Diacritiques

A new group blog, a “Community Euroblog”, as they call it: Viewropa. It is beautifully designed, multilingual (English posts dominate, but when you register, you can set your preferred interface language), and pursues a worthy goal:

… to provide a space for informed, intelligent presentation and civilised discussion of European issues, news and events

Via Madame Martin, a new group blog in French that I found via Language Hat.

Signalons un nouveau blogue collectif européen: Viewropa. Le graphisme est beau, le mulitilinguisme pourrait s’y développer (quand vous vous inscivez, vous pouvez spécifier votre langue d’interface préférée), et l’objectif est estimable : proposer un espace de discussion informée, intelligente et civilisée sur les enjeux, actualités et événements éurpoéens.

Via Madame Martin, blogue collectif francophone, trouvé via Language Hat.

And I had hoped that this sort of, er, innovation would remain a UK-only phenomenon, as far as Europe is concerned. But no, the British are exporting their services to the German land (federal state) of Hesse, which is getting Germany’s first partially privatised prison. It’s not as if north of the Channel some people hadn’t already discovered that privatisation isn’t a panacea against state spending. German law doesn’t allow for private companies to fulfill all the duties that come with running a prison. Yet, says my inner cynic. And you wonder why some of us are despairing over the EU.

To spell out why I feel so strongly about this: There are two main reasons. First, the state (some Americans prefer the term “government”) has a monopoly on the use of force, and reserves itself the right to punish; this creates an obligation to assume the dirty work that punishment entails. Second, while some private companies will obviously benefit from the existence of the prison service (at the very least, suppliers, building contractors and the like), I believe that creating an economic incentive for, on the one hand, raising the number of inmates, and on the other hand, employing/keeping them in a way that generates a profit is an unhealty (and morally questionable) approach.

P.S.: I couldn’t resist to point to this.

Edit: I just discovered that the Netherlands does it, too.

Et je croyais que le Royaume-Uni serait le seul pays Européen à s’ouvrir à ce genre d’« innovation ». Non, c’est le tour du land fédéral allemand de Hesse de se doter d’une prison partiellement privatisée (de). Alors que outre-manche les critiques commencent à se faire entendre (en), l’Allemagne croit toujours en la privatisation des fonctions étatiques comme panacée pour effaçer les trous budgétaires. Certes, la loi allemande ne permet pas à des non-fonctionaires d’assumer toutes les fonctions qu’implique la gestion d’une prison. Pas encore, me dit une petite voix cynique. Et on nous demande pourquoi nous désespérons de l’UE.

Pour être tout à fait claire, voici les deux raison pourqoi j’éprouve un sentiment aussi fort de rejet à l’égard de cette approche. Premièrement, l’état tenant le monopôle d’usage de la force, et se réserve donc le droit de punir, il doit, pour moi, en assumer le sale boulot aussi. Deuxièmement, créer un intérêt économique pour des entreprises privées (dont certaines profitent de toute façon de l’existence des prisons) pour que le nombre des détenus soit au plus haut possible, et qu’ils soient occupés d’une sorte à créer un bénéfice, me semble malsain et moralement détestable.

P.S.: Je ne pouvais pas résister de pointer vers ceci (aussi en anglais, mais lire le titre est suffisant).

M-à-j: Je viens de découvrir que cela se fait également aux Pays-Bas.

Mark Liberman at Language Log has posted a second transcribe-and-guess-the-language quiz. I believe most readers of this blog interested in this sort of question, so you probably know this already. As one of those who got the first one right, I couldn’t resist of course. (More seriously, though, it’s an excellent exercise.)

I have followed my new fondness of wikis and used first my local one, then my new (and still quite empty) online wiki to work progressively on my solution. To be fair, my brother and I conferred a bit on Jabber: he was surprisingly enthusiastic, and provided support and his remarks.

Now, the wiki page (which has a timestamp) won’t be changed (spelling errors and all) until Mark has come out with the solution.

Once the work was as complete as it’s likely to get, I did have a look to find out whether caelestis at sauvage noble might have taken up the challenge, too. It turns out he has — I swear, I didn’t change a letter of my wiki post after looking, and won’t.

Caelestis’ transcription and mine are reasonably similar. He transcribes some sounds as a where I opt for an (open) o, and he might be right. Especially if the language is Somali or a close relative. His morphological analysis is more sophisticated than mine. He rejects Somali, however, on grounds of prosody. I’m not so sure about that. Somali is supposed to have tonal accent (caelestis calls it “pitch accent” for the samples), which is a point in favour. Still, I’m far from convinced myself.

Edit: My certainty level, which has been rising over the day after listening to the Somali recordings on this site (via caelestis) , has just taken another hike. Thanks to my dear brother, who doesn’t have a web presence yet (even though his sister has been nagging). Mark Liberman’s tantalizing “European Event” immediately made me think of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s murder — but I failed to see the in reality obvious connection to Somalia: His film Submission about violence against women, which is said to contain a harsh criticism of Islam, was written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee and now a liberal (ie conservative) member of parliament in the Netherlands. Letters containing death threats against her were pinned to his body with a knife.

Update: The mystery language was indeed Somali. I have updated the documentation of my efforts on the wiki — conclusions and general remarks added.

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