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Originally Posted by Englishlanguage  I'm afraid I am misled by my mother tongue. There is a word very similar to review (they have a common origin) which carries the meaning I assigned to review. Thank you for your explanation. |
English also has similar words and I suspect that revise may be to review as your additional word is. A revision of history is a common English phrase but again this does not change history at all. Merely the perception of history.
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Originally Posted by Englishlanguage However, when I wrote I didn't agree with you, I was referring to your opinion that history is immutable, not to the language question.
As for this matter (I think it's a very interesting one), the problem is that actual history is nothing if people don't know it.
I think Holocaust-denial is really emblematic of this. It's not such a long time ago it occured but there is people denying it. |
This is a bit like the existential connundrum often posed, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear is there any sound made?"
The answer is a resounding yes.
When Kraktoa erupted it is estimated that the sound wave generated traveled around the Earth seven times. That sound existed in Antarctica and on the top of Everest and the bottom of The Grand Canyon in places devoid of life.
History happened and that is that. It happened despite my knowledge of the happening.
You did not know that two days ago I hit my head quite hard. You may not even believe that I hit my head quite hard. It is entirely possible that were I to tell you how I hit my head quite hard you would deny me and call me a liar but that would not change history one iota.
I hit my head quite hard in odd circumstances two days ago and that is history.
The Shoah occurred despite any double digit IQ claims to the contrary. History is and no amound of bald faced lies by Nazi sympathisers will breath life into even one Shoah corpse rotting in it's mass grave naked and stripped of gold teeth and all human dignity.
No amount of revision will change one bacterium that made up the walking corpse that was Adolph Hitler. I was just trying to think of a way to insult Adolph Hitler and I could not think of one word that would induce more revulsion than Adolph Hitler and I am an Australian. I can not go one day with not swearing but such is the depth of genetic revulsion toward that creature that Shakespeare himself at his prime would have simply called him Alolph Hitler and known that some things are beyond even The Bard.
History is history and can not be changed.
Recorded versions of history are notoriously malleable but this has never changed history.
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