Poor white South Africans

An acquaintance of mine had seen a television program that clearly was based on Finbarr O’Reilly's photos. The program had apparently been biased in a way to tell the story of the current horrible situation of the poor whites in South Africa, ignoring the situation of poor blacks.

What the program did not mention was that there always have been some poor white people in SA, just like one of the comments says below the NYT article: "The emergence of Afrikaner nationalism, over 100 years ago, was tied, in part, to a desire to lift poor white Afrikaners out of poverty." There have of course been many other poor Europeans in Africa, notably Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique.

The implicit statement of the television program, that black majority rule makes loads of white poor for the first time in Southern Africa's history, is clearly wrong.

But as a white European, it is not easy to find any acceptable reaction to O'Reilly's pictures. One has to sympathise with the poor whites, of course, as one should sympathise with poor people of all colours in all countries. On the other hand, it feels very awkward to pick out this particular group, when there are plenty of poor blacks in South Africa and plenty of other poor people in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola and so on all the way to the United States and Zimbabwe.


Food is handed out to residents in Coronation Park. Photo: Finbarr O’Reilly

Karlfeldt vs Dickens vs Eliot - three learned men

In the poem Sång efter skördeanden the Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt, describes how Fridolin "talar med bönder på böndernas sätt men med lärde män på latin" - "speaks with peasants in peasants' ways but with learned men in Latin".

It is a very useful expression in Swedish. The problem is to find an equivalent English saying that describes the ability to change language and style according to whom you speak with.

The best thing I found so far is originally from Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend:

‘For I aint, you must know,’ said Betty, ‘much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.’

The last sentence, He do the Police in different voices, was taken up by T. S. Eliot, who used it as the working title of The Waste Land.

Unfortunately, that phrase is a far cry from Karlfeldt's lines, at least for my purpose to describe someone who is able to adapt his language to the situation. If anyone has any better proposal, feel free to post it.

We are completely cut off, but it does not really matter

Strange that the current eruption of the volcano of Eyjafjallajökull is not more noticeable than it is. All air traffic in Northern Europe is cancelled. And yet, we do not really care. We communicate with family and friends and foes that are thousands of kilometres away as easily as we always do using the internet, even if hardly any physical transport can take place.

Diagnosed psychopaths

In my (fictitious) sister's company, all management went to a psycho-therapy training. Part of the training was a so called ppt test, which unfortunately showed that all managers without exception had psychopathic tendencies. They were therefore all dismissed and sent for urgent treatment.

The company could of course not work without management, so the shareholder's board were in a hurry to employ new managers. To speed up the process, they borrowed the ppt test to quickly identify candidates with the kind of psychological profile they considered desirable.

The Final Language

All the different languages we have in the world today are the evolutionary result of people trying to communicate as efficiently as possible with different starting points. As time goes on, people will select more and more efficient features in their languages. Of course one feature that is efficient in one language may not be efficient in another. For example, Chinese has much fewer possible syllables than English, so it is efficient to add tones to make clearer distinctions between syllables. As English has more syllables, it does not need tones.

Languages will drift around, picking up and dropping features that are efficient for different purposes: clarity, speed, variety. But sooner or later, all languages will reach the ultimate stage, where they have turned into the most efficient language possible. I call this ultimate language Magnusianian Languagistically Perfectissimotasticanianish.

You do not believe such a language will ever appear?

I challenge you. Just wait 20 000 years and see, what the world will come up with.

The Joy of Getting Well

Few things can give you such pleasure as a really annoying illness. It does not matter if it is life threatening or just a cold. The only point is that it shall be annoying. It shall cause you such grief that you can think of nothing else for one or a few days. Pain, fatigue or a runny nose. It is impossible to ignore.

Then you get well. And suddenly the world looks bright again.

If you never had been ill in the first place, it might never have looked bright. The end of your illness is what the world waited for to start looking bright.

From Hanzi to kana to konfusion

Today's language lesson comes from Asia, a continent I like as much as I like all the other continents.

The three characters you see in the column to the left above are Chinese characters - hànzì in Chinese. In Japanese they are called "kanji". The first character, 己, is today pronounced "jǐ". However, a thousand years ago or so, it was probably pronounced more like "ki" or "ke".

The second character, 止, is today pronounced "zhǐ", but back then, it was probably more of "te". The bottom character, 毛, is today pronounced "máo" - yes, like chairman 毛 of the Chinese communist party. A thousand years ago, however, he would probably be called chairman "Maw" or something like that.

That was the first column.

The Japanese, who did not have any writing system themselves 1500 years ago, decided to use the Chinese characters. They took 己 and decided to pronounce it "ko" - almost like the Chinese. However, they decided to simplify 己, and instead wrote コ. Or こ. Likewise they made two different versions of 止: ト and と to write "to". And chairman 毛 was used to write "mo" in the simplified shapes of モ and も. The variants you find in the second column are called "katakana" and the variants you find in the third column are called "hiragana".

Now, you probably guessed what the fourth column is. Yes, it is exactly the same three characters again! It is the hiragana variant written in a font inspired by the 12th century poet and calligrapher Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家).

The font's name is Kazuraki (かづらき). If you also want to be able to write Japanese in a way so people will not be able to read it, you can buy it from Adobe.

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The above and many other ancient Chinese pronunciations can be found at Rinet. A lot of what we know about ancient Chinese pronunciation comes from the works of Karlgren.

The Wisest Liar

If you come to a primitive community, like a medieval European town, an Arabian 7th century Rashidun desert camp or a 13th century Kamakura Japanese fishing village, where would you go for information? Who is the most knowledgeable person in the place? The priest of course!

The irony of it is that the most knowledgeable persons are the ones that most certainly would disagree with each other most vehemently if they met. One of the three priests might be right, but the remaining two would be liars. And they would still be the best source of information.

Do we have similar sources of information today? Discuss.

Meat Eater to help the Animals

Me: Here you are, eating a big steak. I thought you were vegetarian.

Him: I was. But I realised that there were more important things in the world than my own health.

Me: Like...?

Him: Biodiversity. Imagine if everyone stopped eating meat. There are all those species that have been bread by humans for hundreds or even thousands of years with one single purpose: to be eaten. If we stopped eating them, species like farm pigs and broiler chickens would have nowhere to live, and we would lose them as species. The only way to make sure that they survive as a species is to eat them as individuals.

Me: I think I'll have a salad. I would not risk salad going extinct.

Afghanistan - the journalists are losing the war

In the war between most of the world and the Taliban in Afghanistan, there may be no winner, but it seems the world definitely is a loser.

This is not because not enough weapons are sent in. This is not because the world does not have enough soldiers. It is not because the Taliban have highly skilled huge armies. Most people seem to agree on this.

However, no one has come up with any convincing explanation for why the world is losing. The people who are supposed to come with explanations are journalists, people who are there, who have contacts, who know the place. And yet we hear nothing much of actual value. We get informations that are easy to collect: the number of troops, the statements of political leaders. But do we get information that matters?

Among the Taliban, how many of them have chosen to fight for the Taliban, and how many have been forced to join them? No one seems to know. Of the ones who chose to join them, what were there reasons for doing so? There must be thousands of different reasons, but I can hardly mention any, and even less do I see any concrete measures taken to remove those reasons.

How much of the country is "safe", be it in the hands of the Talibans or in the hands of the allied troops and the Afghan government? How much is unstable? How many people fear for their lives? How many fear without reason? How many do not fear, even though they should be afraid? In the safe areas, what do people think of the foreign involvement in the country? How many of the women think the burqas are horrible and how many of them actually like the protection it gives? How many of the anti-allied anti-government forces would happily give up weapons, if they were just given... something? And what would that be?

It seems no one can answer those questions. No one knows. No one knows how to handle the questions, how to handle the peoples of Afghanistan, what their needs and desires are.

That's where the journalists fail. Without this information, we, citizens of democratic countries, cannot give any rational opinions on what should be done. Without this information, we cannot pressure our leaders to rational decisions.

And the result is a prolonged and irrational war. And we are in it.