I'm puzzled by this. I'm not good at languages, relative to my other skills, but switching alphabets - Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian... is trivial.
It's not onerous, no, but it is a factor on at least two levels in my experience.
First off, it can create some noise when particular letters look similar to letters in the other language that are not phonetically equivalent, and that usually triggers a bit of recursion in the reading process. It's not a lot of load on the system, but it is processing power that is not being used to make sense of the meaning. Writing English using the Greek alphabet barely affects reading comprehension when deciphering the message when one is fluent in English. Combine a lack of fluency with the need to decipher and the effects compound.
Second of all, it messes with the pattern recognition that one relies upon when skimming a text. When I'm reading Swedish or Spanish, I can skim the text fairly easily and a lot of the language has enough root-equivalency to make those reading skills transfer. That sort of whole-word pattern recognition doesn't fire the same way when I am faced with another alphabet.
All of these things mess with your language in the same way that when a student is asked to write about an unfamiliar topic with its own technical vocabulary, they often end up writing language that has a greater number of grammar and spelling errors than when they are writing about familiar topics. The familiar has a much simplified processing economy.
And again, with functional and transactional language, these difficulties are much less pronounced than when dealing with more complex and nuanced subjects.
At least that is my experience, and it seems to match with my observations of how my non-native student writers interact with texts. Actual linguists would likely have a lot to say about the places where I'm wallpapering over some complex topics, or missing the boat entirely.
In Latin one has to invent new words for concepts Cicero&Co. did not yet possess and would probably not understand. Greek (unlike classical Latin) allows composite words that can transport about any meaning with little to no loss.
No offense, but I wonder if being a native speaker of German might be coloring your view here. Composite words being one of the most noticable things (after gendered nouns) for English speakers when learning it.
I admit that I don't have a wide enough base to know how common composite words are in languages generally.
...the alphabet contributes somewhat to that difficulty...
I'm puzzled by this. I'm not good at languages, relative to my other skills, but switching alphabets - Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian... is trivial.
(I struggle with Hebrew, where some of the letters are just too alike.)
India, with its huge population, already uses it because its people speak 5 mutually unintelligible native languages
Off the top of my head, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu. There are many others.
It occurs to me that a lot of education should be guiding people to what they are good at. I always thought I was good at languages, but I realize that I am really good at the languages that are in roman letters. Had I known, I might have opted for vietnamese instead of thai, or even earlier, dove into chinese first (I have several english native friends who have fluency in Japanese and Chinese and all of them did Chinese first and I don’t know anyone who went the opposite way).
Ancient Greek is far more versatile than Latin but also quite a bit more difficult. I never really got the hang of it (in 3.5 years at school compared to 9 years of Latin).
I think there is little to-day that could not be directly translated into ancient Greek while Latin would require massive reformulation to do the same and much would get lost doing it. In Latin one has to invent new words for concepts Cicero&Co. did not yet possess and would probably not understand. Greek (unlike classical Latin) allows composite words that can transport about any meaning with little to no loss. Latin is the hammer of a blacksmith, ancient Greek is a jeweller's toolset.
Instant translation is fine for functional and transactional language, but it hits its limits pretty quickly as language complexity increases and becomes problematic for understanding as soon as there is an intertextual element at work. I see this a lot with my international students when they are working their way through English texts with the help of translation software. They miss a lot of the features that the authors are using to communicate - parallelisms, homophones, puns, etc.
To be fair, a lot of my native language domestic students miss those things too, but the international students have the reading skills to catch those elements in their own languages, and would notice those things if they were actually working with the original text.
One thing I can add that speaks to lj's first point. Language-wise I've studied Spanish, French, Swedish, and Ancient Greek. I can muddle through in Spanish, and would probably be able to attain fluency in any of the first three in a few months with immersion. Greek, however, never sticks particularly well, and the alphabet contributes somewhat to that difficulty. It's one more unfamiliar element (deciphering) that takes up processing power that would otherwise be used for linguistic sense-making.
Why learn, if there is an instant translator?
I don't see that happening in complex, real-life contexts. It's hard enough to make sense of people in one's native language sometimes, lol.
In case anyone is interested in the subject (and in lieu of fraught AI summaries): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca
It's entirely possible that English will become the lingua franca for international communications, but if it does, I'd expect, like Hartmut, that it continues to shed irregular constructions and colloquialisms and that native dialects will be treated as quaint variants with charming local color. I also predict that both Americans and Brits will complain bitterly that ELF is "not proper English" when that happens, and resent any standard that treats ELF as the paradigm.
Or kill it altogether. Why learn, if there is an instant translator? If everyone has a babelfish in his or her ear, the need disappears (at least for the lazy majority).
English is a good candidate for being easy to get at least sufficient proficiency (Ironically one theory is that this is the result of Old Norse mugging Old English killing declension in the process).
(Proper) Latin is far too cumbersome in some aspects.
Latin supplanted and replaced numerous languages but during the Middle Ages the unity disappeared and Latin turned (degraded?) into numerous new languages as far as common use was concerned.
I consider it likely that over time English will get rid (or ridden) of its 'gothi' problem and some other irregularities will get filed off too by international use and become at least the second language for a majority in the world (provided our world and/or civilisation does not perish before that).
I don't think subjugated peoples or immigrants are relevant examples. You are talking about e.g. the French not speaking French anymore - that's never going to happen because language is so closely tied to indentity and culture, but also practically speaking you would have to change all the laws etc.
More generally, you would have to imagine (non-immigrant) parents speaking to their babies in a language other than their mother tongue. Unless we are a talking about an actual genocide, I don't think that's going to happen either.
Finally, people routinely overestimate the quantity and quality of proficiency in English in other countries. This is understandable because usually those making such assumptions tend to interact only with a highly educated subset of the population of those countries, thus skewing the picture.
Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that the use of national languages in the native countries will disappear or be reduced? I don't think that would be realistic.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Not that it will necessarily be quick. But it will happen.
See, for example, the various Native American / First Nations languages. They haven't, quite, died out and there are various efforts to save one or another of them. But the reality is that native speakers are overwhelmingly old. Children may retain some fluency, in order to speak to their grandparents. But for everyday use, they speak English. And the children's children will be straight Anglophones.
We see the same phenomena in immigrants. My wife's immigrant grandparents were functional in English, but spoke Japanese with family and friends. Her parents were fluent in Japanese (from talking to parents and aunts and uncles when growing up), but generally spoke English except when talking to the older generation. My wife and her siblings? Even having lost virtually all of the Japanese I studied in college, I still speak more than they do.**
Granted, there is more inertia when it comes to languages with a big population base. So it will take longer. But modern communications mean that the next generation will be exposed to English far beyond the classroom. And anyone who interacts with the outside world, from academics to taxi drivers, will need to use it routinely. Already do, actually.
** When my wife and I first got together, we made occasional trips half the length of California to see her family. About the third trip, I got taken off to see Grandma. My future mother-in-law gave Grandma an explanation of who was this blue eyed blond, then introduced us. I remembered enough to say Hajimemashte. Grandma just lit up; from that moment, as far as she was concerned, I was in.
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language.
More than 30 years ago now, I spent some time working with an engineering team at Ericsson, the Swedish telecom company. Ericsson's internal organization at the time had hardware being done in Sweden, operating system being done in the UK, and application software being done in Spain. By decree, the official technical language inside the company was English.
The official rules for international fencing are written in French. This leads to occasional interesting difficulties. Epee rules intentionally allow some amount of incidental body-to-body contact, but not too much. There was a great deal of debate at the FIE over how to translate the French phrase for what was not allowed to English. They finally settled on "excessive jostling".
Re: changing systems of roman-alphabet spellings in japanese: it would be good to get Hartmut's input, since (IIRC) there was a systematic change in "official" German spelling ten? twenty? years ago.
Re: English taking over the world. There's a saying that "English is the Lingua Franca of Science".
Which I find amusing because "Lingua Franca" literally means "French", but (IIRC) is in Latin.
So there's three of the contenders for 'language to take over everything' right there in one sentence.
Why, yes, I *am* easily amused, why do you ask?
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language. There will no doubt be long and bitter fights to preserve the national language. But they will, in eventual history, be seen as futile fighting tetreats.
Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that the use of national languages in the native countries will disappear or be reduced? I don't think that would be realistic.
I am involved in an international organization (ICANN, if you care). I have a nagging (unspoken) embarrassment because everybody speaks English. Most of them barely distinguishable from native speakers.** Partly that turns out to because they did college or grad school in the US, or perhaps the UK or Australia.
But there I am, speaking only English. The German I learned in high school is mostly gone. The Japanese I studied in grad school is also gone. And, of course, because I grew up in California I know a few bits and pieces of Spanish. (Actually, taking a few Spanish classes is on my Really Need To Get Around To This list.) For the moment, I try to at least learn how to say thank you in the language of wherever we are meeting.
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language. There will no doubt be long and bitter fights to preserve the national language. But they will, in eventual history, be seen as futile fighting tetreats.
These days, the world requires a common language to function. One will come: the only question is which one it will be. The Chinese will argue, as their economic power increases, for Chinese (Mandarin), but a tonal language is simply too difficult for anyone not raised in one. Spanish might be a viable option, but it lacks a serious economic power to push it. French might have a chance, except that its spelling is nothing approaching phonetic, which makes it hard to learn.
English, thanks to British and then American economic dominance (plus the fact that India, with its huge population, already uses it because its people speak 5 mutually unintelligible native languages), is already getting there. A lot of countries, not just Japan, start English lessons in grammar school. I won't claim that nothing could displace English. But it would take, at minimum, a couple of centuries of economic and cultural dominance.
** Working groups typically work in English (even if there are no native speakers involved), with a few having simultaneous translations for French and Spanish. For the three major meetings, we get translations in the 5 UN languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) plus Arabic. And the language of wherever we are meeting, if it isn't one of those.
I'm just watching an hour long Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on the Ubu-Putin relationship. Very interesting compilation, with good sources, drawing a lot of stuff together, some of which we knew, but with more details. I don't know if you can get this stuff in the US (or Germany etc), but I reckon if you can you might find it worthwhile: https://x.com/C4Dispatches/status/1945861731344880003
In case it helps, it's called ‘Trump: Moscow’s Man in the White House? Dispatches’
It's as if someone had deliberately did a lot of work to make it really, Really, REALLY look like a high-level conspiracy.
Of course, it doesn't take much work to make a conspiracy look like a conspiracy. And how likely is it that the incompetents involved could manage to fake one convincingly? Or even do a lot of work to try to?
I've just watched a Daily Beast interview with Tina Brown, who commissioned and ran, when she was still with the Daily Beast, the first really detailed series (6 parts) by Conchita Sarnoff in 2010 on the Epstein case . She says, among other things, that her bet is also that Ubu himself was not into underage girls, despite his long, sleazy relationship with Epstein, but that she wonders whether one of the reasons he may want to keep any "list" secret is so that he has leverage, or kompromat, on some of the people mentioned in it. Also credible, IMO.
Acosta, fed prosecutor that let Epstein off with a wrist slap on Federal charges, then got a Trump Sec. Labor job.
FL state charges could have happened, except "guess who? Pam Bondi" was FL atty general.
Epstein "suicided" during Trump's first term, Bondi now saying "nothing to see here" with fiddled video.
It's as if someone had deliberately did a lot of work to make it really, Really, REALLY look like a high-level conspiracy.
Just because there are people who turn this into a wild conspiracy story that can be used for partisan purposes doesn't mean that there is no there there.
Agreed. The wild conspiracy story was that there was a vast deep-state cover-up to protect a large satanic pedophile network of elite Democrats that Epstein was at the center of. What's not at all unlikely is that Epstein trafficked underage girls for himself with help from Maxwell, as was proved in court well enough for both of them to be convicted.
Beyond that, the more clients you propose they had, the less likely it is to be true. And whether there was a written list of clients I would consider a toss-up. Maybe or maybe not. There's also the question of that list, if there was one, being obtained in the investigation.
A list isn't the only evidence that could implicate other participants in the sexual exploitation of underage girls, so what else might there be?
This story gets to that: https://abcnews.go.com/US/jeffrey-epstein-key-victims-attorney/story?id=123805543
Excerpts:
"Jeffrey Epstein was the pimp and the john. He was his own No. 1 client," Edwards told ABC News. "Nearly all of the exploitation and abuse of all of the women was intended to benefit only Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein's sexual desires."
Edwards describes the enigmatic Epstein as living, essentially, two separate lives: one in which he was sexually abusing women and girls "on a daily basis," and another in which he associated with politicians, royalty, and titans of business, academia, and science.
"For the most part, those two worlds did not overlap. And where they overlapped, in the instances they overlapped, it seems to be a very small percentage," Edwards said. "There were occasions where a select few of these men engaged in sexual acts with a select few of the girls that Jeffrey Epstein was exploiting or abusing -- primarily girls who were over the age of 18."
Concluding with:
But for Edwards, the primary concern should be for the survivors of Epstein's abuse -- and he worries that the victims are an afterthought in the ongoing Washington power struggle.
"I think some [victims] believe that the government protected him, and there's this outrage because they believe that [Epstein] was always more important than they were, and that's why this was allowed to go on for so long. So if there was evidence that his political or other connections assisted, I think that they would want to know it," Edwards said. "But more so, they just want this to die off. And they see it's not dying off because of the way that it's being handled right now. In fact, somehow there's more attention to it today than there was when he was abusing them."
For the well-being of the survivors, Edwards is hopeful there will soon be a resolution that will allow the victims to move on.
"I just wish everybody would step back and remember real people were hurt here, and let's try to do what's in their best interest, as opposed to politicizing this whole thing and making it the right versus the left," he said. "All of that is hurting the people who are already hurt."
I know that the mainstream Dem attitude is that all this conspiracy crap is bad and should not be encouraged
I just don't get the Dems sometimes. Just because there are people who turn this into a wild conspiracy story that can be used for partisan purposes doesn't mean that there is no there there.
It was the same with the sexual assault allegations against Clinton. A more principled attitude would be beneficial.
The Epstein narrative is an article of faith among the Believers and a very profitable story arc that never gets old for a host of podcaster/influencers. The howls from them are because Trump just ... took that story away from them and replaced it with nothing. Now he's rummaging through his Bag of Tricks and throwing anything that comes to hand out there. It's a hoax! Written by Democrats! Who suppressed it but now want to release it to attack me! This is no fissure or turning point. They will continue to make up stories, the cries for the Tsar to do something will fade, leaving the circus running it's course. Why Trump has shot himself in the foot for no coherent reason will provide endless speculation with him at the center, where he likes it.
On “The law of the letter”
I'm puzzled by this. I'm not good at languages, relative to my other skills, but switching alphabets - Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian... is trivial.
It's not onerous, no, but it is a factor on at least two levels in my experience.
First off, it can create some noise when particular letters look similar to letters in the other language that are not phonetically equivalent, and that usually triggers a bit of recursion in the reading process. It's not a lot of load on the system, but it is processing power that is not being used to make sense of the meaning. Writing English using the Greek alphabet barely affects reading comprehension when deciphering the message when one is fluent in English. Combine a lack of fluency with the need to decipher and the effects compound.
Second of all, it messes with the pattern recognition that one relies upon when skimming a text. When I'm reading Swedish or Spanish, I can skim the text fairly easily and a lot of the language has enough root-equivalency to make those reading skills transfer. That sort of whole-word pattern recognition doesn't fire the same way when I am faced with another alphabet.
All of these things mess with your language in the same way that when a student is asked to write about an unfamiliar topic with its own technical vocabulary, they often end up writing language that has a greater number of grammar and spelling errors than when they are writing about familiar topics. The familiar has a much simplified processing economy.
And again, with functional and transactional language, these difficulties are much less pronounced than when dealing with more complex and nuanced subjects.
At least that is my experience, and it seems to match with my observations of how my non-native student writers interact with texts. Actual linguists would likely have a lot to say about the places where I'm wallpapering over some complex topics, or missing the boat entirely.
"
In Latin one has to invent new words for concepts Cicero&Co. did not yet possess and would probably not understand. Greek (unlike classical Latin) allows composite words that can transport about any meaning with little to no loss.
No offense, but I wonder if being a native speaker of German might be coloring your view here. Composite words being one of the most noticable things (after gendered nouns) for English speakers when learning it.
I admit that I don't have a wide enough base to know how common composite words are in languages generally.
"
...the alphabet contributes somewhat to that difficulty...
I'm puzzled by this. I'm not good at languages, relative to my other skills, but switching alphabets - Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian... is trivial.
(I struggle with Hebrew, where some of the letters are just too alike.)
"
India, with its huge population, already uses it because its people speak 5 mutually unintelligible native languages
Off the top of my head, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu. There are many others.
"
It occurs to me that a lot of education should be guiding people to what they are good at. I always thought I was good at languages, but I realize that I am really good at the languages that are in roman letters. Had I known, I might have opted for vietnamese instead of thai, or even earlier, dove into chinese first (I have several english native friends who have fluency in Japanese and Chinese and all of them did Chinese first and I don’t know anyone who went the opposite way).
"
Ancient Greek is far more versatile than Latin but also quite a bit more difficult. I never really got the hang of it (in 3.5 years at school compared to 9 years of Latin).
I think there is little to-day that could not be directly translated into ancient Greek while Latin would require massive reformulation to do the same and much would get lost doing it. In Latin one has to invent new words for concepts Cicero&Co. did not yet possess and would probably not understand. Greek (unlike classical Latin) allows composite words that can transport about any meaning with little to no loss. Latin is the hammer of a blacksmith, ancient Greek is a jeweller's toolset.
"
Instant translation is fine for functional and transactional language, but it hits its limits pretty quickly as language complexity increases and becomes problematic for understanding as soon as there is an intertextual element at work. I see this a lot with my international students when they are working their way through English texts with the help of translation software. They miss a lot of the features that the authors are using to communicate - parallelisms, homophones, puns, etc.
To be fair, a lot of my native language domestic students miss those things too, but the international students have the reading skills to catch those elements in their own languages, and would notice those things if they were actually working with the original text.
One thing I can add that speaks to lj's first point. Language-wise I've studied Spanish, French, Swedish, and Ancient Greek. I can muddle through in Spanish, and would probably be able to attain fluency in any of the first three in a few months with immersion. Greek, however, never sticks particularly well, and the alphabet contributes somewhat to that difficulty. It's one more unfamiliar element (deciphering) that takes up processing power that would otherwise be used for linguistic sense-making.
"
Why learn, if there is an instant translator?
I don't see that happening in complex, real-life contexts. It's hard enough to make sense of people in one's native language sometimes, lol.
"
In case anyone is interested in the subject (and in lieu of fraught AI summaries):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca
It's entirely possible that English will become the lingua franca for international communications, but if it does, I'd expect, like Hartmut, that it continues to shed irregular constructions and colloquialisms and that native dialects will be treated as quaint variants with charming local color. I also predict that both Americans and Brits will complain bitterly that ELF is "not proper English" when that happens, and resent any standard that treats ELF as the paradigm.
"
Or kill it altogether. Why learn, if there is an instant translator? If everyone has a babelfish in his or her ear, the need disappears (at least for the lazy majority).
English is a good candidate for being easy to get at least sufficient proficiency (Ironically one theory is that this is the result of Old Norse mugging Old English killing declension in the process).
(Proper) Latin is far too cumbersome in some aspects.
Latin supplanted and replaced numerous languages but during the Middle Ages the unity disappeared and Latin turned (degraded?) into numerous new languages as far as common use was concerned.
I consider it likely that over time English will get rid (or ridden) of its 'gothi' problem and some other irregularities will get filed off too by international use and become at least the second language for a majority in the world (provided our world and/or civilisation does not perish before that).
"
Real-time translation and communicating with devices in any language the user chooses could lower the pressure to learn more than one language.
"
I don't think subjugated peoples or immigrants are relevant examples. You are talking about e.g. the French not speaking French anymore - that's never going to happen because language is so closely tied to indentity and culture, but also practically speaking you would have to change all the laws etc.
More generally, you would have to imagine (non-immigrant) parents speaking to their babies in a language other than their mother tongue. Unless we are a talking about an actual genocide, I don't think that's going to happen either.
Finally, people routinely overestimate the quantity and quality of proficiency in English in other countries. This is understandable because usually those making such assumptions tend to interact only with a highly educated subset of the population of those countries, thus skewing the picture.
"
Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that the use of national languages in the native countries will disappear or be reduced? I don't think that would be realistic.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Not that it will necessarily be quick. But it will happen.
See, for example, the various Native American / First Nations languages. They haven't, quite, died out and there are various efforts to save one or another of them. But the reality is that native speakers are overwhelmingly old. Children may retain some fluency, in order to speak to their grandparents. But for everyday use, they speak English. And the children's children will be straight Anglophones.
We see the same phenomena in immigrants. My wife's immigrant grandparents were functional in English, but spoke Japanese with family and friends. Her parents were fluent in Japanese (from talking to parents and aunts and uncles when growing up), but generally spoke English except when talking to the older generation. My wife and her siblings? Even having lost virtually all of the Japanese I studied in college, I still speak more than they do.**
Granted, there is more inertia when it comes to languages with a big population base. So it will take longer. But modern communications mean that the next generation will be exposed to English far beyond the classroom. And anyone who interacts with the outside world, from academics to taxi drivers, will need to use it routinely. Already do, actually.
** When my wife and I first got together, we made occasional trips half the length of California to see her family. About the third trip, I got taken off to see Grandma. My future mother-in-law gave Grandma an explanation of who was this blue eyed blond, then introduced us. I remembered enough to say Hajimemashte. Grandma just lit up; from that moment, as far as she was concerned, I was in.
"
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language.
More than 30 years ago now, I spent some time working with an engineering team at Ericsson, the Swedish telecom company. Ericsson's internal organization at the time had hardware being done in Sweden, operating system being done in the UK, and application software being done in Spain. By decree, the official technical language inside the company was English.
The official rules for international fencing are written in French. This leads to occasional interesting difficulties. Epee rules intentionally allow some amount of incidental body-to-body contact, but not too much. There was a great deal of debate at the FIE over how to translate the French phrase for what was not allowed to English. They finally settled on "excessive jostling".
"
Re: changing systems of roman-alphabet spellings in japanese: it would be good to get Hartmut's input, since (IIRC) there was a systematic change in "official" German spelling ten? twenty? years ago.
Re: English taking over the world. There's a saying that "English is the Lingua Franca of Science".
Which I find amusing because "Lingua Franca" literally means "French", but (IIRC) is in Latin.
So there's three of the contenders for 'language to take over everything' right there in one sentence.
Why, yes, I *am* easily amused, why do you ask?
"
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language. There will no doubt be long and bitter fights to preserve the national language. But they will, in eventual history, be seen as futile fighting tetreats.
Sorry if I misunderstand you, but are you saying that the use of national languages in the native countries will disappear or be reduced? I don't think that would be realistic.
"
I am involved in an international organization (ICANN, if you care). I have a nagging (unspoken) embarrassment because everybody speaks English. Most of them barely distinguishable from native speakers.** Partly that turns out to because they did college or grad school in the US, or perhaps the UK or Australia.
But there I am, speaking only English. The German I learned in high school is mostly gone. The Japanese I studied in grad school is also gone. And, of course, because I grew up in California I know a few bits and pieces of Spanish. (Actually, taking a few Spanish classes is on my Really Need To Get Around To This list.) For the moment, I try to at least learn how to say thank you in the language of wherever we are meeting.
I have the suspicion that English will eventually end up as the world language. There will no doubt be long and bitter fights to preserve the national language. But they will, in eventual history, be seen as futile fighting tetreats.
These days, the world requires a common language to function. One will come: the only question is which one it will be. The Chinese will argue, as their economic power increases, for Chinese (Mandarin), but a tonal language is simply too difficult for anyone not raised in one. Spanish might be a viable option, but it lacks a serious economic power to push it. French might have a chance, except that its spelling is nothing approaching phonetic, which makes it hard to learn.
English, thanks to British and then American economic dominance (plus the fact that India, with its huge population, already uses it because its people speak 5 mutually unintelligible native languages), is already getting there. A lot of countries, not just Japan, start English lessons in grammar school. I won't claim that nothing could displace English. But it would take, at minimum, a couple of centuries of economic and cultural dominance.
** Working groups typically work in English (even if there are no native speakers involved), with a few having simultaneous translations for French and Spanish. For the three major meetings, we get translations in the 5 UN languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) plus Arabic. And the language of wherever we are meeting, if it isn't one of those.
On “Your Schadenfreude monitoring open thread”
I'm just watching an hour long Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on the Ubu-Putin relationship. Very interesting compilation, with good sources, drawing a lot of stuff together, some of which we knew, but with more details. I don't know if you can get this stuff in the US (or Germany etc), but I reckon if you can you might find it worthwhile:
https://x.com/C4Dispatches/status/1945861731344880003
In case it helps, it's called ‘Trump: Moscow’s Man in the White House? Dispatches’
"
It's as if someone had deliberately did a lot of work to make it really, Really, REALLY look like a high-level conspiracy.
Of course, it doesn't take much work to make a conspiracy look like a conspiracy. And how likely is it that the incompetents involved could manage to fake one convincingly? Or even do a lot of work to try to?
"
I've just watched a Daily Beast interview with Tina Brown, who commissioned and ran, when she was still with the Daily Beast, the first really detailed series (6 parts) by Conchita Sarnoff in 2010 on the Epstein case . She says, among other things, that her bet is also that Ubu himself was not into underage girls, despite his long, sleazy relationship with Epstein, but that she wonders whether one of the reasons he may want to keep any "list" secret is so that he has leverage, or kompromat, on some of the people mentioned in it. Also credible, IMO.
"
Acosta, fed prosecutor that let Epstein off with a wrist slap on Federal charges, then got a Trump Sec. Labor job.
FL state charges could have happened, except "guess who? Pam Bondi" was FL atty general.
Epstein "suicided" during Trump's first term, Bondi now saying "nothing to see here" with fiddled video.
It's as if someone had deliberately did a lot of work to make it really, Really, REALLY look like a high-level conspiracy.
"
Just because there are people who turn this into a wild conspiracy story that can be used for partisan purposes doesn't mean that there is no there there.
Agreed. The wild conspiracy story was that there was a vast deep-state cover-up to protect a large satanic pedophile network of elite Democrats that Epstein was at the center of. What's not at all unlikely is that Epstein trafficked underage girls for himself with help from Maxwell, as was proved in court well enough for both of them to be convicted.
Beyond that, the more clients you propose they had, the less likely it is to be true. And whether there was a written list of clients I would consider a toss-up. Maybe or maybe not. There's also the question of that list, if there was one, being obtained in the investigation.
A list isn't the only evidence that could implicate other participants in the sexual exploitation of underage girls, so what else might there be?
This story gets to that:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/jeffrey-epstein-key-victims-attorney/story?id=123805543
Excerpts:
Concluding with:
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I know that the mainstream Dem attitude is that all this conspiracy crap is bad and should not be encouraged
I just don't get the Dems sometimes. Just because there are people who turn this into a wild conspiracy story that can be used for partisan purposes doesn't mean that there is no there there.
It was the same with the sexual assault allegations against Clinton. A more principled attitude would be beneficial.
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The Epstein narrative is an article of faith among the Believers and a very profitable story arc that never gets old for a host of podcaster/influencers. The howls from them are because Trump just ... took that story away from them and replaced it with nothing. Now he's rummaging through his Bag of Tricks and throwing anything that comes to hand out there. It's a hoax! Written by Democrats! Who suppressed it but now want to release it to attack me! This is no fissure or turning point. They will continue to make up stories, the cries for the Tsar to do something will fade, leaving the circus running it's course. Why Trump has shot himself in the foot for no coherent reason will provide endless speculation with him at the center, where he likes it.
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Our schadenfreude goes up to 11.
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