Invitation to Linguistics by Mario Pei

I never knew anything about linguistics and I am amazed at the power of this science. This introduction offers a glimpse into the tools used by linguistics to study and classify languages and to construct family trees of the different languages.

There are two basic forms of writing: pictographic, like Chinese, where there is this no link between the symbols used and the spoken sound, and syllabic-alphabetic, like English, where the symbols are completely arbitrary and are meant to reflect a sound. Nowadays, there are over 3000 spoken languages with 100 plus having over a hundred million speakers.

Linguistics is divided into three different fields, the Geolinguistic, Descriptive, and Historical. I will offer a short summary of the latter two

The Descriptive field is the study of individual languages in a diachronic manner covering all aspects of the actual spoke word (note, although they use written texts sometimes, they are aware that written texts do not always reflect the way people actually speak.)

Phonemes/Allophenes and Morphemes, which will be explained below, are two main aspects of Descriptive linguistics of which there are many sub-categories and sub-classifications.

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a language that is meaningful and distinct from other meaningful sounds. Allophones are sub-divisions of each Phoneme. For instance the sound p is one phoneme, but there are three distinct sounds that is recognizable as a p sound, but are slightly different i.e. spit, pit, sip. The latter three sounds of p, while slightly different, are recognized by English speakers as belonging to the same p sound, and do not change the meaning of the word no matter which sound of p is used. Contrast this to Chinese, where the English Allophones for p wouldn’t be considered part of the same phoneme and would have a different meaning.

The way a sound comes out is affected by the position of the tongue, whether your tongue touches the front, middle, or back of your mouth, the position of the lips, and the vocal cords and others. Linguistics have many terms and classifications to categorize all sounds of a language. For instance, p,b,k,g,t,d, are all plosives or stops (the sound stops when you say the letter); p,k,t, are unvoiced, meaning they are produced without vibration of the vocal cords, while b,g,d, are voiced, meaning they are accompanied by vibration. Vowels are those sounds which aren’t constrained by the vocal organs and are therefore least restrained when made, as oppose to consonants. I think it’s pretty neat that they can classify all the sounds.

Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning given to a sound. For instance, post has one morpheme while posts can be divided into two morphemes (the latter is the meaning of plurality). Morphemes are usually roughly divided into stems and inflections.

Historical Linguistics seeks to understand extinct languages and determine the evolution of language and languages.

Egyptian, for example, was deciphered by using a parallel Greek and hieroglyphic text which made the Rosette Stone understandable, but even where there is no available bi-lingual text, linguistic can obtain some understanding of a text by analyzing which position different words appear.

The coolest thing, I think, is the comparative method, where languages are compared side by side and their relatedness is determined. Basically, languages that show similarity in their vocabulary, phonetics and grammar and which become more similar the more they go back in time are thought to have a common ancestor. Linguistics use many techniques when determining genetic similarities between languages, and the author offers one.

For example, if an initial p appears in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Slavic, there will appear an initial f in the Germanic, h in Armenian, and the complete fall of the initial phoneme in Celtic, which is evidence that these languages are related. Linguistics constructed three family trees; the best known and the most studied is the Indo-European.

Democracy in America by Tocqueville

At the age of 26 Tocqueville traveled to America and wrote a book about the effects of democracy and equality in America.

He describes, among other things, the structure of the government, with its advantageous and disadvantageous, and the effects of democracy/equality, on poetry, history, freedom, religion, personality, family and more.

His writes beautifully and the book is filled with interesting and insightful analysis.

I will summarize three of them.

He foresees the potential problems with equality and freedom:

He says that “equality awakens in men several propensities extremely dangerous to freedom.” The “most formidable” one is the tendency to trample on individual rights. As people become more equal the government begins to control more and more aspect of people’s lives. (He doesn't say explicitly why equality equals big government, but one could imagine reasons why he assumed this was so.)

As the government becomes bigger and bigger it intrudes more on people’s lives and infringes their independence. In classic Tocqueville style he says that big government “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to a be nothing better than flock of timid industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

He repeats in many different words the simple idea that as the government becomes bigger the individual becomes smaller.

Government, however, is checked by the free-press and the judiciary. The Judiciary, for example, “at a time when the eye and finger of the government are constantly intruding into the minutest details of human actions, and when private persons are at once too weak to protect themselves, and too much isolated for them to reckon upon the assistance of their felloes. The strength of the courts of law has been the greatest security which can be offered to personal independence.”

Tyranny of the majority:

We all know that Tocqueville coined the famous phrase “tyranny of the majority,” but did you know that he thought that lawyers are “the most powerful existing security against the excesses of democracy.”? He says that lawyers form “the only enlightened class whom the people do not mistrust,” (how much has changed since!) and that they put a check on the tyranny of the majority because they control the law and as a rule “their general spirit will be eminently conservative and anti-democratic.” Don’t know how true this is nowadays, but it is an interesting point.

Religion:

He says that people need some dogma in their lives in order not to speculate too much on unknowable things. For if they do, they will undoubtedly not find the answers to them, which will cause then to loose heart in pursuing those things that are knowable. Further, this mental condition makes them more likely to give up their independence.

In his words: if one doesn’t have a creed then, “doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the other… and such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude.. and men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence.”

However, religious dogma should limit itself to the utmost degree and not speak to things which are not religious in nature, for that would cause the intellect to loose its exploratory and independent nature. Furthermore, religious observance should be limited to that which is needed to perpetuate the creed and no more, because people want to live well and not be shackled by rituals.

In his words: religious practice ought “to be limited to as much as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, which is the substance of religion, of which the ritual is its form.”

Religion is also good for democracy since it promotes togetherness and charitableness, and makes people less likely to sacrifice their independence.

In his own words: “I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independent and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that, if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.”

1948 by Benny Morris

This book chronicles the fighting between the Jews and the Arabs following the U.N. resolution to partition Palestine.

The first Zionist began immigrating to Palestine in the 1880s. In 1925 there were 125,000 Jews, by 1931 there were 175,000, and by 1939 there were 460,000.

The state of Israel under partition would have consisted of 500,000 Jews and 450,000 Arabs on 55 percent of Palestine (another 100,000 Jews or so would live in the international zone of Jerusalem).

During the Mandate period Jews gained land through buying it from Arabs, even from notable Arab families, including the Husseinis. Their landholding increased between 1920 and 1947 from 456,000 dunams to about 1.4 million.

During the mandate period the U.N. sent different envoys to suggest ways of partitioning the land.

Eventually, the U.N passed resolution 181 (November 1947) which called for the division of Palestine into two states.

The Jews accept the resolution while the Arabs reject it. (The Jews put a lot of pressure on Truman and used a lot of political maneuvering to get the votes, while the Arabs hardly did any. Some Arabs contend that had the vote for partition been taken anonymously it would not have passed.)

Immediately following the passing of the resolution, a civil war broke out between Palestinian Arabs and Jews on the land earmarked for the Jewish state. The Jews are better organized and beat the Palestinian Arabs. Most Arabs flee as the Haganah conquers villages and towns, including Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa, and expel many Arabs in order to rid the country of a potential fifth column and to prepare for the Arab invasion which was coming at the end of the mandate.

When the British withdrew, at the end of the Mandate, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Syria invade Palestine (Lebanon doesn’t really get involved).

The Arabs countries have their own agenda and there is no unified war plan, and they each suspect the other of trying to gobble up Palestine. The Jordan’s have the only real army: the Arab League commanded by a Brit.

Many Arab leaders understand that they couldn’t beat the Zionist, but the “street” in all the Arab countries called for elimination of the Zionist entity, and had they not complied they feared they would lose their power.

After fighting for a few months, in which Israel halts the attacking armies, the U.N. mandates a truce.

The Israelis attack (they create a pretext) and cut off the Egyptian’s army in the south. The Egyptians ask the other Arab nation for assistance but to no avail.

Political pressure stops the Israeli army from totally crushing the Egyptians army.

The Egyptians are forced to sign a truce and the rest of the Arab nations follow and withdraw from Israel. Israel comes out of the war more powerful and with more territory. During the war Israel gets most of it's weapon from the czechs and become stronger during the embargo.

Facts/Quotes:

Shertok: “There are those who say that we uprooted Arabs from their places. But even they will not deny that the source of the problem was the war: had there been no war, the Arabs would not have abandoned their villages, and we would not have expelled them. Had the Arabs from the start accepted the decision of 29 November a completely different Jewish state would have arisen.. In essence the State of Israel would have arisen with a large Arab minority, which would have left its impress on the state, on its manner of governance, and on its economic life, and [this Arab minority] would have constituted an organic part of the state.”

(though the Arabs would argue that the Zionist influx was, since the beginning, an act of aggression and they were merely acting in self-defense)

“In truth, however, the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POW’s in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948. This was probably due to the circumstance that the victorious Israelis captured some four hundred Arab villages and towns during April – November 1948, whereas the Palestinian Arabs and ALA failed to take any settlements and the Arab armies that invaded in mid- May overran fewer than a dozen settlements.”

“The 1948 War, from the Arab’s perspective, was a war of religious as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory.”

Between 1948 and 1951 Israel absorbs some 700,000 immigrants. 400,000 Arabs are displaced because of the war.

“The Zionist shift from unreserved adherence to the UN borders to expansionism was slow and hesitant.”

After a brazen act, during the civil war, where 58 civilians died.. “Ben Gurion said that he had been in London during the Blitz, ‘but such a thing I never saw, I couldn’t recognize the street.’ But, he added, ‘we were the first to commit [such acts]… the Jews were the first.’ He was referring to previous LHI and IZL bombings.”

One of the fist public opinion polls in Palestine in Feb 41 found that “88 percent of the Palestinian Arabs favored Germany and only 9 percent favored Britain.”

In the beginning of the 20^th century there existed “no Palestinian Arab national movement nor any separate Palestinian Arab national consciousness.” … “Thus, 1920 was to prove crucial in the emergence of a separate Palestinian Arab national movement and a decisive moment in the evolving Zionist-Arab conflict.”

In 1925 the Jews establish Hebrew university. Palestinians Arabs establish universities in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1970’s.

The Vatican opposed Jewish statehood.

In the late 1940's the Yishuv was 90% Ashkenazi and 90% secular and 3% ultra orthodox and anti Zionist.

Islam The Religion And The People by Bernard Lewis

A survey of the development of Islamic civilization. A nice introduction to the religion, though I would've appreciated if Lewis discussed the different sects in more detail. Scattered around the book are Islamic jokes

I found these facts noteworthy (primarily bc I didn't know most of them):

Paper and numbers came from Islamic societies.
Check, pajama, sugar are all Persian words.
There is a complex method that establishes which Hadith's are really from the Prophet.
"During the Middle Ages, the Muslim world developed a very elaborate system of banking and credit. By the 9th century CE, for example, a merchant could draw a check in Iraq and cash it in Morocco."
The West bulleted ahead of Islamic civilization for several reasons: Islamic societies didn't prize competition, so they didn't innovate. They didn't have wood to build boats. They didn't have corporations. They didn't have rainfall, but irrigated through rivers and were therefore subservient to those who controlled them. The political and economic consequences of discovering oil. The West discovered America.
"Generally speaking, however, Muslim toleration of unbelievers and misbelievers werefar better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century."
The Persian language is called Parsi, but it pronounced Farsi bc Arabic doesn't have a sound for P.
"According to traditional teaching, the obligation to jihad will continue until all the world either adopts Islam or submits to Muslim rule."
According to Shari'a "Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first."
"The Islamic tradition is unequivocally against suicide."
The Muslim religious calender is strictly lunar, so the holy month of Ramadan falls out in every season.
Islamic Humor (concerning Hadith):
Two merchants, one Muslim and one Christian, men on board a ship and were chatting amicably. At a certain moment, the Christian merchant took a flask of wine out of his bag and said to his Muslim colleague: "I would ask you to join me in drinking some wine, but I know that it is forbidden by your religion, and I do not wish to offend you."
"How do you know that this is wine?" asked the Muslim merchant.
"I sent my slave to the market, and he bought it from a well-known Jewish merchant."
The Muslim merchant replied: "Sometimes we even reject traditions related on the authority of the companions of the Prophet. Do you expect me to believe a tradition related by a Christian, on the authority of his slave, on the authority of Jewish wine merchant? Give me that flask!"

Plato's Apology

Socrates searches for someone smarter than himself in order to understand the oracles statement tha he is the wisest man. Through cross-examination he discovers that ppl who think they know really do not.
He is accused of corrupting the young and not believing in the gods.
He defends himself on the first accusation that he was only demonstrating other ppl's ignorance and the second that he does indeed believe in the gods, since he believes in spirits.

Likes:
But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets - namely, that because they were expert workmen in their own crafts, they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdon; and therefore, I asked myself on behalf of the oracle whether I would prefer to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or to be like them in both; and I answered to myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I was.

For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your person or your property, but first and foremost to take care of your soul, that it be as good as possible, saying "Virtue is not given by money, but from virtue comes money and every other human good, public as well as private."

Dislikes:
For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say just a private man, but even the great king himself will not find many such days or nights when compared with the others. Now if death is like that, then I say that to die is a gain..