The Reading Room

Feeds

20:18

On this #WorldBookDay, why not ask (or answer!) some questions about your favorite books? #WorldBookDay2017 https://literature.stackexchange.com

Tweeted by StackLiterature on April 23, 2017 at 8:00 PM

Gallifreyan

20:29

@Feeds @Shokhet That tweet needs more #WorldBookDay

@Randal'Thor I was actually intending on reading that book only to take a stab at an answer. I found it in my library... and something happened that changed my mind. I probably simply forgot.

user61230

21:00

@Randal'Thor If people start posting questions about others' answers on Literature, then you know we're a real Literature site.

BESW

21:39

Some fairy tales may be 6000 years old.

Rand al'Thor

22:43

@BESW Wow, some European fairy tales as well.

Seeing the headline, I thought it might be about, say, Chinese or Russian or Native American fairy tales and was unsurprised. In an area that's had as much cultural flux as Europe ... that's pretty impressive.

BESW

Nah, these things pre-date our ability to digest milk, and possibly even our ability to evolve light skin.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor "Chinese or Russian or Native American" cultures had as much "cultural flux", if not more, than Europe had.

BESW

Yeeah.

Rand al'Thor

I thought China had remained reasonably culturally stable for thousands of years?

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor nooooooooo

Rand al'Thor

22:52

And surely Russia's general unconquerability means there are parts of it at least that have had few cultural changes for a looooong time?

Though I was fascinated to learn about the history of Tuva quite by chance some months ago.

Shokhet

@Gallifreyan I know, right? :p

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor no nothing about Russia, but as a general rule, there's no such thing as an unchanging culture

I know more about China, and a lot about indigenous American history, and I can guarantee that definitely not true that they were unchanging.

BESW

Culture doesn't only change by violent upheaval.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Of course, but still, how many places have had such a high density of wars and conquests and changing borders over an extended period as Europe?

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor Central America?

BESW

22:57

North and Central Africa?

Hamlet

Probably North America, but it's hard to tell.

BESW

The Iroquois nation was explicitly created to stop generations of war between different tribes, in part so they could go fight other tribes.

Hamlet

China?

China - 3,000 Years of History in a Minute

►

Probably most places in the world tbh

BESW

Europe isn't special, no matter how much it wants to be.

Hamlet

South America

Rand al'Thor

23:02

hides behind cultural ignorance

BESW

It doesn't even have a monopoly on protracted internecine warfare.

Rand al'Thor

That's an odd shape for a country.

I wonder what geographical feature runs along that thin strip.

BESW

Hamlet

@BESW hmmmm I wonder why Europe is unique for having lots of wars, rather than not having lots of wars...

BESW

Because one thing Europe has done especially well is embrace the idea of the zero-sum game, which makes warfare seem especially necessary and glorious?

[shrug]

Rand al'Thor

23:17

@Hamlet Speaking of history shown well in Youtube videos:

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto

►

Worth watching in full, if you haven't seen one of these already.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Don't worry, I feel like having to do that in here all the time. ;-)

BESW

[grin] There's nothing wrong with ignorance.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson It can be quite humbling at times, to hang out with people like @BESW and realise how little one really knows about the world.

2

BESW

Specific ignorance is a temporary state; awareness of ignorance is a shared human trait.

Rand al'Thor

In a good sense, of course. I like to expand my mind.

4

Napoleon Wilson

23:22

@Randal'Thor Or that.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW "The wise know they know nothing"?

BESW

You guys know and understand things I can't even begin to comprehend, professionally, experientially, linguistically.

There's an RPG chat going on right now about the advantages and pitfalls of multilingual reading, to which I can contribute nothing but a listening attitude.

Napoleon Wilson

In the context of RPGs?

BESW

No, actually.

It's a sort of free-roaming conversation about having English as a second language.

It's moved on now.

Napoleon Wilson

What does "multilingual reading" refer to there? Just reading stuff in different languages or reading the same stuff in multiple languages (or other even more mixed variations of that)?

Rand al'Thor

23:27

I'm constantly ashamed of the fact that I'm only really fluent in one language.

BESW

Mostly the latter, like how it's easier for someone to read Terry Pratchett in German but they know they're probably missing a lot in the translations.

I've ALSO seen conversations about RPG translations; those are like a cross between translating a novel and translating a technical manual, and there's often a lot of confusion.

Napoleon Wilson

@BESW But isn't that more about the former?

BESW

@NapoleonWilson I suppose. It's not exactly either.

Napoleon Wilson

Or do they then seek out the other versions and do comparisons or filling of any lackage?

BESW

People do that sometimes, but not often.

I once read El león, la bruja, y el armário side-by-side with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I was only just barely fluent enough to make it possible.

My mother read Allende's Zorro in English and Spanish simultaneously.

Napoleon Wilson

23:32

I have an edition of The Song of Roland with German and Old French side-by-side, which...is of no particular use to me since I don't know any Old French. ;-)

BESW

(That one's interesting because Allende did the translation herself; apparently Spanish is her first language, but she writes in English and then translates it.)

I wish I knew Russian for many reasons, but one is so that I could read Boris Akunin novels in the original.

Napoleon Wilson

I wanted to do Russian in school, but my particular constellation didn't work because of a lack of participants, so I did Spanish instead.

But I'm sure I'd know as much about Russian as I do about Spanish now anyway, so I'm not sure it matters much. ;-)

BESW

I had a choice of Spanish and Japanese, and I went with the one that would be easier. Not sure I'm happy with that now.

Certainly Japanese would be more practical to know here.

Napoleon Wilson

Which might as well have contributed to an easier learning over the long run anyway.

Since when you don't use it, you don't really learn it anyway. Or at least that's how I am.

My entire education in French, Latin and Spanish was probably just wasted.

BESW

Yeah, without immersion it's nigh impossible to retain fluency.

Rand al'Thor

23:37

@BESW @Hamlet So is this stupidly Eurocentric, or did most of the wars outside Europe either happen >1000 years ago or go unrecorded by surviving history?

@NapoleonWilson You learned Latin?

I thought it was just British public schools and Catholic monasteries that taught that any more :-P

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor that's why you can't trust youtube videos

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Officially, yes. ;-)

Hamlet

Yeah, that video is incredibly Eurocentric

it pretty much only shows European wars.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor No, it's quite common here. But I think we could choose between different things for our third language. I wasn't much interested in French, though.

BESW

I studied Latin and Greek roots in middle school...

Napoleon Wilson

23:41

I probably was just scared of French from elementary school. On the long run it would have been more useful than Latin, I guess. But well, afterthoughts.

On the long I should have dropped the fourth language anyway and taken mathematical specialization.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Yessss.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Do I remember correctly that in Britain "public schools" actually refers to private schools?

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Yes, public schools are a particularly posh subclass of private schools.

The opposite of private school is state school.

BESW

@Randal'Thor Correlation doesn't imply causation, but toying with this map is rather suggestive.

For example, I'm not really seeing the Malian empire contributing much to that map.

Rand al'Thor

That looks awfully Europe-dominated too.

(Also, very slow to load and respond.)

BESW

23:47

Exactly.

This is all the wars that map records for the duration of the Mali Empire:

And it's not like those wars are undocumented.

So to answer your question, no, wars outside of Europe are neither all extremely ancient nor unrecorded; they're just not considered noteworthy by the folks who give us that kind of information.

Rand al'Thor

Bleh.

I don't suppose you happen to know a link to something which gives a reasonably balanced history of global war, in a reasonably quick pictorial form like that Youtube video rather than having to read a history book?

BESW

Not off the top of my head, no.

Rand al'Thor

(cue @Napoleon teasing me for wanting something pictorial rather than reading a book ;-) )

BESW

It's a real problem; the information is available, but often not easily or accessibly.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor I haven't even considered that at all (and amn't now either really).

BESW

23:54

Hmm.

For this sort of thing (historical information that challenges a euro-centric depiction of the world, presented for the everyman) I usually hit up MedievalPOC first, with tags like global-middle-ages, timelines, and interactive-map.

She may not have what I'm after, but that usually gives me a good idea of where else I can look and what terms would be useful to search.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Holy cow America!

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