Only due to the sufferance of the British.
Nope :). Kurmanji is written with a modified Latin alphabet, Sorani with a modified Persian alphabet. And people wonder why I remain skeptical about the long-term prospects for a unified independent Kurdish state :D.
It would certainly make everything tidier. Sadly we’re an inherently untidy folk. There are a lot of things in this world where we don’t have a good, coherent, single definition ( species concepts for example - you might be amazed at how contentious arguments over systematics and taxonomy can get ) and I think ethnicity is a case in point. I’d be awful wary of telling some of my Serb relatives that they might as well be Croats because they speak essentially the same language ( and for that matter they were historically Croatian Serbs, living in the Croatia ) . Even if you throw in the use of different scripts you still have the problem of, say, standard Bosnian and Croatian, which both use Latin scripts.
I do sympathize, since I’ve had to argue on this board often enough that Arabs are best defined as those who speak Arabic as their first language. But there are always exceptions to everything, as with those Afghan Arabs cited above.
All the more reason to subdivide those who identify themselves as Kurds. I do not see what would be wrong with the term “ethnic.”
A definition with a grey area or two wouldn’t be so bad.
As for the species analogy I have never understood why they can’t agree on the ability to produce fertile offspring as the defining condition, with the term “subspecies” used to apply to specimen groups such as wolves and domestic dogs which differ significantly in appearance and/or other characteristics.
The Serb-Croat dividing is pretty grey, depending as it does only on script and attitude. Ditto Croat-Bosnian, which are even closer, since they have the same script.
Are the Afghan Arabs socially segregated? It occurs to me that a criterion for ethnicity might be some degree of self-imposed isolation from other groups.
What if you write a different language? Among Norwegian speakers, does usage of Nynorsk versus Bokmål mark a different ethnic group? Among Serbian (i.e., Serbo-Croatian) and Moldovan (i.e., Romanian) speakers, does usage of Latin versus Cyrillic orthographies mark a different ethnic group? Among Mandarin Chinese speakers, does use of the traditional versus simplified orthographies mark a different ethnic group? What about if you don’t speak at all? Does the Deaf community in a given nation constitute a distinct ethnic group?
If Oklahomans remembered when Texas killed five million or so of their relatives by starving them to death.
Aside from that, yeah.
Difference in script is one thing to consider, but surely Norway has a national written standard? And even if there is not are the two you mention completely mutually unintelligible? I would think the simplified Mandarin would be intelligible to all educated Mandarin speakers and would therefore not constitute an ethnic division. A deaf person would be categorized according to the ethnicity of his parents.
It seems to me at least these three variables are in play in the definition of ethnicity:
spoken language
written language
personal attitude/self-identification/self-segregation
And there might be other variables. The problem is deciding how much relative importance to assign to each variable. I think the most weight should be placed on the language spoken at home, but I agree that is debatable. I cannot be comfortable with dismissing language altogether, though.
I’m sure there’s some mutual intelligibility between the two official Norwegian writing systems, and also between simplified and traditional Chinese, but certainly not much between Cyrillic and Latin. And my last question wasn’t really about deaf people so much as Deaf people. Those who self-identify as Deaf (which I understand to be a majority of those who were deaf at birth or from childhood) usually have a very strong sense of belonging to a culture which is distinct from the larger hearing community, including that of any hearing parents.
Just as a matter of curiosity, is what you’re writing just ad-hoc musing on your part, or are you summarizing previously published classification criteria which have achieved widespread acceptance by those with an interest or expertise in ethnicity and cultural studies?
Does the relationship between Germany and Austria have any comparable features to the relationship between Russian and the Ukraine?
I am missing the point here. The Cyrillic-Latin divide must refer to the Serb-Croat divide. Earlier I referred to that as a grey area case, although besides script the two emphatically self-identify as separate ethnic groups, so maybe it is really not all that grey.
I think it is going too far to define disability as an ethnic category. If they learn to read, write and speak in a language then they should probably be assigned ethnically according to that language.
The problem with accepting self-definition as the sole, exclusive criterion is that it opens the door to absurd necessities such as allowing someone who eats a Big Mac every day to call himself a vegetarian, or allowing someone who denies the sanctity of the New Testament to call himself a Christian. I do not think that is reasonable, and that consequently other criteria must be considered.
Ad hoc musing on my part, although the social sciences are so soft and mushy that I would not feel as obligated to defer to authority as I might to a chemist or a physicist.
And you?
Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are a lot closer to each other than traditional and simplified Chinese writing.
If the sole difference between two languages is the use of Cyrillic or Latin script, and it’s like a simple substitution cipher, then I would say it’s not a difference at all. It would take five minutes to learn the other “language.”
Why must it? In Serbia proper both scripts are used to write the same language. Serbian nationals who identify as Serbian-speaking may write their language in one script, or the other, or both. It’s the same with Moldovans; most of them choose to write their language in the Latin alphabet, though a significant minority prefer Cyrillic. Quite possibly there are large numbers who know only one script or the other.
But nobody is doing that. Just because one may be of the opinion that the Deaf are a distinct ethnic (or cultural, or whatever) group doesn’t mean that one believes that every group sharing a particular disability is an ethnic group as well. I don’t believe that and neither, do I think, do Deaf people.
Bs pbhefr, ohg V nz cerggl fher zbfg crbcyr jbhyqa’g hfr gur jbeq “zhghnyyl vagryyvtvoyr” gb qrfpevor n grkg naq vgf rapbqvat va n fvzcyr fhofgvghgvba pvcure. Lrf, vg’f abg zhpu rssbeg gb yrnea gur pvcure, ohg gur haqrefgnaqvat qbrfa’g pbzr nhgbzngvpnyyl.
In Folklore, there is a term called “Folk group” which works just like ethnicity, on a much smaller level. So disability would reasonably be considered a folk group, because disabled people have experiences and culture in common. It is not, however, an ethnicity, because it does not meet that threshold. What the threshold is, is rather vague, but it seems to encompass an identity held in common with one’s family across generations that includes language, foodways, and all other aspects of a culture. Folk groups can have these, too, but they don’t have to be fully-fledged cultures.
The term is useful, because when a folk group can start with a division within a single ethnicity (say, English in England and English in Canada, or Slavs > Ukrainians & Russians as described above) and eventually, over time, separate into full-fledged ethnicities of their own.
Language is a key diagnostic criterion, but is not essential. Take Wales: Wales has its own language, Welsh, and if you are a Welsh-speaker chances are good you identify as Welsh, but the reverse is not true. Many Welsh are monolingual in English. There are also monolingual English in Wales who do not identify as Welsh, but as English. So, language, geography, and self-identity are all factors, and no single one is diagnostic on its own. (I can self-identify as Ukrainian, but unless other Ukrainians recognize me as such, it means nothing.)
I only meant that the Serb-Croat case was (I think) the only Cyrillic-Latin example mentioned at that point in this thread. Again, what counts most IMO is the language, spoken (as in conversation) or written (as in newspaper subscribed to) used at home.
I do not think any disability should be considered an ethnic category.
The Serb-Croat distinction is not just an alphabet thing. Croats are mostly Roman Catholic and Serbs are mostly Eastern Orthodox.
And because Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, they are better classified as dialects rather than as separate languages, despite using different alphabets.
And so I believe the religious distinction is much more important in defining who is a Serb or who is a Croat than a language distinction.
And there are certainly different historical and geography factors between the two groups that also matter.
I think Austrians and Germans are more similar culturally, but Russians and Ukrainians have a longer history being politically unified. Keep in mind that Germany didn’t exist as a unified state until the 1870s with the formation of the German Empire, and it was only by an accident of history that the German-speaking parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were left out.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
It wasn’t an accident. Bismark did it on purpose. He wanted his empire to speak the German language, practice the Protestant faith, and be loyal to a Hohenzollern monarch.
You say that language is, in your opinion, the most important factor in defining ethnicity. That would make speakers of a signed language a different ethnicity from their oral neighbors.