The German media has been using "The Danes" as shorthand for the SSW. This is quite wrong. Not only were they set up to ensure representation for the autochthonous Danes of South Schleswig, but also the Friesians. Whereas the Danes have, as some supporters of the CDU haven't hesitated to point out, an identifiable homeland outside the Federal Republic, the North Friesians have nowhere to go. If my memory of the end of the Roman Empire in the West serves me, the Friesians were there first anyway.

posted at: 11:40 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry

Concomitantly, there's a letter on a similar subject in the Guardian Weekend section, about halfway down the page, or halfway across in the print edition.

Two things occur to me: firstly that the unhelpful geographical expression "European philosophy" is probably a thinko, or, let's be generous, a subbo, for "Continental philosophy", as opposed to analytic philosophy, and secondly, is proficiency in a language "only" measurable in how you cope in a social situation? We know where that would leave Jane Austen, so where does it leave everyone else?

These people think they can say what they like when they write in to newspapers because the newspapers never print their letters. Well.

posted at: 15:53 | path: /baltism/insidecolinshead | permanent link to this entry

No. It's the lack of practice. I've internalized much of the grammar, have a vocabulary of about a thousand words, I think, can order drinks and say who I am to check in at a hotel, but for anything more complicated, such as writing an e-mail or properly understanding an article in Postimees, I'm in my own private Chinese Room, looking up most of the words in my rather poor dictionary and having to refer back to the textbook for the grammar I don't know. Unless I make a proper effort to read back over what I've written I won't understand it.

If Standard Grade Estonian existed and was like Standard Grade Latin or Greek, this would be fine, but for a living language it won't do.

You can escape from the Chinese Room with practice, as long as there's only one of you. Whether you can identify when you escaped is another question.

posted at: 12:31 | path: /baltism/insidecolinshead | permanent link to this entry

It's odd that in the past few days the far-right Danish People's Party has taken half as many votes as the Social Democrats in the Danish general election and the UK media have ignored this, preferring to concentrate on the largely irrelevant but showy NPD in Saxony.

But this is how the media in general treat threats to a free society: they overplay the successes of small eye-catching extremist groups and underplay what the main parties, no matter how anti-constitutional, are up to. I was pleased to get something of an explanation of present-day Danish politics from taz, which deployed the euphemism Einwandererskeptisch, or immigrant-sceptic, to describe the mainstream, that is Venstre, the Conservatives, the Social Democrats and the Danish People's Party, Danish parties.

taz is a bit like The Independent, but with a sense of humour.

posted at: 22:11 | path: /baltism | permanent link to this entry