Inoku

I'm looking especially at Lithuania during the late Tsarist period (past 1900), and during the first period of independence in the interwar period. Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

Alternatively, any books that have to do with the Baltics in general would be well-received.

Sveiki, r/lithuania! I've been doing genealogical research on my family, and, as it turns out, my great-great-grandfather was Lithuanian. This was confirmed for me when I visited his gravestone and it was written in Lithuanian. Unfortunately, I don't speak Lithuanian, and I was wondering if you could help me out with the inscription on the gravestone.

Here is a picture of the gravestone in question, and here's my transcription (unknown letters marked in parentheses):

Cionais Ilsisi

Apalionas Zaramba

Gimes 1877 metuose 0(?)

mirias 1910 M. 20 diena kovo

D(/B). Sv. J. Draugystes

Amzina At(/f)silsi

So far, my translation is this:

Here lies

Apalionas Zar

I've done some quick Wiki-research, but I'm not finding what I'm looking for. The early and rapid Muslim expansion was not accompanied by forced conversion of the conquered peoples (at least in the Middle East, to my knowledge), so for a while much of the Middle East was ruled by Muslims living in garrison towns among a non-Muslim populace. Conversion to Islam was effected by adding legal incentives for conversions. The question is: how long did this take? How many generations did it take for the Middle East to become majority-Muslim?

Bonus question for extra useless internet points: how long did it take for the Arabic language to be adopted as the vernacular across the Middle East, supplan

I have heard Russians on numerous occasions complain about how Russia's (or the USSR's) contributions to the Allied war effort in World War II are often ignored or downplayed in America. But given how quickly the Soviet victory over the Nazis turned into Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe, I do not find this at all surprising, or even unfair. It seems crass to celebrate the Soviets beating the Nazis when the Soviets immediately used their situation to make puppets out of all the Eastern European states they didn't just nakedly annex.

So I suppose my question is: how do you, as Russians, remember the behavior of your country during and after World War II? Do you think of the victory over t

As a convert, and one who does not actively advertise this fact--mostly because some people can be very, very judgmental of converts who are less frum than the Vilna Gaon--I have a polite request for the Jews-by-birth of r/judaism.

I understand that it may be surprising, when you find out one of your friends or acquaintances was not born Jewish. It is only natural that you are curious as to how and why he or she became Jewish. What I ask is that, before asking the question, "why did you become Jewish," you count to ten, take a deep breath, and decide not to ask that question at all.

I know there are some converts who love explaining why they converted and who have no problem answering tha

Poland's national anthem, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego. It seems like so much fun to sing!

And as an American, I'm particularly fond of the "black national anthem," Lift Every Voice and Sing.

I ask only because of the controversy concerning the German poet Gunther Grass, who recently wrote a poem implying that Israel's possessions of nuclear weapons is a threat to world peace. Responses in the German press (and by others who are criticizing Grass' poem) have often brought up Grass' participation in the Nazi Waffen-SS, when he was 17 years old, and his subsequent years of not mentioning the fact that he was in the SS.

My question to y'all is: would you have done the same, in his position? Or would you have hid, or fled, or done something else to avoid participating in a group that was so tainted by oppressive, genocidal policies? And when the regime fell, would you be honest abou

Bear with me, there's going to be some linguistics jargon in this question.

In my Morphology class today, my professor was talking about how morphophonological alternation (i.e. changes in pronunciation that occur in specific morphological conditions) rarely occurs in loanwords. His example was that if English borrowed a word that ended in -ic (pronounced [-ɪk]), which superficially resembled Latinate nouns with the -ic/-icity (pronounced [-ɪk]/[-ɪsɪti]) alternation, like electric/electricity or elastic/elasticity, that English speakers still would not use the -ic/-icity alternation to give that adjective a noun form.

So, my question for you is this: English speakers have adopted "Pesachdi

Americans often get flak from the Old Country for saying "I'm Irish" or "I'm Polish" or "I'm Chinese" or whatever, when we don't have Irish or Polish or Chinese citizenship. So how is it perceived in the Old Country when Americans do ethnic-specific activities in order to stay in touch with their heritage? Do you think of these things as Americans really trying to stay in touch with their heritage or are they perceived more as ethnic kitsch?

Examples:

• This wonderful clip about "Greek school" from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Similar after-school or weekend heritage schools exist for many groups, like this [