This might be better suited for a linguistics sub, but ah well.

I recently read that Romans didn't have a 'v' sound, it was just pronounced 'w'. So Vespasian would have been something like "Wespasian." Is there any connection between this v-w pronunciation and the fact that Germany and other nearby countries pronounce 'w' as a 'v'? Did the latter somehow come from the other, or is it just a coincidence?

Until the 1960s, historical literature tended to focus exclusively on male perspectives and male agency for discussion of what was historically "worthy".

Since the 1960s, we have had the discipline of Women's History, whose scholars have tried to explore women's roles and perspectives from past eras.

How is that going? What are the hot topics in Women's History right now? What are the controversies?

Can we credit women's host with spurring historians to pay greater attention to women's voices in various societies and eras? Or does women's history remain ghettoized?

Also, what role does class play in our understanding of women's voices? Do the perspectives of elite women tend to be more emphasised because of greater literacy or proximity to power?

I would love to read some sort of timeline depicting how North Korea as we know it emerged from pre-WWII Korea.

Korean literature often portrayed Chinese as the villain, and newspapers accused chinese of being sexual predators or drug smuglers. And then there was the pogroms in 1931, where Chinese got slaughtered. What I'm wondering about is what triggered the hatred?

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Not sure if this is the right sub, but historians should be fairly familiar with this.

I am looking for a word. Say I analyse Marx, but I do so ahistorically, that is, looking at the theory only comparing it to contemporary theories as if Marx' theory itself were contemporary, leaving out historical considerations etc.

When I do this, I look at Marx' theory 'on its own terms' 'per se' ? What is the right word here? (apart from 'ahistorically')

I have been assigned to write a journal in history class as a high clergy before and up to the French revolution. In my first journal entry, I am 21 (born 1763, journal entry in 1784). I would like to know if there was an apprenticeship to become a clergy, and the age you had to be to be one.

Hi

I just finished "Luftwaffe '45" - a book about how planes were produced and used in the last months of World War 2 in Germany. Extremly fascinating stuff, since the aviation industry in Germany was still operational until the very end, thanks to decentrailisation and underground facilities.

But how did it look like in Japan? How did factories look like, were the Japanese still capable of building planes at the same pace as the Germans (Germany still produced over 10,000 planes in 1945!)? And how were they used, how did missions look like in the last months (except Kamikaze, Im thinking more about missions against bombers; although I already read the excellent "Samurai" by Saburo Sakai)

Thanks in advance!

Was there some kind of outlawing of Spanish after the Phillipines became independent?

I know that the old church wouldn't accept that the Earth was round, but since a lot of people apparently followed the heliocentric model, why was the belief still oppressed?

Why would ancient troop formations have more than a few ranks? It seems to me that you would want all of your soldiers to be fighting the enemy at once; why would you then put a large number of your soldiers out of range by putting them in the 4th rank or more? Did they rotate men out of the front ranks, or were they just there to fill in the gaps when the front-rankers died?

Before you guys tell me, I know there was no "China" before the Mongols who unified it into a single country (like how there was no "Russia" until Ivan the Great.) So my statement "allowed in China centuries ago" is technically incorrect but I didn't want a super long title.

But yes, I'm very much curious of how the Chinese felt about trading with the Portuguese when the last time they dealt with foreigners was with the Mongols. And we all know what happened there.

NPR has had a running series covering Shakespeare to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death. Today, they mentioned the theory that the man we traditionally think of as 'Shakespeare' may not actually be the other of the works that are pillars of Western literature.

The arguments included:

• William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon didn't leave behind any letters, or make any leave any indication in his will, that he was a celebrated intellectual and playwright.

• He was not entombed in Westminster Abbey.

• Many of his plays suggest that the author was well traveled; William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon never left England.

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