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That’s not at all clear. Most people, including Jews, can’t tell where their race ends and their religion begins.
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Most Jews are not semitic, so it’s incorrect to use ‘semite’ to designate their race. If anything ‘Jew’ is more appropriate, because while they share common genetic markers their other markers vary wildly. Most Jews are no more semitic than I am (Danish-Dutch).
Semitic doesn’t refer to “ethnicity”. It refers to a language-speaking group. This adds another layer of silliness to the term, being that most targets of anti-Semitism don’t even speak any Semitic language.
However, I don’t blame people who use the term now, since they only do so in order to be understood, which is, to me, no vice. I do however blame the people whose lazy thinking led to the term being formulated and adopted in the first place.
What I mean is that somebody who is anti-Jewish dislikes somebody who practices the Jewish religion and/or associates himself with Jewish culture whereas an Anti-Semite refers to somebody who dislikes somebody because he has Jewish origins, even if he does not practice Judaism or associate himself in any way with Jewish culture.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semite Semite also refers to ethnicity.
" 2) Most Jews are not semitic, so it’s incorrect to use ‘semite’ to designate their race. If anything ‘Jew’ is more appropriate, because while they share common genetic markers their other markers vary wildly. Most Jews are no more semitic than I am (Danish-Dutch)."
Nonwithstanding the fact that Jews, by and large, share a considerable amount of DNA how disparate their people became at one time Anti-Jewish and Anti-Semite are not one and the same.
I mean let’s say that I simply think that the Jewish religion is backwards and barbarous, but I have nothing against its people. I would be anti-Jewish, but not anti-Semitic. Or if I disliked somebody because he was Jewish, but then changed my mind about him after he converted to worshipping Me. I would be anti-Jewish, but not anti-Semitic.
To further the confusion, Norman Finkelstein (an excellent entertaining author), who is as fully Jewish as a man can be from his upbringing and family background, is called an anti-Semite.
If that’s the way it works, it’s a whole lot more complicated than we understand.
How do you make that statement? If you classify Semites as those whose mother language is Semitic, than indeed no Jewish Semites existed before 1949 when Hebrew was artificially revived, if you consider an artificial language capable of making one semitic.
I know many Albanians whose public views would qualify them as ‘anti-Albanian’.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Albania, for a country located so close to Italy, Greece, and Austria, is a surprisingly horrifying region in which a lot of deeply immoral people reside. For an Albanian who must endure stories of organ thieves and human butcher shops regularly, there must be a point of deep disillusionment, after which he would say, “I don’t like Albanians.”
Merlin, think you may be under misapprehension, many ‘sephardi’ (and ashkenazi) used Hebrew as well as whatever local common tongues pre-1949).certainly youd be hard pressed to find rabbis that didn’t…
As far as I know, European Jews pre 1949 spoke either Yiddish (which is German) or the local tongue. If Hebrew was used at all in its religious function, it would still not make Jews Semites, as Latin too is used in the church, which does not make Italians, Spaniards or Frenchmen Latins.
The origin of a word may be important to a linguistic historian but it is irrelevant for determining how a word should or should not be used today. “burger” then should not be recognized as a word according to you: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Burger
Language constantly evolves “spontaneously” in the hayekian sense, so to speak. It is not static. Tracing a word to its historical origin bears no weight on evaluating proper or improper use of it today. There is no such thing as correct language. It is an invention of well to do elites and snobs who like to put more intellectual entry barriers into their institutions on ‘inferior’ people who do not share their values.
I certainly would not think of my country as horrifying or of most Albanians as immoral, although I can see how the idea might spread to outsiders from the occasional newspiece. Such a shame really.
Language constantly evolves “spontaneously” in the hayekian sense, so to speak. It is not static. Tracing a word to its historical origin bears no weight on evaluating proper or improper use of it today. There is no such thing as correct language. It is an invention of well to do elites and snobs who like to put more intellectual entry barriers into their institutions on ‘inferior’ people who do not share their values.
Uh, this is wrong. It is true that there is no set of language rules. But there are ways of speaking, word uses, and semantic confusions that are primarily the province of the stupid, the ignorant and the illiterate. These people may be in their rights to use their language in any way they please, just as a nitwit can splash urine onto a canvas and call it ‘art’ but it is still the province of the low-brow.
The reason there are elites and snobs is because mose people are morons with no sense or taste. If you use the word ‘ain’t’ in a job interview it shows a lack of erudition or understanding as when and how certain modes of speech are to be used.; just like using five exclamation points on a college paper is pretty much a neon sign that screams RETARD.
Language is a means of communication, and it has a lot more to do with whether the words are comprehensible. Yoda speech is perfectly understandable to most native English speakers, but a person who goes around talking like Yoda is evincing that he either lacks English communication skills or is a bit eccentric.
However, I don’t blame people who use the term now, since they only do so in order to be understood, which is, to me, no vice. I do however blame the people whose lazy thinking led to the term being formulated and adopted in the first place.
Certainly I can’t expect most people to put that much thought into their language (how many know what Semite or Semitic even means?), but at the same time I see it as a good enough reason to break with it myself as I use the term ‘semite’ in a totally different sense and ‘anti-Jewish’ is still clear enough to anyone who would understand ‘anti-Semite’ and many people who wouldn’t.
How do you make that statement? If you classify Semites as those whose mother language is Semitic, than indeed no Jewish Semites existed before 1949 when Hebrew was artificially revived, if you consider an artificial language capable of making one semitic.
For a Jew (or anyone) to count as a ‘semite’ he would have to either natively speak a Semitic tongue or be of primarily Semitic (non-Arian, non-Grecian Near Eastern) descent. Very few Jews match either one of these; indeed the fact that I have one side of the family that bears a distant Iberian Muslim anscestor likely makes me more semitic than most Jews on most counts. Jews are closely related to one another and have some common cultural background but their genetic, linguistic and religious background is scarcely closer to ancient Judea and Israel than your average Italian’s.
Needless to say, there are Semitic Jews and close relatives to Jews who are semitics. The Palestinian Jews (discriminated against by the Israeli culture, if not the government outright), the Samaritans (discriminated against by the Israeli culture and government) and the Arabic Jews (discriminated against by the Israeli culture and government). All of these people are semitic in part or whole, in ethnicity and often in language. Ironically, as I have indicated, true anti-semitism is probably most pervasive among the Israeli government simply because most of the Jewish elites in state and culture in Israel (and around the world) are basically white europeans in language, culture and ethnicity with some possible central Asian blood.
According to what body of authority exactly is your grammar the correct one?
Values are subjective! There ain’t no right or wrong with respect to values (or taste).
There is such a thing as Descriptive grammar as oppose to Prescriptive grammar (nonsese they teach you in grade school). You are referring to the latter, which has nothing to do with the study of language per se (Linguistics), and everything to do with the personal tastes of the snobbish elites in charge.
Grammatically (Descriptive), “ain’t” is perfectly fine. The English from the Bronx is just as grammatically valid as yours.
According to what body of authority exactly is your grammar the correct one?
You’re missing the point. The point is that speech and writing convey much more than simple words. A knowledge of what words to use, when and how is an important part of communication beyond the words themselves.
Values are subjective! There ain’t no right or wrong with respect to values (or taste).
This is completely irrelevant. Go into a board meeting wearing a clown suit. It’s a demonstration that you lack familiarity and respect for basic decorum and appropriateness. Likewise, go to church naked some time.
There is such a thing as Descriptive grammar as oppose to Prescriptive grammar
There is such a thing as prescriptive grammar. Ever heard of a hypothetical imperative? If you don’t want to sound like an uncouth slob, you restrict the use of certain words and grammatical forms for certain situations and contexts.
Grammatically (Descriptive), “ain’t” is perfectly fine.
For comprehension it works fine, but it can be contextually inappropriate. You are apparently incapable of comprehending this. It’s not as though I’ve never used the word ‘ain’t’; though as something of a snob I tend to eschew it most of the time. The point is I have never used it on a resume or in school paper, and I’d be retarded if I did.
In general using formal English, especially in speech, is a way to signal that you are eloquent and literate to the point of it being a second nature. If you don’t care about that, fine, but don’t whine when people doubt your intelligence or education because of it.
If you had read my other couple of posts on grammar and language you would have seen that I am quite open to mutating and manipulating language for your own purposes of effect, such as the elimination of verbs from sentences; or the various contortions of speech we see in Milton. However that does not change that there are certain ways of using it that will imply a lack of linguistic skill in some contexts; and whether you are using a neologism or an archaism you have to deploy it selectively if you want to avoid seeming either daft or pretentious. I will err in favor of the latter.
The English from the Bronx is just as grammatically valid as yours.
Just as valid for what? Amongst friends it hardly matters, on a job site it varies with the job culture, in academic papers it is yet another issue. Every language has overlaping magisterium of grammatical and vocabulary forms that vary depending on the context of the usage. Perhaps in one-hundred years it will be appropriate to use ‘ain’t’ or curse words in an academic paper or in an financial management firm but in the present world we live in it is not. This is not arbitrary or small-minded, this is how people communicate subtle nuances of their character and intellectual training.
FWIW, that’s the correct pronunciation/spelling of “Aryan”. “Arian” refers to a religious belief, based around Christianity; nothing to do with central Asian horsemen…
(And yes, “anti-semite” is stupid language)
“Jews are closely related to one another and have some common cultural background but their genetic, linguistic and religious background is scarcely closer to ancient Judea and Israel than your average Italian’s.”
Umm.. thats not true though
Yes, it is. Ancient Israelites and Judeans were Canaanite semites; and would have had a number of genetic markers that do not show up amongst most modern Jews. Most modern Jews have a number of genetic markers in common but the ones they share with semitic populations are the same ones Italians do.
The Israelite religion was in no way modern Judaism. It was still partly polytheistic as late as the 1st century, and in any case was not the Orthodox religion we have at present. Modern Judaism was not codified until a century or three into the common era, it - like Christianity -is a product of Hellenized Judaism.
And the ancient-ancient Israelites were a bunch of heathans worshipping Ba’al, Shahar, God’s wife and many other assorted gods in their polytheistic clusterfack. Just like all the other Canaanites that they imagine themselves to have driven out of the Holy Land.
Nope. The word is closer to ‘Arian’, which is the name of several tribes living in what is now Harat province, Afghanistan on the river Arios (now Hari Rud). In Old Farsi it was Haraiva. The modern transliteration ‘Aryan’ is inaccurate. You will notice that most of the people who speak an Arian language - Pashto, Farsi- use ‘Arian’ and not ‘Aryan’ for transliteration. This is also preferred by many historians and anthropologists. It is true that Sanskrit speakers use ‘Arya’ and ‘Aryan’, but this is clearly derived from Arian.
Where we get the word from is ‘Arianus’ (Latin). The ‘y’ is a misleading vowel, and there is also the tendency for English speakers to say ‘air-ee-un’, which is a terrible mispronunciation. You could say that the word ‘air-ee-un’ is the English version of it, and that’s fine; but I still think it’s better to use the more accurate word and pronunciation if you know better. ‘Iran’ is just ‘Arian’ with some vowel swapping.