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The only tourist in Moldova

telegraph.co.uk

391–400 of 427 posts

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#391
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Hearing Ukrainian for the first time, if you're Russian, sounds like you're hearing a Russian dialect you never heard before but understand 90% of, bar some words you've never heard. The languages are that close. Polish, otoh, would baffle a Russian at first, you'd grasp quite a bit but you know you're hearing a foreign language, Slavic but foreign.

There is a bigger lexical distance between UA and RU than between UA and PL: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/a-map-of-lexical-distances...

Nifty diagrams, but they should be taken with a huge grain of salt of course.

For example it shows EN/DE and EN/NO as having equivalent distances (49) when obviously EN/DE are much closer than either is to NO (in any holistic comparison of the three languages). It also shows IT/FR as being significantly closer (31) than IT/SP (40) when that's also plainly not the case -- again if we consider the distance between respective language pairs holistically (which includes a whole lot of other factors like phonemic footprint, meter, etc).

In short this reads like pretty much the kind of post one would expect from a "brain candy" site like this.

Less harshly (assuming good indent on the author's part), it demonstrates the pitfalls of relying on a single score (which in itself can be subject to all kinds of weighting and sampling biases) simply because it's a "score" and we're all supposed to be "data-driven" in our analyses these days.

But again -- nifty diagrams, and they do at least give a feel for the topic of mutual intelligibility and language distance (even if the scores themselves don't seem to be particularly meaningful).

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#393
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is. It clearly isn't, because so far you've moved the goalposts of colonization several times, including claiming that it couldn't have happened because Soviet authorities said it didn't. But, sure, what's another goalpopst: sure I can, and you don't have to take my word for it, it's literally the Soviet state apparatus that admitted to it. Law N 1107-I of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the…

"The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines." That was rich. Ok, so what was that "theory of political superiority" and how, as you allege, it was applied to Kalmyks? Anyway, the conversation seem to have drifted quite a lot from the topic of 'colonization' of Moldo…

Yes, the population of Moldova was enslaved, put into reservations or exploited. About 90,000 people were arrested, executed, deported, or placed under forced labour conscription during the first year of Soviet occupation alone. About 30,000 of these were forcefully interned in June 1941 alone, and forcefully relocated either to labour camps or to controlled settlements which they were not allowed to leave.

This is ridiculous. You're insisting that the Soviet Union can't have pursued colonization because it used different names for its colonialist policies and justified them by different idelogical means than its Western counterparts. If calling them by a different name helps you reconcile the cognitive disonance of your beliefs, that's fine, but you don't need my help for that, you can keep referring to these policies by whatever name you please. Have fun!

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#394
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is. It clearly isn't, because so far you've moved the goalposts of colonization several times, including claiming that it couldn't have happened because Soviet authorities said it didn't. But, sure, what's another goalpopst: sure I can, and you don't have to take my word for it, it's literally the Soviet state apparatus that admitted to it. Law N 1107-I of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the…

"The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines." That was rich. Ok, so what was that "theory of political superiority" and how, as you allege, it was applied to Kalmyks? Anyway, the conversation seem to have drifted quite a lot from the topic of 'colonization' of Moldo…

Wasn't its industry developed?

The exact same justification/apology used by every colonizing power ever (including the U.S. and all the European powers), of course.

Welcome to the club.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are often described as vodkas in practice, even if they technically aren't. Applies to other eastern Europe products too. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B3dka_%C5%BBo%C5%82%C4%85... is fruit/herb based, but is commonly known as vodka and even was labelled as such.

Rakı is deceptively strong, especially the Cretan version, from which I am proud to have recovered.

The Creatan stuff is raki, not rakı. Both the pronunciation (ı is 'uh') and beverage are different. Rakı is the basically the same drink as ouzo or pastis. Raki is the same as grappa.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines." That was rich. Ok, so what was that "theory of political superiority" and how, as you allege, it was applied to Kalmyks? Anyway, the conversation seem to have drifted quite a lot from the topic of 'colonization' of Moldo…

Wasn't its industry developed? The exact same justification/apology used by every colonizing power ever (including the U.S. and all the European powers), of course. Welcome to the club.

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Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#397
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines." That was rich. Ok, so what was that "theory of political superiority" and how, as you allege, it was applied to Kalmyks? Anyway, the conversation seem to have drifted quite a lot from the topic of 'colonization' of Moldo…

Yes, the population of Moldova was enslaved, put into reservations or exploited. About 90,000 people were arrested, executed, deported, or placed under forced labour conscription during the first year of Soviet occupation alone. About 30,000 of these were forcefully interned in June 1941 alone, and forcefully relocated either to labour camps or to controlled settlements which they were not allowed to leave. This is r…

[flagged]

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they keep water hot in select cities, and the rest is Mukhosransk territory that doesn't matter. You could be from Moscow with that logic! Respectfully you have no idea, planned hot water downtime in summer is reality for most cities in Russia (including SPb with official maximum length of two weeks), don't try to paint it look better than the mess it is. Other post-Soviet countries probably do better, especial…

have you read the original post? > Old Soviet style communities get hot water from central plants, mainly used for heating but also for showers, so when winter is over, they shutdown the heating plants for the season and no hot water at all Because if you reread it, you'll get the ridiculousness of that claim. So what you saying that situation in ex-USSR is such that there is only hot water during the winter. This is…

You said

> It is so incorrect, it is boderline idiotic urban legend. post-Soviet cities have hot water year around.

Probably every city in Russia most certainly don't have water "all year around", and never have going back into USSR times.

How the plants work exactly I have nothing to say, but if there is an urban legend perpetuated here then I'll tell it which it is: it's how good soviet and Russian infrastructure is.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if USSR and China are vast territories and experience might vary.

Exactly my point.

Your point was "post-Soviet cities have hot water year around", and your point was wrong.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a "liberator" according to him pretty sure that's the current propaganda line

I don't care about governments, I born and living here. Those who don't like that can go fck themselves.

That's why your pointing guns at your neighbors... cause you were born "there" but don't like people "over there" and you think you should take their place?
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