@ghostdog6 ;-)
lol no
@pawnedge @ghostdog6
Yes - I chose a provocative title to make people listen. The title itself only says "No Racism on Lichess - all over the globe count the same! ☮️" I am sorry if this was too sensational for some and there is something else interpreted by everyone.
I did not say that English-speaking are racists - not at all ! - or that one should not agree on a common language in a group.
My only statement is that exactly this freedom should also be given to the other, perhaps smaller group.
I think it is simply inappropriate for one group to tell the other that they should adapt to their language. Conversely, they would not like that either.
And the fact that a lot of people don't speak English is somehow not understood by some.
They just can't write in english...
As an example: Exactly these few users speak in their common language and then someone has to tell them that they have to speak another language?
I repeat myself - we do not know why others speak in another language, but we should assume that they certainly have a reason for it and may do so without being constantly asked.
Perhaps this affects the feeling of an English-speaking person indirect, but when he then requests this group to obey his ideas, he does not influence their feelings indirectly - it confront their free space directly.
I find this very indecent, arrogant and not empathetic - even it's only a little thing.
That's all - apart from that, everything is fine.
Yes - I chose a provocative title to make people listen. The title itself only says "No Racism on Lichess - all over the globe count the same! ☮️" I am sorry if this was too sensational for some and there is something else interpreted by everyone.
I did not say that English-speaking are racists - not at all ! - or that one should not agree on a common language in a group.
My only statement is that exactly this freedom should also be given to the other, perhaps smaller group.
I think it is simply inappropriate for one group to tell the other that they should adapt to their language. Conversely, they would not like that either.
And the fact that a lot of people don't speak English is somehow not understood by some.
They just can't write in english...
As an example: Exactly these few users speak in their common language and then someone has to tell them that they have to speak another language?
I repeat myself - we do not know why others speak in another language, but we should assume that they certainly have a reason for it and may do so without being constantly asked.
Perhaps this affects the feeling of an English-speaking person indirect, but when he then requests this group to obey his ideas, he does not influence their feelings indirectly - it confront their free space directly.
I find this very indecent, arrogant and not empathetic - even it's only a little thing.
That's all - apart from that, everything is fine.
It is not Racism unless you are Racist
Il n'y a pas de quoi.
It is probably hard to understand - but we in Germany are trained to find explanations how everything is racism we do not want to find serious arguments against. The threadstarter is just a victim of that ideology with a high inclination to mantal obedience. Probably in his view, if you say speaking English has nothing to do with race - you just prove your racism. Usually political opposition is "racist" ... it is highly irrational, but that is how press and political "conversations" work. And as a matter of fact, the Swiss are not better, as you can see here ... They are too close to us by unfortunately using a dialect of German.
@Sybotes
Read my posts carefully again, because you can see that I am not portraying anyone as a racist, this is just the title as a call.
If you think that all Germans and also the Swiss think or act the same, then you throw 80 million Germans and 8 million Swiss in a generalization. I don't even have the same attitude as my immediate neighbor, how can you assume that 88 million people think or act exactly the same way?
Your claim "...If no serious arguments = victim of this ideology..." is exactly the pattern you mentioned.
I describe my opinion exactly with arguments.
.... that if someone force another group to use his language rather than their own, that is rude in a worldwide platform.
That's all i said.
I'm sure if anyone has the will to try to understand my thought more then just go against it - they could get my point and accept it as my meaning about that stuff - you can have your own, like your own language - that's ok.
Read my posts carefully again, because you can see that I am not portraying anyone as a racist, this is just the title as a call.
If you think that all Germans and also the Swiss think or act the same, then you throw 80 million Germans and 8 million Swiss in a generalization. I don't even have the same attitude as my immediate neighbor, how can you assume that 88 million people think or act exactly the same way?
Your claim "...If no serious arguments = victim of this ideology..." is exactly the pattern you mentioned.
I describe my opinion exactly with arguments.
.... that if someone force another group to use his language rather than their own, that is rude in a worldwide platform.
That's all i said.
I'm sure if anyone has the will to try to understand my thought more then just go against it - they could get my point and accept it as my meaning about that stuff - you can have your own, like your own language - that's ok.
This is what comes of dropping buzzwords when you don’t even mean them. You say you “chose a provocative title to make people listen.” This is annoying behavior, at best; and in the present case, it is deeply insensitive not only to your intended audience, but also to everyone who has actually had to endure real racism. 😐
If you didn’t really mean to invoke race, then you shouldn’t have. I am sorry, but “just to get your attention” isn’t an acceptable excuse for such behavior. This only makes it worse. Now, instead of one complaint against you, I have two. 😑
Personally, when I saw you had retreated in this way, I was inclined to simply stop paying attention to anything you imagined you had to say at that point. In post № 13, you said you were repeating yourself; and indeed you were — apparently without having heard anything I said in the interim.
Since then, Sybotes has also honored you with a reply; and yet you haven’t really heard him, either. His point is that your use of the word _racist_ corresponds exactly to others’ usage in the political Left today, which devalues & relegates that word to one with no fixed definition, which can be applied equally to bedsheeted Kluxers and anyone seeking tax cuts. (And how convenient for the mouthpieces of Big Government to demonize anyone who’d dare consider paying them less. But I digress.) In other words, they use it merely as a term of abuse that has been severed from its former meaning, much like _bastard_ (i.e., a child born out of wedlock) or _bitch_ (i.e., a female dog). And the way in which you are like those people is that you use the word _racist_ in this same manner, rather than the way it was meant to be used. He is exactly right about that — _by your own admission,_ again in № 13, where you said you didn’t really mean it, but just wished to be provocative. (In arguing with him, you thus contradict yourself.)
Well! You have succeeded in provoking a response, sir. A thoughtful one, at that. You would be wise to heed it — and never again pull a stunt like this.
Because that word actually _does_ mean something, your disregard for English is evident in more ways than one. 🤨 Not to mention your apparent disregard for those who speak this language, leave alone the victims of actual racism. You have piled disregard on top of disregard; is it any wonder my strong inclination is to disregard whatever point you imagined you were making amidst this apparently pointless diatribe?
It doesn’t matter that we are both speaking English here. There is an important difference between us: I say what I mean, and I mean what I say; whereas you say things you don’t really mean; and as for what you mean, no one but you knows that. Indeed, I doubt that even you do: from the evidence, I suspect you are simply confused. In any case, no conversation is possible, let alone profitable, till you undertake to use language to say what you mean, rather than hoping others may divine your meaning from thin air, after you grab their attention by insulting them.
Regardless of what you intended, the subject of this thread comes across as needlessly offensive, and your posts here as mindless trolling. No one is going to “understand [your] thought,” because you have yet to articulate it in a way that is both coherent & respectful. If you had some grand vision you were trying to share with us, I am sorry to inform you that you’ve failed.
And if your audience doesn’t understand you, it is hardly their fault.
PS:
I said all of that just to get your attention. 😛
What I really want to talk about is something that occurred to me the other day, after saying what I said before. Which is that all languages are partially derived from other languages (or “culturally appropriated,” as they say nowadays). English, in particular, is _inherently_ multicultural. Having descended from Proto-Indo–European; the Angles & Saxons; the Normans; been hijacked by Vikings, who couldn’t be bothered to learn it properly (and thus simplified it greatly for all subsequent generations); the classical Latin of ancient Rome; etc., et al. And today, there are many dialects thereof around the world; not to mention pidgins, or partial adoptions of words & phrases in other tongues. Just as English shamelessly borrows much of its vocabulary from many of them, so the other popular languages today borrow huge swaths of theirs from it. More than you may realize. Even the most common Internet acronyms stand for English words; e.g. PC, WWW, LOL, GG, etc. If you use any of these, you are speaking English. (FYI: I met an Italian man once, who pronounced PC “peachy.” He used the same acronym, to mean the same thing; he just pronounced it differently.)
In other words: language interbreeds and is, as it were, slutty. And as there is no clean break between tongues, this further refutes your flawed premise that language & race are somehow necessarily entwined. (A premise you have since rejected, and sought to replace with . . . nothing. [At best, some wishy-washy gobbledygook.]) And it challenges your contention that English isn’t an adequate default language for the Internet. (Or _was_ that your contention? Forgive me, but one is at pains to know what it was.) You have gone from saying, “You’re all a bunch of racists!” to saying, “Why can’t we all just get along?” And the answer to your question is: You. (To quote Sarg0n, “You are the glitch.” Cf. lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/no-one-is-in-the-lobby#2)
Incidentally, not only is English inherently multicultural; so, too, is Christianity (the official religion of the West). It debuted in Ancient Africa, and went on to Egypt, Babylon, India, Byzantium, etc., long before it ever made its way to Europe. This has nothing to do with anything else I wished to say just now; it only occurred to me that our worldviews, too, borrow from one another, and have blurry borders. Thus to identify any particular worldview with a given language or race is an uneducated mistake. Religions, political views, languages and races can all be combined in myriad ways, none of which yield themselves to such a simplistic analysis as one like you may be wont to attempt.
This brings to mind a bizarre project I encountered once called Anglish. It gives me anguish (soda speak), because in my opinion it is futile. Since English is a hodgepodge of so many languages, all of which have been repeatedly, heavily simplified by assimilating populations (like the Vikings — perhaps the original anti-Grammar Nazis [if not quite the original Borg {although I’m sure some Vikings were named Börg (the Borg assimilate populations . . . never mind)}]). So purging the Latin loan words would, assuredly, _not_ give us “English as it would have been without Latin.” That particular exercise merely leads to a new modern English dialect, much removed from Anglo–Saxon, which would have proved unintelligible to any native speakers thereof. . . .
A more useful exercise would be to take the originall [sic] Olde Ængliſche, compare it to its contemporarie Germanick ſiſters, see how they chang’ed ouer tyme, and try to follow those examples to come up with a modernized version of “Anglish.” This still wouldn’t furnish anything meaningful, but I think you’d derive more from the exercise as you’d be delving into comparative studies of the history & development of all Germanic tongues, and applying a more meaningful methodology to boot. (Or at least to shoe.)
But I digress.
In closing, there is also a philosophical argument you may be familiar with (though I doubt it), which was most succinctly put by Wittgenstein:
“If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have to disagree with Mr. Wittgenstein, on the grounds that, if a lion talked to me, I would understand perfectly . . . and run the other way. 😉
There. That is all I wished to say. 😅 Just some random observations about the complexity of language. If anyone found this more interesting than the original post, you are welcome.
Cheers
If you didn’t really mean to invoke race, then you shouldn’t have. I am sorry, but “just to get your attention” isn’t an acceptable excuse for such behavior. This only makes it worse. Now, instead of one complaint against you, I have two. 😑
Personally, when I saw you had retreated in this way, I was inclined to simply stop paying attention to anything you imagined you had to say at that point. In post № 13, you said you were repeating yourself; and indeed you were — apparently without having heard anything I said in the interim.
Since then, Sybotes has also honored you with a reply; and yet you haven’t really heard him, either. His point is that your use of the word _racist_ corresponds exactly to others’ usage in the political Left today, which devalues & relegates that word to one with no fixed definition, which can be applied equally to bedsheeted Kluxers and anyone seeking tax cuts. (And how convenient for the mouthpieces of Big Government to demonize anyone who’d dare consider paying them less. But I digress.) In other words, they use it merely as a term of abuse that has been severed from its former meaning, much like _bastard_ (i.e., a child born out of wedlock) or _bitch_ (i.e., a female dog). And the way in which you are like those people is that you use the word _racist_ in this same manner, rather than the way it was meant to be used. He is exactly right about that — _by your own admission,_ again in № 13, where you said you didn’t really mean it, but just wished to be provocative. (In arguing with him, you thus contradict yourself.)
Well! You have succeeded in provoking a response, sir. A thoughtful one, at that. You would be wise to heed it — and never again pull a stunt like this.
Because that word actually _does_ mean something, your disregard for English is evident in more ways than one. 🤨 Not to mention your apparent disregard for those who speak this language, leave alone the victims of actual racism. You have piled disregard on top of disregard; is it any wonder my strong inclination is to disregard whatever point you imagined you were making amidst this apparently pointless diatribe?
It doesn’t matter that we are both speaking English here. There is an important difference between us: I say what I mean, and I mean what I say; whereas you say things you don’t really mean; and as for what you mean, no one but you knows that. Indeed, I doubt that even you do: from the evidence, I suspect you are simply confused. In any case, no conversation is possible, let alone profitable, till you undertake to use language to say what you mean, rather than hoping others may divine your meaning from thin air, after you grab their attention by insulting them.
Regardless of what you intended, the subject of this thread comes across as needlessly offensive, and your posts here as mindless trolling. No one is going to “understand [your] thought,” because you have yet to articulate it in a way that is both coherent & respectful. If you had some grand vision you were trying to share with us, I am sorry to inform you that you’ve failed.
And if your audience doesn’t understand you, it is hardly their fault.
PS:
I said all of that just to get your attention. 😛
What I really want to talk about is something that occurred to me the other day, after saying what I said before. Which is that all languages are partially derived from other languages (or “culturally appropriated,” as they say nowadays). English, in particular, is _inherently_ multicultural. Having descended from Proto-Indo–European; the Angles & Saxons; the Normans; been hijacked by Vikings, who couldn’t be bothered to learn it properly (and thus simplified it greatly for all subsequent generations); the classical Latin of ancient Rome; etc., et al. And today, there are many dialects thereof around the world; not to mention pidgins, or partial adoptions of words & phrases in other tongues. Just as English shamelessly borrows much of its vocabulary from many of them, so the other popular languages today borrow huge swaths of theirs from it. More than you may realize. Even the most common Internet acronyms stand for English words; e.g. PC, WWW, LOL, GG, etc. If you use any of these, you are speaking English. (FYI: I met an Italian man once, who pronounced PC “peachy.” He used the same acronym, to mean the same thing; he just pronounced it differently.)
In other words: language interbreeds and is, as it were, slutty. And as there is no clean break between tongues, this further refutes your flawed premise that language & race are somehow necessarily entwined. (A premise you have since rejected, and sought to replace with . . . nothing. [At best, some wishy-washy gobbledygook.]) And it challenges your contention that English isn’t an adequate default language for the Internet. (Or _was_ that your contention? Forgive me, but one is at pains to know what it was.) You have gone from saying, “You’re all a bunch of racists!” to saying, “Why can’t we all just get along?” And the answer to your question is: You. (To quote Sarg0n, “You are the glitch.” Cf. lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/no-one-is-in-the-lobby#2)
Incidentally, not only is English inherently multicultural; so, too, is Christianity (the official religion of the West). It debuted in Ancient Africa, and went on to Egypt, Babylon, India, Byzantium, etc., long before it ever made its way to Europe. This has nothing to do with anything else I wished to say just now; it only occurred to me that our worldviews, too, borrow from one another, and have blurry borders. Thus to identify any particular worldview with a given language or race is an uneducated mistake. Religions, political views, languages and races can all be combined in myriad ways, none of which yield themselves to such a simplistic analysis as one like you may be wont to attempt.
This brings to mind a bizarre project I encountered once called Anglish. It gives me anguish (soda speak), because in my opinion it is futile. Since English is a hodgepodge of so many languages, all of which have been repeatedly, heavily simplified by assimilating populations (like the Vikings — perhaps the original anti-Grammar Nazis [if not quite the original Borg {although I’m sure some Vikings were named Börg (the Borg assimilate populations . . . never mind)}]). So purging the Latin loan words would, assuredly, _not_ give us “English as it would have been without Latin.” That particular exercise merely leads to a new modern English dialect, much removed from Anglo–Saxon, which would have proved unintelligible to any native speakers thereof. . . .
A more useful exercise would be to take the originall [sic] Olde Ængliſche, compare it to its contemporarie Germanick ſiſters, see how they chang’ed ouer tyme, and try to follow those examples to come up with a modernized version of “Anglish.” This still wouldn’t furnish anything meaningful, but I think you’d derive more from the exercise as you’d be delving into comparative studies of the history & development of all Germanic tongues, and applying a more meaningful methodology to boot. (Or at least to shoe.)
But I digress.
In closing, there is also a philosophical argument you may be familiar with (though I doubt it), which was most succinctly put by Wittgenstein:
“If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have to disagree with Mr. Wittgenstein, on the grounds that, if a lion talked to me, I would understand perfectly . . . and run the other way. 😉
There. That is all I wished to say. 😅 Just some random observations about the complexity of language. If anyone found this more interesting than the original post, you are welcome.
Cheers
@pawnedge
You accuse me of a lot of things.
Just because you and maybe a few others don't understand me completely, you can't say that nobody understands me.
Nowhere was I concerned with the language of English itself, but exclusively with imposing one's own language on others.
I didn't choose the provocative title freely. I take a stand on racism because if someone wants to force someone else to speak his language, as far as I know it has something to do with the not perfectly defined word racism.
Forget English - I would write the same if other language speakers tried to dictate this to a group of English speakers.
No - I will not follow your advice to stop forever.
I will speak every time a minority is pressed - even if this is only the case in small approaches like here in my topic.
But thanks for your sympathy.
Time to play chess 😎
You accuse me of a lot of things.
Just because you and maybe a few others don't understand me completely, you can't say that nobody understands me.
Nowhere was I concerned with the language of English itself, but exclusively with imposing one's own language on others.
I didn't choose the provocative title freely. I take a stand on racism because if someone wants to force someone else to speak his language, as far as I know it has something to do with the not perfectly defined word racism.
Forget English - I would write the same if other language speakers tried to dictate this to a group of English speakers.
No - I will not follow your advice to stop forever.
I will speak every time a minority is pressed - even if this is only the case in small approaches like here in my topic.
But thanks for your sympathy.
Time to play chess 😎
The same thing happened again: after hitting REPLY and calling it a night, overnight I thought of another expansion upon my original point. This time, I’ll be brief.
It occurs to me that the concept of race, itself, is fuzzy. Not only because we are all members of the human race, but because the borders between races are blurry, just as they are between languages and worldviews. To the point where I feel safe in saying someday, everyone on earth will qualify as “mixed race.”
* * *
As to your latest, um, contribution to this thread, now you claim to be speaking on behalf of an oppressed minority? . . . What minority is that? And who is oppressing them? And how? (Be specific, please.) In using this purportedly oppressed hypothetical minority as an excuse for your attention seeking, it seems to me you have merely contradicted yourself, yet again.
You: “People who only speak English are racists.”
Me: “This is nonsense, for several reasons which I will take the trouble to list.”
You: “Well, you’re not _really_ racists; I just wanted to get your attention.”
Me: “Don’t ever do that. It devalues the word, and insults people needlessly.”
You: “I’m defending minorities, so I won’t stop calling people racists, even if they aren’t!”
. . . And round and round we go.
It seems to me the only person “oppressing” anyone here is you. You are oppressing the majority, for no apparent reason (and there is no such thing as a justifiable reason for such behavior, anyway); and you are making light of the suffering of actual minorities. You are deliberately dishonest, to get attention, and you contradict yourself repeatedly (and repeat yourself generally, despite multiple objections to which you do not listen). In short, you are engaging in some kind of half-baked pseudo-intellectual terrorism. It is uncalled for, and unappreciated. And yes, I believe I do speak on behalf of everyone here. (Read the other comments; mine are not the only critical ones. Indeed, some of the others can even be taken as poking fun at you. E.g., the Lovecraft quote; “lol, no.” And one of the points in my first post — that using English is simply a courtesy to others here, since it’s a common language for most of us — is echoed by others as well. In fact I find no single comment in support of whatever it is you believe you are promulgating.)
The thought of wasting more time trying to reason with you does not appeal to me; and as I say, there is no such thing as a good reason for behaving in the manner you have stubbornly chosen to; so I think I will unsubscribe from this thread. Have a nice day.
It occurs to me that the concept of race, itself, is fuzzy. Not only because we are all members of the human race, but because the borders between races are blurry, just as they are between languages and worldviews. To the point where I feel safe in saying someday, everyone on earth will qualify as “mixed race.”
* * *
As to your latest, um, contribution to this thread, now you claim to be speaking on behalf of an oppressed minority? . . . What minority is that? And who is oppressing them? And how? (Be specific, please.) In using this purportedly oppressed hypothetical minority as an excuse for your attention seeking, it seems to me you have merely contradicted yourself, yet again.
You: “People who only speak English are racists.”
Me: “This is nonsense, for several reasons which I will take the trouble to list.”
You: “Well, you’re not _really_ racists; I just wanted to get your attention.”
Me: “Don’t ever do that. It devalues the word, and insults people needlessly.”
You: “I’m defending minorities, so I won’t stop calling people racists, even if they aren’t!”
. . . And round and round we go.
It seems to me the only person “oppressing” anyone here is you. You are oppressing the majority, for no apparent reason (and there is no such thing as a justifiable reason for such behavior, anyway); and you are making light of the suffering of actual minorities. You are deliberately dishonest, to get attention, and you contradict yourself repeatedly (and repeat yourself generally, despite multiple objections to which you do not listen). In short, you are engaging in some kind of half-baked pseudo-intellectual terrorism. It is uncalled for, and unappreciated. And yes, I believe I do speak on behalf of everyone here. (Read the other comments; mine are not the only critical ones. Indeed, some of the others can even be taken as poking fun at you. E.g., the Lovecraft quote; “lol, no.” And one of the points in my first post — that using English is simply a courtesy to others here, since it’s a common language for most of us — is echoed by others as well. In fact I find no single comment in support of whatever it is you believe you are promulgating.)
The thought of wasting more time trying to reason with you does not appeal to me; and as I say, there is no such thing as a good reason for behaving in the manner you have stubbornly chosen to; so I think I will unsubscribe from this thread. Have a nice day.
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