As I Was Saying About Iran...

It's good to see that the powers that be are finally reading this blog. Two months ago, I pointed out that Iran is the key to easier access to Afghanistan, and that the road India built in Western Afghanistan to link up to an Iranian route to the coast could be useful to the U.S. as a better supply route in the future. We currently depend on a tortuous Central Asian route that is notable for how many unstable countries it traverses, not to mention how it depends on Russian magnanimity to let us play in their backyard...for now. Which is why it is good to see the Pentagon at least considering a future route through Iran and by way of the Indian-built road.

...Pentagon and NATO planners, as part of an effort to consider every contingency, have studied Iranian routes from the port of Chabahar, on the Arabian Sea, that link with a new road recently completed by India in western Afghanistan. The route is considered shorter and safer than going through Pakistan.

“In the course of prudent planning, our military planners have looked at virtually every conceivable avenue of supplying our forces in Afghanistan,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “However, as you would expect, they have done so with an eye on logistical feasibility rather than political reality.”

Indeed. The political reality is something else. But if necessity is the mother of invention as everyone says, we could add logistical feasibility to the bucket of common interests between the U.S. and Iran. Also, little matters such as reestablishing diplomatic relations might be required before we can even discuss this in seriousness. Not to forget that whole Iranian-pursuit-of-nuclear-weapons fly in the ointment.

Just one little step at a time...

How Languages Bind Us Together

I love languages, in an armchair sort of way. I have no formal training in languages, but I am often struck by how the evolution of language is simply a superficial marker of the deeper evolution of culture. People move and take with them a piece of their ancestral culture in the form of certain rituals, yes, but more importantly, they take their language with them. This 'snapshot' of their past doesn't remain still either; it incorporates influences from the new homeland, and the evolution continues. But the ancestral links remain. I remember my own wonder when I first learned in school about the Romance languages and how they were all derived from Latin. I further remember my amazement at learning about this so-called Indo-European language family, and the fact that Latin and Sanskrit were sister languages! Common knowledge for us now, but still a powerful symbol of how cultures have traveled over millenia. For example, India and China are neighbors, but, separated by the Himalayas and some mighty rivers, their cultures have had little contact and hence, their languages--Indo-European/Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan language families respectively--have little in common. The ties between the Dravidian (South India) and Austro-Asiatic (South East Asia) languages are more complex: close connections in script, but little in terms of vocabulary.

Because of my interest in the general subject of languages, I was fascinated to see this footage of British actor, Eddie Izzard, going to Friesland in Northern Holland where some of the Anglo-Saxon tribes originally came from. Eddie knows that the local language, Frisian, is a Germanic language that is very similar to Old English. So, naturally, he attempts to buy a cow from a local farmer, by speaking in old English and seeing if he's understood. (Hat tip to Tall Blog.)