- 5 Posts
- 16 Comments
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•How Come Latin Didn't Spread in the Middle East as Much as it did in Europe?
11·2 天前In the context of biblical history, I’ve heard that, because of the Alexandrian empire and it’s 3-4 off-shoot kingdoms, Greek was actually the ‘Lingua Franca’ (default language for international communication) throughout the middle east; from before the Romans arrived, to Jesus’s time, to until after the Roman empire split in two for good.
I guess it is hard to supplant an existing Lingua Franca. France today is a good example - they are very defensive of their language, once the Standard Internationale, and so France sees less English speakers proportionally than other European countries such as Spain, Nederland and Germany.
So… The middle East’s dominant languages were Greek and Persian, Greek and Persian, Greek and Persian - then Muhammed shows up with Islam, and they conquer surrounding states. Arabic is spreading. And this is testament to Persia’s linguistic domination, right - Arabic calligraphy comes from the Persian alphabet. That’s bonkers; a group of people, B, subjugated by A, manages to get A to assume their script for all writing.
At that point, the whole(-ish) middle east now had a different alphabet - neither greek nor Roman - to write in. Languages don’t tend to change their script once they’ve settled on one. The only examples I know are Poland, who did it because of catholic church’s influence , and Mongolia, who were forced to by the soviet union; it doesn’t happen naturally. Oh also Turkey, which was again a government mandate.
Certain scripts are better for certain language sounds; I don’t expect Arabic will ever be written in Latin script in general practice. It didn’t spread at first because Greek was already so dominant, then because the catholic church wast spreading into Muslim territories in the middle east, and now because it is not Lingua Franca, languages have settled on the correct scripts, and Christianity isn’t spreading in the middle east, same as usual.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•How Come Latin Didn't Spread in the Middle East as Much as it did in Europe?
56·2 天前They’re pretending to not understand that you mean Latin was the language of catholic church, Roman state, law, medicine, mathematics and thus the script for (almost) all European alphabets.
There’s genuinely a toxicity problem on Lemmy, probably ingrained in many users from years of Reddit usage. 😮💨🥰 but DW about it.
Technically it is not the “basis” of languages, but with contextual knowledge it’s so easy to know what you really meant by that. That it’s “the basis language for European civilization,” perhaps. Written on heraldry, churches, buildings and artifacts all over the continent.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksOPto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Do pedophile/ephebophile s have a tendency to seek out friendships or romantic relationships with young adults as well as with minors?
51·2 天前Yes, a fair point. That is part of what I was wondering actually - is someone who exhibits that behaviour doing so because a young adult is adjacent to a teenager, in their eyes?
Your observations bring us onto some natural follow-up questions.
- Is Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, someone suffering from ephebophilia and toeing the line legally? Most of the internet seems to think so and seems disgusted by his dating habits.
- If a young adult is non-minor, should we tolerate much-older adults only dating young adults? If not, do you think it should it be solved with a sliding scale of “acceptable dating ages” based on your own age, or merely with social punishment (e.g “cancelling”) - or is it a non-policeable issue?
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksOPto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Do pedophile/ephebophile s have a tendency to seek out friendships or romantic relationships with young adults as well as with minors?
21·2 天前Wow what a stupid reason to not vet/background check someone? That’s actually a scenario I’ve wondered about before but I think all the places where I live aren’t making that mistake (hopefully)
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
Patient Gamers@sh.itjust.works•Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
3·3 天前Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian.
A Really patience demanding game - even when you know the story by memory you still need to click through all the pages to test options. I played three runs in a row and don’t feel like playing it for a while now. Which is probably good because it’ll make it last longer.
Probably not everyone’s cup of tea but I find the stat-mixing aspect of it fascinating, and I know I’m not alone because it’s how other players in the discord play as well.
Today: Balatro and Anno 117
Also this week: Stardew Valley. Started yet another new save, deleted all my others; this time I will take it from start to finish without starting any new saves. (I’ve reached perfection once already and gotten to ginger island half a dozen times)
SDV makes you feel so good.
I never trust the critics over normal viewers, lol. I am NEVER the second guy down
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works•Turns out the Soviets could take it while the Germans couldn’tEnglish
3·10 天前I’ll need to read up on afghanistan war but for ww1 i’d say that russia lost because it had a revolution co-occuring and it was already a collapsing country
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works•Turns out the Soviets could take it while the Germans couldn’tEnglish
31·10 天前Hey now hey now. We’re at the end of history. It died with my inner child.
But since you insist, let me amend my statement to simply say russia “war of attritions” better than anyone else.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works•Turns out the Soviets could take it while the Germans couldn’tEnglish
133·11 天前This is a basic history concept is it not? Combined with WW2 fact
Russia - whether it wants to or not - always ends up fighting wars in a slow meat grinder way, but because of uts superior pooulation it wins every ‘War of attrittion’ against another european power.
Germany on the eastern front did manage to push into russia but, as per usual, the cold and the lack of infrastructure (settlements more spaced out than in core Europe) causes immense suffering for them - eventually they are driven back. Many casualties, of course.
So i say that because i’m baffked why someone would know the top statement and need to be corrected with the bottom one. People should learn both together - the WW2 fact - and with it, the historical truth that Russia wins every war of attrition.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works•Putin finally realizingEnglish
3·13 天前Pro tip: don’t march on a capital in the 21st century, take a flight there.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works•Putin finally realizingEnglish
171·14 天前I was sad when Yevgeny Prigozhin (leader of Wagner Group) was killed off, because if his coup was successful we could have seen less bloodshed and a sooner close of the war.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksOPto
Casual Conversation@piefed.social•Freaked myself out with google calendarEnglish
1·16 天前Lmao, very good point! I’ve been naming them in shorthand terms because of fears it was being read by someone else, and i wanted to be secretive
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksOPto
Casual Conversation@piefed.social•Freaked myself out with google calendarEnglish
2·19 天前So true. I first started actually using Google calendar when my uni timetable was added, and got into the habit of looking at it too much because of anxiety. I definitely do the same thing with emails because I never get email notifications unfortunately.
One of my favourite tools now though. You can set up a schedule for people to book meetings with you or generate links corresponding to social meets, helping people to remember them and plan their day around the meeting. It’s actually pretty good because I can suggest multiple things I might want to do that day and have them overlap, then finally choose one.
FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.worksto
Patient Gamers@sh.itjust.works•If you could only play 10 games for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
7·26 天前Ironically I’m probably not going to choose my favourite games because those are usually just very simple story based games, and can be just as enjoyable to read as a book instead.
The games which instead give the most fun-value and replayability:
- Balatro (my go-to “I’m bored and don’t know what to do with myself” game.)
- Stardew Valley. Super good, something is so satisfying in the art, animations and little gameplay loops. I replayed it to death earlier this year and now I’ll try not to think about it again until that time next year.
- “The Sims Medieval” is one I keep on coming back to, so I’ll definitely add that.
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon (don’t think this counts as a mod.) Super good replayability, I’ve been playing it intermittently for about 11 years now.
- Anno 117. Gotta have some strategy games - I’m kind of boring in that I only do anno and not more complicated stuff like city skylines.
- Fields of Mistria is a new farming sim that I have high hopes for.
- Pentiment has a lot of replayability despite only being a linear story game.
That gives me enough time to add 8. Minecraft, which I don’t play anymore but it’s a great boredom buster, and 9. Life and Suffering of Sir Brante and 10. Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian - afforementioned visual novel stories which are also fine to enjoy in book form.


Killing tapeworms is murder, but they’re parasites rather than humans so we don’t care.