Whites, Blacks and Caucasians

 

One of the most idiotic things in the English language is the custom of referring to the White race as "Caucasian". The people who use that term have obviously never seen actual Caucasians.

For those who don't know, Caucasia is a region north and south of Caucasus mountains where, geographically speaking, Europe meets Asia. It's between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, north-east of Turkey, north-west of Iran, south-east of Ukraine, south of Russian heartland. I hope something from that rings a bell.

Now, Caucasians do technically belong to the White race all right, but only in the broadest possible meaning of the word. When an average person thinks about the White race, he would imagine people like English, German, Scandinavian or Russian. Most Caucasians look clearly darker than that. In fact, in Russia, as well as in my country Estonia, and surely some others, Caucasians are called Blacks. That's right, the Russian word чёрный (chornyi), which is the regular word for the colour "black", also means a person of Mediterranean-Middleeastern-Caucasian race. (As far as I understand, the corresponding term in English is "Dago".)

I have not studied the use of that word in other languages, and that is not really the point. The point is that many millions of White people obviously perceive the Caucasians so non-White that they have taken to calling them "Blacks".

A classmate of mine who went to study in the USA back in the 1990's told me later how he was greatly confused when asked about his race in a form he had to fill out, as he couldn't identify with any of the choices given. He reflected that he was obviously not Black (which, of course, he knew meant "Negroid" in English), obviously not Asian, obviously not Mexican, and so the only choice left was Caucasian. I think many an East European in the USA has found it puzzling.

It is more than confusing and inaccurate. To call us Caucasians is an insult. We are not Caucasians any more than Incas are Apaches. From the scientific point of view, we may technically belong to the same race as the Caucasians, but to suggest that we ARE Caucasians is really very offending.

I have heard of a case when an American from Missouri took offence when called a Yankee. And you have the nerve to call us Caucasians?

To give you a comparison – the scientific name for the so-called yellow race may be "Mongoloid", but you never refer to the Indonesians or Vietnamese as "Mongols". Because they aren't, are they?

Caucasia is an obscure region whose inhabitants barely qualify as White. Whoever came up with the ludicrous thought that the Caucasians could somehow be considered representative of the White race?

The love for ludicrous length

Recently, I watched a video with certain instructions on certain software, and there was one thing in it that just made me gasp in utter amazement.

I can't believe that native English speakers pronounce "setup.exe" (or whichever filename in the form *.exe) as "setup dot ee ex ee" instead of simply "setup ex-ay". In my native language I have never ever in my life heard anyone say "dot" and spell out "exe" letter by letter. I mean, you obviously cannot pronounce "jpg" as such. You have to say "jay-pee-gee". But "exe", "com", "bat", "ini" and such are perfectly comfortable to pronounce as words (and, needless to say, always pronounced as words by my countrypeople). So what is with this native English speakers' spelling-out obsession? I mean, if someone can't recognise the file extension "exe" without having it spelt out letter by letter, or doesn't know that there is a dot between "setup" (or whichever other filename) and "exe", then he has no business talking about computer files to start with. You don't discuss car engines with someone who doesn't know what a cylinder is.

This reminds me of how I couldn't believe my ears when I, years ago, heard for the first time how a native English speaker said "double-u double-u double-u whatever dot com". It's just mind-blowing. Considering how often people in our time tell URL's to each other, I would go crazy if I had to say and hear "double-u double-u double-u" all the time. By contrast, in our language the letter "v" is called "vee" ("veh" for you the English speakers) and the letter "w" is called "kaksisvee". But "www" in URL's is always pronounced "vee-vee-vee". We know that "vee" actually stands for the letter "v", but we still pronounce "www" as if it was "vvv" because nobody, really nobody, can be bothered to say "kaksisvee-kaksisvee-kaksisvee". (And, as I hardly need to tell you, everyone has enough mental capacity to know that when someone says "vee-vee-vee", he means "www".) Astonishingly, native English speakers seem to have no problem with pronouncing nine syllables in front of almost every Web address that are always the same, and to do that frequently, on a regular basis. Somehow their brains seem to be wired in an entirely different way.

The list goes on. Just recently I heard someone say "Windows eight dot one". I was half expecting to wake up the next moment and realise I was just having a crazy dream.

Or here's a mind-blowing quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano:

"fingers and thumbs".

Homo sapiens and English-speaking peoples?

And speaking of the newer Windowses, I was once more left in utter disbelief when I saw various people use the expression "tap or click" (or "click or tap", "tap/click" or "click/tap") in various computer-related articles. I mean, everyone knows that clicking on one type of devices corresponds to tapping on other type of devices. He who fails to understand that the terms "to tap" and "to click" are equivalent, needs to either get psychiatric help or turn for assistance to a much younger friend or relative, instead of the rest of us having to write "tap or click" each and every fucking time. But, astonishing as it may seem, the native English speakers seem to just love such insane verbosity.

I wonder when you will start writing "I came out of the lift or elevator and entered my flat or apartment".
Added 3 years later:
Now that time has arrived. I saw a forum post titled "What is your favourite/favorite movie?"
Stop the world. I want to get off.

More on the crippledness of the English language's word-building

In my article "The Astonishing Primitiveness of the English Language", I touched upon the striking difficulty of building new words in the English language, resulting in the need for many loanwords and acronyms. In view of the comments from rather upset native English speakers, I feel I should elaborate a little bit on that subject. Again, this is not a scientific paper. It is merely an attempt to make a thing or two clearer. I am not trying to convince you of anything. I want to make you think.

When a dog is able to fetch the slippers when ordered to, the people admire it and say how dogs are so intelligent. When a human servant is able to fetch the slippers when ordered to, people think nothing of it, because human beings are expected to be able to fetch not only slippers but any available and carriable item named.

The English and Estonian (for instance) language are like dogs and humans in that respect. Once upon a time, a native English speaker thought about naming in a more compact way the people who have the compulsion to buy things. He thought about alcoholics, and he thought about shopping, and it suddenly occurred to him that the shopping addicts could be referred to as "shopaholics". And the word catched on. The people found it brilliant. Non-English speakers, when seeing a word like that, are likely to think: wow, the English language is so cool.

In Estonian, you have the word "ostma" which means "to buy". "Ost" means "purchase", "sõltuma" means "to depend", "sõltlane" means "addict". When someone first felt the need to create a term to refer to shopping addicts by, he just put those words together and wrote "ostusõltlane". It requires no inventiveness whatsoever, it's the routine way of word-building in Estonian.

In other words, in Estonian many neologisms are just created without a second thought, and pretty much everyone can do it when the need arises. In English, they find themselves published in "top 20 coolest invented words" lists. They cause admiration because they are so rare. In most cases, the English language is unable to create a new word, cool or uncool. Instead, it needs to find a loanword from another language. As a result, a place where people become mothers is called a maternity ward. Sick (haige) people are cured at a hospital (haigla). Doctors are giving the patients medical treatment (ravi) by prescribing pharmaceutical drugs (ravim). The nurse gives the patient an injection (süst), using a syringe (süstal). And while we're at it, let's not forget that the treatment heals (tervendab) the patient, and the patient also heals (terveneb). The word "healer" can mean someone who heals another person (tervendaja), but it can also mean someone who is being healed (terveneja). Hilarious.

For fairness's sake, I should mention that the acquisition of loanwords instead of creating one's own has an important advantage (which, of course, I am nowhere near the first to point out): one can often find several English words originating from different languages meaning almost but not quite the same thing (speed; velocity; rapidity). That enables a preciser distiction between close concepts. For instance, the Estonian language has only one word for "victim" and "sacrifice". So when you say that a person was an "ohver" of the Aztec priests, you will have to specify whether you mean to say that he was sacrificed or that he fell victim to the religious zeal. Neither does Estonian distinguish between "venom" and "poison". "Rat poison" would be "rotimürk" and "snake venom" would be "maomürk". In English you could, I assume, distinguish between "snake venom" (a poisonous substance a snake's organism creates) and "snake poison" (a poisonous substance used to kill snakes). In Estonian you can only make that distinction by adding a few words of explanation. So in that respect, English is more efficient than Estonian. But then again, it is hilarious to hear the English say "take a look at your watch or clock" because they don't have a word like the German "Uhr". I mean, it simply doesn't exist, and I can't see an easy way of creating one. And, well, obviously nobody has, so far. (And let us not forget that the word "watch" has other meanings too, so when you say that someone took the first watch, you might want to watch out for being misunderstood.)

The English tendency to magnetically attract loanwords becomes outright absurd when things that are exactly the same are being referred to by different words. A tank (in the meaning of armoured military vehicle) which belongs to Germany, can also be referred to as a panzer. So you can take two exactly identical tanks, paint German colours on the first and the French colours on the second, and all of a sudden the first tank has turned into a panzer while the second tank has remained just a tank.

That is mind-blowing. If German submarines are called U-boots (or even U-bootens), why aren't Russian submarines called podvodnaya lodkas? When a partisan happens to operate in a Spanish-speaking country, he is called a guerrilla. Would that make a Finnish partisan a sissi?

Rather than making up different words to name a tank by, you would think that people would spend their creative energy on making up a separate word for a cannon-carrying armoured vehicle, so they wouldn't have to call it with the same word as a container for liquids or use an acronym like ACV. But strangely enough, that doesn't bother the English-speaking peoples.

Speaking of acronyms, their disadvantage is obviously their inaccessibility to the uninitiated. Everyone can guess that a "mirror-camera" must be some kind of a photographic device, but there is no way to know that DSLR is a photography term and LGBT isn't, unless you have considerable pre-knowledge. But for some incomprehensible reason, the English-speaking peoples seem to  p r e f e r  the acronym DSLR. It would seem that they not only use acronyms when forced to because they can't create words. They seem to actually enjoy memorising and using an acronym even when there is a word.

Which brings me to a couple of totally retarded photography terms which goes slightly off topic here but illustrates nicely the English-speaking people's obsession with tradition.

I kept reading about that ISO thing being referred to as "ISO speed" in the English language, until at one moment I stopped and thought: "Wait, what speed?"

Larger ISO "speed" means that the light entering the camera's sensor is being amplified, so that it's possible to produce a proper photo when there is little light. But what on Earth is it supposed to have to do with speed?

I suspected it was because this signal amplification thing corresponded to some antique technology which had something to do with the speed of something. As I found out, that was precisely the case. "ISO speed" was the term used to mark the sensitivity of a photographic film to the light. But again, what fucking speed are we talking about? I did some more reading and, well, apparently the ancient English photographers, not excelling in logic, chose to call a more sensitive film "fast" because it took less time to transform the same amount of light into an image of the same brightness, compared to a "slow" (meaning less light-sensitive) film.

Right. So keep in mind that buildings are not high or low. The buildings with more stories are advanced scream buildings or ASB's (because a falling person first screams out of fear and then hits the ground), and the buildings with fewer stories are delayed scream buildings or DSB's (because a falling person first hits the ground and then begins to scream out of pain).

Another competely retarded photography term in the English language is "shutter speed". It has, again, nothing whatsoever to do with speed (the magnitude of an object's velocity). What is actually meant by "shutter speed" in the English language is the time interval between the shutter's opening and closing. I doubt the actual speed of the shutter ever changes, and even if it did it would hardly make any difference.

Do I need to tell you that in our language we call the time interval between the shutter's opening and closing "exposuretime"? In fact, I dare to boldly suggest that the English-speaking peoples also have the ability to distinguish between the concepts of time and speed. But somehow they are so fixated on tradition that they can't get loose. That's why their SF writers put sailing masters on their spaceships.

Oh, and don't even get me started on English computer terminology. That totally merits an article of its own.

I'd like to give you one more example of that tendency of referring to the same thing by different words loaned from different languages (as well as unreasonable tradition-fixatedness). I mentioned in a previous article that the English legal language is sheer horror. One particularly retarded thing about it is precisely that habit of using two words to name the same thing. Examples:

any and all

null and void

terms and conditions

last will and testament

"All" obviously includes "any", only the lawyers in the English-speaking countries seem to be too stupid to realise it. "Null" and "void" are the same thing. "Terms" and "conditions" are the same thing. Etc. No other language in which I have read legal documents uses such needless repetitions (except sometimes when they have obviously translated an English text word by word).

Yes, I know, if one really wants to split hairs, one can argue that "null" and "void" are not quite exactly the same (in fact my native language has two separate legal terms to that effect, but they are never used together; you always choose the one that is appropriate, and you look like a bloody amateur when you get it wrong); one could argue that "last will" can be given a meaning slightly different from "testament". But the point is that it's never done. Those pairs of words are virtually always used together, creating verbal noise by unnecessary duplication. How many legal texts have you seen which say that something is just null but not void, or just void but not null? Can you take a "last will and testament" and show me which part of it is last will and which part is testament? I don't think so.

As to terms and conditions, one can argue that some terms are conditions and some are not. But if so, the nonsensicalness of the phrase "terms and conditions" is particularly obvious. It's like saying "vehicles and cars" or "animals and cats" or "human beings and Americans". It is inconceivable to me that a person who is too stupid to recognise the illogicality of that could ever get a law degree.

The English legal language clings mindlessly and pointlessly to such unnecessary duplications. Maybe it is because 500 years ago one scholar used one term and another one used another, and nobody has the courage to say "Hey, isn't it about time to cut the crap?" Or maybe one term originates from Latin and another one from Greek, and no one is absolutely certain that they couldn't be given different meanings in some obscure context, so everyone always uses both terms just in case. And strangely enough the English-speaking world doesn't seem to have a mechanism for improving its legal language, for ridding it of such nonsense.

So that is one of the things that makes the English legal language more confusing that it should be.

But now I have really written long enough and I have other things to do, so bye for now.

More on the English language's tendency to isolatingness

My article "The Astonishing Primitiveness of the English Language" has drawn a large number of angry comments from the native English speakers who are, as I have clearly pointed out, definitely not the target audience of that article. "How dare you say our language is primitive?" Their anger is perfectly understandable, them being so used to being looked up to by all the world. But they just don't have an idea what it's like to have at your disposal a language where you can substitute one affix for another and get a different meaning which would take ten words in English to explain.

Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to try and clarify a couple of things, lest someone begins to think that it's somehow difficult for me to reply to the criticism I've been getting.

I read an article some time ago (too bad I can't find it anymore) where a native English speaker discussed the differences of languages. He brought examples from the Chinese, showing how the verbs and nouns don't have various grammatical forms the way they do in English. Indeed he demonstrated quite convincingly that the Chinese people's way of thinking must be quite different from the English people's. But he was too afraid to spell it out, so he took it all back by saying something like this: "Do those examples mean that the Chinese people's way of thinking is different from the English people's. No-no, of course not! Every people's way of thinking is exactly the same. It's just that the Chinese express less meaning with the actual language and leave much of the meaning to be deduced from the context."

Well, that is exactly what I mean by saying that a language is primitive. You have to leave much of the meaning to be deduced from the context, because you can't express it through the language.

And just so you don't suspect me of native language bias, let me tell you that I heard a Chinese woman who was teaching the Chinese language say to her students in the first lesson: "Our language is easy to learn because we have no grammar."

The point of my previous article was that English looks to us like Chinese looks to the native English speakers. While English may technically qualify as a synthetic language, on a scale isolating-synthetic it is closer to Chinese than to, for instance, Russian. (Just as before, I am deliberately limiting the discussion as much as possible to big languages, in order to not deprive the readers of the opportunity to argue against me.)

I think the fastest and easiest way to get a personal impression of what kind of a crippled language English is, is by translating subtitles from and into English. (Or, equivalently, create non-English subtitles for an English-language movie, and English subtitles for a non-English-language movie.) When you translate subtitles into English, you will be... well... sad, really, to see how much meaning gets lost because you just can't say it in English, at least not at acceptable subtitle length. Staying with the example of Russian, virtually all those же, -то and -ка which are such a delight to listen to will be impossible for you to share with your English viewers, just as a number of other nuances which add colour to the text's factual content.

The same thing does not happen when you translate subtitles from English. On the contrary. You will routinely find yourself in situations where the English text goes like: "A is B. C is D," and in the target language you have to write "A is B, and C is D," because without "and" it would just look totally weird. Or the English text goes like: "A is B. C is D," and in the target language you have to write "A is B, because C is D," because without "because" it would just look totally weird. Or the English text goes like: "A is B. C is D," and in the target language you have to write "A is B. After all, C is D," because without "after all" it would just look totally weird.

For some reason, the native English speakers tend to choose to omit those "ands" and "buts" and "becauses" and "isn't it?s", putting only the bare facts into their words and leaving the rest to intonation and (the listener's understanding of the) context.

Look at this line from a US movie:

Wilmer, I'm sorry to lose you, but I want you to know I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. Well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.

If it were a written text, I would automatically assume that there is a typographical error, the word "but" having been mistakenly omitted before "There's only...". One can beget another son, but one cannot find another Maltese Falcon. I mean, binding two statements with the word "but" is not a complex linguistic concept like imperfect progressive. It is one of the most elementary things in the human language. There can hardly be a human being in the world for whom it is too difficult to understand or too uncomfortable to use. But that character in the movie actually talks like that, so it's not a mistake, the writer actually meant it to be that way.

Or look at that passage from a famous British writer's novel:

She was going to be tortured, she was going to be raped, she was going to be shot. She had done nothing. She did not want to die.

If someone wrote like that in my native language, people would think he's retarded. I mean, really. What is it, a computer program or a novel?

Or look at this conversation from a US TV series:

"No, she's telling the truth. Something happened. Something too horrible for her mind to handle. Her memory's blocked."

"Well, even if that's true, maybe it's blocked because she killed Kara."

"Well, it's possible. I don't think so. I think she's a victim."

I just can't understand how any human being in the world would say it without the word "but" before "I don't think so." It is possible, but I don't think so. It's not like he reflected for a while and then said: "No, I don't think so." He said "I don't think so," immediately after "Well, it's possible."

And, just to make the picture complete, in my native language I would almost certainly add a certain word before "think she's a victim", but that nuance would take unreasonably long to explain here.

 
That kind of thing keeps popping up in English all the time. Maybe the most jaw-dropping example of this kind is this conversation in an Australian movie.
The character says (apparently referring to neighbourhoods of a city):
"I live in the Mountains because Blacktown or Penrith would kill me."
The subtitles that came with the movie read, would you believe:
"I live in the Mountains, Blacktown or Penrith would kill me."
Let me make this absolutely clear: the word "because" is spoken, but omitted in the subtitles!
Could be just a mistake. But it could also be that the author of the subtitles felt that "because" was an unnecessary word that could be omitted. I wouldn't be surprised, not the slightest, because I have seen so many occasions in English-language movies and books where the second part of the sentence is the cause of the first part of the sentence and yet there is no word "because" between them.

 
Added later:
No, it was not a mistake. Here is a dialogue from a TV series:
"Mugging gone wrong maybe?"
"Don't think so. His wallet's gone, but he did have this on him." (showing a certain object of value)
The subtitles say:
"Don't think so. His wallet's gone. He did have this on him."
It is obvious to every sane human being outside the English-speaking world that the world "but" is essential here. But the author of the subtitles who wouldn't skip one single "uh", "um", "ooh", "ah", "unh", "ahem", "ha ha" or "ha ha ha" thought the word "but" was irrelevant.

Another example. (Some moron accused me in a comment of not bringing examples. Ha!)
Speech:
Walter wouldn't let that happen. At least I believe he wouldn't let that happen.
Subtitles:
Walter wouldn't let that happen. I believe he wouldn't let that happen.
So, another retard (or possibly the same one) who would never skip a "uh", "uhn", "ahem" or "heh" and thinks the difference between "ha ha" and "ha ha ha" is vitally important, considers the words "at least" irrelevant in this context!!!!
Really, those people's brains ought to be scientifically researched.

 
Of course, if English is the only language you speak properly, chances are you won't notice it and even if you did, you wouldn't find anything wrong with it. And that is, as I've been saying, the reason why it will be pointless for a monolingual person to participate in this discussion. How can you be able to bring forward expert arguments in favour or disfavour of various sniper rifles if you have never fired one? I have no use for armchair theoreticians. I am only interested in discussions with people whom I can learn from. Unless you have considerable tongue-on experience with languages, do not waste my time.

By the way, the other side of the coin is that Russians, for instance, have the tendency to excessively start sentences with "А..." ("But..."). Often it doesn't really add anything, it's just a bad habit. It's like the native English speakers' tendency to start their sentences with an unnecessary "Well..." But that doesn't disprove my point because for every superfluous "well" they omit a couple of necessary "buts" and such.

I was suggesting in my previous article that somehow the English speakers' linguistical thinking seems to be closer to that of the Chinese than that of the Continental European peoples. That can be seen from the fact that the English language has been and still is developing in the direction of isolatingness. Meaning, the native English speakers seem to like to leave unused even those rudiments of grammar which their language still has. I brought examples of that in my previous article. Here I'd like to add just one thing. Recently I have begun noticing how often the native English speakers use the present tense when talking about the past. For instance, they are asked to recall what exactly happened when they came home last night, and they're like: "I open the door, I walk in, I see a broken cup on the floor." That kind of a stylistic tool is occasionally used in other languages as well, and it totally has its benefits in certain situations, but the English-speaking peoples seem to be doing it on a regular basis. So, they seem to have a linguistical mindset similar to that Chinese girl who told me in perfect seriousness that it is pointless to put the verb into the past tense when it is clear from the word "yesterday" that the events described take place in the past.

And another thing I just remembered – I keep seeing adjectives used as adverbs (like, people write "doubtless" when they mean "doubtlessly"). Why bother adding the suffix when you will be understood anyway, right? And why bother saying "they are" when "they is" will be understood just as well, right?

And they almost always say "maximum" when they mean "maximal". I don't know if the adverb would in that case be "maximumly" or would it remain "maximally". (Oh, I forgot. They omit the "-ly", of course. Silly me.)

And it's just unbelievable how they keep mixing up "who" and "whom". I mean, what kind of a retard wouldn't know when to say "who" and when to say "whom"?

I could go on but I think you're getting my point by now.

For the record, I am not saying that a primitive language is necessarily a bad language. (For instance, a vague language like English is a blessing for poets and comedians.) I'm just dying to understand what it is that makes people create more or less complexity in their languages. The way the prevailing mentality of an ethnic group is reflected in their language is one of the most fascinating subjects in the world, as far as I am concerned. Not only that, but there is that general tendency of languages to slowly alter their type (a process which is well known to be taking place with my native language as well). As I understand, the only legitimate explanation under the yoke of political correctness is "it just happens". That is not satisfactory. I want to understand what it is that makes English move away from the languages it shares a common origin with. What on Earth might be the similarities between the English people and the Chinese people that make them enjoy the same kinds of things in a language?

I mean, the linguists seem to be largely concentrating on figuring out which languages are related in terms of stemming from the same proto-language. While that is very important, I have found curious connections which don't seem to fit in any linguistical categories – such as certain affinities between German, Estonian and Russian on one side, and English, Swedish and Finnish on the other side. A Swedish text translates into Finnish almost by itself, while translating it into Estonian is really hard work. There are connections between languages which seem to have something to do with not just common history and exchange of vocabulary, but also with some sort of linguistic mentality. The linguists admit the existence of such tendencies in certain isolated cases, such as the Balkan sprachbund (amazingly, in almost a hundred years, the English haven't managed to create a word of their own for it; I mean, it must be hell for them to pronounce it), but the phenomenon is much wider. Chinese and Vietnamese are considered to be totally unrelated, but they are in fact very similar. (I daresay more so that Chinese and Thai which are supposed to be related.) Finnish and Hungarian may technically be related, but for all practical purposes they're not much closer than Finnish and Quechua. I mean, relatedness of the languages is undoubtedly verifiable and has its useful purpose in language research, but it's being grossly overvalued at the expense of other connections which are not so easy to quantify scientifically (such as  the greater or smaller overlapping of semantic fields). I mean, Hungarian is related to Finnish while Swedish has no relation to Finnish whatsoever, but in the real life a native Finnish speaker would surely find Swedish much easier to learn than Hungarian – not only in terms of common vocabulary (which can be explained by geographical closeness and a long common history) but also in terms of grammar. Meaning, when he has learned the vocabulary, he will find it much easier to form grammatically correct Swedish phrases than Hungarian ones.

That is that other kind of relatedness which I don't know the proper term for and which seems to be more than mere areal diffusion. I mean, why do the black Americans tend to make their English more primitive than the average speaker – a phenomenon routinely sneered at by the white racists? Where does that tendency come from? Their African origin (as the racists would suggest)? I don't think so. After all, the major African languages seem to be grammatically more complex than English, so it doesn't look like the black people have less capability for, or tolerance of, language complexity. And the English don't seem to be all that different from the other Europeans, so what is it that makes them shun morphology, or stick to an amazingly rigid syntax? Speaking of language contacts and mutual influences, look at the strikingly complex grammar of Irish. Why hasn't it rubbed off on the English speakers, the latter seeming rather like Chinese-minded people struggling to get rid of the curse of a Germanic grammar? With a large percentage of Irish in the population of the USA, why seem the Americans more inclined to primitivising their language than the British?

One might suggest that English and Chinese share the drag to primitivity because they are both languages of big empires, the assimilated peoples having learned the language improperly and thus contributing to its primitivisation. No, that won't fly either, because if it were so, why hasn't it happened to Russian? Sure enough, German, an empire-language, is more primitive than Icelandic, a non-empire-language, but so are Norwegian, Swedish and Danish which have hardly had anything worth calling an empire. Neither does Spanish have a simpler grammar than Italian – and speaking of Romanic languages, Latin has one of the most superior grammars there's ever been, and the Romans most certainly assimilated a lot of foreign peoples. Yet their language went primitive (that is, split into a number of related languages more primitive than Latin) only after the empire was gone, that is when the various groups of former non-Romans went their own separate ways. So the empire hypothesis just won't do. It must be something else.

I would very much like to know if such things have been studied apart from isolated research papers stating "wow, it's so interesting and we have no idea what makes it so".