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Tired point to make. Languages are cousins, either first or fifteenth. (Or maybe they have no known cousins, but whatever… English certainly does.) Anglish prop

Tired point to make. Languages are cousins, either first or fifteenth. (Or maybe they have no known cousins, but whatever… English certainly does.) Anglish proposes more Germanic words. It doesn’t propose to find words which cannot be traced back to a common Indo-European root word… > Not to over-charge this conversation, but it reminds me of anti-race-mixing ideologies. Race is also a much more slippery concept than some people would care to admit; we're all related if you go back far enough. First of all, “race” is pseudo-science. Language research is not. Second of all, try to make an argument for “race mixing” which isn’t racist. In contrast, Anglish is more of an aesthetic approach to language, one which doesn’t threaten to marginalize any groups of people. Frankly, I suspect that the reason why this offensive comparison is even brought up is becaue of the Germanic assocation, which some people might not find aesthetic for historical reasons.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
> First of all, “race” is pseudo-science. Thank you. That is all.
- xico 4y ago
  It is a pretty well known fact. The concept of human race is developed by racist ideologies (obviously), see for instance [1], and is as such a banned concept in many countries. [1] https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/ https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement...
  - sib 4y ago
    How awful to think that a concept could be banned...
  - yarg 4y ago
    The only thing that this proves is that the humanities have science by the balls.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  "race science" may be pseudo science, but race is not == science. in a linguistic context, people mean something when they talk about something. you may not like what they mean, or even what they talk about, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking something and are talking about nothing.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Thank you for the assent.
temp2302271148 4y ago
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bloppe 4y ago
I think it's fine to describe Anglish as "more Germanic". It's the words "native" and "pure" that I find confusing in this context. Digressing a bit, I think race is rather akin to dialects, and species akin to languages. Neither have clear distinctions. Most people think of species as groups that can sexually reproduce, and races is a sub-groups of a species with identifiable shared characteristics. Similarly, languages are often defined in terms of mutual intelligibility, and dialects in terms of, well, identifiable shared characteristics. But this is all very hand-wavy. In particular, nether can satisfy the transitive property. I might understand the English spoken in two different regions, but speakers in those regions could have a hell of a time understanding each other. The same applies to reproduction, and not just hypothetically: Grizzly bears can hybridize with polar bears and with black bears, but the latter two cannot hybridize with each other. All this is to say that every individual actually has their own unique language, it just happens to be 99.99% similar to a lot of other peoples' language so we call them "the same". But within "a language", differences abound in vocabulary, grammar, slang, and connotations.
yarg 4y ago
Races exist. I can't believe that I'm even saying that. They're not a social construct. Nor are the sexes. Human beings are a single species with a large number of branches allowing them to survive localised environmental niches. Sometimes the edges are blurry, sometimes not. But to pretend that races aren't real just because of an interlink between the study of race and racist ideologies is fucking ridiculous.
- achenet 4y ago
  ehhh.... You have genes. Certain genes are well adapted to certain environments, for example hi/low melanin to protect from UV radiation. In environments where people don't move a lot, such as the Earth 5000 years ago, genes will tend to cluster together, and if you have someone's genetic makeup you can make informed guesses about their phenotype. The problem, imo with 'races' is that the modern world has created too many hybrids to be able to accurately guess much information about someone's genetic makeup from their phenotype. Blue eyes for example, which maybe 5000 years ago were only found in one small corner of the globe, are common in many different places, and associated with many other types of genes. You can no longer reliably predict that someone with blue eyes will have blonde hair for example. Or that they won't also have say sickle cell anemia when in the past those two traits were probably never found in the same person. Like for example when in the US someone marks their race as "Black" in some census form, that tells you almost nothing besides maybe that they likely have elevated levels of skin pigmentation. You have some genetic clusters, such as those found in the Kenyan Rift Valley, where they have good genes for long distance running, and others, such as those found in Jamacia and West Africa, better suited for explosive sprinting. Both of which tend to be associated with high levels of skin pigmentation. Operating at the level of 'races', which, from what I can tell, basically means 'skin color', completely misses this sort of detail, and is, in my opinion, a mental model that is so crude, and so lacking in granularity as to be basically worthless. Genes exist. Races... if you're using that term to mean "certain groupings of genes which are often found together, usually in groups of people that have spent a long time living together in the same environment", then yes, they exist, but then you have many people that you'd not be able to fit into a 'race' - basically every stereotypical American who is "one eighth Irish, one eighth Italian, one eighth Swedish, one eighth Chinese...." is going to have a set of genes that is not associated with any "race".

TimTheTinker 4y ago

> First of all, “race” is pseudo-science. Thank you. That is all.

xico 4y ago
It is a pretty well known fact. The concept of human race is developed by racist ideologies (obviously), see for instance [1], and is as such a banned concept in many countries. [1] https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/ https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement...
- sib 4y ago
  How awful to think that a concept could be banned...
- yarg 4y ago
  The only thing that this proves is that the humanities have science by the balls.
fsckboy 4y ago
"race science" may be pseudo science, but race is not == science. in a linguistic context, people mean something when they talk about something. you may not like what they mean, or even what they talk about, but that doesn't mean they aren't thinking something and are talking about nothing.
avgcorrection 4y ago
Thank you for the assent.

temp2302271148 4y ago

[dead]

bloppe 4y ago

I think it's fine to describe Anglish as "more Germanic". It's the words "native" and "pure" that I find confusing in this context. Digressing a bit, I think race is rather akin to dialects, and species akin to languages. Neither have clear distinctions. Most people think of species as groups that can sexually reproduce, and races is a sub-groups of a species with identifiable shared characteristics. Similarly, languages are often defined in terms of mutual intelligibility, and dialects in terms of, well, identifiable shared characteristics. But this is all very hand-wavy. In particular, nether can satisfy the transitive property. I might understand the English spoken in two different regions, but speakers in those regions could have a hell of a time understanding each other. The same applies to reproduction, and not just hypothetically: Grizzly bears can hybridize with polar bears and with black bears, but the latter two cannot hybridize with each other. All this is to say that every individual actually has their own unique language, it just happens to be 99.99% similar to a lot of other peoples' language so we call them "the same". But within "a language", differences abound in vocabulary, grammar, slang, and connotations.

yarg 4y ago

Races exist. I can't believe that I'm even saying that. They're not a social construct. Nor are the sexes. Human beings are a single species with a large number of branches allowing them to survive localised environmental niches. Sometimes the edges are blurry, sometimes not. But to pretend that races aren't real just because of an interlink between the study of race and racist ideologies is fucking ridiculous.

achenet 4y ago
ehhh.... You have genes. Certain genes are well adapted to certain environments, for example hi/low melanin to protect from UV radiation. In environments where people don't move a lot, such as the Earth 5000 years ago, genes will tend to cluster together, and if you have someone's genetic makeup you can make informed guesses about their phenotype. The problem, imo with 'races' is that the modern world has created too many hybrids to be able to accurately guess much information about someone's genetic makeup from their phenotype. Blue eyes for example, which maybe 5000 years ago were only found in one small corner of the globe, are common in many different places, and associated with many other types of genes. You can no longer reliably predict that someone with blue eyes will have blonde hair for example. Or that they won't also have say sickle cell anemia when in the past those two traits were probably never found in the same person. Like for example when in the US someone marks their race as "Black" in some census form, that tells you almost nothing besides maybe that they likely have elevated levels of skin pigmentation. You have some genetic clusters, such as those found in the Kenyan Rift Valley, where they have good genes for long distance running, and others, such as those found in Jamacia and West Africa, better suited for explosive sprinting. Both of which tend to be associated with high levels of skin pigmentation. Operating at the level of 'races', which, from what I can tell, basically means 'skin color', completely misses this sort of detail, and is, in my opinion, a mental model that is so crude, and so lacking in granularity as to be basically worthless. Genes exist. Races... if you're using that term to mean "certain groupings of genes which are often found together, usually in groups of people that have spent a long time living together in the same environment", then yes, they exist, but then you have many people that you'd not be able to fit into a 'race' - basically every stereotypical American who is "one eighth Irish, one eighth Italian, one eighth Swedish, one eighth Chinese...." is going to have a set of genes that is not associated with any "race".