Month: September 2016

February 2016, as far as I can tell. I joined August 2015. I was collapsed quite a bit at the start.

Some fascinating answers here.

For me, no, and that’s about different attitudes to ethnicity and history.

My no is for the same reason as User’s (answer stupidly collapsed by mods) or Feifei Wang’s. My skepticism about the methodologies in pop DNA tests is the same as Madelene Zarifa’s, my skepticism about the utility the same as Lyonel Perabo’s.

My father’s Greek Cypriot, my mother’s Greek Cretan. It’s likely Greek peasantry all the way back. If there was some stray Venetian in my lineage from 500 years back, or some stray Arabic from 1000 years back, that does not impact my sense of who I am—a sense that is cultural and not genetic.

Now, that attitude is coloured by being brought up in an ethnically monolithic area (Crete, where even the Muslims were Greek). If I were Anglo in the Melting Pot of the US, I may well have a different attitude. In fact, Cypriots have been much more sanguine about being a mixture of people than Greece Greeks are; I might have been more curious had I been brought up in Cyprus.

But really, the peregrinations of my ancestors, such as they might have been, doesn’t tell me who I am. I already know who I am. And “0.5% Sub-Saharan African” or “1.2% East Asian” is statistical noise, it’s not identity.

Feifei put it well:

If the test shown I have Arabic or perhaps Jewish ancestors, I’m not going to start picking up the Quran or convert to Judaism. I don’t understand some people’s need to search their “roots”, as if that would help them define who they are. I might not know exactly who I am, but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with my genetics. I originated in Beijing, China. That’s my origin.

Yes, Arabic script was a spectacularly bad fit for Turkish. But a more proximate reason, surely, was that mass literacy presupposes printing—and the Ottomans did not allow printing in a Muslim language. (They didn’t allow it in Christian Greek either, but at least Venetian printers were able to capitalise on that.)

Global spread of the printing press

Due to religious qualms, Sultan Bayezid II and successors prohibited printing in Arabic script in the Ottoman empire from 1483 on penalty of death, but printing in other scripts was done by Jews as well as the Greek and Armenian communities (1515 Saloniki, 1554 Bursa (Adrianople), 1552 Belgrade, 1658 Smyrna). In 1727, Sultan Achmed III gave his permission for the establishment of the first legal print house for printing secular works in Arabic script (religious publications still remained forbidden), but printing activities did not really take off until the 19th century.

1727: First press for printing in Arabic established in the Ottoman Empire, against opposition from the calligraphers and parts of the Ulama. It operated until 1742, producing altogether seventeen works, all of which were concerned with non-religious, utilitarian matters. Ibrahim Muteferrika.

1779: Abortive attempt to revive printing in the Ottoman lands, by James Mario Matra (Briton).

[Btw, Wikipedia? What printing in Greek communities? Judaeo-Greek doesn’t really count as the “Greek community” in this context. Citation needed.]

On the late adoption of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire

It is clear from the historical evidence that the professional manuscript scribes were violently against the printing press because they did not want to lose their jobs.

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It is not so clear that the clergy of that era were against the printing press even though historians show evidence that it was the case. In the current intellectual climate of religious fervor in Turkey the prevailing opinion is that the clergy of the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries were not against the printing press. They say that the printing press was rejected because of the strong opposition of the calligrapher/scribe class. This begs the question: if the clergy were not against the printing press why Muteferrika or others were not allowed to print religious books?

Myths and reality about the printing press in the Ottoman Empire (which looks like a weak apologist account to me—they didn’t allow it because it wasn’t as pretty as manuscript? And only the scholars needed to read anyway? Really?)

Printing banned by Islam? (Christian polemicist, but consistently with scrupulous scholarship)

Ah, French in the Val d’Aosta.

I don’t have a phonetic answer for OP. I do however have a sociolinguistic answer that I’m delighted to share, because I co-supervised an MA thesis on this subject. The facts are all from Genevieve Foddy (née Czarnecki). The snark is all mine.

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The indigenous language of the Val d’Aosta is not French. Any more than French is the indigenous language of Brittany, or Alsace, or Gascony.

The indigenous language of the Val d’Aosta was Franco-Provençal. Which was also the indigenous language of Suisse Romande, and Grenoble, and the rest of the erstwhile Duchy of Savoy. “Franco-Provençal” doesn’t sound like much of a name for a language, so locals now prefer to call it Arpitan. The Val d’Aosta is now where Franco-Provençal survives the strongest. And “the strongest” is not all that strong.

Franco-Provençal never got taken seriously as a language. (I mean, have you ever heard of it?) The Duchy of Savoy, in fact, adopted Paris French as its official language, even before France did. In 1536.

That means that Paris French was a Roofing Language (Dachsprache) for Franco-Provençal. Meaning, it was the Official Language that you file the local dialect under. A roofing language can give you some shelter: you can claim the superior status of the roofing language as your own. But it also stunts your growth: literary Franco-Provençal was never going to amount to anything but cute stories about dales and goats, because French was the “real” language of anything outside the shepherd’s hut.

The Val d’Aosta became part of Italy, Grenoble became part of France, and Suisse Romande had already got rid of its Arpitan at the time of Napoleon. The Valdôtains protested they were French, but they were swamped by migrants from the Piedmont, and their dialect was on the retreat.

Before Mussolini. But of course, it was Mussolini that made martyrs of the Francophone Valdostans, such as Émile Chanoux.

Fast forward to the end of WWII. De Gaulle is doing some sabre-rattling on the French–Italian border. To smooth things over, Italy grants the Val d’Aosta autonomy.

Autonomy from Rome pays off bigtime economically. The Valdôtains achieve the highest standard of living in Italy. Which attracts a lot of migrants from elsewhere in Italy again—this time, from the poor South.

Like I said, Franco-Provençal is not doing that well: it’s steadily retreating. There may be revival efforts, but if you’re not in Palestine 1910, revival efforts seldom reverse language loss.

Franco-Provençal, once again, is not French. But Franco-Provençal is also not an Ausbausprache—an Official Language of the kind you can put in forms and legal documents and books. French is.

And the Valdôtains, dammit, are Savoyards. People who belong to the glorious lineage of the French-Speaking Nations.

So they learn French at school. Because they sure as hell don’t speak it at home.

And they get all their government forms in French as well as Italian.

And most of them, in reality, don’t speak anything but Italian. Some of them will speak Franco-Provençal in the villages, some of the time.

But remember: French is what makes them distinct, French is what makes them autonomous, French is what makes them part of la Francophonie. If it was just some mountain gibberish dialect that they spoke, halfway between French and Tuscan, well, Italy is full of those.

(Remember: the snark is all mine, not Genevieve’s.)

So, this is how the scenario plays out for Eustace-Marie de Valdôtain-Courmayeur, born and bred in the Vallé d’Aoste, pronounced [vale dɔst], sacré, not [daɔst].

(In Franco-Provençal it’s actually Vâl d’Outa, but remember: French. Because: French.)

• We Valdôtains are Savoyards.
• That makes us members of the glorious lineage of the French-Speaking Nations, who adopted French before Paris did.
• We speak French, and that makes us autonomous from Rome.
• The fact that noone in my family has spoken Franco-Provençal in three generations is irrelevant.
• The fact that I only learned French in school is irrelevant.
• The fact that I always fill out the Italian forms down at the town hall, and not the French forms, is irrelevant.
• We speak French. And those southern migrants don’t. Because we are true Valdôtains.

Meanwhile, this is how the scenario plays out for Salvatore Mangia-Foccaccia, who has moved here from Reggio di Calabria.

• The streets of Aosta are paved with gold.
• The streets are paved with gold, because the Valle d’Aosta (pronounced [daosta], porca miseria, not [dɔst]) speaks French.
• Any actual French they speak here, they learned at school.
• … Hey hang on! I learned French at school!
• Sure, Vive l’Aoste libre! Works for me just fine!

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OP, this doesn’t really answer your question, but it is a warning to look at the claims carefully. It’s Arpitan, not French (hence the “distinctive features”), and the locals are motivated to exaggerate how much non-Italian Romance they speak. Arpitan is a second language in the revival now; but so is French.

I wish Arpitan well, as I wish all minority languages well. But Arpitan in the Val d’Aosta is not going to grow if it keeps calling itself French…

The best saying of Ancient Greek ever comes from the very end of Ancient Greek.

When Julian (emperor), last Roman advocate of paganism, was asked what he thought of Christianity, he said:

ἀνέγνων. ἔγνων. κατέγνων.

It’s a truly magnificent pun.

Literally, it means: I up-knew, I knew, I down-knew.

“To up-know” is the Greek for “to read”. “To down-know” is the Greek for “to condemn”. “To know” can be used to mean “to understand”.

So: I up-knew, I knew, I down-knew = I have read it. I have understood it. I have condemned it.

Or, as a most weak echo of Julian’s magnificence:

I’ve read it; I get it; I’ll shred it.

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When Esperanto was invented by Ludovik Zamenhof, the lack of a culture was somewhat felt, though nowhere near as acutely felt as people assume. In any case, it was quickly filled in with a whole lot of Mitteleuropa literary culture, which was what was prestigious around where Esperanto was invented.

As a sign of respect, Ludovik Zamenhof published his father’s collection of proverbs in multiple languages. Including Esperanto. And the Esperanto has jingle jangle blunt rhymes, the way you’d expect of proverbial wisdom.

Those proverbs were instant culture; but they weren’t high culture. So sadly, they were ignored by everyone in Esperanto culture since. With the exception of the magnificent translation into Esperanto of the first volume of Asterix, which used them with gusto. (Even more sadly: the subsequent volumes were done by other people, and were nowhere near as clever.)

One of them wedged itself into my mind when I found the collection, and it hasn’t dislodged itself since. You could say, it’s a relation of Julian’s apophthegm.

Dio longe paciencas, sed severe rekompencas.

God has long patience. And stern payback.

I agree with Karen Tiede’s answer: the most effective way to counter a bad answer is with a good (and dispassionate) answer.

The most *easy* way to do so (and indeed, the one I usually use) is to comment. But not everyone wants or accepts comments. And if you’re worried about sounding offensive, you’re unlikely to want to engage in comments to begin with.

I disagree with Karen’s premiss as a way of participating in society, as opposed to Quora (“It’s not my job to consider other points of view”), because being open to considering other points of view is the responsibility of a citizen. Even as an approach to Quora (“this is not a debating site”), I am uncomfortable with it: it truly comes across as the stuff of echo-chambers.

And yet, in my own practice on Quora with answers (as opposed to comments), I do the same thing. I’m often not interested in rewording questions, if they’ve been found to be wanting in someone’s comments—even if I agree with that comment. I will edit to add things I’ve left out, sometimes, particularly in matters of fact. But edits of answers don’t trigger renotifications to everyone who has already answered your question. Just as comments refuting you are nowhere near as visible as new answers refuting you.

And I’d rather let my answer stand, as the best record of what I thought—if the answer is a matter of opinion or judgement rather than fact. If the answer is debatable, well, let’s have the debate in comments, *I*’m fine with that. But my answer stands, and the best way to refute it is a counter-answer.

I’ve often encouraged people to post a counter-answer; they rarely do…

Marc Ettlinger’s answer to Why do people use “Nope” even though “No” is easier to say and shorter to spell?

The Question Bot is actually getting more aggressive about questions that make no sense without reading the question details. It’s detecting them in a hamfisted way—by looking for “this”; but…

… well, it’s doing the right thing. Questions have to make sense on their own. As Frank Dauenhauer explains.

For a more rarified instance:

Which dialect (hesitate to call it that) of Greek is being used in this translation of the Iliad?

With the translation shown as a scan in details.

Dinged, timed and again by the question bot, until I confirmed what translation I thought it was, and changed the wording to:

Which variant of Greek is being used in Alexandros Pallis’ translation of the Iliad?

OP may or may not have known whose translation it was. Lots of Greeks may not have heard of Pallis, and would find the scan in the question details more informative.

But as a one sentence question, “Alexandros Pallis’ translation” is more useful than “this translation”.

Would you not agree?

A2A, but I can only agree with Hans-Georg Lundahl, though with some qualifications.

Historical sources are by definition what is written, as opposed to what is dug up out of the ground.

For the Minoans, we have undeciphered writings in Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A. We have too-oblique references from Egyptian diplomacy (Amarna letters). We have some garbled memories via Greek mythology, notably around the Minotaur.

For the Mycenaeans, we have deciphered writings in Linear B, except that they tell us what little they do tell us indirectly, as they are purely accounting texts. We have something embedded in the core of the Iliad—but with a lot of accretions on top of it, so that archaeology is more help in extracting what’s Mycenaean about the Iliad, than the Iliad telling us anything on its own about the Mycenaeans.

Sorry to answer by reference to Wikipedia, but, well, I think the answers are all there.

We have ancient philosophical schools.

We have popularisations of what those ancient philosophical schools were about, in education and in all-round educated discourse.

We have people repurposing those popularisations, to express commonplace attitudes.

To the extent that the meaning differs from antiquity, that’s the result of popularisation.

Stoicism first

The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, of the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature.

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Later Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that, because “virtue is sufficient for happiness”, a sage was immune to misfortune.

The word “stoic” commonly refers to someone indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy. The modern usage as “person who represses feelings or endures patiently” was first cited in 1579 as a noun, and 1596 as an adjective. In contrast to the term “Epicurean”, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Stoicism notes, “the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins.”

And indeed, if you read Epictetus, the stuff of pop stoicism is there: you should only care about the stuff you can control, there’s no point being bothered by the stuff that’s outside of your control. So you don’t let pain, pleasure, grief or joy from those things run your life. It’s just that there’s a calm—at times, a defiance, even a joy, in Epictetus not bothering with the stuff you can’t control. And there is a sense of purpose in the stuff you can control, which does give you joy.

The pop version of stoicism, as exemplified by the British stiff upper lip, doesn’t have that; it’s more absolute. But you can see how you would jump from one to the other in the 16th century.

Now Cynicism (philosophy):

Cynicism is a school of Ancient Greek philosophy as practiced by the Cynics. For the Cynics, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.

That’s not small-c cynical.

By the 19th century, emphasis on the negative aspects of Cynic philosophy led to the modern understanding of cynicism to mean a disposition of disbelief in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions.

Oh, OK. So what gave people that idea?

The ancient Cynics rejected conventional social values, and would criticise the types of behaviours, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering. Emphasis on this aspect of their teachings led, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, to the modern understanding of cynicism as “an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.” This modern definition of cynicism is in marked contrast to the ancient philosophy, which emphasized “virtue and moral freedom in liberation from desire.”

Ah. So too many anecdotes in the 1800s of Diogenes of Sinope flouting conventional morality to point out hypocrisy. And not enough justification of what Diogenes’ point was, behind his antics—that there was true virtue to be found out there, it just wasn’t to be found in conventional pieties.