View Topic

As far as I can tell after talking to a lot of people, the Constitutional Convention just drained everyone...that and the usual NS summer lull.

To be fair part of that is that I was/still kinda am splitting my time between WZSB and here. While I have caught much flack for my involvement, both here and abroad, for my involvement within WZSB it is something I care deeply about. Wintreath is my home, but WZSB is something I've helped create and I have tried to make it succeed...and it kind of is...although I do have to say I have gained a bit more respect for Wintermoot during my time in WZSB...even though I'm not officially leading the region anymore.

There is also the fact that my life has been insane the past few months, and it seems it will only increase in insanity or remain about the same....

I don't think that you've caught any flack for your mere involvement with a warzone...it's not much different from people being involved in other regions. It's the fact that you weren't able to separate your roles in Wintreath and in Warzone Sandbox. You made yourself WA-immobile while retaining the position of Jarl of Defense, a position whose occupant is expected to keep a free WA so they can participate with the military they're leading. You also gave the distinct impression that you were only interested in warzone missions, both in mostly applying yourself to those and by showing visible annoyance when other defenders would prioritize non-warzone missions...an attitude that obviously led to the invasion of Warzone Sandbox to begin with.

Your response to that invasion was a last straw...the outburst itself was highly inappropriate in any circumstance. However, what was just as disturbing was when you essentially stated that Wintreath would retaliate against the Grey Wardens for its invasion of Warzone Sandbox by refusing to work with them, in the process creating a diplomatic incident between Wintreath and other defenders that we could have really gone without. Besides the fact that you weren't authorized to make such a decision, it showed that you could not separate your roles in Wintreath and Warzone Sandbox, and that's why I had to insist that you continue in one, but not both of them.

Your mistake wasn't in being involved in warzones, it was in allowing your ambitions in the warzones to supersede your responsibilities in Wintreath, and to a lesser but perhaps more painful extent, being unable to control your temper once again. If what you said on IRC about learning from your past mistakes is true, those are the lessons you'll take away from this.

Personally I've always had an issue with defenders that do raids, as it goes against what I believe to be the very foundations of defending (for me it is the protection and upholding of the right of a regional community to exist so long as it is not actively advocating for the harm of someone else.) Also yes I give the general precedence to Warzones as I do other regions, at least when they have a functioning/active regional community.

I also do personally believe that if Wintreath is going to be a defender, then it needs to draw a line in the sand. I will also admit my reaction was made in a bit of anger, however in the end I decided that Wintreath should not work with a military or group that fails to apply sovereignty as defenders should.

However I should explain why I reacted so strongly. Wintermoot how would you feel if a group that you had helped build up for several months was going good, and then attacked by people who you did consider, at the very least and in a sense, friends? Would you not feel betrayed? Yes one may argue that it is a Warzone after all, however it does not sting any less.

In any case I did not make that post to start an argument over what occurred. Also at this time I am not in the best of moods to be discussing this...

Well, if you ever decide to give it another go, at least now you know a francophone.

I had often read that Afrikaans is an easy language but I never thought it'd be that easy. Are there any irregularities at all? For example I'm thinking about the past participle, like in German, infinitive is bringen but PP is gebracht.

French has a stupid amount of tenses, most of the distinctions they make could be left to context or periphrasis without any problem. There are even some we never use when speaking but that we must use when writing. By "never use" I mean what I say, there are tenses that nobody, no matter how snobbish or educated, would use in conversation.

Hell, I don't think I have used the pluperfect subjunctive once in my life, even when writing. What's the point? I swear that on some level, learning written French is almost like learning a second language even for a native speaker.

Is Afrikaans endangered or is it still transmitted to children? Like how many Afrikaners can't speak it and just speak English instead?

I think it's important to be proud of one's language and to transmit it to future generations. In Canada, French is dying outside of Quebec and some areas in New Brunswick. In Quebec you can still meet francophones who can't speak English at all (in New Brunswick this is much rarer). Outside of these areas, you'll meet a lot of Canadians with French surnames but they can't speak the language at all. They're completely assimilated. I think that's really sad, but as one of the unassimilated ones I suppose I'm a bit biased.

That's why I swore I'd transmit my language to any children of mine (back when I wanted them) no matter who their mother would be or where they would be born. Even if I had married, say, a Japanese girl and stayed in Japan and had children, they would have grown up speaking French and Japanese.

I think it's swell there's another linguistic minority on the forum.

Haha, I'll keep that in mind. My best friend is actually the son of a French father and Afrikaans mother, as I'm the son of a German mother and Afrikaans father, but he's fairly shit at explaining
languages.

And yeah, there are some changes in Afrikaans. One example is the verb "hê," which becomes "gehad." (Hê = to have). I'm not entirely sure why it can't just be "gehê," apart from just looking weird. So yeah, there will be some irregular words to contend with, but it's a very simplified language overall. But to use the German example, whereas bringen becomes gebracht (very far from the weirdest example in German, lol), in Afrikaans, the infinitive is "bring," while the past tense would simply be "gebring."

There are some changes to the words, depending on the context. For example, while the verb "breek" (break) simply becomes "gebreek" in the past tense, it can change when used as an adjective, similar to English. "He's a broken man," would be translated as: "Hy is 'n gebroke man," in Afrikaans. So there would definitely still be a fair amount of weirdness to contend with when attempting to learn Afrikaans.

The only truly difficult part I can foresee for native English or French speakers, though, is the pronunciation. It would be a lot harsher than you're used to. Apart from the rolling R, our G sound has been known to be difficult for English speakers.

And it is a sad fact of life that some Afrikaans parents would rather send their children to English schools than to Afrikaans schools, but Afrikaans is something most children in South Africa learn as second language, at the least. It's rare to find a native English or Zulu speaker who doesn't understand or even speak Afrikaans. But it is also becoming increasingly rare to find someone who can only speak and understand Afrikaans, too. English is the language used when our native tongue isn't recognised in the city. If I'm speaking to a Zulu, Xhosa, or even Pedi in Pretoria, I automatically assume they'll speak and understand English much better than Afrikaans, so that's the language I immediately begin speaking in. In more rural areas, however, Afrikaans is much more widely spoken and understood. If I begin speaking English in Amsterdam (not the one in the Netherlands), this little village near my favourite camping site (and also very close to the Swaziland border), I'd get a lot of blank expressions, whereas speaking Afrikaans would be much more successful.

Afrikaans is one of the eleven official languages in South Africa, and I think it is the second most spoken first language, behind only Zulu. The coloured population makes up the majority of its first language speakers, not the Afrikaner himself. That's why it's actually wrong for our current government to think of Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor, as the coloured population was mistreated during apartheid for being too black, and is now mistreated for being too white.

That said, there are two main dialects. Cape Coloured Afrikaans sounds quite different from standard Afrikaans, and even with standard Afrikaans, the people who speak it have their own small differences depending on where they live. Afrikaans spoken in the three Capes, and particularly the Klein Karoo, and some parts of the Free State, can sound closer to Dutch, whereas the northerners, like myself, can sound quite a bit more snobby to our southern brethren.

The real threat to Afrikaans comes not from parents unwilling to teach it to their children, but from the government. Anti-Afrikaans sentiment is growing ever worse, and it's being stamped out at universities across the country. There has recently been a tremendous increase in violent protests calling for the removal of Afrikaans in all schools and universities. Plaasmoorde, or farm murders, aggravates the problem. Rural Afrikaners are facing genocide.

Afrikaners who immigrate obviously also face the risk of having children who don't learn the language, as for obvious reasons, you'll struggle to find established settlements in other countries where Afrikaans would be commonly spoken. And we're fleeing this country in record numbers, so this will also become increasingly more of a problem. As it is, you'll find quite a few Afrikaners in England, Australia and New Zealand. Canada and Dubai have recently become more popular as destinations for Afrikaans immigrants to consider as well. Germany also holds some appeal.

As for surnames, you'd actually struggle to find a purely Afrikaans surname. The majority of us have Dutch, German, British or French surnames. My surname, Bester, is either a Dutch or German (can't quite remember) variant of Beste, an old English surname. One of our famous figures, general De La Rey, had a French surname, for instance.

And yes, I would teach my children (if I ever decide I want any) Afrikaans too, no matter where I might live. I probably wouldn't skimp on my German heritage, either. I'd teach my children that too.

EDIT: Just to give a more comprehensive idea of how easy Afrikaans is to learn. http://www.pagef30.com/2010/12/why-afrikaans-is-also-easiest-language.html?m=1

EDIT 2: This is also useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans_grammar

Personally I've always had an issue with defenders that do raids, as it goes against what I believe to be the very foundations of defending (for me it is the protection and upholding of the right of a regional community to exist so long as it is not actively advocating for the harm of someone else.) Also yes I give the general precedence to Warzones as I do other regions, at least when they have a functioning/active regional community.

I also do personally believe that if Wintreath is going to be a defender, then it needs to draw a line in the sand. I will also admit my reaction was made in a bit of anger, however in the end I decided that Wintreath should not work with a military or group that fails to apply sovereignty as defenders should.

However I should explain why I reacted so strongly. Wintermoot how would you feel if a group that you had helped build up for several months was going good, and then attacked by people who you did consider, at the very least and in a sense, friends? Would you not feel betrayed? Yes one may argue that it is a Warzone after all, however it does not sting any less.

In any case I did not make that post to start an argument over what occurred. Also at this time I am not in the best of moods to be discussing this...

I'm not arguing, I'm just pointing out why things happened the way they did. You have to understand that warzone sovereignty is still a novel idea in gameplay, even among defenders, and most people don't follow it...from their point of view, warzones were specifically designed to be invaded, so they're merely following the design of the game. I think even people in warzones understand this and know that being invaded is just part of the risk of a warzone and take it lightly. They no that any invasion won't be long, so they just come back afterwards.

In any game like this you're going to run into situations that make you emotional, and as you know now some people will try to intentionally provoke you into getting emotional. And I do understand, I do...I can recall situations that made me seethe with rage or hurt, but I had to put on a calm and reasonable face for the good of the region and the community. People don't want a leader who rages when things go wrong, and in a game like this people will take advantage of any slip-ups to try to kill your reputation...character assassination is just par for the course for some people in NationStates.

Unfortunately, that's just politics, and it's the game that people play outside the region, both in game and in real life. If you want to be a leader, you're going to have to learn how to not let your emotions get the best of you. I'm not really criticizing...it's not as if I've always been perfect at this myself. I'm just trying to help you to learn.

@Chanku, New Hyperion has actually held WZAU before, and when we were raided, we simply held our heads high and laughed about the opportunity to capture it once more when you presented it to us. It's par for the course. Regions that were created with the sole intent of being raided, will be raided.

Of course, I extend this same philosophy to any region without a founder.

Well, if you ever decide to give it another go, at least now you know a francophone.

I had often read that Afrikaans is an easy language but I never thought it'd be that easy. Are there any irregularities at all? For example I'm thinking about the past participle, like in German, infinitive is bringen but PP is gebracht.

French has a stupid amount of tenses, most of the distinctions they make could be left to context or periphrasis without any problem. There are even some we never use when speaking but that we must use when writing. By "never use" I mean what I say, there are tenses that nobody, no matter how snobbish or educated, would use in conversation.

Hell, I don't think I have used the pluperfect subjunctive once in my life, even when writing. What's the point? I swear that on some level, learning written French is almost like learning a second language even for a native speaker.

Is Afrikaans endangered or is it still transmitted to children? Like how many Afrikaners can't speak it and just speak English instead?

I think it's important to be proud of one's language and to transmit it to future generations. In Canada, French is dying outside of Quebec and some areas in New Brunswick. In Quebec you can still meet francophones who can't speak English at all (in New Brunswick this is much rarer). Outside of these areas, you'll meet a lot of Canadians with French surnames but they can't speak the language at all. They're completely assimilated. I think that's really sad, but as one of the unassimilated ones I suppose I'm a bit biased.

That's why I swore I'd transmit my language to any children of mine (back when I wanted them) no matter who their mother would be or where they would be born. Even if I had married, say, a Japanese girl and stayed in Japan and had children, they would have grown up speaking French and Japanese.

I think it's swell there's another linguistic minority on the forum.

Haha, I'll keep that in mind. My best friend is actually the son of a French father and Afrikaans mother, as I'm the son of a German mother and Afrikaans father, but he's fairly shit at explaining
languages.

And yeah, there are some changes in Afrikaans. One example is the verb "hê," which becomes "gehad." (Hê = to have). I'm not entirely sure why it can't just be "gehê," apart from just looking weird. So yeah, there will be some irregular words to contend with, but it's a very simplified language overall. But to use the German example, whereas bringen becomes gebracht (very far from the weirdest example in German, lol), in Afrikaans, the infinitive is "bring," while the past tense would simply be "gebring."

There are some changes to the words, depending on the context. For example, while the verb "breek" (break) simply becomes "gebreek" in the past tense, it can change when used as an adjective, similar to English. "He's a broken man," would be translated as: "Hy is 'n gebroke man," in Afrikaans. So there would definitely still be a fair amount of weirdness to contend with when attempting to learn Afrikaans.

The only truly difficult part I can foresee for native English or French speakers, though, is the pronunciation. It would be a lot harsher than you're used to. Apart from the rolling R, our G sound has been known to be difficult for English speakers.

And it is a sad fact of life that some Afrikaans parents would rather send their children to English schools than to Afrikaans schools, but Afrikaans is something most children in South Africa learn as second language, at the least. It's rare to find a native English or Zulu speaker who doesn't understand or even speak Afrikaans. But it is also becoming increasingly rare to find someone who can only speak and understand Afrikaans, too. English is the language used when our native tongue isn't recognised in the city. If I'm speaking to a Zulu, Xhosa, or even Pedi in Pretoria, I automatically assume they'll speak and understand English much better than Afrikaans, so that's the language I immediately begin speaking in. In more rural areas, however, Afrikaans is much more widely spoken and understood. If I begin speaking English in Amsterdam (not the one in the Netherlands), this little village near my favourite camping site (and also very close to the Swaziland border), I'd get a lot of blank expressions, whereas speaking Afrikaans would be much more successful.

Afrikaans is one of the eleven official languages in South Africa, and I think it is the second most spoken first language, behind only Zulu. The coloured population makes up the majority of its first language speakers, not the Afrikaner himself. That's why it's actually wrong for our current government to think of Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor, as the coloured population was mistreated during apartheid for being too black, and is now mistreated for being too white.

That said, there are two main dialects. Cape Coloured Afrikaans sounds quite different from standard Afrikaans, and even with standard Afrikaans, the people who speak it have their own small differences depending on where they live. Afrikaans spoken in the three Capes, and particularly the Klein Karoo, and some parts of the Free State, can sound closer to Dutch, whereas the northerners, like myself, can sound quite a bit more snobby to our southern brethren.

The real threat to Afrikaans comes not from parents unwilling to teach it to their children, but from the government. Anti-Afrikaans sentiment is growing ever worse, and it's being stamped out at universities across the country. There has recently been a tremendous increase in violent protests calling for the removal of Afrikaans in all schools and universities. Plaasmoorde, or farm murders, aggravates the problem. Rural Afrikaners are facing genocide.

Afrikaners who immigrate obviously also face the risk of having children who don't learn the language, as for obvious reasons, you'll struggle to find established settlements in other countries where Afrikaans would be commonly spoken. And we're fleeing this country in record numbers, so this will also become increasingly more of a problem. As it is, you'll find quite a few Afrikaners in England, Australia and New Zealand. Canada and Dubai have recently become more popular as destinations for Afrikaans immigrants to consider as well. Germany also holds some appeal.

As for surnames, you'd actually struggle to find a purely Afrikaans surname. The majority of us have Dutch, German, British or French surnames. My surname, Bester, is either a Dutch or German (can't quite remember) variant of Beste, an old English surname. One of our famous figures, general De La Rey, had a French surname, for instance.

And yes, I would teach my children (if I ever decide I want any) Afrikaans too, no matter where I might live. I probably wouldn't skimp on my German heritage, either. I'd teach my children that too.

EDIT: Just to give a more comprehensive idea of how easy Afrikaans is to learn. http://www.pagef30.com/2010/12/why-afrikaans-is-also-easiest-language.html?m=1

EDIT 2: This is also useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans_grammar

Very interesting, thank you for the in-depth answer.

PS : Afrikaans (and sometimes Dutch) G is just an unvoiced version of our R, perhaps with a bit more friction. What is usually really hard for francophones to pronounce is H, sounds like English TH and syllable stress, as we actually don't have any in the English sense (by syllable stress I mean the added "emphasis" you'd put on, for example, totalitarianism / to-tal-i-tar-i-an-ism). It took me forever to stop eliding my Hs and to pronounce TH as TH and not T or D (French Canadians will replace TH with T and D stops, whereas French Europeans will replace them with S and Z fricatives). I still don't have the syllable stress down pat for certain words since it's pretty much random.

Still enjoying law so far? I think South Africa is a mixed system. It is here too. It's the worst.

A little down about how slow things have been around here lately.

Interesting. I struggle with the "th" sound too. If it's meant as the sound in "thin," then 9/10, I say "fin." If it's meant as the one in "the," then odds are I just pronounce it as "ve." Afrikaners of previous generations just say "de" when trying to say "the." I can say it correctly, but I have to concentrate really hard, and it's just not worth it, as native English speakers get used to it, and non-native English speakers rarely realise I'm saying it wrong. So fuck it.

Yeah, we have a mixed system. But in all fairness, the constitution does have sovereignty, so if common law, civil law or customary law is found not to be in keeping with the values and laws as set out in the constitution, it is considered unconstitutional, and therefore unlawful. It does lead to needless bureaucracy for no real reason, as there's no getting around the fact that our system still doesn't care much for customary or indigenous law, but I imagine it is an olive branch to have it recognised, at least. And figuring out when someone may marry more than one person does lead to quite a few headaches, and blatant discrimination in some cases.

I must say that I have seen far worse legal systems than ours, though.

But to answer your question, there are days that I don't care much for it, but overall, I enjoy it quite a bit. I do like the philosophy of law much more than its practical application, though. Haha, one mistake people keep making is assuming that we know all the laws by heart. We would fucking die, were that the case.

What about you? Do you/did you enjoy it? Could you tell me a bit more about the Canadian system? I imagine (but correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm not at all familiar with your system and just assuming) that it is derived from the British common law system?

I enjoyed it in theory, but not in practice, hence why I seem to forever be looking for something new. What I mean by that is that I really liked learning about the subject on an intellectual level, but the reality of actually practicing law wasn't for me. I just don't believe that legal expertise should be sold, or even that legal expertise should actually exist, much less be needed. I didn't manage to come to terms with my philosophical convictions and the reality of the profession, so here I am.

The Canadian law system is generally drawn from common law. All over the country, public law is sourced from it, and so is private law everywhere except Quebec province, where it's based on civil law. Some old treaties (with the natives) are still part of the system, and the same section that recognizes these treaties also recognize native customary rights.

Canada is a typical federation, but more centralized than the US. For example, there is only one criminal law code (the federal one) because criminal law is a federal jurisdiction, whereas in the States, criminal laws differ from state to state. We have a constitution, but only some of it is actually written, some of it is unwritten like in the UK, which leads to confusion and tough constitutional law classes.

The Criminal Code is outdated and needs some hardcore pruning (we have a specific section prohibiting theft from oyster beds for instance, and some murder provisions that were declared unconstitutional are still in the books).

A really big bug crawled onto me outside today and and I was on a dock and and I had a fishing pole and I slammed it down and started screaming ;-;

Hmm, have you considered simply becoming a lecturer?

And I must say I do struggle to reconcile the reality of law and politics with what it should be in theory, myself. The justice system still doesn't apply as much to those with money as it does to those without, as state attorneys are overworked and underpaid, and can't hope to compete with large private firms who handle far fewer cases, and are much better paid. So the poor still get fucked over. And they always will. You have to harden yourself quite a bit in this profession to do it particularly effectively. I mean, I'm not the most sensitive person around, but even to me, some of the things those in the profession would have to deal with would make me hate myself. Or I'd pretty much try to let go of my conscience completely, at some point, and become a pure pragmatist.

Sorry boys, I'm officially off the market.   

Sorry boys, I'm officially off the market.   

aww