History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

[Kyriakos]

Well, it seemed a bit like you were tacitly mentioning Yiddish as the "actual" Jewish language, not the artificial Hebrew made up by the usurping Zionists. But you might not have meant that at all, despite your reputation, so I won't make any accusations.

What I was actually offended by was the fact that Yiddish was an Ashkenazi language. Sure, in local terms it was the "Jewish" language because there weren't any other Jewish ethnicities around in Poland or Germany, but that doesn't make it the actual Jewish language by a long shot. My father's ancestors never spoke it.

My reputation is that of a fair demigod

As for what i meant, i think it was obvious both from my post and what others said before it, that the point was the state of Israel artificially resurrected a language which was dead for millenia, instead of using the language already spoken by a large percentage of the jewish people who went there. It seems pretty clear that the reason was mostly political. Think of a break-away 21st century central Italian republic, of some millions of people, annexing the vatican as well, setting latin as the official language.

 

[Plotinus]

But I've seen it used in that context plenty of times.

Then you've seen other people using language misleadingly plenty of times.

The others are correct: "semantics" refers to the relationships between words and things. It contrasts with "syntactics", which refers to the relationships between words and other words (i.e. grammar). If someone corrects you on a matter of semantics that just means they're telling you that a word means something different from what you thought it meant (or, more accurately, that it refers to something different). So in fact this discussion right now is about semantics, because it's about the meaning of the term "semantic". A discussion about what languages Jews in particular places and times spoke is not about semantics, unless you're disagreeing about what words to use to refer to different things.

(In fact the discussion above about whether Scots should be called a "language" or a "dialect" is arguably a semantic discussion, because the only point at issue is what word to use - there are no material points of fact at dispute.)

 

[Domen]

Can you explain the relevance of this fact?

The relevance of this fact is that some of Jews expelled from Spain (in 1492) and from Portugal (in 1497) escaped to oland.

And that's how Sephardi Jews found themselves here. Askhenazi Jews, on the other hand, came to oland from Germany.

Jews were gradually moving eastward as the result of constant expulsions from various German states, for example:

1421 - expulsion of Jews from parts of Austria
1499 - expulsion of Jews from Nueremberg
1519 - expulsion from Regensburg
1551 - expulsion from Duchy of Wuertemberg
1573 - expulsion from Margraviate of Brandenburg
1590 - expulsion from Duchy of Braunschweig-Lueneburg
1670 - expulsion from Vienna and from entire Austria
1746 - expulsion from left-bank (to the west of the Oder River) part of Silesia
1819 - large-scale pogrom against Jews in Hamburg carried out by German mob

Etc., etc., etc.

They were moving eastward gradually, not immediately to oland. But in the end almost all of those Jews ended up in oland.

In years 1793 - 1806 Prussian government organized further expulsions of Jews - not all of them, some were allowed to stay - from their newly acquired territories of oland. One can read about this in: "Policies of Prussian government towards olish Jews since year 1793 to 1806", published in: "Judaistic Review" numbers 1 to 6, Poznań, 1923 ("Polityka rządu pruskiego wobec Żydów olskich od roku 1793 do 1806", in: "Przegląd Judaistyczny" numbers 1 to 6, Poznań, 1923). Austria had similar policies of removing some Jews (not all of them) and Russia too (see "the Pale of Settlement", located in western part of the Russian Empire).

So most of Jews from Prussian, Austrian and Russian partition zones ended up in the Pale of Settlement.

Many Jews from Prussian and Austrian partition zones of oland emigrated to the USA as well, or to Western Germany.

I was born in a town which used to have a very large Jewish community - most of them emigrated to the USA during the 1800s.

In early 1500s number of Jews in entire oland was still very low - between several thousand and twenty thousand:

http://translate.google.com/transla...zasy-nowozytne.pl/index.php?page=tomy_in&i=15

http://www.czasy-nowozytne.pl/index.php?page=tomy_in&i=15

But during the 16th, the 17th and the 18th centuries there was constant influx and immigration of Jews to oland from the West.

The first mention of Jewish immigrants in my home town is from year 1460, but the large scale immigration started only after the "Deluge". The town was plundered and destroyed several times in period 1655 - 1657 - in turn by Swedish, Swedish-Brandenburgian, Austrian and Czarniecki's forces. The town was depopulated during that time and Jews played an important role in populating it again. In 1674 there were 36 Jews here, and in 1676 already 76. More or less in the same period - in 1656 - also first Lutheran immigrants settled in the town, further ones came during the 1700s (but the main influx was during the 1800s).

Initially most of Jews in oland settled in Red Ruthenia, Podolia, Volhynia and - after the Union of Lublin - in Ukraine. In ethnically olish towns of Greater oland, Mazovia and Lesser oland favorable conditions for Jews to settle appeared after the "Deluge", during which urban population of these areas was greatly reduced (in 1650 ca. 650 towns in these areas were inhabited by ca. 1 million people, while a dozen or so years later only ca. 350 - 400 thousand left).

So Jewish immigration played an important role in overcoming the demographic crisis experienced by towns and cities during the mid-17th century.

 

[Domen]

Is it true that a 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine "predicted" the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust?

I've seen a quotation allegedly from Heine's text, but the book where I saw it doesn't provide the exact text from which it is cited.

The quotation is also not in German, but translated, which makes it harder to find the original source.

Bumped, because nobody has answered so far.

This is the exact supposed quotation from Heine that I've found:

"(...) Nobody knows the Germans, the strength of savagery and inhumane pride hidden in this nation. This here German nation, when it becomes strong enough and when it achieves the state of full consciousness of itself - will pour out an ocean of blood and tears, going to cruelty of historically unknown magnitude. (...)"

- Heinrich Heine (born 1797 - died 1856)

On Forum of olish Jews, where they quote an article published by Pola Jamajkówna in Warsaw on 22.08.1919 - I found even more quotes from Heine:

http://www.fzp.net.pl/historia/henryk-heine-esej-poli-jamajkowny-z-1919-r

http://translate.google.com/transla...ia/henryk-heine-esej-poli-jamajkowny-z-1919-r

Here is what Heine wrote about Germany according to that article from 22.08.1919:

"Wo mann Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende Menschen."

"Where people burn books, they will start to burn people in the end."

And also this is what Heine wrote about Germans (probably after the Hamburg pogrom of 1819 - in which Heine's house also fell victim to German mob):

"Tief unter uns, da wimmelt
Das närrische Menschengeschlecht;
Sie schreien und wüten und schelten,
Und haben Alle Recht."

===================================================

Pola Jamajkówna also describes such an episode from Heine's live, one of many times when he experienced anti-Semitism of Germans in Berlin:

"(...) Place: Berlin Theatre, during the performance of Heine's "Almanzor". Author sits in the first row of chairs and suddenly he can hear how his neighbour answers to somebody's question: the author of this play is Jew - Heine. This information goes around the auditorium. The audience starts to whistle. Bashing the Jew. Heine resigns from his plans for a career of a playwright. But he was not going to forget that injustice. (...)"

=================================================

The very term "anti-Semitism" was invented in 1873 by a German journalist - Wilhelm Marr - who later in 1879 founded the League for Anti-Semitism and actively supported it, being an anti-Semite himself. Here is more about this issue:

http://remember.org/guide/History.root.modern.html

(...) This period also coincided with a new cycle of anti-Semitism [in Germany], with Jews being blamed for manipulating peasants and small businessmen into resisting the traditional social and economic order. Jews were blamed for the severe economic depression [in Germany] of 1873. In the same year, Wilhelm Marr, a journalist who coined the term "anti-Semitism," wrote a pamphlet, "The Victory of Jewry over Germandom." It was very successful, going through twelve editions in six years. Using ideas of race and Vilkisch nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the "first major power in the West" in the 19th century. He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans "beyond salvation." In 1879, he founded the League for Anti-Semitism. (...)

But the theory of a "Jewish conspiracy" is much older. It was first formulated by another German anti-Semite - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - in 1793:

(...) Jews constitute a "state within a state" (a phrase first used by the German philosopher Fichte in 1793) (...)

Germany has a profound history of anti-Semitic ideas and thinkers.

It is modern German propaganda which tries to blame the 19th century Russians for the origins of modern European anti-Semitism.

In fact, Germans are to be blamed.

 

[Flying Pig]

Are you writing oland just to fool the search engine?

 

[Louis XXIV]

My reputation is that of a fair demigod

As for what i meant, i think it was obvious both from my post and what others said before it, that the point was the state of Israel artificially resurrected a language which was dead for millenia, instead of using the language already spoken by a large percentage of the jewish people who went there. It seems pretty clear that the reason was mostly political. Think of a break-away 21st century central Italian republic, of some millions of people, annexing the vatican as well, setting latin as the official language.

Well, part of the reason is also to be more inclusive so the Jewish homeland won't just be for eastern European Jews. Hebrew was still a studied language even if it wasn't a spoken language.

To build from your example, imagine someone recreates the Roman empire. They could have everyone speak French, Italian, Spanish, or Dutch, but they settle on Latin because it's something that can connect them. Even then, you have to imagine this was before Vatican II when Latin was still spoken in church.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't know if mutual intelligibility is necessarily the best way to go about things here. I mean theoretically you could create a chain starting in SW Sicily with a speaker walking to the next village and talking to somebody there and being understood and keep doing that, chaining all the way up Italy through the riviera and into Galicia or Portugal. Moreover, even though I've never learned Italian, I can usually figure out what an Italian speaker is saying assuming they speak very very slowly, likewise with Portuguese.

Of course there are tons of other examples I can point to, such as speakers of neighboring villages in Germany being entirely unintelligible to each other even into the 50s despite them all technically speaking German. There's the famous story of a shipwrecked Bretonese being picked up by Welsh fishermen and them understanding each other, despite Welsh and Bréton commonly being acknowledged as distinct languages. Finally of course, even though I might be able to read Scots with some effort, I can also essentially make out Latin with some effort through my knowledge of Spanish and French, however I don't know if I'd be able to understand one he if spoke to me, and I know I've heard stories of Jamaican English and Scots speakers speakers being mutually unintelligible.

Yeah, this. If you can understand Scots, that doesn't mean Scots is not a language, it just means you can understand it.

It's also worth stressing that the sort of continuum that Owen talks about aren't necessarily geographic, because there's a similar continuum from Standard Scottish English through vernacular Scottish English to Scots, and it might not be clear exactly which one you're looking at. The poems Plotinus linked read as vernacular Scottish English, for example, not Scots, even if the site claims they are. And that's in addition to those regional difference which do exist, and often stump Scots themselves; it's a common stereotypes of Easterners that nobody else in the country can make out a word they're saying.

 

[Flying Pig]

Indeed. I can understand Afrikaans and Dutch because I speak both English and German, for example. I would also point out that Plot's 'Scots' poems seem rather more influenced by English than 'Scots' poetry like this:

But hear, my lord! Glengarry, hear!
Your hand's owre light to them, I fear;
Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies,
I canna say but they do gaylies;
They lay aside a' tender mercies,
An' tirl the hallions to the birses;
Yet while they're only poind't and herriet,
They'll keep their stubborn Highland spirit:
But smash them! crash them a' to spails,
An' rot the dyvors i' the jails!

 

[Domen]

A video about Jews in pre-war Poland, and how their life changed after the Germans came in 1939 (English subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOsfc-RgwZ0


Link to video.

You can open the spoiler below only after watching the video above:

Spoiler :

Many Polish Jews survived the Holocaust as small children hidden by Christian families. They remain unaccounted for among the Holocaust survivors, their parents were murdered by Germans while they were raised in Christian families and didn't know anything. Now their children are discovering their roots. Below is a video about these Poles who discover their Jewish ancestors recently. And how Judaism is reborn in Poland. Unfortunately this video is contaminated by modern German anti-Polish propaganda (Deutsche Welle), which did put a lot of effort into finding a few examples of anti-Jewish graffiti:


Link to video.

 

[Traitorfish]

Nobody is interested in Poland. Please stop assuming we are.

 

[Domen]

This is a video about Jews and German war crimes, not about Poland.

This is a documentary - 40 minutes long - with testimonies of Jews concerning their wartime experiences.

So?

 

[Traitorfish]

So, you still made about Poland. Which given the subject matter, isn't just annoying, it's actually pretty gross.

Please stop.

 

[Domen]

No - it is about Germans, Nazi Germany and their crimes against Jews.

It might be annoying, but people should be aware of crimes to prevent them in the future.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yes, Domen, we know that the Holocaust happened. We also know about Poland. Few of us have any desire to know much more about either.

 

[Mouthwash]

I want to know more about Poland!

Tell us again how to debunk those Russian pseudohistorians?

 

[Kyriakos]

You know, Domen does post a lot about Poland, but it is rather jerkish to jump on him all the time. It's not like 2 or 5 posters own the site 5 times more than any individual poster.

@Domen: maybe present other stuff, not having to do with Poland, while still having your background in Poland. I mean all people here have a country and (i suppose) know more about that, however they don't refer to it when they post about issues not centered on it.

Unless it is Greece, of course, cause all civ=Greece

 

[Joecoolyo]

You know, Domen does post a lot about Poland, but it is rather jerkish to jump on him all the time. It's not like 2 or 5 posters own the site 5 times more than any individual poster.

I agree with this. He gets way more flak than he deserves.

 

[Phrossack]

I agree with this. He gets way more flak than he deserves.

I disagree. I have never seen anyone spam, derail, and double-post more in my life. No matter the topic, he'll try to guide it towards Poland, the Jews, and why Germans are evil. And he routinely makes rambling posts thousands of words long with links to multiple documentaries and videos entirely in Polish that nobody can understand, with citations of books entirely in Polish that nobody can read. He makes these monstrous posts two or three in a row, usually in threads that have nothing to do with Poland. If anything, it's amazing that he hasn't been permabanned, considering all the rules he breaks on a daily basis.

Back to the topic:

Why exactly was Operation Downfall (the planned Allied invasion of Japan) considered necessary, and why was Japanese civilian resistance expected to cause such high casualties?

The US Army thinking seems to have been that Japan would not be defeated unless it were conquered outright; they argued that blockade would be too costly. But how exactly could it have been bloodier than an invasion, and how could a Japan stripped of its empire and totally blockaded be a threat? It seems unlikely that it could have kept sending out ships and aircraft to try to break the blockade for long without a steady supply of fuel and other resources.

Were the Army planners thinking of it being too costly in terms of Japanese civilian casualties? If that were the case, wouldn't an invasion still have been worse? And did the Japanese have enough weapons and ammunition to distribute to their civilians and make them in any way dangerous to the invading Allies?

 

[sophie]

Then you've seen other people using language misleadingly plenty of times.

The others are correct: "semantics" refers to the relationships between words and things. It contrasts with "syntactics", which refers to the relationships between words and other words (i.e. grammar). If someone corrects you on a matter of semantics that just means they're telling you that a word means something different from what you thought it meant (or, more accurately, that it refers to something different). So in fact this discussion right now is about semantics, because it's about the meaning of the term "semantic". A discussion about what languages Jews in particular places and times spoke is not about semantics, unless you're disagreeing about what words to use to refer to different things.

(In fact the discussion above about whether Scots should be called a "language" or a "dialect" is arguably a semantic discussion, because the only point at issue is what word to use - there are no material points of fact at dispute.)

Or if you're discussing the semantics of the Hebrew language from an academic-linguistic point of view.

 

[Phrossack]

Or if you're discussing the semantics of the Hebrew language from an academic-linguistic point of view.

Are we discussing semantics, Semitics, or Semitic semantics?