MetaFilter posts tagged with latin and history

The Lithuanian Press Ban, 1864-1904

mdonley — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:17:27 -0800

From 1864 to 1904, the Russian Empire tried to quelch the nationalism of Lithuanians by ordering all Lithuanian texts to be printed with Cyrillic characters instead of in the Latin-derived Lithuanian or Polish alphabets. But they didn't count on the Knygnešiai - the Booksmugglers. Working in Lithuanian-speaking areas of East Prussia, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and parts of the Polish voivodeship of Warmia and Masuria, and with texts printed locally and sometimes from as far away as the United States, many thousands of people over the decades worked to transmit books, leaflets, journals, and other written works over the heavily guarded border, risking imprisonment and exile to Siberia; over three thousand people were caught. A harrowing recollection of what it was like to dodge the military patrols can be found here. The movement also was assisted by a network of clandestine "village" lessons in the language outside the school system, organized through local churches and civic organizations. The Lithuanian National Movement, active before independence, used the language to resist Russification and, later, promote the cause for an independent state. When Lithuania became independent again in the early 1990s, the back of the 5-lita banknote featured an image of a sculpture of a woman teaching a child to read Lithuanian in defiance of the press ban. The anti-Lithuanian language effort had been part of Tsar Alexander II's Russification campaign across all of the lands Russia had absorbed through the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Uprising of 1863, St. Petersburg attempted to create a divide between the Polonized Catholic nobility, the szlachta, and the Lithuanian-speaking rural populations in order to allow Russian language and culture to supplant the Catholic, Latin heritage left behind by the Commonwealth. Today, Lithuanian is spoken by between four and five million people, has made a cameo appearance on CSI: New York, and, like everyone these days, has a podcast. Lithuanian has also been the focus of much attention in linguistics circles for its links to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the theoretical progenitor to all the Indo-European languages. Some early texts in Lithuanian can be found at the University of Texas at Austin's Linguistics Research Center here. Check out some Indo-European roots yourself with this Google Books preview of the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. And this year, Vilnius hosts the European Capital of Culture title together with Linz, Austria. It's a quick hop from most of Europe and an amazing destination for anyone into the culture and history of the region.

The Map-Happy Chaplain

Rykey — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:15:08 -0800

John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century. [Most maps in Latin]

The South Bronx: A Legacy in Song

Miko — Thu, 18 May 2006 08:04:46 -0800

Music from Morrisania: Dr. Mark Naison, urban historian at Fordham University and principal investigator of the Bronx African-American history project, leads a musical tour of one South Bronx neighborhood from the 1950s to the present, describing how hot summers, open windows and a fertile mixing of ethnic groups influenced landmarks in American musical history -- from Tito Puente to "Watermelon Man" to KRS-One.

"I am of Ireland, and the Holy Land of Ireland..."

languagehat — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 16:20:39 -0800

CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, "brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online database consisting of contemporary and historical texts from many areas, including literature and the other arts." It has texts in Irish, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and English, ranging from the annals of the fifth century to the Agreement reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations in Northern Ireland of 1998. "Great my glory/ I that bore Cuchulainn the valiant..."

Funny Latin Phrases

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:30:59 -0800

Quanto putas mihi stare hoc conclave ? That's "How many prostitutes does it take to change a lightbulb?" in Latin. No, actually it's "How much do you think I paid for this apartment?". Here's hoping, in the wake of the BBC's superb The Roman Way series, written and presented by David Aaranovich, that good old Latin is on its way back, albeit in an Internet, soundbitey way. Those intending to smuggle some into MetaFilter should definitely start here. The owner, for instance, might find Ne ponatur in mea vicinitate useful - "Not in my backyard". And Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione - "I'm not interested in your dopey religious cult" should prove popular in the God threads. Vale!