the Sinosphere would be considered a cultural region and a sprachbund rather than a language family. Also, Thailand is often considered part of the Indosphere.

Especially considering Chinese languages, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are all linguistically unrelated.

Cekoviu wrote:In that case, you're missing some languages (according to Google Translate):

As I said, I wasn't trying to put together an encyclopedia. The point of the list is to emphasize the global importance of practicing extremism.

Puldania wrote:

Bienenhalde wrote:Strictly speaking, the Sinosphere would be considered a cultural region and a sprachbund rather than a language family. Also, Thailand is often considered part of the Indosphere.

Especially considering Chinese languages, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are all linguistically unrelated.

Some linguists consider both Korean and Japanese to be related, possibly part of the Altaic language family. But the main reason for similarity between these languages is the use of Chinese-based writing systems and Chinese loanwords.

Bienenhalde wrote:

Puldania wrote:Especially considering Chinese languages, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are all linguistically unrelated.

Some linguists consider both Korean and Japanese to be related, possibly part of the Altaic language family. But the main reason for similarity between these languages is the use of Chinese-based writing systems and Chinese loanwords.

I've heard the possibility of Korean and Japanese being related, but never that they could be part of the Altaic family... where did you read this?

Bienenhalde wrote:Strictly speaking, the Sinosphere would be considered a cultural region and a sprachbund rather than a language family. Also, Thailand is often considered part of the Indosphere.

Yes, that is correct. I debated whether to include Thai under the Sinosphere or miscellaneous. However, since Thai is sometimes regarded as being a part of the Sinosphere, too, I opted to place it under that category.

Bienenhalde wrote:

Puldania wrote:Especially considering Chinese languages, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are all linguistically unrelated.

Some linguists consider both Korean and Japanese to be related, possibly part of the Altaic language family. But the main reason for similarity between these languages is the use of Chinese-based writing systems and Chinese loanwords.

Very few linguists accept that Korean and Japanese are related, and even fewer accept the Altaic hypothesis.

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Jelmatt wrote:Why the hell would you prefer "extremist" to "radical?" The former almost universally has far worse connotations than the latter, and in academic definitions the former also means something a lot less palatable to most people.

As I wrote:

I wrote:The term, radical, has become far too commonplace. It is, much of the time, an over–used smear word. These days, in the U.S., many Republicans absurdly ascribe that designation to most, even all, members of the Democratic Party.

The point is that I wanted to be provocative without implying military violence.

..."extremist" implies the willingness to use violence. "Radical" doesn't. Also, are you gonna stop calling yourself a socialist because the Republicans call Democrats socialists?

Jelmatt wrote:..."extremist" implies the willingness to use violence. "Radical" doesn't.

Actually, it does not. Look up the word in any dictionary.

Also, are you gonna stop calling yourself a socialist because the Republicans call Democrats socialists?

Like many communists I know, I stopped calling myself a socialist because of Bernie Sanders.

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:In that case, you're missing some languages (according to Google Translate):

As I said, I wasn't trying to put together an encyclopedia. The point of the list is to emphasize the global importance of practicing extremism.

But you haven't emphasized it enough with your dozen or two examples!

Bienenhalde wrote:

Puldania wrote:Especially considering Chinese languages, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are all linguistically unrelated.

Some linguists consider both Korean and Japanese to be related, possibly part of the Altaic language family. But the main reason for similarity between these languages is the use of Chinese-based writing systems and Chinese loanwords.

50 years ago, maybe. Now nearly nobody accepts the Altaic hypothesis, and even people who do may not include Koreanic and Japonic as subgroups, the primary accepted groups being Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic.
I also don't think Hangul is based off of Chinese writing systems (and Vietnamese has largely abandoned using hanzi), so there aren't many similarities there. Vietnamese does have a high quantity of Chinese loanwords, though, and maybe Korean as well.

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Jelmatt wrote:..."extremist" implies the willingness to use violence. "Radical" doesn't.

Actually, it does not. Look up the word in any dictionary.

You of all people should know dictionaries aren't reliable for precise definitions. Since you like academic definitions, I'd like to draw you to the distinction made in, say, German jurispudence (where extremist parties are banned), between radical and extreme politics, where the former is defined as being outside the political mainstream and the latter is defined as being hostile to the democratic politics and seeking change by means of force. This is echoed in comparative politics with Cas Mudde's and Luke March's treatments of right-wing and left-wing radicalism and extremism, where right-wing radicals (such as most European nationalist parties) are separated from right-wing extremists (neo-fascists and neo-nazis), and left-wing radicals (most democratic socialists who reject mainstream social democracy, as well as "eurocommunists") are separated from left-wing extremists (revolutionary-democratic socialists and most communists).

Democratic Communist Federation wrote:

Also, are you gonna stop calling yourself a socialist because the Republicans call Democrats socialists?

Like many communists I know, I stopped calling myself a socialist because of Bernie Sanders.

...I, uh, that's kinda sad. What, one social democrat uses the term and it's just discardable?

Cekoviu wrote:50 years ago, maybe. Now nearly nobody accepts the Altaic hypothesis, and even people who do may not include Koreanic and Japonic as subgroups, the primary accepted groups being Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic.

Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

I also don't think Hangul is based off of Chinese writing systems (and Vietnamese has largely abandoned using hanzi), so there aren't many similarities there. Vietnamese does have a high quantity of Chinese loanwords, though, and maybe Korean as well.

I have learned some basic Korean, and I can tell you for certain that Korean has numerous Chinese loanwords. Before the invention of Hangul, written communication in Korea was only in Classical Chinese. But after the development of Hangul, people used something called "Korean mixed script", meaning that Chinese loanwords were written with Chinese characters, while Hangul was used for native Korean words. But now they mostly use just Hangul. The letters in Hangul are not based on Chinese writing, but they are arranging in roughly square-shaped blocks which each represent one syllable, which is similar to Chinese characters, since Chinese characters fit into a roughly square-shaped space and also represent one syllable.

Bienenhalde wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:50 years ago, maybe. Now nearly nobody accepts the Altaic hypothesis, and even people who do may not include Koreanic and Japonic as subgroups, the primary accepted groups being Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic.

Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

I also don't think Hangul is based off of Chinese writing systems (and Vietnamese has largely abandoned using hanzi), so there aren't many similarities there. Vietnamese does have a high quantity of Chinese loanwords, though, and maybe Korean as well.

I have learned some basic Korean, and I can tell you for certain that Korean has numerous Chinese loanwords. Before the invention of Hangul, written communication in Korea was only in Classical Chinese. But after the development of Hangul, people used something called "Korean mixed script", meaning that Chinese loanwords were written with Chinese characters, while Hangul was used for native Korean words. But now they mostly use just Hangul. The letters in Hangul are not based on Chinese writing, but they are arranging in roughly square-shaped blocks which each represent one syllable, which is similar to Chinese characters, since Chinese characters fit into a roughly square-shaped space and also represent one syllable.

The Chinese writing system isn't a Syllabary at all, and Hangul isn't really either.
Chinese writing is mostly logographic/ideographic, although syllabic elements are occasionally used.

Hangul is more of an alphabet that happens to be arranged in syllabic blocks, but it is pretty distinct from true syllabaries like Cherokee.
Also, Hangul is the best writing system.

Japanese, however, is just really weird.

Bienenhalde wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:50 years ago, maybe. Now nearly nobody accepts the Altaic hypothesis, and even people who do may not include Koreanic and Japonic as subgroups, the primary accepted groups being Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic.

Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

As someone who's most likely going to major in linguistics, I resent that.

The current scholarly view is that the Japonic language family is an isolate. Japanese is related to Ryukyuan, but there's little evidence (or at least not enough evidence) to suggest it's related to any other languages.

Bienenhalde wrote:

Cekoviu wrote:50 years ago, maybe. Now nearly nobody accepts the Altaic hypothesis, and even people who do may not include Koreanic and Japonic as subgroups, the primary accepted groups being Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic.

Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

I do appreciate that, but I don't think I'm the most knowledgeable here. Jelmatt appears to know more about linguistics than me, tbh. But anyway, Japanese is considered a Japonic language. Japonic is a primary language family with no relation to any other. It only contains Japanese and Ryukyuan, the latter of which is a smallish language spoken in the Ryukyu islands south of mainland Japan.

I also don't think Hangul is based off of Chinese writing systems (and Vietnamese has largely abandoned using hanzi), so there aren't many similarities there. Vietnamese does have a high quantity of Chinese loanwords, though, and maybe Korean as well.

I have learned some basic Korean, and I can tell you for certain that Korean has numerous Chinese loanwords. Before the invention of Hangul, written communication in Korea was only in Classical Chinese. But after the development of Hangul, people used something called "Korean mixed script", meaning that Chinese loanwords were written with Chinese characters, while Hangul was used for native Korean words. But now they mostly use just Hangul.

Oh, I see. I don't know very much about Korean, so that's new to me.

The letters in Hangul are not based on Chinese writing, but they are arranging in roughly square-shaped blocks which each represent one syllable, which is similar to Chinese characters, since Chinese characters fit into a roughly square-shaped space and also represent one syllable.

That's true. Alphabets that one has come in contact with tend to influence the ones that you create, even if it's unconscious, so the overall layout of Chinese characters may have had an effect. The characters each representing one syllable may not necessarily be influenced by Chinese, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Puldania wrote:

Bienenhalde wrote:Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?



I have learned some basic Korean, and I can tell you for certain that Korean has numerous Chinese loanwords. Before the invention of Hangul, written communication in Korea was only in Classical Chinese. But after the development of Hangul, people used something called "Korean mixed script", meaning that Chinese loanwords were written with Chinese characters, while Hangul was used for native Korean words. But now they mostly use just Hangul. The letters in Hangul are not based on Chinese writing, but they are arranging in roughly square-shaped blocks which each represent one syllable, which is similar to Chinese characters, since Chinese characters fit into a roughly square-shaped space and also represent one syllable.

The Chinese writing system isn't a Syllabary at all, and Hangul isn't really either.
Chinese writing is mostly logographic/ideographic, although syllabic elements are occasionally used.

Hangul is more of an alphabet that happens to be arranged in syllabic blocks, but it is pretty distinct from true syllabaries like Cherokee.
Also, Hangul is the best writing system.

Japanese, however, is just really weird.

I've heard claims that Hangul is the most efficient or most visually accurate, but I really don't see the latter claim and the former may be true, but comes with a caveat -- it's rather difficult to distinguish certain characters when they're crammed into such a tight space. This is just a personal opinion, but I also feel like curvy, flowing scripts like Burmese, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, etc. are a lot more visually appealing than Hangul, which just feels a little bit robotic and boxy to me.

Jelmatt wrote:

Bienenhalde wrote:Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

As someone who's most likely going to major in linguistics, I resent that.

The current scholarly view is that the Japonic language family is an isolate. Japanese is related to Ryukyuan, but there's little evidence (or at least not enough evidence) to suggest it's related to any other languages.

Don't worry, I gave my title to you anyway.

Cekoviu wrote:

Bienenhalde wrote:Since you seem to be the person here most knowledgeable about linguistics, what is the current scholarly view on the classification of Japanese?

I do appreciate that, but I don't think I'm the most knowledgeable here. Jelmatt appears to know more about linguistics than me, tbh. But anyway, Japanese is considered a Japonic language. Japonic is a primary language family with no relation to any other. It only contains Japanese and Ryukyuan, the latter of which is a smallish language spoken in the Ryukyu islands south of mainland Japan.

I have learned some basic Korean, and I can tell you for certain that Korean has numerous Chinese loanwords. Before the invention of Hangul, written communication in Korea was only in Classical Chinese. But after the development of Hangul, people used something called "Korean mixed script", meaning that Chinese loanwords were written with Chinese characters, while Hangul was used for native Korean words. But now they mostly use just Hangul.

Oh, I see. I don't know very much about Korean, so that's new to me.

The letters in Hangul are not based on Chinese writing, but they are arranging in roughly square-shaped blocks which each represent one syllable, which is similar to Chinese characters, since Chinese characters fit into a roughly square-shaped space and also represent one syllable.

That's true. Alphabets that one has come in contact with tend to influence the ones that you create, even if it's unconscious, so the overall layout of Chinese characters may have had an effect. The characters each representing one syllable may not necessarily be influenced by Chinese, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Puldania wrote:The Chinese writing system isn't a Syllabary at all, and Hangul isn't really either.
Chinese writing is mostly logographic/ideographic, although syllabic elements are occasionally used.

Hangul is more of an alphabet that happens to be arranged in syllabic blocks, but it is pretty distinct from true syllabaries like Cherokee.
Also, Hangul is the best writing system.

Japanese, however, is just really weird.

I've heard claims that Hangul is the most efficient or most visually accurate, but I really don't see the latter claim and the former may be true, but comes with a caveat -- it's rather difficult to distinguish certain characters when they're crammed into such a tight space. This is just a personal opinion, but I also feel like curvy, flowing scripts like Burmese, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, etc. are a lot more visually appealing than Hangul, which just feels a little bit robotic and boxy to me.

flowing scripts (specially Mkhedruli and Sinhalese) are extremely aesthetically pleasing, but, when it comes to learning them as a secondary script, very difficult to discern individual characters, especially abugidas.
Hangul, while not the prettiest, is very practical. That's why most linguists have a vicious boner for it.

Cekoviu wrote:But you haven't emphasized it enough with your dozen or two examples!

lol. Why is this so important to you? All that matters is that I have emphasized it enough for my purposes. You are certainly free to make your own list if you choose.