Ask A Bulgarian

[Domen]

Would you agree that the Balkans = living evidence of the success of multiculturalism?

And in few more decades Western Europe will perhaps become the new Balkans.

 

[gay_Aleks]

If slaughtering 25 million of Europe's young is a success.

 

[Takhisis]

Not an insult from the mouth of most people, save for several nationalist snowflakes.
We prefer using Janissary as an swear, really.

Janissary? Interesting.

Correct version, as you know, is Tourk.

Tȣrk, as you should know by now.

It is a more general European thing actually. In German, 'getürkt' means fabricated, though it is derived from Turk. In Dutch slang, 'Turken-' can be used pejoratively as a prefix to specific instance of things that are both non-Western and working class: For instance 'Turkenclub' indicates a nightclub where patrons are working class non-whites.

Oh, I know they're associated with a lot of bad things that vary according to the location, but in Croatia it appears to be used as a synonym for thief or scoundrel.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Janissaries are usually thought of as traitors or slavers. It's mostly due to the fact that every single children, indeed has to learn how Christian kids were taken young and then turned into warriors who also killed more Christians. They're the most symbolic thing that the Ottomans have left.

 

[Domen]

The taking of Christian boys for Janissaries is what is also known as the "blood tax", right?

Or was the "blood tax" something different than kidnapping boys / future Janissaries?

 

[Kyriakos]

Janissaries are usually thought of as traitors or slavers. It's mostly due to the fact that every single children, indeed has to learn how Christian kids were taken young and then turned into warriors who also killed more Christians. They're the most symbolic thing that the Ottomans have left.

Link to video.

 

[gay_Aleks]

The taking of Christian boys for Janissaries is what is also known as the "blood tax", right?

Or was the "blood tax" something different than kidnapping boys / future Janissaries?

As far as I know, yes.

Link to video.

That's just awful.

 

[Kyriakos]

As far as I know, yes.



That's just awful.

So you like janissaries?

Traitor!



(the whole movie looks like a total war mod tbh).

 

[gay_Aleks]

So you like janissaries?

Traitor!



(the whole movie looks like a total war mod tbh).

Except that a TW mod usually gets more research than most of the industry ever does.

This...movie..does not.

 

[Domen]

Except that a TW mod usually gets more research than most of the industry ever does.

"Europa Barbarorum" actually has a longer bibliography than many history books:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?668341-Europa-Barbarorum-Bibliography



Of course this happens only in mods. Original TW games have much lower levels of historical accuracy.

 

[Borachio]

Vlad the Impaler did really impale people. Loads of people.

Was he Bulgarian?

What's the collective noun for a group of impaled people, btw? They used wooden stakes, so I suppose it could have been a thicket.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Most definitely not. Fortunately, we have our very own, fortunately, benevolent Vlad the Impaler. With one leg on the Danube, and another in the Balkans (the mountain, not the peninsula) who freed three chains of slaves.

Man, that sounds better in original Bulgarian.

 

[Borachio]

Ah. A "chain" of slaves.

Good use of an interesting collective noun, there!

What's the collective noun for a collection of nouns?

 

[Domen]

Was he Bulgarian?

More like Romanian. One of his great-great-great-great... grandfathers was this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basarab_I_of_Wallachia

Male founder of the Basarab dynasty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Basarab

 

[gay_Aleks]

It's "make your own thread to ask people about it".

 

[Domen]

Vlad the Impaler did really impale people. Loads of people.

Well, there were also more cruel ways of killing people at that time.

Impaling was perhaps not the worst method after all.

 

[Borachio]

I was reading he had it down to a fine art, and people could survive impaled for days. There was even a youtube video explaining how it could have been done.

And Vlad had loads of practice. He impaled 20,000 people at once, on one occasion.

 

[gay_Aleks]

That's not what this thread is about.

 

[Borachio]

No. No. True.

Who are the arch-villains of Bulgaria? Or don't you have any?

 

[Domen]

I've found such a glorious Bulgaria-related video (but are all of these border changes historically accurate / confirmed by sources?):


Link to video.