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April 28, 2006
The Poor Letters
The poor letter! No, I don't mean the epistels sent by the needy, I mean the miserable sounds and signs. These few signs that are supposed to represent sounds, but they seem to be completely ignored. I have been hired as their attorney here, and on behalf of Mr. T., Ms. R, and Dr. U, I wish to call some people to the stand.
First, Mr. John Doe, from Long Island. If I may ask you, sir, to pronounce source report for me...
Mr. Doe: ehem... soace repoat...
Lawyer: your honor, as you can see, Mr. Doe here just committed two cases of manslaughter in front of the jury. Ms. R and her younger sister, Ms. Pre-Stop R. were just bruttally massacred. Now, if I may ask Ms. Jane Doe from Los Angeles to step to the witness stand...thank you madam. Would you please say the number twenty and the word letter for us...
Ms. Doe: tue-ni...ledre
Lawyer: again, your honor, you see that the poor Mr. T was killed once and in another instance, was reduced to a voiced dental stop, to say nothing of the mysterious disappearance of little baby e in the word letter. Now, for the last demonstration, can I ask Prof. Romanicarum to pronounce the name of Emperor Decius for us?
Prof. Romanicarum: Emperor Dee-shes.
Lawyer: Your honor, I rest my case! Not only was the poor Dr. U. cut down to an unimportant frontal weak vowel, but the old and glorius Mr. C., the prominent hard C of the old, was reduced to a miserable and awful sounding palatal sibilant. How, pray tell, does this happen? O gods of Cicero (pronounced Kikero) and Antoninus Pious (pronounced Anto-neen-us Pee-yus), bestow upon thine poor creatures the power of distinguishing the difference between sounds and give them the gift of pronunciation. In the name of the word, the letter, and the accursed elocution.
Posted by Khodadad at 02:09 PM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2006
Aymi-aynes
I have no idea why the English speakers, even the highly educated ones (in this case even the professors) tend to completely mispronounce names. If your lay-person pronounced Lucius like looshes, why does a professor of Roman history do that? Why is Ammianus Marcellinus pronounces aymi-aynes maar-si-laay-nes? What is the problem with Constantius and why are we insisting of saying it like Kons-tan-ches?
From now on, I will say GAIUS IULIUS KAESAR!
Posted by Khodadad at 04:42 PM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2006
Anti...
There is a controversy brewing in the blog world which is not very pretty, and since conservative blogs seem to outnumber liberal ones by the rate of ten to one, the thing seems to be taking off well. I am not sure whose strategy it is, but it is a great way by the Free World to achieve what Islamic Republic could not: to shut-up the bloggers. Basically, some of my more influential blogger friends have been accused by a minimally informed person of being spies for the Islamic Republic, just because they are not pro-American (or Canadian) and they don't flip burgers (read Work) for a living. I am not going to provide links so not to spread the whole nonsense.
But this is interesting, since it is often assumed that if you are not pro-something, it means you are anti-that thing. If you are critical of the Iraq war, means you are not supporting the soldiers. If you are critical of the short-comings of the US government, means you are anti-American. If you think Blair is an idiot, it means you are anti-Labour. Of couse, the accusation of being anti-semitic if you are critical of Israel seems to be the oldest one of these. A known, non-Middle Eastern, professor of Near Eastern History once was accused of being anti-Semitic since in an article, he mentioned the presence of a pro-Likud faction among the lobby groups in Washington D.C.! The first occurance of equating a political party with a whole nation, ethnicity, culture, and religion that I know of!
About 80 years ago, we had a populat, and populist, politician in Iran, called Modarres, who was known for being independent and rather boarishly hard-headed. There is a story that once the Russian Ambassador told an Iranian politician that he thinks Modarres is an Anglophile! The Iranian politician answered with amazement that Modarres is known for being independent, and furthermore, he is famous for his anti-British speeches, so the accusation is unfonded and unusual. The Russian Ambassador answered: I don't care. For me, whoever is not a Russophile has to be an Anglophile!
The same logic, and lack of logic, seems to go here. If you are not on anyone's side, each side takes you to be a partisan of the other. If you are not a "patriotic", flag waving American, then you are a spy for Iran, and if you are not pro-Islamic Republic, then you must be a Western-smitten American spy.
I am moving to the moon.
Posted by Khodadad at 09:15 PM | Comments (2)
April 16, 2006
Makes you think...
When I am home, I keep on checking my email and wasting my time on the computer, so on the weekends, I usually take refuge in the local cofe here and read under the LA sun (which has been rather mean lately).
Today, I went out and sat outside in the local Starbucks and started reading. About 15 minutes later, this elderly couple showed up and sat at the table next to me. They were speaking Persian, so I could not help myself and heard all of their conversation. The man, about 60-70, started, like all Iranian, to speak about politics, and about Israel-Palestine for that matter. The wife just listened, and so did I, although he didn't know!
He was militantly on the Israeli side. He kept on telling his wife that Israel should stop acting like a "pacific Jew" and use its power to end the conflict once and for all (nothing wrong with that), but the suggestion was a bit surprising. He said "why don't they just drop about 1000 tons of bombs on their heads and just be done with them? Or they are about two million of them, right? So, just surround them with a wall and starve them to death, those pests! Who cares what the rest of the world will say, they are just two million of them, or maybe less. They keep on causing problems for our people, and even now that Israel has a government of its own and Jews have power, we still refuse to use it. A few insects here and there, just crush them! If they were worth a human life, they would know better and leave and go to an Arab country and live in one of those pig slums. They are not human and they should just die, and then we will solve the 'Palestine problem' forever".
The whole thing has an uncomfortable ring of a sort that one does not expect the victims of a genocide to utter. Isn't this odd?
Posted by Khodadad at 04:58 PM | Comments (3)
April 14, 2006
I wonder...
I am quite convinced that soon enough, the vocabulary of the historians is going to become limited to "I wonder..." and "..., so I guess my question is...", or at least Historians' English is going to develop this syntactical feature and it becomes prominent to start all sentences with them. It will be sort of like Ancient Greek were almost without a fail, as ge or de was inserted as the second element of the sentence, without any reason or point whatsoever.
I think the fact that most of the modern study of history is either revisionism or a type of micro-history trying to eventually challenge the long-held beliefs, has led historians to lack a lot of self-confidence. Nothing is certain for them anymore. If you believed that Louis XIV was the poster-boy of absolutism or that the Yongle Emperor was an idiot for stopping Zheng He's maritime expeditions, now you have to give up and re-learn that Louis was actually much bound by the executive power of local institutions and that Yongle was doing the right thing. So, you cannot decide on what you should think or what you should say.
As a result, at a talk or any sort of conference, the format for asking questions is that you give a bit of a half-chewed, not-at-all-sure-of-this reason for why they are asking their questions, and then you say "...so I wonder..." or "...so I guess my question is..." and then ask a lame question. I have now switched to guessing at what point in their "questions" my fellow historians will include this injection. Some are in a hurry and do it fast, and some give a speach before getting to the point. It is a cool game, it takes away the boredom of being at yet another talk about the "ideas of space and place in Byzantine hagiography" or "image and self-concious in Civil War America" or "Jews and economy during the Third Reich".
Poof!
P.S.: For no reason at all, I created another blog on the blogspot, a place to write short, quotation like entries. Visit my Short Attention Wisdom...
Posted by Khodadad at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
Papar in English
My very good friend Parastoo, who is rather well-known in the Iranian blogosphere, has recently gathered up the courage to start an English blog. She is taking some baby steps, but she has a brilliant mind and I know before you know it, she will manage to make it a very interesting blog. Check her out...
Posted by Khodadad at 08:01 AM | Comments (2)