A LIttle CW
I think I have read every article on the baseball playoffs, and conventional wisdom suggests that the schedule in the AL works against both Angels and Red Sox.- The Angels would probably beat the Yankees (with some difficulty).
- The Yankees would probably defeat the Twins (handily) and the Red Sox (narrowly).
- The Red Sox would probably defeat the Angels (narrowly).
The Angels will face their most difficult opponent first rather than hoping that they might be eliminated by another team. Of course, I do not think that wild card teams would normally faced the winners of their own division.
My prediction: the ALDS will be won in the fifth game, eighth inning on Manny's glove and Chone's legs.
I'll be back later with more baseball and Johno bashing.
posted by Nathanael @ 8:28 AM
1 Comments:
Connie,
Thank you for your kind words--I am impressed that you have an active interest in Alsatian dialect, a subject which is both complex and difficult to penetrate. Strasbourg is one of the most beautiful and well ordered cities in the world, and I continually look forward to seeing it again. I can be sympathetic to the Red Sox, but my native team is Anaheim ... .
My dissertation is in "Rhenish" history (l'histoire rhenane). More specifically, I focus on what I call modern regionalism in the Rhine, which is the drive to create territories below the national level that allow people more control over politics. Actually, this is a horrible definition, and if you want the full spiel I recommend looking at the link on the right called "My Prospectus". It is more technical, but also more accurate.
Language is not my specialty, but I cannot get away from discussing it. The politics of language deepened rifts between Alsace and the "interior" (outre-Rhin). The officials that Paris sent to Alsace, especially after the return in 1918, knew little German and no dialect. Socially, individuals found that they could not communicate with their government. Politically, this added to the perception that the central government would not let Alsatians govern and administer themselves.
Allemanisch is more problematic in France than German. During the period of the German Second Empire, Alsatian politicians promoted bilingualism--German and French, cutting out dialect. When they returned to France, support for French-German bilingualism continued, but dialect received no official support. Native speakers of Allemanisch have been graying slowly since the early 20th C. Every generation can undersand its predecessors less.
Allemanisch has survived in academic works. Alsatians benefitted from the German cultural movement "Heimatkunde". These movements that studied local culture created dictionaries, collected legends in dialect (Mundart), and even created new literary works. During the contentious 1920s and 1930s, there were several regionalist newspapers that attacked Paris in dialect. So, there were ways that dialect has survived, just not as a native language. You probably realize that the local presses put out lots of lit in the local patois.
There are few sources in English on Alsatian dialects. The politics of teaching language in elementary schools is covered by Stephen Harp in "Learning to be Loyal". Their are some useful things written in French and even in German. A writer who might interest you is Yvan Goll. He was a Jewish expressionist poet who wrote in some poems in dialect. "Jean sans terre", in French and German, is a great expression of the feelings of Alsatians for France and for Europe.
Nathanael Robinson
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