History of the Castilian/spanish language

>>Gaul was very near and they would trade slaves for wine amphora and other goods. <<

Napoleon reffered to Spain as Africa.

-->>>that is because he COULDN'T see Beyond the horizon.

<<The Romans needed most of all people who tended to be docile, who were hard workers and who came from peoples with high birth rates. After,all, the average life of a slave in the Roman Empire was only about 21 years. Greeks and Arabs would have been some of the best candidates although Greeks were seldom used for physical labor, mostly things that required specific skills and talents.>>

This statement stinks of an -ism, especially the part about "tended to be docile". How do you qualify such a statement against an entire population?

««This statement stinks of an -ism, especially the part about "tended to be docile". How do you qualify such a statement against an entire population?»»

I qualify it as being correct.
There were nations that were known for being great warriors; they would start their warrior apprentice almost from birth and when captured could escape or kill the master. Other nations, that were not good fighters and were easily conquered, could make good house slaves. The Greek slaves would make great accountants or tutors for Roman children because they were very well educated, the best house servants were from Cyrene, the best shepherds came from Epirus etc.
At one time it is believed that 30 to 40% of the total population of Rome was enslaved.

According to the sales contract, the slaves were ‘non-returnable. Laws were made, like the Digest of Justinian, to protect the buyer from purchasing a "defective" slave from the slave traders (the traders were called mango) that would do or say anything to sell any defective “merchandise”. The law required the seller of slaves to warrantee that the slave was free from any disease or defect and inform the buyer of any relevant information. The relevant information was written on a label hung from the slave's neck. What was considered a human defect, like bad temper, bad teeth or infertility in female slaves, was discussed in the laws, and had to be informed. Slaves were common goods and were seen as non-persons.

Thanks, I was asking Brennus, or did you say what I quoted above?

It is about what you quoted. I thought you were asking anyone.

Ok, I think I've misunderstood the statement. I understand what went on in the past and that slaves were treated as non-persons. However, I took the statement that in short said "Arabs and Greeks tend to be docile" as a general statement applicable to a population - even today. Of course in the past people "picked" slaves and "tamed" them - tried to make them docile - like taming a horse. My point was that "being docile" is not a "predicable" naturally-occuring human trait among large numbers of people in any population.

Point: I misunderstood and thought he was labelling Greeks and Arabs as "tending to be docile naturally". But this has mostly to do with nurture, not nature in the case of slaves.

>>Thracian and Dacian peoples to be too proud and too warlike to make good slaves. Remember Spartacus, the gladiator <<

I agree with Brennus at this point.

Also Decebalus the king of Dacia (Romania) was too proud and too warlike to make a good prisoner.

"After his army was defeated, rather than being captured as a prisoner by the Roman soldiers, Decebalus committed suicide"

If any of you know where I can find valid websites discussing the correlation between the Ancient Greek language and Spanish that would be great. I know that Spanish is a direct decendent of Latin and the the Greek language contributed to classical Latin, but I was needing something more. (besides just the alphabet and articles - "the")
Thanks!

The ethnic/racial makeup of any nation is far too complex for anybody to apply simplistic generalizations in describing what particular racial type is represented in any particular European country. With a few exceptions, such as Finland, and the Scandinavian countries, excessive ethnic/racial intermarrying took place on such a large scale, that it is impossible to precisely point out any one ethnic or genetic characteristic that can be used to describe any particular nationality in Europe.

Spanish is barely spoken in the Philippines.

hi. i grew up thoroughly Greek, all sides. My contribution to your site is this: after working for the Head of the Anthropology Dept. at my college for three yrs or so, upon my departure he told me that his major field of study was the human skull. He told me that i had a totally CLASSIC
Spanish skull, not Greek at all!!! Hats off to those of you who learn Greek. I never appreciated its lyrical beauty until my American husband learned it on his own. Difficult at first, but lends itself beautifully to all
kinds of subtleties.

<<<Spanish is barely spoken in the Philippines.>>>

Yup! Well I'm trying to learn it so hopefully it would improve from barely to "a substantial minority speak it".

Spanish is so far away from people's minds that a couple of years ago the Ketchup song became a dance craze here and everyone thought it was about worshipping the devil.

Here in the United States, citizenship was recently granted to over 10 million Spanish speaking Mexicans. It looks like the trend is going to continue. I see Spanish overtaking English in North America in the next 20 to 30 years.

I doubt English will be completely taken over even in 100 years, but Spanish will become bigger in the United States than what it is now. However, for the most part, the people that are importing Spanish to the United States are undocumented workers, who generally tend to have little education (hence, why they're immigrating to the US in the first place), and thus their Spanish skills are also weaker than a regular Middle class person in a Spanish speaking country. If this is the Spanish you refer to as taking over English in the United States, I do not think this is going to happen at all, mainly for the following reason:

Where I live (Kansas, US), the school system offers no Spanish-language education until High School (in which case is is taught as a foreign language to native speakers). In those 9-10 years, the kids have been taught nothing but English, and whatever Spanish they know comes from their parents. If their parents are illegal immigrants with a low level of education, then what they learn of Spanish is minimal and 'tainted' with many regionalisms. Because of this, many cannot communicate efficiently with each other using Spanish as they would using English, since they have much more education in that language than in Spanish. Because of that, many young Spanish speakers prefer English as their primary language, than Spanish. Sometimes when they do speak Spanish, they incorporate English words, and sometimes 'verb' them, making the language more like Spanglish.

Because of this preferrence of English over Spanish in a large portion of the Spanish-speaking younger generation, I do not think that Spanish will be taking over English anytime soon.

However, there are exceptions to this. In Los Angeles CA, the school system DOES offer Spanish language education, so that may not apply with the same effect it does in Kansas.



P. S. - What I meant by 'verbing' the words is that, an english word is taken, and the appropriate Spanish suffixes are added to make it into a verb.

An example:

(Eng) To park
(Spng) Parquear

Nous sommes des hispaniques. Quand nous rencontrons des personnes de l'Inde, nous avons perdu notre langue espagnole à l'hindi et notre religion catholique à la religion hindou immédiatement.

We are hispanics. When we meet people from India, we lost our Spanish language to Hindi and our Catholic religion to Hindu religion within a short time.

ःअम अरे हिस्पनिcस्. कब हम थिक लोग से वह बटन , हम अलग किय हुअ हमर एक प्रकर क शिकरि कुट्ट भश ओर पिच्हवडे क और हमर सर्वसमन्य इश्वर भक्टि ओर पिच्हवडे क इश्वर भक्टि भिटर अ च्होट समय.