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The last Romans are still around

signoregalilei.com

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Re: The last Romans are still around

#221

Post by 8note »

trashb wrote: post #135
parineum wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate. Ethnicity is entirely arbitrary, that's why it should be avoided. For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Ehy aren't they Asians or even Africans? There is cu…

You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate. I take language and debate serious. For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Why aren't they Asians or even Africans? Yes I have arbitrarily decided, based on…

you havent stated it directly, but you are asserting that "ethnicity" is equivalent to "a set of humans with a membership rule" with the most important part being legibility

and that you can create subsets and most importantly, union any two ethnicities together to get a subset.

ethnicity does not have that latter property though, so starting from the largest group and subdividing does not work.

"the americas is really big" is actually describing "there are many ethnicities in the americas that cannot be unioned together"

the union rule for ethnicities is that you can union two ethnicities and get an ethnicity only if there's significant overlap in genetics, language, culture, traditions, geography, etc.

there arbitrariness in setting that line, but its not approximately zero, as you've been suggesting, and we can tease that out with sniff tests. You maybe just dont know much about native americans, but you'd never put inuit and maya in the same ethnicity.

seriousness in debate and language would be to take curiosity in why the critiques think that size does matter, rather than asserting that it doesnt.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#222

Post by empath75 »

pjio wrote: post #204
empath75 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Holy Roman Empire considered itself a successor to the Roman Empire, so in this case, it is an exact translation.

It's true that the "Heiliges Römisches Reich" (literal translation "Holy Roman Realm") considered itself the successor of the Roman Republic. The English referred to the Roman Republic by what it was in the modern sense: an empire. Therefore its self-proclaimed successor got translated as "Holy Roman Empire", which, unlike the original, it is not.

Almost every single statement in this sentence was wrong. It was founded as the Sacrum Imperium -- literally the Holy Empire. "Heiliges Römisches Reich" was a later German translation of the Latin term for it. Charlemagne explicitly had himself crowned as the emperor. It was never in any sense a republic and it never pretended to be.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#223

Post by onraglanroad »

pjio wrote: post #204
empath75 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Holy Roman Empire considered itself a successor to the Roman Empire, so in this case, it is an exact translation.

It's true that the "Heiliges Römisches Reich" (literal translation "Holy Roman Realm") considered itself the successor of the Roman Republic. The English referred to the Roman Republic by what it was in the modern sense: an empire. Therefore its self-proclaimed successor got translated as "Holy Roman Empire", which, unlike the original, it is not.

It's a little odd to blame this on the English translation since Voltaire was, naturally, writing in French:

"Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire."

Re: The last Romans are still around

#224

Post by frollogaston »

benj111 wrote: post #132
frollogaston wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though

Ok. So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person? Surely 'ethnic americans' are Native North Americans? This is the thing. Ethnicity gets wrapped up in a value judgement. We don't want to talk about ethnic Americans, but are willing to talk about ethnic Britons. Which then implies some rights those ethnic groups should have. But I would dare say the majority of 'ethnic Britons' wouldn't ident…

> Ok. So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person?

Yes

> Surely 'ethnic americans' are Native North Americans?

Yeah but they're normally called Native Americans

Re: The last Romans are still around

#225

Post by mrguyorama »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have a civilized prison system with human conditions, instead of an medieval revenge, profiteering, racism and exclusion, a prison-labor complex, and the death penalty - all created, ran, and cheered by bigoted Old Testament-types of human scum. Especially if I get far far worse crime outcomes than countries with much healthier prison systems. But, hey, that's just me.

I'd be content with a prison system that keeps the criminals away from victimizing more people.

So look at the US recidivism rate and understand that our mostly suffering inducing system does not do that

Re: The last Romans are still around

#226

Post by dormento »

rich_sasha wrote: post #73
4rtem wrote: post #33

I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta. Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russ…

Only loosely related, but on the topic of deep historical namings: Mayonnaise comes from, and derives its name, from Mahon on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic islands. That in turn is named after Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal Barca, "the" Hannibal who almost destroyed Rome. Mago was also a Carthaginian general, fighting alongside Hannibal. So whenever you dip your french fries in mayo, you are celebrating the ep…

Allow me to recommend the AMAZING "Tasting History" YT channel, by Max Miller. He does history research into many different periods so he can cook the most authentic dishes, and has done a bunch of episodes on Greek and Roman culture.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#227

Post by frollogaston »

trashb wrote: post #110
frollogaston wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though

Ethnicity is hard to define and a term that spurs a lot of debate. Therefore I think it is best avoided in serious discussion. For America (and in extension the american continent) it is quite clear who is ethnically native, actually it is probably one of the clearest examples there is partly because it is near in history. And already it gets messy when you dig deeper because of limited record keeping etc. Broadly in…

1700ad is a good cutoff for the modern definition of Britain, which is when the island was unified under a single government. Norman Conquest was pretty transformative I heard, and by then the conquerors had already been assimilated, but idk how much that really matters since William wasn't like Tamerlane.

Caesar saw Europe differently back then but surprisingly not that different by geography, "omnia Gallia" divided by rivers plus Germany, Britain, and Spain. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT-R1QU...

Re: The last Romans are still around

#228

Post by frollogaston »

throw4847285 wrote: post #168
frollogaston wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're always British in film for some reason

Not in the underrated movie The Eagle! In that one, the soldier from the world's dominant global empire has an American accent, and the actual Briton slave has a British accent.

I should watch that one. Not that surprising since it's a British film. There's also Waterloo which cast English as English, Scottish as Scottish, French as American, and German as idk foreign, plus tons of extras either yelling in French or saying nothing in Russian.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#229

Post by ericmay »

carlosjobim wrote: post #211
ericmay wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re following this line of reasoning then even the “native” Americans aren’t actually native because they migrated here too. Further, the concept of “America” referring to what is geographically the United States today isn’t a concept that was held be tribal peoples. It wouldn’t have ever made sense to describe them in this context as the original Americans because they never held such a concept themselves. Als…

America is a real physical landmass. Two actually. "American" is to be understood as those ethnicities from that physical and very much existing landmass. Whether they called it America or not, which they of course didn't. The same thing for discussing Australian native ethnicities for example. Otherwise we have to argue that dinosaurs didn't exist, because they had never heard about Pangea. > Also, tribal peoples, w…

> America is a real physical landmass. Two actually.

America refers to the United States of America in virtually all context in the everyday English speaking world.

> "American" is to be understood as those ethnicities from that physical and very much existing landmass. Whether they called it America or not, which they of course didn't. The same thing for discussing Australian native ethnicities for example.

Let’s put it another way…

The people who live here now are the natives over the long arc of history. You’re only focusing on a small sliver of time in a very constrained historical environment.

If you say the native Americans as they are called are the only “real” natives so to speak you have to apply that standard everywhere. And if you think that the disruption of native lands in the past was bad, you’d also have to believe that continuing to bring more people to America is also bad, ergo immigration to the Americas is immoral.

> And just like a foreigner cannot belong to any ethnicity or nation just because she has citizenship today, neither could they in Roman times.

This is untrue in the western world, specifically the Anglo-American world. It’s difficult for most of the world to understand our societies and I think this is a good example of how things get confused. I can’t, as a white American, become “Chinese”. But a Chinese man or woman can certainly become an American and belong to our nation. There is no question about that.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#230

Post by throw4847285 »

frollogaston wrote: post #228
throw4847285 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the underrated movie The Eagle! In that one, the soldier from the world's dominant global empire has an American accent, and the actual Briton slave has a British accent.

I should watch that one. Not that surprising since it's a British film. There's also Waterloo which cast English as English, Scottish as Scottish, French as American, and German as idk foreign, plus tons of extras either yelling in French or saying nothing in Russian.

And of course there's Death of Stalin where everybody just uses either their own accent or they're Jason Isaacs who went for over the top Yorkshire.

I love creative accent work in movies. I recently watched Pride and Prejudice, and Donald Sutherland clearly isn't doing an English accent but it works somehow.

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