Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

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The Extinction of a Language

24 January 2008 / / 4 Comments

I see that an Alaskan lady named Marie Smith Jones has passed away. As the last speaker of the Eyak language, an entire way of thinking dies with her. (h/t Mark G)
A couple of competing quotes come to mind. From GK Chesterton’s Napoleon of Notting Hill:

“The Señor will forgive me,” said the President. “May I ask the Señor how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?”
“I never catch a wild horse,” replied Barker, with dignity.
“Precisely,” said the other; “and there ends your absorption of the talents….
In Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses–by lassooing the fore feet–which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilised.”

Versus this one, from Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia:

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

I doubt very much that my inital thought, that the Eyaks of Alaska are some kind of Eskimo (or Esquimaux, as Chesterton has it), is correct. Nevertheless, their Northerly homeland does remind me of the story about how Eskimo’s have forty words for snow (or is it fifty? Or a hundred?) What special, specific thoughts and words have we lost now that Mrs Smith Jones has passed away? Matthew Parris, writing in the Spectator last week, says “I know exactly what I mean. I just can’t think of the word for it” referring to those Meaning of Liff or Meaning of Tingo type words that should exist, but do not. How many words, phrases and thoughts could the Eyak have taught him?

Another PC Myth is born

24 January 2008 / / 4 Comments

The Telegraph headline blares: Three little pigs ‘could offend builders, Muslims’
Yet another example of our country being hijacked by minority sensibilities? Of course not. Perhaps just another example of a government agency lacking either common sense, or perhaps the confidence to apply it? I fear this may be a media storm in a tea-cup.
This time, the defendant is Becta, the education and technology agency, who have refused to give a BETT prize to a piece of digital artwork featuring the Three Little Pigs. Shoo FLy, the snubbed agency, claim that the feedback form from Becta stated that “judges would not recommend this product to the Muslim community in particular” and that they are the victim of political correctness gone mad. Meanwhile, the judges claim that the product failed to impress on a number of criteria.
I think Becta have a point. Political correctness irritates people the most when they are required to change something already in cultural existence (the Telegraph mentions “Baa baa rainbow sheep” as an example). But the Shoo Fly story was a new creation. If their brief is to create something inclusive accross all communities, then pigs probably aren’t appropriate.
Either way, it is only in the final paragraph of the article that we discover that the pigs aren’t so problematic after all. “we are not offended by that at all” says the MCB. This quote seems to have been missed by many readers of The Daily Telegraph, who complain of yet more kowtowing to minorities.
I am sadly confident that this story will join the canon of PC myths, alongside Winterval and the Royal Bank of Scotland Piggy Banks, which ‘prove’ that we are being overrun by barbarians. In fact, when British cultural practices and values come up against minority sensibilities, they usually win out.

BNP are shit

24 January 2008 / / 4 Comments

BNP advert on a toilet door
BNP supporters have taken to scrawling the party’s website onto toilet walls, presumably as part of some guerilla-marketing strategy. It has the odd effect of making me think of the BNP every time I take a dump.
Surely, the need to stoop to this rather pathetic level – graffitio on toilet walls next to cottagers’ phone numbers – would make such activists stop and think. Like the throatless smoker who still inhales via his tracheotomy, or the heroin addict who has to inject into his eyeball to get a decent hit, these campaigners seem to lack a certain self-awareness.

Facetious Gaza Post

23 January 2008 / / 13 Comments

Gaza Wall
In reporting the recent Gaza border break the BBC reffered to the security “wall”. Now, call me pedantic, but that looks more like a big fence to me, just like the other “security fence” currently under construction around the West Bank.
Oh, but wait! The fence in the West Bank is actually a wall. Now I’m confused. Why can’t we get nomenclature correct on this one?
That’s the problem with dehumanising people these days, you just run into a wall of political correctness. Or is that a fence?

Cheats and the Church

23 January 2008 / / 1 Comment

David Cameron has been defending those parents who baptize their children in order to win a place at popular schools. Meanwhile, the hackles of some Labour MPs have been raised:

Fears that middle-class parents are adopting religion to get their children into popular schools have led some Labour MPs to call for an end to the expansion of faith schools.

The usual Labour objection over schooling is that parents can ‘buy’ better education for their offspring, either by sending them to a private school, or by moving to an expensive area with better state schools. But I don’t see how this argument works regarding faith schools, since presumbably parents of all classes can arrnage a cynical baptism, thereby gaining that edge in the competition for places.
More likely, the Labour MPs are objecting because they beleive the practice emboldens Catholicism, which in turn they believe to be a threat.
If his is the case, then they are mistaken. Although Catholicism is a threat to progressive, liberal values, it will not be strengthened through this particular ploy. In fact, quite the opposite – by inviting these pseudo-Catholics into their churches, Catholic priests dilute the fervour and reverence of their congregations. The cohesion of their community is inevitably weakened, and the religion as a whole loses power and influence.
By making silly demands on people’s spirituality, priests of all religions undermine themselves. One aetheist friend of mine signed allowed his fiance to sign a form committing their unborn children to the Catholic faith, just so they could get married in a Catholic Cathedral. And a Hindu friend of mine will ‘convert’ to Islam this year, just so certain relatives of her betrothed will attend the marriage.Yet her appreciation of the five pilliars is slight.
The social pressures which religions were able to exert over their communities many centuries ago, hardly exist in contemporary Britain. Baptising someone is no longer enough to keep them in the pews. By demanding these empty conversions, priests ask these parents and newlyweds to tell a lie, the easiest they will ever tell. No souls are secured, and the church will recieve no succour. More of it, I say.

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