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Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

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Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#41

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

azernik wrote: post #8

Somehow this article managed to discuss the status of a post-Holocaust European Jewish community without once mentioning Israel - where the largest community of Ladino speakers live, and where public radio has regular broadcasts in Ladino. If Sephardi Jews who take up the Spanish Law of Return don't seem attached to Ladino, it's because they're a self-selected group who have decided not to take up the more famous Law…

While there is a bit of Ladino media in Israel, overall among the Ladino community immigration to Israel has been seen as the death of the language, because there is pressure there to assimilate to the Hebrew mainstream. (This is analogous to the death of Yiddish in many contexts that it had prewar, because all those Yiddish speakers switched to Hebrew after migrating to Israel, except for the Haredim who do not use Yiddish outside their own narrow contexts.)

Because Ladino speakers remain an Other in the European diaspora and can therefore draw on more minority-language support, etc., they have a way to maintain their identity that they would not have if they made aliyah.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#42

Post by iguy »

vinceguidry wrote: post #40
OnlineCourage wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The late 1400s was very far away from Nationalism. You are thinking of the early 1800s. The first truly Nationalist state was France under Napolean or some would say the USA, but even earlier USA barely held itself together for the first 20 years.

No, he's onto something. Don't let popular understanding and terminology blind you, what we're looking at here is the shift from war as the primary driver of polity creation to what we now call popular sovereignty. This shift would have taken hundreds of years and Christianity would have been a huge driver. Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the…

Philip Bobbitt would argue that it was in large part different kinds of wars.

The classic 20th C nation-state went hand-in-hand with 20th-C warfare: it needed both massive industry, and every single man. The Ottomans and other relics of earlier times fell apart under the stress of such wars; the states that survived were those with a strong identity. Such identities were partly fostered for this very purpose.

But we seem to have moved on from this, war is again a profession of a few (plus high-tech weapons), conscripting the millions would be of no use. And in parallel our ties to nations are weaker than before, both whether we'd fight for the flag & conversely whether the country is interested in safety nets etc. Our economy is also much less nation-based: GM in its heyday was quite unlike Apple. He calls this emerging form a "market state".

Earlier forms also fought very different wars, he argues that Westphalia (and Waterloo) were among a series of such transitions, each entailing changes to what states are legitimate, and what kind of wars they fight.

Anyway if this sounds interesting then his book "The Shield of Achilles" is cautiously recommended. Someone really needs to write a condensed version... but if you're willing to skip a bit, the ideas are great.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#43

Post by uluyol »

emanreus wrote: post #39
netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?

You are speaking as though the improvements in life expectancy today require the loss of ethnic diversity which just plain isn't true. I doubt anyone would really want to live in the past, but that doesn't mean that everything we have today is strictly better.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#44

Post by netcan »

tronko wrote: post #30
netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

Muslim Spain was not a peaceful place of convivence. Numerous pogroms and killings happend during that time, e.g. the Granada Massacre of 1066 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre The contribution of Arabs to Spanish culture is enormous but that doesn't hide that in medieval times, almost everybody (including them) had barbaric customs.

I never said it was. Neither was the ottoman empire. Both also made formal distinctions between people based on religion. European empires weren't equal or peaceful either.

What I did say was that they were multi-ethnic. Even with all the pogroms, jizra and other forms of discrimination, numerous minorities existed. Empires were multi ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and such.

When those empires gave way to modern nation states (or earlier precusurs, like Spain and Portugal), multiculturalism died. This is the story of the 20th century.

The process is still ongoing, particularly in ex-ottoman states..

There are arguably good and bad things about empires. Multiculturalism^ is a trait of empires. Groups like the spharadim, small communities with their own customs, beliefs and language, exist because empires existed.

Btw... this is not new. King Cyrus, Alexander & Genghis Khan's Empires are notably remembered for their multiculturalism.

^Real multiculturalism. I don't hate melting pot migration, but I don't count it as multiculturalism.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#45

Post by irrational »

emanreus wrote: post #39
netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?

Especially when one empire replaces another. Just look at the history of the Near East. The Akkadian empire replaced by the Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Babylonian empire, replaced by the Persian empire, replaced by the Greek "empire", replaced by the Roman empire, replaced by the Palmyrene empire, eventually replaced by the Ottoman empire. Each replacement was of course violent and caused massive societal upheavals.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#46

Post by empath75 »

emanreus wrote: post #39
netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?

Nations as a concept didn't exist when those empires were founded. And it's really a trade off. Within the boundaries of the empire you had peace and prosperity. It was on the frontiers that people suffered.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#47

Post by marcospri »

azernik wrote: post #32
pseingatl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that prior to 1492, there was no language known as "ladino." It was simply Spanish, and the Jews who were exiled continued to preserve the language. Does the community auto-identify with the term "ladino"? Or was this term imposed after the exile?

More accurate to say that at the time, there was no language known as "Spanish" - there were speakers of Latin dialects (including what became Spanish and Portuguese and Galician and Catalan &c.), speakers of Arabic, and speakers of Basque.

We are talking about 1492 here, there was already a established Spanish language

That same year this was written:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram%C3%A1tica_de_la_lengua_ca...

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#48

Post by netcan »

emanreus wrote: post #39
netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?

Consider this (sort of paraphrasing Yuval Noah Harari).

Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These are metaphors.

People are subjigated, not nations. They can be equally subjugated by empires or nations, whichever happens to be in charge.

Wherever you happen to live, it's probably a nation state.

There were good and bad things about both. Im not suggesting a return to empires. I am just encouraging people to notice that nationalism and nation states is not The Natural And Eternal Way Of Things. It's a template we squeezed the entire world into over the last 100 years.

One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody. Europe needed genocide (eg Jews), mass forced migrations (eg Germany) and forced cultural conversions (eg Netherlands, Belgium..) before they arrived at ethnically homogeneous parcels of land.

Turkey did this too. Genocide for Armenians, forced migration for Greeks, cultural conversions therapy for Kurds and arabs.

Syria & Iraq are dividing into ethnicly homogeneous regions. If your ethnicity (eg yazidi, Greek, aramean..) Is too small for an enclave, you are probably leaving the region or converting.

The ladino speakers of Bosnia are a remnant of the multicultural legacy of the ottoman empire.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#49

Post by grangerize »

netcan wrote: post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

Just to add to this, actually Ottoman Empire's parliament had more representation for minorities than the current parliament of Turkey which is a funny fact. Despite this, conditions were already bad for minorities as you mentioned. Look at the Turkish Parliament now, Kurdish representation is constantly being oppressed, there is almost no representation for other minorities such as Christians, Armenians.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#50

Post by simias »

mns wrote: post #38
harperlee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mancare in Italian is to miss/need/be lacking, and although mancar in modern Portuguese is to limp French also uses “manquer”, and there are traces in spanish (such as a manco being a person that lacks an arm).

In romanian, a more isolated romance language, "mancare" means food and "a manca" is to eat.

Well "manger" is "to eat" in French and "mangiare" in Italian which apparently both come from latin "manducare" so maybe the Romanian word comes from here?

Meanwhile French "manquer" and Italian "mancare" seem to come "From Latin mancus, from Proto-Indo-European *man-ko- (“maimed in the hand”)."

Actually we still have "manchot" in modern French to mean one-armed which I always assumed came from "manche" (sleeve) but seems to actually have a different etymology.

That's all sourced from the wiktionary by the way.

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