I am seeking information regarding the "Barron (sic) Wars"
in Germany and Lithuania in the early nineteenth century.
A poster on <alt.war.vietnam> has made reference to his
royal ancestry and to the above wars being the reason or cause
of his ancestor's immigration to America around 1740. I have
never heard of these wars. When questioned regarding those
wars the poster has ridiculed and challenged me to investigate.
<http://tinyurl.com/y78vhx>
<http://tinyurl.com/ye76qa>
I really have no desire to harass or further embarrass him
-- he has problems enough stemming from his 'Von Munchausen'
like claims in regards to his Viet Nam service. My
investigation of the "Barron" (sic) wars turns up no
information on any such war(s) fought during that period --
other than the well known "Northern War" fought between Russia
and Sweden which dramatically increased the powers of the
Baltic German aristocracy at the expense of the ethnic
Estonians. Which sort of begs the question; why then would a
German aristocrat choose that moment to immigrate to colonial
America when his fortune and power had so recently increased in
Estonia?
Nor can I find any linguistic information, German or
Estonian, for the term "Barron." The poster also claims to be
a linguistics expert. Originally he claimed that "Barron" was
archaic German and is now claiming "Barron" to be an archaic
Estonian form of "Baron" with a long phoneme. It would seem
that when phonemes are of different lengths they would signal
distinctly different word meanings, not just spellings. For
example, the English words 'bat' and 'back' have distinctly
different final phonemes and, of course, different meanings.
It seems to me that if a phoneme is distinctly different, the
word meaning will be distinctly different. I'm not an expert
linguist, so perhaps one of you can explain the Estonian short,
long, and "overlong" phoneme phenomenon.
Thanks in advance for any information, explanations, or
suggestions.
-Dai Uy
|
