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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2026

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  • In the context of biblical history, I’ve heard that, because of the Alexandrian empire and it’s 3-4 off-shoot kingdoms, Greek was actually the ‘Lingua Franca’ (default language for international communication) throughout the middle east; from before the Romans arrived, to Jesus’s time, to until after the Roman empire split in two for good.

    I guess it is hard to supplant an existing Lingua Franca. France today is a good example - they are very defensive of their language, once the Standard Internationale, and so France sees less English speakers proportionally than other European countries such as Spain, Nederland and Germany.

    So… The middle East’s dominant languages were Greek and Persian, Greek and Persian, Greek and Persian - then Muhammed shows up with Islam, and they conquer surrounding states. Arabic is spreading. And this is testament to Persia’s linguistic domination, right - Arabic calligraphy comes from the Persian alphabet. That’s bonkers; a group of people, B, subjugated by A, manages to get A to assume their script for all writing.

    At that point, the whole(-ish) middle east now had a different alphabet - neither greek nor Roman - to write in. Languages don’t tend to change their script once they’ve settled on one. The only examples I know are Poland, who did it because of catholic church’s influence , and Mongolia, who were forced to by the soviet union; it doesn’t happen naturally. Oh also Turkey, which was again a government mandate.

    Certain scripts are better for certain language sounds; I don’t expect Arabic will ever be written in Latin script in general practice. It didn’t spread at first because Greek was already so dominant, then because the catholic church wast spreading into Muslim territories in the middle east, and now because it is not Lingua Franca, languages have settled on the correct scripts, and Christianity isn’t spreading in the middle east, same as usual.


  • They’re pretending to not understand that you mean Latin was the language of catholic church, Roman state, law, medicine, mathematics and thus the script for (almost) all European alphabets.

    There’s genuinely a toxicity problem on Lemmy, probably ingrained in many users from years of Reddit usage. 😮‍💨🥰 but DW about it.

    Technically it is not the “basis” of languages, but with contextual knowledge it’s so easy to know what you really meant by that. That it’s “the basis language for European civilization,” perhaps. Written on heraldry, churches, buildings and artifacts all over the continent.




  • Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian.

    A Really patience demanding game - even when you know the story by memory you still need to click through all the pages to test options. I played three runs in a row and don’t feel like playing it for a while now. Which is probably good because it’ll make it last longer.

    Probably not everyone’s cup of tea but I find the stat-mixing aspect of it fascinating, and I know I’m not alone because it’s how other players in the discord play as well.

    Today: Balatro and Anno 117

    Also this week: Stardew Valley. Started yet another new save, deleted all my others; this time I will take it from start to finish without starting any new saves. (I’ve reached perfection once already and gotten to ginger island half a dozen times)

    SDV makes you feel so good.