#linguicide

[tomorrowusa]

This episode of Ukraine's True History from the Kyiv Independent deals with Russian attempts to suppress the Ukrainian language, and culture in general, for over 300 years.

Russia has been trying to wipe out Ukrainian identity for over 300 years. There is little difference between the tsars, the communists, and Putin. All have been imperialists with the aim of Russian domination.

There are some people, mostly Putinistas and ignoramuses, who claim that Russian and Ukrainian are the same language. For now I will hold off on a linguistic explanation of how they aren't. But if they weren't really different, why would Russia spend three centuries trying to wipe out Ukrainian?

[unhonestlymirror]

Pro-russian activists want to destroy Belarusian-language voice announcements in the subway

Pro-russian activists continue to fight against the Belaruthian language. Now, for the sake of guests from russia, they have decided to replace the Belaruthian-language announcements in the subway with russian-language ones because russians do not understand Belaruthian and may get off at the wrong station.

.

Панаехала гасцей з іншаземных абласцей, бл***. Не разумееце па-беларуску? Чамадан, вакзал, расея. Вас ніхто тут сілком не трымае. "Станцыя: Акадэмія навук" - што тут незразумелага? Гэта занадта складана для вялікага русскаво язьіка? з'їбались нахуй звідси, тупі кровожерливі виродки

[tjeromebaker]

Cultural Genocide Linguicide And Forced Assimilation: Colonial Boarding Schools In Tibet Separated From Their Families Hidden From the World

A staggering figure has come out of Tibet. Almost 80 percent of Tibetan children aged 6 to 18 have been placed in state-run boarding schools. There, they are cut off from their families, language, and traditions. That’s according to the analysis of official data from a U.S.-based NGO, the Tibet Action Institute. Download the full report: Separated From Their Families, Hidden From the…

[rikaklassen]

CWs: eugenics, linguicism, linguicide

Today I learned there were many deaf artists in Finland until sign language became forbidden and oralism became the dominant model for education which persisted until the 1970s.

[fatehbaz]

Decolonizing history [...].

Linear time was particularly functional regarding the objectives of the European conquest in that it easily translated time into space. The overseas territories were as remote in space as in time. Exotic lands with strange ideas of time were temporally very distant from the colonizer’s present. [...] Once dispossessed of any future-making function, such past was deemed irrelevant and should vanish into oblivion. [...] The first procedure generates massive epistemicide (the destruction of knowledge); the second, kairoside (the destruction of qualitative time) [...].

Only though counter-histories of lived experiences through struggles is it possible to identify such absences.[...]

Thus emerged the dichotomy civilization/barbarism, the abyssal line distinguishing humans from sub-humans. [...] It made it unnecessary to justify the contrast between the ideals of liberalism and the practices of the colonizers, as well as unthinkable that non-European populations might have ideals and principles [...]. This ideology legitimated an unmeasurable epistemicide -- the systematic destruction of non-European knowledges, philosophies, and cosmovisions cherished by the colonized populations. Epistemicide goes hand in hand with genocide and linguicide. [...]

---

The absences were produced by destroying in the bud opportunities for social transformation, major as well as minor opportunities, for either small betterments of the livelihoods or for ambitious initiatives of revolt and liberation. Such systematic neturalization of struggle I call kairocide (from Gr. kairos, ‘the right moment’) to designate the destruction of opportune moments of resistance. Such crucial moments represent the deep time of social resistance emerging in social practice as the mature moment in which the chances of success are maximized. Declaring emergency meant erasing the historic quality of time, disfiguring memories and the possibilities of a better future for the oppressed. Kairocide often involved epistemicide as well. In states of exception protestors and social leaders were frequently assassinated. Social leaders were the guardians of traditional, vernacular knowledge and experience in organizing [...]; with their deaths all such knowledge, experience, and wisdom were lost. [...]

---

By the monoculture of rigorous knowledge, the colonial subject was de-specified as ignorant. By the monoculture of linear time, the colonial subject was de-specified as backward, primitive. By the monoculture of the dominant scales (the universal and the global), the colonial ways of life were de-specified as particular, exotic, local, traditional, to be replaced by modern ones. By the monoculture of ethno-racial classification, the colonial subject was de-specified as inferior. By the monoculture of the humanity/nature separation and hierarchy, the colonial subject was de-specified as natural, subhuman, barbaric, beast. Finally, by the monoculture of the capitalist criterion of productivity, the colonial subject was de-specified as lazy, otiose, unproductive.

---

The history of emergences.

Exposing the procedures of the history of absences opens the possibility of a counter-history. [...] The history of emergences proceeds by reconstructing the wholeness of bodies, communities, livelihoods, struggles, resistances, ways of knowing and ways of being which were [...] made silent or produced as absent by dominant history. It consists in confronting each one of the monocultures presiding over de-specification and replacing them by ecologies. Ecologies are the workings of mutually enriching and self-transformative interaction among different components of complex realities, be they human or non-human realities.

---

The monoculture of rigorous knowledge is challenged by retrieving and valorizing knowledges, cultures, and beliefs of the non-European, colonized people and the ways in which such epistemic and cognitive wealth has guided their resistance and resilience [...]. In spite of the violence of the colonial encounter, the version of the universalizing European knowledge system prevalent in the colonies never succeeded in accomplishing full epistemicide; on the contrary, over time there was much interaction, hybridization [...].

The monoculture of linear time must be confronted by the recognition of other conceptions of time. If Aristotle was right when he says that memory is the imagination plus time, it follows that different conceptions of time generate different memories. The history of emergences consists in retrieving the ‘strange’ conceptions of time [...]. [T]he virtuous eradication of the past [...] [turns] into the precious guardianship of what remains and of what has been. [...] Confronting the monoculture of ethno-racial classification is a specially demanding task. Such classification combines differentiation with hierarchy. [...] In this case, the history of emergences aims at reconstructing differentiation by separating it from hierarchy. [...] Finally, the monoculture of capitalist productivity is challenged by the history of emergences as it retrieves the diversity of livelihoods prevailing in the non-European world. [...]

---

[I]t is not possible to write the history of liberation without liberating history. While the history of absences permits to measure realistic fear, the history of emergences grounds realistic hope. [...] It cannot guarantee either the non-repetition of past atrocities [...] or the return of dominant historical narratives [...]. Decolonizing history must be aware of the danger of recolonizing history, as long as capitalist, colonialist, patriarchal, [...] casteist, and ableist domination lasts.

---

Text by: Boaventura de Sousa Santos. “Some theses on decolonizing history.” Seminar 743, pp. 16-24. July 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[langsandlit]

E’ ineccepibile che la decisione di barrare le porte della scuola ad un plurilinguismo millenario è antistorica per definizione, e quindi una delle cose più artificiali che esistano.

E’ ineccepibile inoltre che un sistema scolastico che si è da sempre ostinato a parlare ed insegnare solo ed esclusivamente il dialetto toscano (anche se con il rebranding di “lingua italiana”) a bambini non toscanofoni non ha nulla di naturale.

Così come non c’è nulla di naturale nello spingere i genitori a non parlare la loro lingua madre con i propri figli. Semmai, parlare la propria lingua madre con i figli è la cosa più naturale che esista, mentre parlare loro una lingua imparata attraverso le bacchettate e i quiz di Mike Bongiorno è tanto artificiale quanto grottesco.

E’ ovvio dunque che il procedimento che sta portando la morte della diversità linguistica in Italia ha ben poco in comune con la presunta “morte naturale” e molto con una condanna a morte.

A sobering article. It’s a good reminder that denial and promotion of linguicide is engineered by nation-states to enforce cultural and linguistic imperialism.

[purecommemasolitude]

Linguicide is like kinda fucked up when you think about it

[motguernesiais]

L'affaire va-t-alle?

Ch'est 'chin aen "side-blog" ouecque l'Enfaeutchie s'en va postaï ses Maots d'Ogniet. This is a side-blog where Enfaeutchie will be posting her Words of the Day.

Since 2020, on Discord, Tumblr, cohost, and Twitter, I've been posting one word every day from the Guernésiais language, the dialect of Norman from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Guernésiais is severely endangered with likely less than 200 remaining native speakers, the majority of whom are elderly. While government funding has finally been allocated to preserve the language, revitalisation is still very slow. Thankfully, it is well documented in both text and audio.

Norman is one of the Langues d'Oïl, the spectrum of Romance languages which includes French. For many years, the Langues d'Oïl have been regarded as lower-class "patois" of French, a perception reinforced by the frankly linguicidal attitudes of the French and British states. This perception is entirely erroneous. Norman is one of the major influences on English, with many everyday words such as "camp", "pocket" and "scarf" having identifiably Norman pronunciations (compare the French champ, pochette and écharpe, all of which have ch).

Guernésiais (A.K.A. Guernsey French, Guernsey Patois) severely declined after the beginning of English-only schooling and the Nazi Occupation during WWII, both of which limited children's exposure to the language and taught them to be ashamed of it and think of it as lesser. Other dialects of Norman have similar stories, but they are finally beginning to improve in public perception.

I am not a trained linguist or a native speaker, just an enthusiastic learner. I base my IPA transcriptions on my own experiences and on the collected academic works on the language.

If you're interested in learning more about the languages, I have a list of resources on my main blog (pastebin mirror) and my asks are open.

Merci bian pour m'avé écoutaïe.

[nuansea]

Anonymous were quick to post some abstract "humane" quotes from classical russian writers each of which is just a ceremonious version of "You're all dumb, I'm smart." They have never posted quotes of Ukrainian writers, poets, and scientists.

Tolstoy's "If you feel pain, you're alive. If you feel other people's pain, you're a human being," – as if this is going to cure all the hell, bloodshed, torture, genocide, linguicide, ethnocide, and other still unpunished crap the russian nation has been committing against the Ukrainian nation for centuries. Wow...

[peysk]

Catch me in the Italki video chat telling my tutor about Various Examples of Politically Motivated Linguicide across history

[unhonestlymirror]

It makes me sick to see "arguments" in defence of russia as "but their culture..." - did you know that a Wegeners granulomatosis was renamed because it was discovered(?) by the nazi doctor, Wegener? And they renamed it to granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and nothing bad happened. Did you know that a nazi Germany actually had a bunch of good doctors/artists/singers/etc who supported and even participated in the fucking genocide? We don't forgive nazis, then why should we forgive ruzzia?

Why do people still glorify russia? Why do people STILL draw Ukraine and Belarus as russia's sisters? Why do people use russian names for Ukrainian and Belaruthian cities and history? Why do people completely ignore what russia does to Ukraine? Why do people ignore the total linguicide of Belarus? Why do people erase us and glorify our rapist?

Sometimes, I feel like most of us never studied WW2 at school. Everyone is just ready to glorify the new hitler. Seems like most people are able to understand what Eastern Europeans feel only when a russian rocket hits their house. Otherwise, they just don't understand why rusliet or drawing Belarus with prorussian flag or drawing MY COUNTRY AS RUSSIA'S SISTER is fucking disgusting and very offensive.

I wish every such content maker to find out how it feels to live under russian occupation. Seems like the experience of real people is not enough for them.

[a-really-big-cat]

When at the mid-19th century, primary school is made compulsory all across the State, it is also made clear that only French will be taught, and the teachers will severely punish any pupil speaking in patois. The aim of the French educational system will consequently not be to dignify the pupils' natural humanity, developing their culture and teaching them to write their language, but rather to humiliate them and morally degrade them for the simple fact of being what tradition and their nature made them. The self-proclaimed country of the "human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation. And with that attitude France, the "grande France" that calls itself the champion of liberty, will pass the 20th century, indifferent to the timid protest movements of the various linguistic communities it submitted and the literary prestige they may have given birth to.    [...]    France, that under Franco's reign was seen here [in Catalonia] as the safe haven of freedom, has the miserable honour of being the [only] State of Europe—and probably the world — that succeeded best in the diabolical task of destroying its own ethnic and linguistic patrimony and moreover, of destroying human family bonds: many parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren, have different languages, and the latter feel ashamed of the first because they speak a despicable patois, and no element of the grandparents' culture has been transmitted to the younger generation, as if they were born out of a completely new world. This is the French State that has just entered the 21st century, a country where stone monuments and natural landscapes are preserved and respected, but where many centuries of popular creation expressed in different tongues are on the brink of extinction. The "gloire" and the "grandeur" built on a genocide. No liberty, no equality, no fraternity: just cultural extermination, this is the real motto of the French Republic.

Jaume Corbera Pou, doctor in Catalan philology and professor at the University of the Balearic Islands

[useless-catalanfacts]

Experiences of Northern Catalans during “La Vergonha” (France’s policies of cultural and linguistic extermination)

The Great Linguistic Genocide of France is often referred to as “La Vergonha”, an Occitan word that means “The Shame”, because France’s objective was to make speakers so ashamed of themselves (or their parents) that they would completely distance themselves from their language and culture, and would put all their efforts in becoming French instead.

The French State used official exclusion, humiliation at school, rejection from the media, and sanctions in order to eliminate the local languages (Occitan, Breton, Basque, Catalan, Corsican, Alsatian, and the different langues d’oïl) and succeeded in making most of these languages be on the brink of extinction nowadays. The Vergonha is still a taboo topic and many French people deny it ever existed, while some people still call their non-French language patois (a despective word that means a mix of languages spoken by uneducated people) encouraged by the fact they were never taught how to write it and made to think only French exists in the written form.

In the school of Camélas in Northern Catalonia, a former pupil reports:

“Everyone but the teacher's children spoke Catalan among themselves. We'd even get punished for that, because at the time, we all had to speak French. Be Clean, Speak French could be found written on the school's walls. And if you refused to speak French, they'd give you some sort of wooden sign to wear until death came, as we said, which meant the last offender, in the evening, had twenty lines to copy. We'd speak French in the schoolyard, and for the first ten metres of the way back home, for as long as we thought the teacher would overhear us, and then we'd switch back to our own mother tongue, Catalan.

In those times, Catalan speakers were rather despised. My generation associated speaking Catalan with a disadvantage, with being less than the others, with running the risk of being left behind on the social ladder, in short with bringing trouble.”

Professor Jaume Corbera Pou adds the following about the French policies in the second half of the 20th century:

“When at the mid-19th century, primary school is made compulsory all across the State, it is also made clear that only French will be taught, and the teachers will severely punish any pupil speaking in patois. The aim of the French educational system will consequently not be to dignify the pupils' natural humanity, developing their culture and teaching them to write their language, but rather to humiliate them and morally degrade them for the simple fact of being what tradition and their nature made them. The self-proclaimed country of the "Human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation. And with that attitude France, the "grande France" that calls itself the champion of liberty, will pass the 20th century, indifferent to the timid protest movements of the various linguistic communities it submitted and the literary prestige they may have given birth to.

[...]

France, that under [fascist dictator of Spain] Franco's reign was seen here [in Spanish-occupied Catalonia] as the safe haven of freedom, has the miserable honour of being the [only] State of Europe—and probably the world — that succeeded best in the diabolical task of destroying its own ethnic and linguistic heritage and moreover, of destroying human family bonds: many parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren, have different languages, and the latter feel ashamed of the first because they speak a despicable patois, and no element of the grandparents' culture has been transmitted to the younger generation, as if they were born out of a completely new world. This is the French State that has just entered the 21st century, a country where stone monuments and natural landscapes are preserved and respected, but where many centuries of the people's creation expressed in different tongues are on the brink of extinction. The "gloire" and the "grandeur" built on a genocide. No liberty, no equality, no fraternity: just cultural extermination, this is the real motto of the French Republic.”

Source

[obscureoldscotspoems]

Excerpts from A Very Civil People: Hebridean Folk, History and Tradition (2000, John Lorne Campbell; Edited by Hugh Cheape) 

Father Allan McDonald’s Diary for March 1898

The diary was kept in Gaelic during this month. This is a translation by John Lorne Campbell and was published in Gaelic in Gairm (1952-3) 1-2.

March 1st (Tuesday) ... I have no reason to complain when I need not move from the fireside. It is the poor fishermen who are out on the bare back of the sea, wet and frozen, in this windy weather, with incessant sleet squalls and hail stone about their ears, who are to be pitied. If only they had a fair chance, but they are ill-met and ill-clothed in every way. After all it is little profit they make though the fish are plentiful around the coast. May God send them a sufficiency of it and may He preserve their lives to them.

 It is often said that the Gael lacks diligence. I would like to see the people who most frequently make this charge confined for a while to a sea island without any sustenance except what they could win by their own diligence from the sea in the kind of weather we have at present. I am very much afraid none of them would be alive to tell the tale within a week. Whatever is wrong with the Eriskay man, not even the person who dislikes him most can truthfully say that he lacks diligence.

...

 I read Gaelic every day. To tell the truth reading it on these gloomy days has been a third of my life -- but I must admit that I have written only a little of it for some time -- at any rate out of my own head. I daresay I was not diligent enough at carefully collecting and writing down every fragment of verse and poetry, anecdote or story I heard, in the books in which I kept everything of that kind, but it is a year, or two, or three, or four perhaps since I tried to compose even a single verse of a hymn in Gaelic. No wonder it is pretty rusty for that. But how I envy the people who can speak fluent well-pronounced Gaelic, as fluently and sweetly as the lark (druideag) singing, and as sweet  as the honey which the buzzing bee sucks from the flower blossoms (didhean : yellow flower) in autumn! It can’t be helped. In spite of diligence, practice in youth is better. That is where I lost -- brought up in a village half Lowland and half Highland (Fort William / An Gearasdan) without as much as even the Paternoster, let alone any schooling in Gaelic, but shut up from dawn till dusk in an English-language school -- in a Latin and Greek school if you like -- while the language which was most expressive and most natural to us was forbidden. The effect of that is there -- the twist English put in my mouth then is still there and will remain. In consequence of it I will never have been completely at ease in Gaelic, and though I hate it with heart and with spleen, my Gaelic will always have the harsh stammering unpleasant accent of the English speaker which a tongue-tied, stiff-worded English education has left in my head.