#that post was nationalist

[theskyexists]

What I meant to say is who CARES what states or rather nations used to do, have done in the past, especially states now run by a different generation - what atrocities are these states committing NOW. I don't give a fuck about the history of the nation beyond its effect of legitimising violence NOW. It isn't relevant otherwise. YES we would do well to list the atrocities committed NOW within the living generation by every state, list em all out. Chinese state, U.S. state, Russian state, European states, Indonesian state, Australian state well you get it.

[leroibobo]

another mena language post - i wanted to talk about judeo-arabic and clarify a little bit about what "judeo-arabic" means

the basics, for those of you who don't know: arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different things that differentiate certain dialects. languages/dialects can be influenced by languages speakers' ancestors spoke before, by the social structure of where speakers live, by languages they come into contact with, and by gradual evolution in pronunciation. (many letters like evolving into ones that are easier to pronounce - this is why arabic has no "p" sound, it eventually evolved into "f" or "b". the same thing happened in germanic languages to some extent, which is why we say "father" in english and "vader" in german while in romance languages it's some variation of "padre" or "père".) many arabic dialects in particular possess different substratum (obvious, traceable influence from languages people spoke in before shifting to the new one).

arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different regional dialects which are different for the reasons i described in the above paragraph. even though there's modern standard arabic (which is the subject of its own post), people speak regional dialects in real life. on top of that, there's a variety of social influences on different types of arabic, such as whether someone's living in the city or in the country, whether someone's sedentary or a bedouin, and in some cases religion.

in the middle east, religion was historically:

not seen as a personal choice, but as something you're born into and a group you're a part of, kind of like ethnicity;

not generally something governments actively wanted everyone to share one of at the penalty of ostracization due to sticking to your group being the more livable way of life in the area, or later, the benefits of things like imposing extra taxes on people who weren't the "correct" religion/branch (this is far from being a "muslim thing" btw, it's been in the area for a while now, i mean look at the assyrians);

an influential factor in where you lived and who you were more likely to interact with because of those two things. (for example, it wasn't uncommon for most of the people living in one village in the countryside to share one religion/branch of a religion. if your village converted, you converted, too. if they didn't, you didn't, either.)

this means that the influence of religion in different types of arabic is due to people of different religions living in or coming from different places, and who people talked to most often.

for example, in bahrain, most sedentary shia bahrainis' ancestors have lived on the island for a very long time, while most sedentary sunni bahrainis' ancestors immigrated from other places in the gulf and iran in the 18th century. therefore, while they've all interacted and shared different aspects of their dialects including loanwords, there are two "types" of bahraini arabic considered distinctive to sunni and shia bahrainis respectively, regardless of how long ago their ancestors got there. despite the differences being marked by the religion of the speakers, they have nothing to do with religion or contact/lack thereof between bahraini sunni and shia, but with the factors affecting the different dialects i mentioned in the first paragraph which influenced either group.

a similar phenomenon to this in english is class differences in accent in england. nothing in received pronunciation is actually something only rich people can say or unintelligible to poor people, it developed by the class differences influencing where rich and poor english people lived and the different pronunciation/linguistic histories in those places, as well with different classes keeping more to themselves.

the influence of religion on arabic dialects isn't universal and nowhere near as intense as it is with aramaic. some places, especially more cosmopolitan or densely populated places, are less likely to have very noticeable differences or any differences at all. in addition, certain variations of a dialects that may've been influenced by religion in some way (as well as urban dialects) may be standardized through tv/movies/social media or through generally being seen as more "prestigious", making more people who wouldn't have spoken them otherwise more likely to pick it up. (this is why so many arabic speakers can understand egyptian arabic - cairo is like the hollywood of the arabic-speaking world.) this is the case with many if not most countries' official and regional languages/dialects nowadays.

this phenomenon is what "judeo-arabic" refers to generally. like many other jewish diaspora languages, the "jewish" aspect is that it was a specific thing jewish people did to different types of arabic, not that it was isolated, possessed a large enough amount of certain loanwords (though some varieties did have them), or is unintelligible to non-jews. people were generally aware of differences where they existed and navigated between them. (for example, baghdadi jews may've switched to the more prestigious muslim baghdadi dialect when in public.) if you know arabic, listen to this guy speak, you should be able to understand him just fine.

judeo-arabic also often used the hebrew alphabet and some may have been influenced by hebrew syntax and grammar in their spelling. you can also see the use of script for religious identification in persian and urdu using the arabic script, and in english using the latin alphabet. in general, influences of hebrew/aramaic on different types of judeo-arabic aren't consistent. you can read more about that here.

"judeo-arabic" isn't a universal that definitely happened in every arabic-speaking part of the world that had jews in it to the same degrees, but it did definitely exist. some examples:

after the siege of baghdad in 1258, where mongols killed all muslim baghdadis and spared baghdadis of other religions, bedouins from the south gradually resettled the city. this means that the "standard" sedentary dialect in the south is notably bedouin influenced, while dialects in the north are more notably influenced by eastern aramaic. christians and (when they lived there) jews in baghdad have dialects closer to what’s up north. within those, there's specific loans and quirks marking the differences between "christian" and "jewish".

yemenite jews faced some of the most persistent antisemitic persecution in the middle east, so yemeni jewish arabic was more of a city thing and often in the form of passwords/codewords to keep jews safe. jews were usually a lot safer and better-regarded in the countryside, so jewish yemeni arabic was much less of a thing there, and when it was, it was less "serious".

due to the long history of maghrebi immigration to palestine, there's attestation of maghrebi influences in arabic spoken by some palestinian jews with that origin. this was also a thing in cairo to some extent.

(i'd link sources, but most of them are in hebrew, i guess you'll have to trust me on this one??)

still, the phrase "judeo-arabic" is often used with the implication that it was one all encompassing thing (which it wasn't, as you can see), or that jews everywhere had it in some way. many jews who spoke some version of arabic special to their mostly-jewish locale may not have registered it as a specifically "jewish" version of arabic (though they did more often than not). the truth is that research about anything related to middle eastern and north african jews is often sloppy, nonexistent, and often motivated by the desire of the researcher to prove something about israel's colonization of palestine (on either "side" of the issue). this is not me being a centrist about the colonization of palestine, this is me stating that academia is often (even usually) influenced by factors that aren't getting the best and most accurate information about something. i don't think we're going to get anything really "objective" on arabic spoken by jews in that regard for a long while.

for comparison's sake: yiddish is considered a separate language from german due to 19th century yiddishists' efforts to "evolve" yiddish from dialect to language (yiddish-speaking jews were said to speak "corrupted german" historically; on that note sephardim were also said to speak "corrupted spanish"). this was at a time when ethnic nationalism was en vogue in europe and declaring a national language meant declaring your status as a sovereign nation (both metaphorically and literally). for yiddishists to assert that they were speaking a language and not a dialect that intrinsically tied them to germans was to reject the discrimination that they were facing. (besides, german/austrian/swiss jews weren't speaking yiddish (leaving it with the connotation of being the language of those icky ostjuden), yiddish-speaking jews had practically zero other ties to germany/austria/switzerland, and yiddish-speaking jews (let alone the yiddishists) were almost entirely east of germany/austria/switzerland, so it's not like they were pulling this out of their ass.)

whether a jewish person of arabic-speaking descent calls it "arabic", "judeo-arabic", or something like "moroccan"/"syrian"/etc depends on who you're talking to, where they're from (both diaspora origins and today), how old they are, and what they think about zionism. despite "judeo-arabic" being what it's called in academia, on the ground, there's no real strong consensus either way because the social circumstances arabic-speaking jews lived in didn't drive them to form a movement similar to yiddishists. (not because there was no discrimination, but because the political/social/linguistic circumstances were different.) the occupation since made the subject of middle eastern jews’ relation to the middle east a contentious topic considering the political and personal weight behind certain cultural identifiers. the term "judeo-arabic" is modern in comparison - whether it's a distinction dredged up by zionist academics to create separations that didn't really exist or a generally accurate term for a specific linguistic phenomenon is a decision i'll leave you to make.

[quaranmine]

it is kind of crazy to me that we live in such a polarized, absurdly nationalistic, patriotic country and yet when evidence that nearly 50% of bald eagles, our national bird and icon of America, suffer from chronic lead poisoning and one third from acute lead poisoning there is not some massive outcry to fix this instantly. people are just like nooooooo but i wanna keep using lead fishing weights :((((( and the NRA is like over my dead body will you take our lead ammunition

like obviously this affects other types of animals too but i would've thought that the bald eagle would be THE charismatic species for the USA to take action on behalf of but. nope

[heimonas]

a collection

[inthefallofasparrow]

[themoonplantwrites]

So I want to talk about some of the implied elements of the culture that exists in New Rome and Camp Jupiter for a second.

So one of the things we are introduced to about Camp Jupiter and New Rome pretty quickly in The Son of Neptune is that there is a pretty influential anti-Greek/Hellenic bias. There’s more extreme examples, like Octavian, but then there’s the more, I guess average version too. Like I think we all can agree that Frank is pretty accepting of the Greeks and Camp Half-blood and everything, and yet when he is guiding Percy around Camp Jupiter explaining everything to him, even Frank still refers to the Romans as an “improved” version of the Greeks. Like there is just this kinda vibe of “the Greeks suck, especially when compared to us” that exists in the modern Roman culture of Camp Jupiter and New Rome.

One of the other things we are introduced to pretty quickly is that they only learn Latin at Camp Jupiter. Like there is never any implication that Camp Jupiter teaches the Romans any other language than Latin. Like obviously many of the kids know other languages depending on where they come from before coming to Camp, but they only learn Latin at Camp Jupiter.

And I bring these two things up because a lot of Ancient Roman texts were written in Greek. Because in Ancient Rome, knowing Greek as a sign that you were educated. So some Roman writers wrote in Ancient Greek because they only wanted educated folks to read them. So there’s all these texts written by Ancient Romans in Ancient Greek at are either very culturally important (like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations) or have mythological importance (I’m going through a lot of mythological fragments written in Greek right now and some of them are from Roman sources). And it is heavily implied that no one at Camp Jupiter and New Rome can read them. At least, they can’t read them unless they are translated.

And that’s like, really messed up. Like this implies that at some point between ancient times and when Percy shows up at Camp Jupiter, the Romans’ anti-Greek/Hellenic bias got so strong that they would rather cut themselves off from their own culture and texts than teach their children Ancient Greek so that they could read them.

Now let’s make this sadder. Jason spent six months at Camp Half-blood. He probably picked up some Greek there. It really wouldn’t surprise me if Chiron gave him a copy of Meditation’s with the original Greek text at some point. Because even if there are parts of Camp Half-blood that Jason likes and that work better for him, he deeply cares about New Rome and Camp Jupiter and wants the best for the people there. They are his people, this is the culture he grew up in and he cares about them.

So I can just see Jason planning on introducing teaching Ancient Greek at Camp Jupiter so that they can have access to their ancient texts in their original form again. And either he never got around to introducing this measure to the Senate because he died before he could or he did introduce it and was further shunned for no longer being Roman enough, and that’s part of why we see him living at a mortal boarding school in Trials of Apollo, because he’s “too Greek” and no longer all that welcomed in Camp Jupiter and New Rome. And either option is just really sad.

[max1461]

Oh, you have an easier time seeing value in things than most people do? Name a value you see in the White race then.

I love motorboating big fat white titties

[allgremlinart]

I would let her open me up like a pistachio shell WHO SAID THAT... not me...

[synchodai]

"Oh wow, good thing I consume Japanese/Chinese/etc. media which doesn't have these harmful fantasy tropes!"

Your romantasy webcomics and light novels aren't free from imperialist idealogy and questionable tropes just because they aren't "western." The belief that some people are inherently superior and thus deserve to rule over others is called the Mandate of Heaven in China, the caste system in India... heck, the Japanese believe that blood type dictates personality. It is a common trope in almost all countries' and cultures' founding myths and national epics because it justifies the status quo. The ideology that some people are genetically superior or divinely chosen didn't pop up all of a sudden in 1940s Europe and stop at The White Man's Burden. You cannot weeb yourself out of problematic tropes, because every culture has myths and legends whose primary purpose was to extol the virtues of the ruling class and keep children in line.

A genre that looks to the past for inspiration will always have to contend with regressive tropes. What seperates good fantasy from clichè fantasy is how the author utilizes, explores, and reframes these tropes to communicate a message that is more constructive for the modern audience and progresses the fantasy genre a little bit away from its obsolete values — not by avoiding said tropes to keep their writing morally pure, as if such a thing were even possible.

[undaughtered]

i think this is controversial but i do legitimately think (and this trend is starting to emerge, very slowly but very surely, in religious and theological studies, especially among scholars of comparative religion) that judaism can wrestle christianity back from christians on some level. not practically, obviously, but it is really is about time christianity was reappropriated by the people it has been used to oppress including and perhaps most especially jewish people. not in a messianic way, obviously, but in the sense that jesus as a historical figure was a jew, a jew who loved his religion and culture passionately, and the jesus movement was, long before it was christian, a jewish movement.

[muirneach]

in the other direction. nhl media still very much loves to market themselves as a league full of saskatchewan farmboys. and don’t get me wrong. saskatchewan is still very much producing constant talent per capita. much love to the farmboys of the league. but i think the nhl ignores that half the rosters are from rich gtha suburbs because the facilities and time and commitment and opportunities required for going pro or even just going to higher levels of hockey past your local cities league has a lot of barriers that are largely accessible only to rich people. and its just weird to me how they still harken to a time when it was very much a working class upbringing in the league. for a very long time players have been making comparatively big bucks but even still many of them had summer jobs even in the 60s. in 1972 the national film board released a little doc about the nordiques entitled “just another job”. boy the continued increase of life or death professionalism in professional sports!

[composeregg]

We used to be a country

[weed-cat]

.

[crane-song]

I don't want to get too political on this blog but it is about my life and I wanted to share how the current state of things in Springfield, Ohio have impacted me.

I attend one of the two universities based in Springfield (Which I won't name for privacy and personal safety reasons) and we are currently on remote learning thanks to the shooting and bomb threats leveled against us and other schools in the city. These threats were made out of the xenophobic hatred for the Haitians in our community. Thanks to lies spread by Republican politicians schools are going under lockdowns, being evacuated or going remote to protect students, mostly children. These include elementary schools, one of which was evacuated today.

Even though I don't live on campus my parents made me come home (they don't live in Springfield) for my own safety. I'm lucky to have the privilege of that option but many people in Springfield and many of my fellow university students don't have the option to flee. Let me be clear--The politicians promoting racist and false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets don't care about anyone in Springfield. They are doing it for their own political gain and don't care about the consequences these lies have on the average person. They have given motivation to, let's be honest, domestic terrorists who are willing to scare and hurt Haitians and everyone else caught in the crossfire just to fulfill their xenophobic and racist desire to 'protect' an idealized white America. But people won't call them terrorists because they're white Americans.

As someone who spends about eight months out of the year living in Springfield I have never heard of a Haitian stealing and eating people's pets. They are not a threat to the security of our community. That would be the KKK, who are currently handing out fliers in town by the way, and the white nationalists threatening people.

[a-kinda-nerdy-girl]

Listen I'm not usually patriotic, unless it's the olympics and american women are freaking killing it. Then I basically turn into a bald eagle.

[slog-the-book]

i find it funny when everyone is like “[their country] RAHHHHHH” during olympics like yes!! be proud! brazil rahhhhh philippines rahhhhhh indonesia rahhhhhhh etc etc. but then when an american does it, its so corny