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#2697 05/27/00 07:21 PM
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Juanie Baby,
Would you elaborate a bit, por favor?
Specifically: were you thinking of something specific that
we take for granted, and which Babel Tower are you
referring to? Church language?
Gracias--



#2698 05/27/00 08:02 PM
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Jackie.
I think I know what has happened with my post.
I posted it regarding a jhm posting which said that about the 14th century people of different regions of Britain could hardly, if possible at all, understand each others.
How I’ve been missing for a few days my posting has gone to the end of the stack and now seems anachronistic.
Pressing the ‘Threaded mode’ button helps a little in those cases.
Thank you for your observation. It has helped me to celebrate a double graduation this night. Without your cues I would have had to change my nickname juanmaria for 'John Doe the stranger'.


Juan Maria.

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>I think I know what has happened with my post.

'brick and I exchanged some thoughts on this problem of responding to posts after some passage of time and having said response end up at the end of the thread. like you say, the threaded mode can help a bit; but overall it leaves a lot to be desired too. we finally agreed that the least bad alternative is to quote a bit of the post to which you're responding, to give your post some context.

hope this helps...




#2700 05/28/00 12:50 AM
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*sitting this one out*


#2701 05/28/00 01:42 AM
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>>change my nickname juanmaria for 'John Doe the stranger'

You did it, Journeyman John!!
Congratulations, felicitations, and exaltations upon you!





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> hope this helps...

Sure. Thank you!.


Juan Maria.

#2703 05/28/00 02:51 PM
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> I thought a woman overly dedicated to the female cause was a feminist. After all, you never hear of a maleist, do you?? (or do you?).

I think I will have to join in, I can bear it no longer.

There seems to be totally different way of describing men and women here.

The point about feminism is that it is about an oppressed majority in search of equality, no more, no less. When the suffragettes chained themselves to railings it wasn't because they were overly dedicated to the female cause it was because they thought it would be nice to be able to vote for the government of the day (and therefore have their views taken into consideration by those in power), a right which was at that time in the UK not only not available for women, it wasn't available to working class men either, so they took the on the cause of non-land owning men too. We've all benefited.

When the women in the sixties and seventies burnt their bras it wasn't because they were overly dedicated to the female cause it was because many quite ordinary rights were denied to them. Women would now be appalled to be told that they couldn't sign a cheque or have a mortgage in their own name but these are relatively recent rights in the UK. A friend's mother pretended she wasn't married so that she wouldn't have to give up her Civil Service job in the early sixties - she was the main breadwinner in her family but knew she wouldn't win the battle if she told the truth.

When we try to do something about mandatory female circumcision or the plight of women who are outcasts following fistulas related to childbirth traumas we are not overly dedicated to the female cause, one would hope that any modern, caring man would be a feminist too.

So call us female chauvinists, not feminists, when we want to set up a women-only club or fail to employ men when they are better qualified for the job. We can behave badly too.

I'm sure that in some matriarchal societies it would be right and proper to have a maleist movement. It may be just round the corner as more marriages fail (or never happen)and so many boys are brought up without access to their fathers.

So I suspect the reason that the "male" has started to disappear in the word "male chauvinist" is that we don't get enough time to be "female chauvinists"!



#2704 05/28/00 03:09 PM
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> by the end of 15th Century Gutenberg’s invention started putting an end to that local Babel Tower

I heard a wonderful radio programme where they discussed the evolution of BBC English - they couldn't call it standard English (as it wasn't) and eventually settled on "RP - received pronunciation", essentially the way English was spoken by "educated people" in the South East of England. They asserted (and played tapes to prove it) that the dialects spoken across Britain could not be understood by people from outside their area (I listened to schoolchildren in Devon and in North East England and it was very difficult to tell what they were saying).

It was only in the last twenty years that today's (modified over time, dialects) were "allowed" on to the airwaves. (The popular dialect for radio DJ's was for several years "mid Atlantic").

So if it took the printing press to encourage standardisation of written English (I can only speak for Britain), it took another invention (the radio) to begin the standardisation of spoken English.

Perhaps in the future, people using whatever the Internet becomes will talk of the days when people all over the world spoke different languages. Who knows?


#2705 05/28/00 04:11 PM
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> chauvinism - 3) an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex

masculinist - an advocate of male superiority or dominance

so, by definition, a male chauvinist is a masculinist.

Yep. I'll go with that - despite the ambiguity.

> [this is similar to what happened with 'decimate', which started out applying to a narrow ratio (1 in 10) of punishment and
the definition was broadened to include "a large part of" (and then it got misused by *narrowing* application to specific
ratios other than 1 in 10).]

Which brings us around to my original point about broadening definitions to 'suit the occasion'. But I'll leave it at that. I think that I (and everyone else) has got the point. Nice work tsuwm. I am suitably impressed by your research skills and good argument. Maybe it is you who should be the lawyer!


#2706 05/28/00 04:14 PM
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> I imagine that by the end of 15th Century Gutenberg’s invention started putting an end to that local Babel Tower.

I agree. But only for the educated few. Books were expensive until mass production in the 1800's and even then only a few people could read due to illiteracy amongst the proletariat.


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