Eurocentrism

[Flying Pig]

Until you've learned Greek and Latin you can't complain about unnecessary grammatical complexity.

 

[Tee Kay]

...Right?

Do you indicate tones or not?

Who of course most likely looked like the below depicted:

That's both a hilarious and accurate depiction.

a) Chinese sounds beautiful for me It is IMHO much more melodious than all other languages.

Not Standard Chinese surely. That stuff bleeds me ears.

(by the way, oh hay look, a Polish poster I can stand reading, so if you think I harbour some anti-Polish bias, hah)

Until you've learned Greek and Latin you can't complain about unnecessary grammatical complexity.

I'm going to complain about the lack of grammatical complexity in Chinese. For a speaker of a European language it can take some getting used to.

 

[gay_Aleks]

While we're on languages, I only feel duly to spread enlightment about the slight mess that Bulgarian language could be.

Let's start from letters. We have "ч", closest to which is in English "ch", ц equaling "ts", and not to mention the collossal mess that is the letter "я". In Bulgarian, this letter could be pronounced as e, a or ia, depending on the day and word. I doubt I could find an equivalent in English. Normally, I'd say "y", but sometimes it falls closer to "ю" in cases like "you". Which means, if we literally transcript my name, it would be "Iavor", but since there's friendly people who realise that blowing up people's minds is not a good business practice, we've adopted "Y". So it's Yavor. Also, there's the "й" and 'и' and "Ѝ" business, the closest to which you've got is the "c" and "k", and the whole pretty n Spanish people are so proud of.

And that's not even scratching the surface.

You have it easy with definitive articles in English - slap a "the" on anything, no matter of gender and you're all set up. We have it so, so much worse, as we have a full definitive form for the one who is doing the action. For an example - "The man is doing his job" would be "Човекът който си върши работата". And there's different forms for every gender. And then, there's short form, of course.

You're welcome.

 

[Domen]

if we literally transcript my name, it would be "Iavor", but since there's friendly people who realise that blowing up people's minds is not a good business practice, we've adopted "Y". So it's Yavor.

Jawor is a tree over here:

 

[Traitorfish]

Do you indicate tones or not?

i hate you human capacity for language i hate you so goddam much

 

[Masada]

Strange, I find Vietnamese quite easy to pronounce.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Jawor is a tree over here:

Yes. It's a maple tree. Can we get over this now?

 

[Kyriakos]

According to the Bulgarian rts game Tzar, there are only three seperate civs/cultures anyway, and one of them is clearly Byzantine

The other two seem to be east asian and middle-eastern.

 

[Tee Kay]

Sounds like Empire Earth III

 

[gay_Aleks]

According to the Bulgarian rts game Tzar, there are only three seperate civs/cultures anyway, and one of them is clearly Byzantine

The other two seem to be east asian and middle-eastern.

Truthfully, you can safely ignore the cultural implications, because dragons.

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

Until you've learned Greek and Latin you can't complain about unnecessary grammatical complexity.

Hic vir dicit verum.

 

[Phrossack]

Hic vir dicit verum.

I'm a little surprised I could understand that.

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

I'm a little surprised I could understand that.

Bah. I used no subjunctives or passives or subjunctive passives.
Fuisset durior.

 

[MilesGregarius]

I'm going to complain about the lack of grammatical complexity in Chinese. For a speaker of a European language it can take some getting used to.

Same problem in Lao: incredibly easy to learn the basics, but coming into the middle of someone else's conversation leaves you with almost no reference points to figure out what's going on:

OK, I know there is someone is getting hit here, but the lack of tenses leaves me clueless as to whether the hitting is happening now, next week, or happened ten minutes ago. Nor can I figure out who's doing the hitting because of the tendency to drop subjects and a complete lack of conjugation markers for such. Are they telling me to hit someone?"

 

[Masada]

Maori has that same problem.

 

[Absolution]

As I see it, radicalism is much more of a problem here than any kind of Eurocentrism.

Some members of CFC think that it would make them look wiser if they took the exact opposite side against Eurocentism.
Some intelligent people in CFC historical discussions relate to every pre-civilized north Asian tribe as equal to European medieval duchies and kingdoms.
This is wrong, and they do it only for the sake of anti-Eurocentrism.

What I believe is that European civilizations through history has indeed been more dominant, with several other important powers, depending on what period we talk about.
The ideal is to accept the European dominance, but to remember the other great civilizations for all around the globe.

 

[Tee Kay]

What European dominance? You mean the brief two hundred years which is now rapidly coming to an end?

 

[Absolution]

What European dominance? You mean the brief two hundred years which is now rapidly coming to an end?

The years when most leading powers and technologically advanced cultures were Europeans.
For sure since around 1500 until now, and during most of the Roman golden age.
Also possibly in the period between the Crusades and the Mongol Invasion, in which some of the world's leading civilizations were European.

 

[Joecoolyo]

The Europeans did such a great job being leading civilizations that most people didn't even know they existed.

 

[sophie]

The years when most leading powers and technologically advanced cultures were Europeans.
For sure since around 1500 until now, and during most of the Roman golden age.
Also possibly in the period between the Crusades and the Mongol Invasion, in which some of the world's leading civilizations were European.

Europe did not meaningfully eclipse China in terms of economic or technological power until the late 18th century, at the earliest.

I don't think anybody would call the Romans a dominant world power.