Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
This week’s theme is Linguistics, and because it’s Friday I am no longer bound by the pesky 20-year-rule, I can finally share the story I’ve wanted to all week: the legend of John Quijada and his language Ithkuil.
Ithkuil is a language that Quijada started making as a young adult, over 40 years ago. It follows a somewhat similar premise to philosophical languages like John Wilkins’s universal a language and, to a greater degree, logical languages like Lojban, but is much more extreme. Its goal is to clearly yet concisely express the full range of human cognition. It does this through reduced ambiguity, increased precision, and overall by being as exact as possible, optimizing people’s capacity for communication… all without being overly clunky, and instead words must be able to pack a lot of info into just a few syllables. Here’s a famous example from his website:
Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.
TRANSLATION:
‘On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point.’
Now, Ithkuil was a project that Quijada was working on for own amusement. It was never designed as a something that would be used, but as an idea of what language could do: increase our capacity to communicate our cognition. But decades into the project, in the early 2000s, he shared his work with the world online, and people came to appreciate it. In 2008, Ithkuil won the Smiley Award, where they write it “isn't so much a language as it is a monument to human ingenuity and design.”
Eventually, some people approached Quijada because they were very interested in the practical applications of Ithkuil. They translated his website, invited him to speak at conferences, and worked with him for a while. Who were these people, and what did they want with the language? For that, you’ll have to read the article “Utopian for Beginners; An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented”. It is a wild and unexpected journey.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, June 24 - Thursday, June 30
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 6,020 | 67 comments | SCOTUS Justice Thomas recently indicated that he'd like the court to revisit libel laws. How normal is this in the court's history, for a sitting justice to telegraph the kinds of cases they'd like to see brought before the court? |
| 4,205 | 373 comments | [Megathread] Megathread: Roe v Wade overturned by the US Supreme Court |
| 3,207 | 115 comments | Why is Smith such a common English last name when it seems like it would have been a relatively uncommon profession, with most places only needing one blacksmith? |
| 2,939 | 76 comments | Several photos of Iranian women before the Islamic Revolution circulate the internet. But I've seen people refute the view that Iran was progressive by saying this was limited to a small rich elite, and that the great majority of women had no substantial rights. Is this true? |
| 2,736 | 67 comments | How did prostitution work before contraception? |
| 2,427 | 84 comments | Why do women from the 1920’s era all seem to have rounder faces despite being slim? |
| 1,929 | 33 comments | What mentality went into deciding the various national republics in the USSR? Or, why did the Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or Uzbeks get Soviet Socialist Republics that later became independent, but the Chechens, Buryats, or Yakuts didn't? |
| 1,578 | 70 comments | Ronald Reagan won the 1984 presidential election in one of the most lopsided victories in American history, yet by 1986 his party had been swept from power in the midterms. What happened? |
| 1,510 | 21 comments | What did Charles V mean by “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse”? |
| 1,412 | 41 comments | 90’s Norwegian black metal bands were infamously violent towards Christianity and churches. Did this antagonism originate within the metal subculture, or did it have roots in other movements of the time? |
###Top 10 Comments
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Happy Canada Day everyone!
I thought you folks would appreciate this post https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/vo3s4t/eat_shit_king_taejong_they_know_you_fell_of_your/
What are the most under-researched or often overlooked topics in the military history of Late Antique (Late Roman/Early Byzantine Empire)?
I appreciate any suggestions and ideas. Consider it a sort of a brainstorming
I'm a day late but hope that someone will answer still. Otherwise I'll try and repost this in next weeks thread.
It seems to me that the US is currently on a straight forward path to fascism.
The recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the explicitly fascist-theocratic-libertarian Texas GOP manifesto, the January 6th coup attempt, the GOP reactions to that event and the hearings, the actions and all suggest an explicit intent of overturning American democracy by the GOP.
The 2022 midterm elections may be the most important midterm elections yet in the history of the US, and the GOP is poised to take both the House and maybe even the Senate. They would then control 2 out of 3 government branches.
Then the 2024 elections may see an actual successful coup by the GOP.
The Democratic party also currently seems to not have seen the writing on the wall yet and still tries to be good with optics and not be severe enough with dealing out punishments for the attempt at overturning American democracy on January 6th.
Mind you, I am an outside observer from Germany but the US path since 2016 has me extremely worried and I am afraid we may be headed to either civil war or theocratic-fascist dictatorship in the worlds biggest economy with the 2nd biggest nuclear arsenal.
So my question is: What do the historians here think of the recent developments in the US?