I don't think you've established any factual challenge to either of my statements:
> But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places.
> Modern German is no closer to the language of a randomly chosen 'Germanic Tribe' than English, Prussian, Danish, Yiddish, Swedish, Czech, etc
The fact that there is some connection between modern German and Old High German and some connection between Old High German and the languages of the Germanic tribes does not contradict either.
I read the whole thing. It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.
Accusations of bias, the suggestion that 'only nationality X would question this aspect of our proud Y history', turning minor linguistic coincidences into meaningful history, the admission that 'everyone is from all over the place, but nonetheless we are all definitely from Z because [no evidence]'.
Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.' The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening. Appeal to biased histories written by true believers. Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question. Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.
Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje. He did not speak Macedonian, 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'. There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.
Germanic tribes in the ancient world did not speak Old High German. The status of Old High German as the origin language of modern German is part of the construction of German history in exactly the manner I have described.
There is very little Celtic in Old English. It's very close to a synthesis of Anglish and French. There's much more Danish in English than there is Celtic.
But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places.
During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migrants in one region of Yugoslavia. Like most linguistic groups they adopted the national language and believed themselves to be Yugoslav. However their group was sometimes referred to as 'Macedonian' because the corner of Yugoslavia near Bulgaria is also near Macedonia in Greece. They now have their own country (and language - whose only differences from Serbo-Croat are those which were intentionally introduced), and many believe themselves to be the descendants and cultural and spiritual heirs of Alexander the Great (even though Alexander reigned over and left an influence over a region bigger than Europe).
All countries have things like this in their history. It's just that generally they are a few hundred years further away.
> states ruled from Prague, inhabited largely by Czech speakers, extending to virtually the same territory.
More like two polities which share a capital city, but barely have either a language or a geography in common. The idea that Bohemia is essentially Czechia has no more reliable historical basis than belief that it belongs to Greater Germany, or to Czechoslovakia.
This isn't true. The majority of countries are much younger than this. The thousand year old ones are the exceptions.
Many countries have an 'origin story' which implies that they are the same thing as random countries or regions which had similar names/languages/locations but in the vast majority cases these are something between a loose approximation and a myth.
> Frustrating enough since it feels like in JavaScript, you never have control over what’s going on.
> In C, you can go ahead and misconfigure a makefile to output debug files, a segfault, or a bad reference, but at the end of the day, it’s your fault.
> The same goes for any serious language ecosystem out there.
> But JavaScript is quite the opposite: it works like magic (and not as a compliment!) even though you know it’s pure software!
I think we can recognize from these comments what is happening here. If you think that the tools you are working with are magic (whether because of bias, unfamiliarity or whatever), it will be much harder to pin down problems. If you understand that you're dealing with very complex, but deterministic systems, you will be able to work systematically, observe things carefully and carry out experiments to check your hypotheses, and you have a chance of actually discovering what's going on.
SQLite is not 'a little iffy'. It's a) one of the most resilient pieces of software ever made and b) one of the most widely adopted pieces of software ever made.
You might think that making sure your children will be cared for after you are dead is an impossible desire. You might think that leaving a will specifying your intentions for unpublished work is an action with an expected outcome. The line between actions with expected outcomes and impossible desires seems hard to establish.
We only have Otto Frank's word for it that this is what she would have wanted. And he is known not to have had respect for her legacy in every way, for example editing the diary to remove criticism of himself.
Also, 'wanting to be a writer' does not necessarily mean that you would have wanted to have a specifically private piece of writing published.
Should we act this way with regards to all future events? Should I for example vote for leaders whom I believe will make decisions which make things better during my lifetime only to get much worse in the far future after I'll probably have died? If I have a disabled family member who will likely outlive me, should I ignore the fact that they will continue to require care after my death, when planning my financial affairs?
> But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places.
> Modern German is no closer to the language of a randomly chosen 'Germanic Tribe' than English, Prussian, Danish, Yiddish, Swedish, Czech, etc
The fact that there is some connection between modern German and Old High German and some connection between Old High German and the languages of the Germanic tribes does not contradict either.