Posted on 02/14/2005 2:12:42 PM PST by quidnunc
After the revival of the Welsh language, can Faliscan be far behind? Europe's interest in its 50 or so "minority languages" is growing, in inverse proportion to its birthrate. One or two of the 6,700 languages spoken on the planet go extinct every fortnight, but not all of them will go down without a fight. Peeking through the perforations in the veneer of European civilization are cultures that pre-date Rome. With apologies to comedian Robin Williams, a more fitting name for "Western civilization" might be the "Dead Peoples Society".
The 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrongly qualified the pope as "the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the tomb thereof". Hobbes was wrong about that (and wrong about everything else, including the social contract). Rome left no ghosts at all; Rome itself was a casket in which the ghosts of extinct tribes were interred. We still hear the undigested remains of dead peoples banging on the inside of the casket called Rome, demanding to get out. That is the subject Italy's National Joke. Stop me if you have heard this:
An Italian driver misses a hairpin turn in an Apennine fog, and finds himself hurtling toward the valley floor a thousand meters below. "Save me, Sant' Antonio!" he prays. An enormous hand catches the car in midair. "Grazie, Sant' Antonio of Padua!" says the driver." "Sorry, I am Sant' Antonio Abate," a celestial voice replies, and the hand drops the car.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
If Murphy was an optimist then this guy is Pollyanna.
I don't think the passage that follows represents that point at all, but the point that we will become dust, and how great we were will matter not at all.
The founders of the US were radical rejectionists who broke away from Western civilization to found something quite different, a throwback to the Hebraic notion of a Chosen People.
A very interesting way of putting it, and I'm going to have to give it some thought. Naturally he isn't referring to the obvious roots the American government had in British Enlightenment political theory, but to the attitude that its founders and successors have had with respect to moving forward from those roots instead of watering them.
Americans should stop worrying about the decline of the West. The bad news is that the West has long since declined right over the edge; the good news is that the matter is hopeless, but not serious.
You don't usually walk away from a thesis of this one's gravity laughing. Great article.
Similarly, Western Civilization has over the course of a century or so, splitting into the Euro-sphere and the Anglo-sphere, with the Euro-sphere in decline, and the Anglo-sphere, though experiencing turmoil, has the potential to survive, and indeed thrive.
That is probably misspelled but when pronounce phonetically Ya-key Dah, it means "Cheers" or "to your health" in Welsh.
I usually like Spengler's stuff, but this time he's in over his head. It makes him sound like a snotty fool. Some sort of British anti-Catholic prejudice, maybe?
Sure, Socrates was an ironist. But he was also a philosopher, with Plato and Aristotle and the rest. Western philosophy up until Descartes is the best wisdom I know of.
The Tower of Babel is Crumbling
Culture/Society News Keywords: LANGUAGE
Source: Wired News (AP)
Published: June 19, 2001 Author: AP reporter
Posted on 06/20/2001 12:23:28 PDT by ELS
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b30f8303753.htm
'Status' drives extinction of languages
Australian Broadcasting Corp Online ^ | Thursday, 21 August 2003 | Bob Beale
Posted on 10/17/2004 12:45:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1248057/posts
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
HA!!
Yea well maybe & maybe not.
One thing's almost guarenteed, though.
After all the "thriving's" finished we of today sure won't recognize what it became.
Primarily because.
...we've not a clue where it started. {g}
SO9
True! Where did Western Civilization start? Ancient Greece? Ancient Israel? Early Christian Ireland? The Franks? Medieval Britain?
*Where* civilization started is not the question, my friend.
The question's who started it to which any (moderately informed) Yank would know.
Al Gore.
...but of course. {g}
Just FYI, it's spelled "iechyd da".
About to read article. Response to follow.
I'm speechless. Or I would be if he had his way. As would the 85% of the people here in Gwynedd who speak Cymraeg as their first language. A language they have been brought up speaking here for centuries. The language of a literary tradition and culture that predates English. A language that has survived centuries of suppression and legislation from successive English monarchs and governments. Take a trip to the remotest parts of rural Wales, untouched by industrialism, and look at the churches and gravestones dating back centuries, read the engravings on statues, war memorials and civic buildings, listen to the locals from 9 to 90 talking, then try and tell me that Welsh has "long since faded into obscurity." For sure, it has suffered, but it never died. It's not a fad or a fashion, or anything to do with nostalgia or romanticism. It's not a symptom of anything (referring to the Welsh language in the same sentence as Basque terrorists is an outrageous and unfounded slur, incidentally).
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