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-- Philosophy and Language
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Originally posted by Lira Now, that's up to the groups themselves to decide, isn't it? This Piraha tribe I told about does have much contact with Europeans (now Brazilians). They have words such as ~commercial goods~ and they even wear "Nike~ shirts. However, that doesn't mean they look the other culture as superior (in fact, it's often quite the opposite).

I'm not saying that we should force our culture or our language upon them. Of course it is up to them to decide which way of life is better for them, and if they enjoy living in a small jungle tribe, that's perfectly ok for them. But ultimately I have serious doubts that such tribes will last for a long time before assimilating into the brazilian society.

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They didn't lost their appeal. A single sentence sums it up: ~When Cort�s arrived in Tenochtitlan, he forbid human sacrifice, so the Spaniards did not witness human sacrifice in the city.~ (Source)

Yes, but if the people of Tenochtitlan had great desires to continue the sacrificing rituals, they would probably revolt against the barbaric practices of the occupiers. Now, it would have been a different thing if Cortes invaded with a force of a 100 000 men, but his handful of soldiers would have surely faced great resistance and would probably be wiped out if the native population had strong desires to get back to their old ways.

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They didn't stop at will, or because they had been "enlightened" by Christian thoughts. They simply weren't as strong since those empires were far from being centralised nations, and the several civil wars weakened their governments. Most of their original culture disappeared because they were slaughtered and/or died of diseased brought by the Europeans.

That is mostly correct. But the slaughtering by europeans came only after their society started to fall apart. If they had a strong cultural ties to their way of life, it would have been extremely difficult for the europeans to gain control. Now imagine the vice-versa situation. Let's say a 1000 native american soldiers came to Paris in 1492 and killed the king of France. Do you really think they'd be in power for more than 5 minutes or that they'd be able to install the cult of human sacrifice there?

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The colonisation of America was completely different from what happened in the Roman Empire.

For the most part, yes. But they do have that one underlying similarity of having a society that is latently desiring a change.

Anyway, that omniglot site is cool, I see they have old croatian glagolitic alphabet there too. But they only have the older and less commonly used curved version..

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Yes, but if the people of Tenochtitlan had great desires to continue the sacrificing rituals, they would probably revolt against the barbaric practices of the occupiers.

That�s what in fact happened. Ritualistic killings continued to occur in Mexico for the better part of the following three centuries of colonization by the spanish, and well into modern mexico; and i�m not even speaking of what it took to make the native americans believe in European culture, many today continue to deny it. Nowdays, human sacrifice has come almost to a stop, but cases of human sacrifice continue to occur in contemporary Mexico, news usually report it as cases of witchcraft.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 But the slaughtering by europeans came only after their society started to fall apart.

You�re wrong about this. For one, Tenochtitlan wasn�t the only culture in Mexico, there were over a thousand, each at different stages of development. The aztecs were at their peak, mayans were almost gone, chichimecas were doing so-so. What relly allowed the conquest was the small pox. It killed 9 out of 10 native americans in the first years.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I agree that suitability is a better term. Still, we may define superiority as a broader term than suitability as basically a property that allows a certain language to be suitable in a greater variety of occasions than an inferior one.

There are a few things you're forgetting:

1. Languages aren't static: Nor are cultures. The best example I can think of is the rise of computers and the spread of computer related words. Languages are used to express thoughts within a specified reality and, once it has been changed, language usually follows. In Portuguese, we have the verb "remover" which does mean what you're probably thinking of (to remove). However, since most computer programs were in English and we saw the word "delete" everytime we erased a file, the verb "deletar" was born. The same with "escanear", "resetar" and "logar". Notice that it does not mean we're speaking English - rather, we imported concepts and adapted them to our rules (reason why "escanear" is twice as long as the original word).
   
2. Changes can happen both ways: English and French share an interesting history. In the past, French influenced English in such a way that a good percentage of words from this language are of Latin origin. Now though, English is influencing French, and triggered the anger of many purists.
   
   The same goes with Brazilian Portuguese and Tupi (a Native American language). When the Portuguese got here, they obviously were outnumbered by the natives. Therefore, it was easier for the Europeans to learn the language, and that's exactly what happened. Tupi has many interesting features that Portuguese lacked, such as an inclusive and an exclusive "we" (i.e. a "You and me" sort of "we" and a "Me and them" sort of "we") and an incredibly rich way of distinguishing characteristics of humans and animals. But then the natives were enslaved, slaughtered and so on. More Europeans came. The Portuguese kind forbit the use of such strange language as Tupi in its colonies. Naturally, most people already descended from Europeans so...
   
   If Portuguese were to be superior, why did Tupi influenced our language so much? If the Natives weren't slaughtered (and had not died from the diseases brought by the European), we would either speak it or a hybrid of languages highly influenced by it.
   

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Anyway, that omniglot site is cool, I see they have old croatian glagolitic alphabet there too. But they only have the older and less commonly used curved version..

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Originally posted by Lira There are a few things you're forgetting: Languages aren't static: Nor are cultures. The best example I can think of is the rise of computers and the spread of computer related words. Languages are used to express thoughts within a specified reality and, once it has been changed, language usually follows. In Portuguese, we have the verb "remover" which does mean what you're probably thinking of (to remove). However, since most computer programs were in English and we saw the word "delete" everytime we erased a file, the verb "deletar" was born. The same with "escanear", "resetar" and "logar". Notice that it does not mean we're speaking English - rather, we imported concepts and adapted them to our rules (reason why "escanear" is twice as long as the original word). Changes can happen both ways: English and French share an interesting history. In the past, French influenced English in such a way that a good percentage of words from this language are of Latin origin. Now though, English is influencing French, and triggered the anger of many purists.

Agree. Most of these computer terms have entered other languages aside from the portugese, and I agree that these languages with the new add-ons are equally suitable to every aspect of life as english is. Infact, same goes for all the other languages, be it portugese or the piraha tribe language. The thing with piraha tribe you mentioned earlier is that they seem to be pretty stubborn in not accepting new trends and this I don't see as a very bright thing to do. Sooner or later it will become very hard for them to keep their culture when faced with the better suitability of the brazilian culture to the demands of modern life, and this effect can only be amplified by their refusal to modernize. Unless of course they really insist on continuing living this way forever, but that is not really the simplest thing to do.

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The same goes with Brazilian Portuguese and Tupi (a Native American language). When the Portuguese got here, they obviously were outnumbered by the natives. Therefore, it was easier for the Europeans to learn the language, and that's exactly what happened. Tupi has many interesting features that Portuguese lacked, such as an inclusive and an exclusive "we" (i.e. a "You and me" sort of "we" and a "Me and them" sort of "we") and an incredibly rich way of distinguishing characteristics of humans and animals. But then the natives were enslaved, slaughtered and so on. More Europeans came. The Portuguese kind forbit the use of such strange language as Tupi in its colonies. Naturally, most people already descended from Europeans so...

I never said european languages were superior to the ones of other descents. Every language has some thing that makes it better or worse than most others. Ultimately, we may either have a very definite system with a very high complexity or a very simple although vague system, or anything in between for that matter. Each of those systems has its up and down sides, and each language fits somewhere in there. English is one of those more vague and simple systems, which is not necessarrily a good thing. Likely that Tupi was better in some regards than english is now.

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If Portuguese were to be superior, why did Tupi influenced our language so much? If the Natives weren't slaughtered (and had not died from the diseases brought by the European), we would either speak it or a hybrid of languages highly influenced by it.

I wasn't talking about language superiority, I was talking about cultural superiority. It is often the case that a weaker culture does have some significant improvements when compared with the stronger one, be it language or anything else, and sadly such improvements are often completely annihilated when the culture is faced with a superior one.

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Unless you know the Chinese script quite well, this sort of judgement is quite biased and unfair.

Well, I guess it's up to the chinese to choose what they'll finish up with. Considering that their system does have some 3000 more commonly used characters than the latin one, it is logical that it should cover some more finesses than the latin one can, but considering that to learn such a system you need 5 years instead of 5 days, it is really a question of a cost-benefit ratio. I mean, Rolce Roys is better than a Yugo, but you don't need a Rolce Roys to go to a local store, and not everybody has 50 years of life to spare on saving enough money to buy themselves one.

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Regardless of the differences, after studying Japanese for two years, I'd rather keep using their modified version of the Chinese script rather than the Latin alphabet, which I've been using (in European languages) since I was 6.

Modified ok. But when you look to a script such as korean, it's essentially pretty much the same as latin, as it is also a phonetic system. Sure latin one lacks some components needed for the chinese speaking people, but it can also be modified so that it does suit those needs without the need to resort to nearly the current level of complexity of the chinese one. Now, whether they choose to switch to a modified latin, or a modified chinese with a similar number of characters as latin, that's essentially the same thing, but since one already exists and the one pretty much doesn't, it is generally better to have one global system than hundreds of local ones.

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Even then... their script makes reading (and comprehension) a lot easier, even if it's not as simples as most people would like it to. Here's a clear example: the words "eye" and "study" are not rare words in English language. Wouldn't it make things a lot easier if you had a symbol of "eye" and "study" with some phonetic aid meaning "study of the eyes" rather than looking up in the dictionary what ophtalmology is? Even if read the same way?

But ophtamology is literally the study of the eyes in latin. English just didn't translate the word. It's kinda like importing a word from japanese to chinese without transliterating it and leaving the japanese chraracters in place. Anyway, a similar way of reasoning is one of the reasons why the chinese scientists have such a hard time breaking down complex structures into smaller details, simply because they don't look at words as a combination of voices, but as a single whole entity.

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No, it means that the French had invaded Vietnam and French replaced Chinese as the "cultural language" and once education had become widespread, going back wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Yes, but their language is still the chinese-like vietnamese, it is not french. They only picked up the good part, and that is the script. If french as a language would be so much better, while french writing would be so much worse, it would probably be the other way around, they'd speak french and write it in chinese.

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If we keep destructing their environment, then they're gonna have the same destiny of the millions of natives that "disappeared" since Brazil was conquered. They've resisted for five centuries, mind you, that's quite an achievement.

True..

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You do know that 75% of the original population died of smallpox and typhus, right? If you read this, you'll find out things weren't that simple.

Hehe, but if you read the first part of the article, it says that most of the tribes rebelled against the aztecs exactly because of their sacrificing rituals, and that even the aztec leaders knew that the rituals were more or less pointless, and therefore didn't have a hard time forbidding them. So I have to reiterate. If the people would have been happy with the culture, Cortes wouldn't have stood a chance. Now, of course that the people whose lives weren't endangered by the sacrificing couldn't have cared less, but the majority's lives were endangered, and therefore the majority did dislike the culture.

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Would they ally with the Brits, learn about gunpowder from the Chinese and spread unknown diseases? Unlikely, isn't it?

If the Brits would have been impressed by their cultural and technological achievements, and if they had a feeling that the french culture was genocidal and barbaric, they probably would have allied with them and give them the gunpowder while they're at it. As for diseases, they could have brought syphilis

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Europe had many advantages, like location and contact with cultures such as the Arabs and Chinese.

With the arabs, yes, although their culture wasn't so significantly different. With the chinese, eh, they hardly had any direct cultural contact.

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I find it quite unlikely that all these people were willing to die in order to have another culture take over, but that's just me.

Umm, which ones are you talking about, romans or the indians?

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Originally posted by KaNoS That�s what in fact happened. Ritualistic killings continued to occur in Mexico for the better part of the following three centuries of colonization by the spanish, and well into modern mexico; and i�m not even speaking of what it took to make the native americans believe in European culture, many today continue to deny it. Nowdays, human sacrifice has come almost to a stop, but cases of human sacrifice continue to occur in contemporary Mexico, news usually report it as cases of witchcraft.

Yes, but a few isloated cases don't really mean that the majority of the people wanted it to go on. A few muslim bombers don't mean that the majority of muslims are suicide bombers, and a few ritual killings don't mean that the majority supports ritual killings. As soon as they stopped being sponsored by the state, they did diminish in size greatly, regardless of the occasional local sacrifices.

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You�re wrong about this. For one, Tenochtitlan wasn�t the only culture in Mexico, there were over a thousand, each at different stages of development. The aztecs were at their peak, mayans were almost gone, chichimecas were doing so-so. What relly allowed the conquest was the small pox. It killed 9 out of 10 native americans in the first years.

I know, and I agree that without the smallpox it would have been much more difficult for the europeans to invade. But, smallpox was only the final blow, although a great one in size.

Re: Philosophy and Language

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Originally posted by zarathustra I have a question for people who have studied philosophy at any level: A friend told me that languages such as Russian, Greek and French are more "flexible" than a language such as English when it comes to expressing ideas and therefore they are more suitable for studying philosophical works in. Is there any truth in this or is it just a load of horseshit? Thanks.

Well... this question is better answered by someone who has studied linguistics or cognitive science, not strictly philosophy per se.

The short answer:

No matter the differences in nuance, structure, or grammar between languages, it has been well established in cognitive psychology and linguistics that all human languages are equally complex, and can equally well convey all ideas conceivable by the human mind.

Some elaboration:

The phenomenon of a literary work losing something of its meaning or nuance when translated into English isn't peculiar to English. This happens whenever you translate from language X to Y, for all languages X and Y. For example, I know of English works that have been translated into Serbo-Croatian but that have definitely lost some meaning or "oomph".

Some of this effect might simply be due to the cognitive bias of the reader, having learned the original work in its native (original) language and thus finding all other translations to be inadequate, simply due to the bias (which is unconscious).

However, I do believe there is some truth to a work losing some meaning when being translated. This is simply because the original author had a complex constellation of ideas in mind when producing a work, and derived a literary transformation or expression of those ideas when writing his or her work. When a translator comes along, that one can't possibly hope to have the exact same constellation of ideas the original author had, for various reasons. Therefore a translator will inevitably make a poorer translation to varying degrees, contingent on his level of understanding of the original work and his understanding of the author's ideas and mindset.

One consequence is that important philosophical works written in English will probably be better studied in English, and not just German works in German. So it goes both ways.

That being said, I'm pretty confident that for whatever philosophical work you're interested in, you can find an adequate translation in English that preserves the central meanings and even most of the fine meanings; what is best is works that have footnotes describing the shades of meaning of a phrase or passage, alternative translations of a word or phrase (I've seen this a lot in good English translations of Japanese and Chinese texts), etc.

Ultimately, if you really really really want to get 101% into a certain text, understand all of its meanings, then you will have to (a) learn the native language, (b) go back in time and be reborn in the time of the author, (c) grow up in that cultural context so you pick up on all of the cultural references and language meanings. For example, old Chinese texts have very obscure language like "eighty-four thousand birds" meaning "all birds" etc., which is even one of the less obscure phrases.

Basically, what I'm saying in that last paragraph is that it's nigh impossible to "fully" understand a text exactly as the author intended it. So you don't really have to worry about it, chances are that the 95% understanding afforded by a good English translation will be good enough for just about any purpose. Happy reading!

EDIT: spelling

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Unless of course they really insist on continuing living this way forever, but that is not really the simplest thing to do.

How so? All they have to do is to remain where they live. Unless, of course, we destroy their environment, then I'm sure it'd become pretty hard to live there.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I never said european languages were superior to the ones of other descents. Every language has some thing that makes it better or worse than most others. Ultimately, we may either have a very definite system with a very high complexity or a very simple although vague system, or anything in between for that matter. Each of those systems has its up and down sides, and each language fits somewhere in there.

We agree here

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I wasn't talking about language superiority, I was talking about cultural superiority. It is often the case that a weaker culture does have some significant improvements when compared with the stronger one, be it language or anything else, and sadly such improvements are often completely annihilated when the culture is faced with a superior one.

This is where our idea's have been clashing.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Well, I guess it's up to the chinese to choose what they'll finish up with. Considering that their system does have some 3000 more commonly used characters than the latin one, it is logical that it should cover some more finesses than the latin one can, but considering that to learn such a system you need 5 years instead of 5 days, it is really a question of a cost-benefit ratio.

Indeed, it's up to them.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 But when you look to a script such as korean, it's essentially pretty much the same as latin, as it is also a phonetic system.

It's much more than a phonetic script. It does tell you what your tongue/mouth should be doing, among many other features Latin script lacks.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Sure latin one lacks some components needed for the chinese speaking people, but it can also be modified so that it does suit those needs without the need to resort to nearly the current level of complexity of the chinese one. Now, whether they choose to switch to a modified latin, or a modified chinese with a similar number of characters as latin, that's essentially the same thing, but since one already exists and the one pretty much doesn't, it is generally better to have one global system than hundreds of local ones.

Latin-like Chinese "alphabet"? Yes, there are but they haven't adopted them, have they?

As for a global system... I'm all for unity but I reckon it would be easier to teach a lingua franca worldwide (in our era, English) than modifying every language out there to suit its needs. Why? Roughly speaking, Latin Alphabet is used by cultures that had been in contact with Christianity (with some exceptions). There are a bit more than 1 billion Christians in this world, and let's suppose 1,5 billion people use the Latin Script. It's not even half of the whole population - Roughly speaking, it would be almost the same amount of people that use the Chinese alphabet if you include Japanese there. And we didn't even get started on India.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 But ophtamology is literally the study of the eyes in latin. English just didn't translate the word. It's kinda like importing a word from japanese to chinese without transliterating it and leaving the japanese chraracters in place.

With the difference that you will have the concept of "eye" and "study" blatantly clear in the word.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Anyway, a similar way of reasoning is one of the reasons why the chinese scientists have such a hard time breaking down complex structures into smaller details, simply because they don't look at words as a combination of voices, but as a single whole entity.

That's the way we do it, isn't it?

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Yes, but their language is still the chinese-like vietnamese, it is not french. They only picked up the good part, and that is the script. If french as a language would be so much better, while french writing would be so much worse, it would probably be the other way around, they'd speak french and write it in chinese.

Now that's something difficult to happen because of one simple reason - first you learn how to speak, and then you learn how to write. Unless there was a huge French immigration in the area, and they outnumbered the natives in a way that it was necessary for the natives to speak French in order to survive, hardly French would ever become their native language.

Changing the writing, if it's not spread is not that difficult though. If only a few people know the original writing and a bunch of foreigners tell the others how to write in a different system, chances are the foreign system will be adopted more easily - those who learned it didn't know a previous system anyway.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Hehe, but if you read the first part of the article, it says that most of the tribes rebelled against the aztecs exactly because of their sacrificing rituals, and that even the aztec leaders knew that the rituals were more or less pointless, and therefore didn't have a hard time forbidding them. So I have to reiterate. If the people would have been happy with the culture, Cortes wouldn't have stood a chance. Now, of course that the people whose lives weren't endangered by the sacrificing couldn't have cared less, but the majority's lives were endangered, and therefore the majority did dislike the culture.

I'm leaving this part on Mexican culture to Kanos, who's actually Mexican and knows about it a lot more than I could ever do

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 If the Brits would have been impressed by their cultural and technological achievements, and if they had a feeling that the french culture was genocidal and barbaric, they probably would have allied with them and give them the gunpowder while they're at it. As for diseases, they could have brought syphilis

But the thing is, why would they have left America in the first place? They didn't have to.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 With the arabs, yes, although their culture wasn't so significantly different. With the chinese, eh, they hardly had any direct cultural contact.

You can't ignore things like this and this. There's been a lot cultural contact throughout Eurasia.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Umm, which ones are you talking about, romans or the indians?

The Native Americans.

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