Josephine Quinn’s “Insider and Outsider” (NYRB November 6, 2025; archived) is a favorable review of Augustine the African, by Catherine Conybeare; here are some bits of Hattic interest:
He was baptized by the militant bishop Ambrose of Milan in 387, seven years after the Edict of Thessalonica attempted to enforce Christianity on all Rome’s subjects and five years after the emperor Theodosius launched a new campaign of persecution against Manichaeans. In another change of heart, Augustine gave up his imperial sinecure to return to North Africa, though not to his former companion: now he was committed to chastity. Monnica died on the way back, but Augustine finally arrived home after five years overseas in 388. After that he never left Africa again.
At first he settled in his hometown of Thagaste, where more grief awaited him with the loss of his beloved son at the age of sixteen around the year 390. The following year he was seized by the local congregation on a visit to the port of Hippo and ordained a presbyter, or priest. […] In 395 he was promoted to the unusual position of coadjutant bishop with the incumbent Valerius, a native Greek speaker who needed the support, and finally became sole bishop on Valerius’s death in 396. This prompted him to write his Confessions, an autobiographical account of his spiritual journey and his first work of real brilliance. […]
Conybeare focuses throughout on the ways in which Augustine’s developing theology and theological self-positioning were “inflected by his view from Africa.” One example is his interest in Punic, a western form of the Phoenician language originally introduced to African coastal areas by Iron Age Levantine settlers. It had been adopted by local communities and even kings by the third century BCE, seems by the third century CE to have entirely obliterated the “Libyan” languages previously used in the area, and was still widely spoken across northwest Africa in the early fifth century, alongside Latin. Punic was the first language of many African Christians, and though Augustine wasn’t fluent he seems to have had a functional understanding of it and a good sense of its importance to the Christian mission in the region. Much of our evidence for its continuing popularity comes from Augustine himself, as he renders words and phrases into Punic and back for his own congregation and finds translators, interpreters, and even a Punic-speaking bishop for others.
Conybeare argues that working in a bilingual environment and confronting the fact that words in different languages can have only an approximate correspondence affected Augustine’s attitude toward scripture. This is illustrated by an argument he had with the Bethlehem-based theologian Jerome over the latter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin. The specific point at issue may seem trivial: Jerome had translated a Hebrew word in the book of Jonah as “ivy” rather than, as had been traditional in earlier Latin versions, “gourd vine.” Augustine wrote to protest, explaining that when local Christians reacted badly to this unfamiliar new version, another African bishop had to change the wording back. Jerome was offended by the implication that he was wrong and by the idea that more than one translation could be authoritative. But Augustine’s experience in Africa of the limitations of translation convinced him that the specific wording of a biblical text was less important than its communicative power—that “different human words could still serve the single truth of God’s word.” […]
In one early exchange, he tells Maximinus, a contemporary from Madauros, that as “an African writing to Africans, and given the fact that we’re both here in Africa,” he shouldn’t mock the Punic names of Christian martyrs. This highlights the complex relationship between the concepts of “Punic” and “African” in antiquity and might suggest an alternative form of regional identification. In Latin, punicus or poenus was simply an unaspirated transliteration of the Greek label phoenix, or Phoenician, but the term was associated in particular with the great imperial city of Carthage, of more immediate concern to Romans than the ports of the Levant. From there its meaning extended to the entire region, no doubt helped along by the widespread adoption of the Punic language there, along with Carthaginian cultural practices and political institutions like the “sufetes” who served as chief magistrates in more than forty North African cities in the Roman period. By the imperial period the terms “African” and “Punic” could be used interchangeably by Roman authors, something like the modern use as synonyms, in some contexts at least, of “British” and “English,” although the latter term refers to foreign migrants who introduced their language and culture to a large region of Britain beginning around 1,500 years ago—more or less the same distance in time as that between Augustine and Dido, founder of Carthage.
Augustine certainly had Punic sympathies, from his youthful sorrow for Dido, who was abandoned by Aeneas on his way to found the Roman people, to his guarded admiration for the Carthaginian general Hannibal in his last great work, The City of God. It’s hard to put too much meaningful weight on them, however—isn’t everyone Team Dido? When he directly identified himself as Punic in the 420s, it was in response to the Italian heretic Julian of Aeclanum hurling the term at him as an insult. He responded by forcefully reclaiming it: “Do not despise this Punic man…puffed up by your geographical origins. Just because Puglia produced you, don’t think that you can conquer Punics with your stock, when you cannot do so with your mind.” Strong stuff, but more of a comment on Julian’s notions of identity than his own.
One problem here is that our own understandings of identity are difficult to align with those of the ancients. Conybeare describes Augustine as having “Amazigh—Berber—heritage,” inferring the likely Berber origins of his mother from her name, derived from that of the local god Mon, who was worshiped near Thagaste. But as Ramzi Rouighi explained in Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib (2019), “Berber” is a category constructed by Arabic soldiers and scholars more than two hundred years after Augustine’s death, and the local populations they collected under this label had no shared culture or common identity. Before modern nations and communications, collective identification tended to coalesce at a more local or cultural level than a regional or ethnic one: the city and the sanctuary. […]
Another of Augustine’s inventions was the West: he explains in The City of God that although most people divide the world into three unequal parts—Asia, Europe, and Africa—it can also be divided into two halves: the Oriens (the East, or Asia) and the Occidens (the West, comprising Europe and Africa). This new binary geography made sense in relation to the division of the Roman Empire. And it makes some sense of Augustine, too, who struggled with the Greek language of the Eastern Empire and attracted little attention there. He lived an entirely western life between Italy and Africa in an era when journeys to Constantinople and pilgrimages to the Holy Land were not at all uncommon: in the early 390s his close friend and fellow Thagastan Alypius visited Jerome, who was originally from the Adriatic coast, at his monastery in Bethlehem.
I’m pretty sure Augustine didn’t actually invent the West, but one has to forgive a certain amount of hype in favorable reviews. (We discussed Latino-Punic back in 2007 and Augustine’s reference to a Punic proverb last year; not directly related, but I will take any chance I can get to point people to the Circumcellions.)
Looking at the name Conybeare, WAry says, “Perhaps a habitational surname from a lost or unidentified place in Devonshire, from either cony or Old English cyning (‘king’) + Old English bearu (‘grove, wood’).” WPedia lists quite a few illustrious scholars of that family, including John Josias C. (who published a translation of Beowulf in English and Latin verse) and his brother William Daniel C., “best known for his ground-breaking work on fossils and excavation in the 1820s.” I’m supposed to read that with a straight face?
Augustine was baptized by Ambrose in A.D. 387, almost exactly 1200 years after the traditional date of the founding of Carthage by Dido in 814 B.C. Opinions might vary as to whether 1200 years is “more or less the same” as 1500 years.
Once upon a time in the 1980’s I was skimming a discarded review copy of a then-new academic monograph which, as best as I can recall, argued not that Augustine had invented the West but that he had invented Post-Modernism, somehow anticipating (by around 1500 years …) Nietzsche and then the French Theory Dudes. I alas don’t remember the author or any details of what supposedly supported the argument, but this seems like a specific-enough thesis that I’m hoping I haven’t just conjured up a false memory of it out of nothing?
seems by the third century CE to have entirely obliterated the “Libyan” languages previously used in the area
I wonder if there’s any attestations of those. (Is anything known about them at all?)
the West, comprising Europe and Africa
…probably not Egypt, though; the inclusion of Egypt as part of “Africa” is AFAIK much later. In the 5th century it was clearly part of the (Greek-speaking) east.
>more or less
Maybe she follows the traditional dating of the Trojan War to the 12th century before Caesarian era and believes Dido must have lived then. There are alternate foundation myths for Carthage that go back that far or further. And archaeological evidence against the idea, but she is talking about myth here after all.
seems by the third century CE to have entirely obliterated the “Libyan” languages previously used in the area
Only if “area” is defined rather narrowly. (It might be true of the province of Africa and even of the area Augustine grew up in – though the latter was not far from the largest single concentration of Libyco-Berber inscriptions; it certainly was not true of North Africa as a whole.)
But as Ramzi Rouighi explained in Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib (2019), “Berber” is a category constructed by Arabic soldiers and scholars more than two hundred years after Augustine’s death, and the local populations they collected under this label had no shared culture or common identity.
No common identity – probably not. No shared culture? That goes well beyond anything Rouighi’s sources can possibly support. (I reviewed the work in question some time ago on my blog.)
the West, comprising Europe and Africa
In medieval Arabic, the Maghrib (West) included Spain as well as North Africa – but of course excluded Egypt as well as Greece.
I can’t see how that 814 date for the founding of Carthage could be consistent with 753 for the founding of Rome. I imagine the number of mythological generations in the royal house of Alba Longa between Aeneas and Romulus was probably not very consistent, but it cannot possibly have been less than four. Wikipedia has a family tree with sixteen generations. Most of the kings on it were presumably dreamed up precisely to push the date of Aeneas’s arrival in Italy back to the time of the Trojan War.
And why shared Berber language is misleading and unimportant and shared Latin or Greek is important and not misleading?
The 814 B.C. date for Carthage (expressed as “38 years before the first Olympiad”) may trace back to at least Timaeus, who was a few centuries closer to the events than Vergil. It may also match modern archeology better but that may well be a coincidence …
I have a feeling of double absurdity when Morocco is referred to as “East”.
It’s the country a European should visit if what she needs is fairy tales from 1001 nights or imagery from the Muslim Arab east – and I can’t dismiss the label.
Perhaps some “Oriental” things can be found in Muslim Spain as well. Umayyads, for one thing:)
@drasvi: Indeed, the wiki article on the hippie-era standard “Marrakesh Express” describes its music as having an “Eastern vibe.” From an actual longitude perspective, of course, Marrakesh is 8 degrees west of Greenwich, and 5 degrees west of Blackpool in Lancashire, where Graham Nash (who wrote the song) was born.
Some inferences about the appeal of mystic Marrakesh to the hippies may be drawn from the title of a recent article: “In Search of Morocco’s Hashish Heritage.”
“Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” has the hero travel forty days from his home in China (the farthest East known to the Arabian world) to the shores of Morocco (correspondingly the ultimate West).
Chinese princesses are daughters of party leaders and Morocco is believed to be full of sorcerers. (Surely, these daughters deserve their fairy tales too…)
@JWB, Morocco is known for its marijuana (and speaking of linguistics, as Lameen noted, Gutova did the fieldwork for her Senhaja grammar in a place known for its marijuana in Morocco). But it’s an oriental dream even if you don’t smoke it. Also music and magic, for those particularly interested in those.
I note that the bolded word looks a lot like shofet, Hebrew for “judge” (the book of Judges is Shoftim, for example).
It occurred to me that her name might be a variant of “David”, which is also mentioned as a possibility in her WikiP article. The article also mentions a different suggestion; that her name derives from “wanderer” (which in Hebrew has a root of ndd) (and I think it unlikely because of the absence of the initial nun, although I admit I don’t know how Punic modifies the Semitic roots).
IIRC, in early Islamic times “Urufa” (=Europe) meant Western Europe and the Maghrib, i.e. basically the Latin-speaking half of the Roman Empire.
I note that the bolded word looks a lot like shofet, Hebrew for “judge”
And indeed they are related; Wiktionary:
And under the 𐤔𐤐𐤈 link:
I think it’s a completely regular Punic version of the West Semitic word, which is probably better glossed as “magistrate,” even in Hebrew. “Chieftain” is also used as a translation, when referring to the relevant period in the Deuteronomic history. The association of the Hebrew word with judges comes from its appearance in a Torah passage that outlines the judicial functions of local leaders.
Not really. Collective identity was always based on objective ethnolinguistic differences. Identities based on culture or religion or political ideas have always been anemic at best.
Besides the local identity there was always a supra-local or national identity. The French nation didn’t magically appear in 1789, it already existed. The idea that national identity and the strong feelings surrounding it are a modern invention is one of the goofiest ideas of modernity.
Eww.
>The French nation didn’t magically appear in 1789, it already existed,
My understanding is that the title and some of the appeal of the Marseillaise comes from the surprise of locals that a group of southerners who showed up in Paris to help the revolution actually spoke/sang French. A French patrie may have existed, but it wasn’t the one that we know. Per wiki, an Alsatian version of the anthem was written to rally those “French” who didn’t even speak a Romance dialect.
I suspect language/dialect has always been a part of identity, though not with the strength suggested above. What was new in the 18th century was the hegemonic power of a dominant dialect.
Notably, given the topic we’re posting under, there is nothing read as evidence of strong differentiation of dialects within Punic or Phoenician, and yet there is little evidence that in the last few centuries BC Punic or Phoenician was a powerful identity. It’s not just a matter of absence of evidence, but of the evidence present for a different sort of identity – civic. Merchants in other cities don’t seem to have formed Punic associations. Instead, they formed Tyrean, Sidonian or Carthaginian societies, and made monuments to them which survive today.
Even Greeks fought more wars for their city against other Greeks than against “Persians”.
>Identities based on… religion… anemic at best
You have to be pretty much history-illiterate to think that religion wasn’t an extraordinarily powerful organizer of identity in Europe prior to the “Age of Reason”.
Ryan, please don’t.
Yeah maybe I shouldn’t have. Sorry.
Eww.
My understanding …
Ryan, please don’t.
Sorry.
Took me a moment to figure out what that was about. Such delicate adumbration ! Almost the sweet bliss of connubial reciprocity !
[Another ignorant, bigoted rant deleted — I asked you once to go away, and I’m asking you again. –LH]
In some times & places yes, in others not remotely; we’ve had a striking counterexample here before.
LH
I have never insulted anyone in my comments here. Deleting them while saying that I am posting rants or even that I am bullying people is not only uncivil and insulting but also very childish. And as if that were not enough, you had to excuse yourself with the rationale ‘I have talked with all kinds of people but I am drawing the line with you’. Pathetic, really.
@cj
Different people have different objectives (and capabilities) for engagement in discussions. Much of what you post suggests that you derive satisfaction from irritating people, including especially the admin. You also give the impression of having a low desire or ability to engage with primarily reasoned arguments, but also social cues, from others that do not share your overall point of view. If this is not your intention, then you need to try to improve both style and content in your posts, based on feedback from other posters.
PP
The style of expression is a character trait, the content is likewise a reflection of someone’s views. If someone says, you should try to improve your style and content, he’s simply saying ‘I don’t like your character, change it’. How would you react if someone told you that? I think it would be naive to imagine that you would react positively.
At any rate I find the accusation of bullying or vile behavior completely baseless and unacceptable. If, for example, I voice the opinion that the supporters of so-called Palestine are the useful idiots of terrorists, that’s not meant as a personal insult towards a particular person. It’s simply my reading of the situation.
If an argument doesn’t contain name-calling there is no objective moral ground for removing it or asking the poster to ‘beat it’. Since they lack moral grounding, these acts are dishonorable, unjust and arbitrary. Exactly what you would expect from a self-professed ‘anarchist’.
If you really haven’t noticed you’re doing that, you’re too stupid to comment anywhere this side of YouTube. Many of your rants seem carefully packed with insults to as many people as possible.
Appeals to Klingon honor are not going to work.
On his own personal blog?
See? You did it again: extremely broad brush + insult.
I wonder, what is the origin of the name Tagaste (Tagasta?), mentioned above. The shape of the word looks vaguely Berber (T-… -t…). The English Wikipedia offers an etymology here, but I don’t know whether to trust that or not. There is also a note on the name here from a long-defunct site.
If an argument doesn’t contain name-calling there is no objective moral ground for removing it or asking the poster to ‘beat it’. Since they lack moral grounding, these acts are dishonorable, unjust and arbitrary.
Fine, I’m immoral, dishonorable, unjust, and arbitrary. Why exactly do you want to hang around here and be subject to this brutal oppression? I’m sure there are plenty of master-race sites where you will find your powerful intellect and home truths more than welcome.
The shape of the word looks vaguely Berber (T-… -t…)
Indeed; a number of Classical-era North African place names have the same shape, matching the usual Berber feminine singular circumfix. but WP’s
The old name of the Numidian city of Thagaste derives from the Berber Thagoust, which means the bag, given that the site of the town is located at the foot of…
is obvious folk etymology.
While we’re at it, ahras is singular, not plural, and there’s no word *ahra.
@CJ
I think others have made good points regarding excessive use of emotive and denunciatory language (I think the word for this in German is hetzen). Regarding the general point of self-expression, you seem to be saying you feel that any accommodation to your audience when communicating would represent an attempt to “change your character”. I am surprised; if I understand this correctly, then you must speak (or at least advocate speaking) in the same way to dogs, children, parents, colleagues, neighbours, strangers. I would find such an approach non-optimal for my own needs and objectives. Many spiritual warriors have had more tactical approaches; as an example, take Odysseus, who disguised himself as a slave in order to gain access to his household and overcome a number of enemies at the proper moment.
@PP
Nobody could provide a quote showing me personally insulting someone here. It’s as simple as that. In my latest comment I tried to respond to someone criticizing my view on national identities in the pre-nation state era and LH removed it just because he doesn’t want to allow what he sees as far-right views. This is not the first time he’s rudely prevented me from discussing with people. Just let him come out and say I don’t want you here because I think you’re a damn Nazi. Accusing me of misbehavior or bullying is not only slanderous but hypocritical on his part.
@PP:
This specimen dropped in the motto over the gate of Belsen into a thread about national slogans, for the LULZ. (Hat deleted that comment, and quite right too.)
He is not interested in actual discussion. Don’t be taken in. He gets his kicks entirely from provocation. This current “poor little me” shtick is merely yet another well-worn troll technique.
Personally? You mean one-by-one? You’re much more efficient than that!
you seem to be saying you feel that any accommodation to your audience when communicating would represent an attempt to “change your character”.
This is kind of a fun hypothesis to pursue, in that taking it to its logical conclusion would require one to reject all attempts to learn foreign languages in the first place. Strictly speaking, it might even rule out learning one’s first language, a process which after all involves considerable concessions to adult demands for comprehensibility and politeness; the only truly authentic way to communicate is by crying loudly when one’s needs are unmet.
Just let him come out and say I don’t want you here because I think you’re a damn Nazi.
Fine, I don’t want you here because I think you’re a damn Nazi. Happy now? And I’m still not clear on why you want to participate in a venue where nobody wants you.
To be clear, I haven’t banned you with extreme prejudice; you notice I haven’t deleted innocuous or whiny comments. If you can manage to restrict yourself to carrying on a civil conversation about topics that don’t engage your racial/nationalist views, you can hang around and chat. This is, after all, primarily a site about language and literature, and politics is just an occasional distraction. But I will delete all bigoted rants, and I will decide what’s a bigoted rant. It’s up to you to decide how to play it.
Right wing trolls are always so desperate for approval from more liberal thinkers. When I really think people are idiots, I usually just don’t engage with them. I have better things to do like go read The Podlipnayans which DM helpfully reminded us of.
The subject and tone sounds a bit like the works of our recent Hungarian Nobel laureate. Fun.
Do read it, and let us know what you think!
You and that Scot guy (apologies if I got the gender wrong) aren’t everybody. Most people here probably couldn’t care less whether I’m here or not. Besides political philosophy I also happen to be genuinely interested in linguistics so why not participate?
Alright, this being your site, you have the prerogative to define what is a bigoted rant and remove it. I am just thankful that the ‘property is theft’ crowd doesn’t also get to define property and theft for the rest of us.
[rant deleted — LH]
Most people here probably couldn’t care less whether I’m here or not.
Ah, the famous “the lurkers support me!” defense. Just so you know, you are the first commenter in the 23 years I’ve been running LH who more than one person has wanted banned.
Alright, this being your site, you have the prerogative to define what is a bigoted rant and remove it.
Very kind of you.
Besides political philosophy I also happen to be genuinely interested in linguistics so why not participate?
You are welcome to talk about linguistics; if you can confine yourself to that topic, you should have no problems. But you can’t seem to keep yourself off sociopolitical topics. Make the effort!
“rant deleted”
An attempt at humblebrag, gone.
Not in OED nor Green’s. Though some sites credit Harris Wittels in 2010, Merriam-Webster claims a 2002 use. American Dialect Society “most useful” word of 2011.
Work Life: A Publication on Employment and People with Disabilities 1.4, (Winter, 1988) 24 reprints from USA Today a recommendation to “be a humble braggart.”
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Worklife/K8zRBCrQXH0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=humble
As far as I’m concerned he’s permanently skunked, even if all he ever writes again are comments on linguistics. Since he hasn’t apologized for his insults, they still stand, attached to him.
As one of many people who are “here” and who hasn’t said anything negative yet — I just want to say that I feel a deep sense of revulsion for Charles Jaeger’s sociopolitical comments; they feel like they are either deliberately and gleefully malicious, or written with such depraved indifference to malice that it might as well be deliberate.
This is of course my own idiosyncratic perception, which may not be felt by anyone else.
Thank you.
I used to argue a hell of a lot with similar bigots elsewhere, but even if I felt the urge, you’ve made it clear over the years that you do not want the blog comments to be an argument forum. And I don’t want to do anything to make moderating the blog to be an unpleasant chore.
Let Languagehat be Languagehat.
When I really think people are idiots, I usually just don’t engage with them.
Yes, that has been my policy. I think I’d avoid saying “idiot” out loud. But the whole plagiarism shtick right at the beginning indicated dishonesty and trolling.
@CJ Most people here probably couldn’t care less whether I’m here or not. Besides political philosophy I also happen to be genuinely interested in linguistics so why not participate?
Just in case you’re trying to use the lurker’s defence: I want you to stop with the rants and invective. I fully support @Hat deleting the rants. I saw enough of them to observe the absence of reasoned argument. I’m enough of a liberal to hope @Hat doesn’t have to actually ban you — in the hope you’ll eventually contribute something positive.
I am interested in political philosophy; what you produce isn’t philosophy but
unsupported bullshitpropaganda. This, however is a language site, only obliquely touching on politics/philosophy, for its language interest. As people have said repeatedly: if you want to trade political/philosophical invective, there are plenty other sites; (why) aren’t you over there?I’m primarily a lurker and I concur with the anti-Jaeger commentary. I feel most of the regular commenters I see here generally make valuable comments even when I disagree with them, which is why I keep lurking. I don’t feel the same way about Charles Jaeger, partly out of fundamental disagreement with his views and tone, and partly because there are any number of other places he could choose to express them without bogging down the comments on this blog, if he is keen to express them somewhere. I’m posting this merely to vigorously disagree with the idea that ‘most people’ here support him.
Thanks for that. I am a very strong advocate for free speech, and I dislike shutting anyone down or deleting their comments, but some things are more important than free speech. I too feel the commenters generally make valuable comments even when I disagree with them, which is what makes the blog such a thrill for me. To have comments that drag it down and depress and anger me just isn’t worth it.
I’ve already expressed my opinion of this guy, so I won’t repeat myself; just want to say that I think our host here has done a fantastic job of making this blog a good place to hang out, and keeping it that way over an astonishingly long period of time. Given that record, I trust his judgement over my own on this issue (I personally would not have been nearly this patient.)
I too feel the commenters generally make valuable comments even when I disagree with them
Sure, there wants fire where there are no lively sparks
Of roughness.
I never said or implied anything about anyone supporting me. Obviously, that was never the case on this site. I only wished to state that most people here (i.e. the sum of lurkers and commenters) are indifferent to the question of whether I should be allowed to post or not. Even you are allowing me to post as long as you don’t find the content inflammatory.
The fact that I’m the first person in 23 years to earn this dubious distinction doesn’t signify anything of import about me personally. It rather means that the people who tend to visit here are broadly left-wing and hence allergic to someone like me. If more ideological tastes were being represented, feelings of indignation and revulsion would crop up more often. I’m not criticizing the lack of diversity. It’s not strange that most commenters on a linguistics site lean left because that’s where the linguistics community generally leans. A far-right person like me who’s interested in linguistics is rare.
Anyway, I promise not to bring up anything political again. I am an old person, LH is probably an old person too and I can empathize with the similarity in age. I think our host wants to have a peaceful blog and I shouldn’t stir up people’s emotions.
Yes I am an old person, and if you’re willing to allow me to have a peaceful blog, you can avoid deletion.
Just to keep adding to the chorus – I’m primarily a lurker here, and I fully support Hat on this (and, like Owlmirror, feel “a deep sense of revulsion for Charles Jaeger’s sociopolitical comments”)
To be clear, when I–politically independent oldster–above tried to salvage something linguistic to comment upon, namely a perhaps if loosely-conceived humblebrag attempt that failed, I found that Charles J. post repellent.
When I have had time to visit to LH in the past few weeks, I have been saddened to find that, in order to find some spark of interesting discussion, I must scroll past Carl Jaeger’s rants, and the pointless attempts to engage him, and the consequent debate on how to deal with trolls. I could find these things Facebook if I wanted them, things that are (to borrow a phrase from Teju Cole cited elsewhere on this page) as idiotic as the rest of the internet. I can learn nothing from them, and they don’t stimulate me to do further research myself on topics about which I want to learn more. I was hoping that regular commenters would just ignore Carl Jaeger’s rants and that he would go away and bother some other forum, but that did not happen. I was happy to find that our host Language Hat had just begun deleting the rants, so that that nobody would even be tempted to comment on them.
I did enjoy that Platonic fragment on trolls and trolling that someone linked to, however!
I feel your pain. Hopefully our long nightmare is over and we can go back to enjoying the good stuff.
“Let Languagehat be Languagehat”–yes!
I am not highly interested in digging into the details of what went down here, but whatever I’ve actually seen of this C J. fellow so far strikes me as innocuous; and I have never liked mr. Hat’s or many of the commentariat’s heavy-handed demonization of right-wing views (vs. no reaction whatsoever to political derails towards opinions “held by sensible people”). But, of course, it is his blog and his choice of what degree or flavor of openness to to encourage. Whether people like me might count as lurkers “supporting” the guy seems debatable. But it deserves to be noted that this kind of moderation is, yes, to some degree driving commentators away. We can and do get the message that people who do not toe the party line on the sacred calfs of modern “leftist” thought (on, say, how to conceive of ethnicity) are unwelcome here.
whatever I’ve actually seen of this C J. fellow so far strikes me as innocuous
Really? You haven’t read him very extensively or carefully, then, because his views, as expressed at length, are clearly Nazi-adjacent, and I won’t have that kind of thing on my blog. (In fairness, I deleted his worst screeds, so you may have missed them.) I have nothing against conservatives as such and no interest in imposing any particular set of views — that would be pretty boring. And I assure you that my own views are no more acceptable to the “left” as commonly conceived than to the “right” (those divisions are pretty silly in any event). But master-race authoritarianism is not conservative, it is vile and inhuman, and since it is currently doing its best to destroy my country, I’m not in the mood to be patient with it. I trust you do not share such views, so you might want to think twice about making common cause with CJ or adopting him as some sort of persecuted victim. He is no more representative of the “right” than Stalin was representative of the “left.”
Also, I hope you do not have the idea that because I express my own views firmly I expect others to “toe the line.” I say what I think and I expect others to say what they think; I value argument (when it’s reasonably respectful and people actually listen to and respond to each other) and I have zero desire to dominate anyone. The world is a complicated place and nobody can be confident of being in the right, least of all me. I have changed my mind about many things and expect to continue doing so.
master-race authoritarianism is not conservative, it is vile and inhuman
Exactly.
J Pystynen: I very much enjoy your occasional posting, and hope you stick around. You are fortunate to have missed the worst of CJ’s posting; suffice it to say he made it perfectly clear (with plagiarism to boot) that he looks up to the Nazis for their foreign policy (despite minor differences on things like economic policy) and dreams of the day when German armies will finally be able to undertake a successful Drang nach Osten – and is obsessed enough with this dream to shoehorn it into a discussion about the Piraha. Not views calculated to endear him to anyone far enough left to think genocide is bad, let alone to an aficionado of Russian literature.
J Pystynen: I should add that I have always enjoyed your comments here and perk up when I see your name, confident in the likelihood that something interesting will be said. I can’t imagine why you would feel unwelcome. If I were a regular commenter on a blog whose proprietor I knew to be a (traditional) conservative it wouldn’t bother me a bit unless he or she expressly attacked me; I’m used to people disagreeing with my political views on one axis or another (and in fact have never met anyone who completely agreed with me — it would probably frighten me if it happened). Surely mere disagreement doesn’t make you feel unwelcome?
@Lameen
I won’t ever talk about politics or anything not related to linguistics here. I just want to make it clear once and for all that I do NOT support genocide and that I do NOT in any way, shape or form deny or minimize the multiple crimes against various unarmed and defenseless people committed chiefly by Germans and Austrians in that period under the direct orders of the NSDAP and its deranged leader. Killing any person of any ethnicity, persuasion, or any other acquired or inborn characteristic who’s not immediately trying to kill you is not only criminal but profoundly unintelligent. Not only I do NOT admire AH and his whole party, I despise them. I hope I was as clear as humanly possible about this.
“who’re you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
– Deutsche Volkspartei in Rumänien proverb
Anyɛ-nɛ-nif sɔn’ɔ awʋm-tʋba.
“Saw-with-eye is better than heard-with-ears.”
… as we* say in Wales. No doubt the proverb is borrowed from the Romanian.
* Well, as I say in Wales. Also, some people say it in London, which is historically in Wales.
A core tenet of political philosophy is that a true shepherd of nations should protect and lead his flock to pasture, not drive them over a cliff. In other words, a true leader has the responsibility to protect all people under his rule, and by all people, I mean all people. It’s clear that A.H. didn’t act as a pastor gentium but as a complete maniac. Again, I think this makes it abundantly clear what I think about him and his poisoned legacy. So I would kindly suggest that you try to be a little bit less confident in your assumptions about the belief system of a person you don’t know. As LH said, people are complex.
OK, you’ve made yourself clear, and I hope you will let it go and stick to language. Again I remind you that you are under no obligation to respond to what other people say.
One argument (which can be important for me and maybe CJ but not LH) is that
– this blog and its forum is good and important for English readers interested in languages and linguistics.
– It is not commercial. It is done by a man, not “a Chinese company” or whatever.
Basically, IF some ‘objectively’ good comment will remind LH something (subjectively) unpleasant and he will be disgusted, I think it’s a good idea not to write this comment.
____
I agree with J Pystynen that “Russian and Hungarian, Putin and Orban… If what is said about Putin and Orban is that they’re assholes ” is a problematic approach.
I do think that Putin is an asshole, and “don’t talk about x, y, z, that will derail the conversation” is NOT my way.
My way is “talk about anything but learn not to derail it”.
So as for me, that’s good that Putin and Orban can be called assholes here.
But problematic.
seems by the third century CE to have entirely obliterated the “Libyan” languages previously used in the area
I wonder if there’s any attestations of those. (Is anything known about them at all?)
In regard to oldest attested languages of the region called Libya in antiquity, I believe Qeheq has been discussed before at LH. See for example Jason P. Silvestri (2023) “The Oldest Berber Text(s)? Egyptian Evidence for the Ancient Libyan Language(s)”, available here on academia.edu. I am not at all in a position to evaluate the proposals in this article. There is also a handy summary in the Wikipedia at the entry Kehek language, of course, with more bibliography.
@Lameen, I understand that you see a Nazi fan in him and find it disgusting. But I want to note that when you say he is so, I – who did not read all those comments which I don’t find interesting – read it as “CJ said that Slavs are undermen and Jews are the enemy”.
Or said something that means he thinks so.
@drasvi: I am quite certain that you, along with literally every other human being on the face of this earth, have better things to do than read the tedious and annoying comments I linked to above. However, if you’re not going to read them, there is little point in commenting on the conclusions I drew from them, or speculating on what he meant. (You can always just search the linked thread for the string “slav”, if that’s what you were wondering about.) Nor is this blog the place to discuss either question, given our host’s expressed wishes.
Yes, drasvi, please just let it go.
@Lameen, I did read that comment. It seems to be written by a fan of German military who, maybe (?), thinks that it is good that Germany invaded my country.
Yes, I don’t want to read or reread that thread and don’t want to argue with you or anyone, so I have chosen this form of noting the fact of “how I would understand your comment if I didn’t read the linked comment”.
Perhaps your comment would have mislead me (I don’t think you want that).
@LH, one can’t call a lady “whore” and expect everyone to talk about Punic. Or call her “Nazi” and expect same.
With “whore” the problem is that a lady shouldn’t be called so (if she does not want that) even if it is how she earns money, and with “Nazi” the problem is that it IS important whether a person holds views that make the Nazi Nazi.
It is a serious word. As I said to Lameen, I do NOT want and I think not going to argue with you or anyone. I did not take part in arguments with CJ and don’t want to take part in arguments about him. But I don’t really like this idea, “call him Nazi and talk about Punic”. It is not a cheap insult. (or maybe is not in my country)
I repeat, just let it go. You don’t have to type out everything that enters your mind.
@LH, as I have said, I have said everything I wanted to say. But I don’t like* that you’re saying what you’re saying.
* I wrote “disgusted” and changed it to “don’t like”. I don’t think that’s what I feel.