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in reply to Re^3: Help to have real Perl's advantage
in thread Help to have real Perl's advantage
> The fact that two World Wars were started by people speaking german
Isn't it rather that they were lost? ;-)
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Re^5: Help to have real Perl's advantage
by cavac (Parson) on Jan 11, 2022 at 13:33 UTC
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Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity. Plus, invading Russia in Winter without proper winter clothing makes one look like a complete idiot.
Things like these, plus, you know "being the enemy" and "starting a global conflict the likes of which the world has never seen before" won't make you win any popularity contest. And if most of the world doesn't like you, they are probably not going to embrace your culture and your language.
That's actually something that had a huge influence in the United States from the beginning of the first World War. There was a relatively large german speaking population in the U.S. in the early 1900's. WW1 and WW2 pretty much stamped that out. WW1 was also used as an argument for Prohibition (many of the large beer brewers were of german origin and held their business meetings in german).
perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'
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> Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity.
Please not Godwin's law, lets concentrate on WW1
The fact that Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and so on are independent countries is due to the fact that Russia lost.
(Yes the Germans recreated Poland, tho farther to the east )
It's normal strategy to weaken the looser by "liberating" parts of their territory/influence sphere as a buffer zone and installing friendly regimes. What do you think how Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia where constructed? And why they quickly deconstructed later...
So we would have seen an independent Ireland (completely), Wales and Scotland. Also Brittany and some other French areas.
Northern Italy probably reunited with Piemonte.
The use of Dutch in Belgium would have been promoted. Large parts of Austria/Hungary would still be intact.
German was already first foreign language in most parts of Europe, this would have been enhanced.
10% of American school kids got their primary education in German speaking schools, 10 million Brazilians have German ancestry, 5-10 millions ethnic Germans living in Russia. Plus 5-10 million East European Jews speaking a close language.
It's hard to see how this could not have been beneficial for the spread of the German language after a victory.
> Well, killing a good percentage of your own people for their believes doesn't go down well with the rest of humanity.
No genocide in Imperial Germany and Austria, plus as usual the victor writes history.
Try to inform yourself how Russia and Turkey are still censoring their dark past.
The Americans "liberated" the Philippines only to fight for their dominance in a dirty war leading to hundreds of thousands of victims.
The Brits build an empire on piracy, slave trade, opium trade and killing Bores for diamonds and gold in so called "concentration camps".
Who really talks about this?
That's unfortunately the reality of politics ...
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Please not Godwin's law, lets concentrate on WW1
Agreed. WW1 is more interesting for me as a history nut anyway. And it was the time the Vickers machine gun was invented (bonus point right there) plus it was the first major conflict that hinged on encryption (or rather the inept use it it).
German was already first foreign language in most parts of Europe, this would have been enhanced.
And it would have meant more cultural export from Germany. Beer for breakfast and Oktoberfest for everyone. That's certainly something i can see myself supporting.
The Brits build an empire on piracy, slave trade, opium trade and killing Bores for diamonds and gold in so called "concentration camps".
I think they call it "colonization", which for the typical Brit meant "bringing civilization to the rest of the world", and more importantly, and endless supply of tea. I always thought it stupid to try to invade Britain. Pretty much every nation in Europe has tried and failed in the last 300 years or so. Just take control of their tea supply lines and you got them on their knees in a couple of years.
Pretty much every nation has its own achilles heel (or two). For France, you have basically two options: Either invade Paris, or just wait until they have another revolution. For Italy its even simpler: Start the conflict with Italy on the enemies side, then just wait until they switch to your side mid-war.
These days, dealing with the USA is also very simple, provided your country doesn't have oil...
Who really talks about this?
But yeah, every nation has their own dark side of history. A few hundred meters from the house where i grew up, there is a memorial to the Bleiburg repatriations. On the other hand, the area was also part of the 1920 Carinthian plebiscite. It was one of the first times in human history that a region decided in a (more or less) free and fair election which nation it wanted to be part of.
War also has some unexpected results and sometimes strange results. Programmable electronic computers where invented to crack high level encryption in WW2, after the groundwork for modern codebreaking was laid down in WW1. The british monarchy helped to bring democracy to large parts of Europe. Modern radiation therapy has its basis in the Manhattan project. And GPS was invented to provide better navigation for US soldiers in case of war with the Soviet Union...
That's unfortunately the reality of politics
I always say: Wars happen if politicians fail to do their job. Fortunately, in a democracy we all have the power to fire incompetent politicians and replace them with politicians that are incompetent in a completely different way. It's only a small improvement, but at least it provides for good TV. And we get the occasional highly entertaining scandal that results in the unexpected comeback of the Vengaboys of all things...
perl -e 'use Crypt::Digest::SHA256 qw[sha256_hex]; print substr(sha256_hex("the Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything"), 6, 2), "\n";'
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Re^5: Help to have real Perl's advantage
by bliako (Monsignor) on Jan 11, 2022 at 12:14 UTC
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ok ok "started and lost" then :) hehe. Although I feel to say that it has nothing to do with speaking or being german (or being austrian) as the historical, political and economical circumstances have been documented widely already. Additionally, it seems that 1900-1950 has seen a statistical anomaly which is now slowly but steadily being fixed with the english-speaking wars (and losses) prevailing.
1min update: I don't care at all if I have to speak english or my "mother tongue" in public places neither if my variables are foreign-named (english expletives suit me fine). I have never added a comment in my code other than in english and I always make sure i make fun of all those who comment in their native languages polluting their code with unicode (ok other than because they are forced work-wise). That said, I believe that political correctness of names (of programs, projects, variables) relating only to the english language should be abandoned (e.g. piddle or gimp). And I truly condon Mitsubishi's choice of "Pajero" (warning, vulgar dictionary entry) to name one of their most popular 4x4 models, taking a word with a derogatory meaning in one language and elevating it to the pinnacle of four-wheel mechanical excellence. With a pinch of salt please.
bw, bliako
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> Additionally, it seems that 1900-1950 has seen a statistical anomaly
I'm not sure what you mean.
> as the historical, political and economical circumstances have been documented widely already.
Again ...
I'm far from being a nationalist if it comes to German as lingua franca, and English is almost the second best choice for Germans.
(Afrikaans would probably be even easier). But it was a real world language back then.
But I'm sure an alternate history where France and England loose the WWI (Russia did BTW) would have produced a very different outcome.
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I'm not sure what you mean.
that 2 WWars were started by Germany. This balances out in the long term.
And I also meant that "starting a war" is not a DNA thing and that both WWars started by Germany is not a "statistical pattern". It is merely economical circumstances coming together to a perfect storm, and Capitalism is known (for 100 years at least) to cause Imperialism which causes War and Slaves.
There's another factor to take into account: There was an uprisal in 1918 Germany (ok parts of it, R.Luxenburg's and K.Liebnecht's deaths anniversary this week) in the style of the Bolshevik revolution a year earlier. The Freikrops had a significant role in crashing it and SPD in using them. To me, Freikrops is the beginning of fascism in Germany. All these on economy grounds, nothing nationalist or "aggression-in-DNA" (latter is nonsence) etc. Freikrops brutality was a political choice of brainwashing people to violence, by the economy powers and their political puppets (SPD of all things!).
And another point to consider, in the original language debate: Capitalism will optimise language, like everything else, for profit. Some languages are simpler/easier than others. In school we learned that French were very strict with their language and did not borrow foreign words light-heartedly (one example teacher said was "Le Weekend") but now with this digital revolution, internets, YT where are they? Can they resist for long?
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