"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." - Thomas A. Edison

***

"In Arabic, as in most European languages, the word 'Slavs' was becoming, by the tenth century, increasingly synonymous with human cattle.

Nothing, indeed, in the fractured Europe of the time, was more authentically multicultural than the business of enslaving Slavs. West Slavs captured in the wars of the Saxon emperors would be sold by Frankish merchants to Jewish middlemen, who then, under the shocked gaze of Christian bishops, would drive their shackled stock along the high roads of Provence and Catalonia, and across the frontier into the Caliphate.

Few opportunities were neglected in the struggle to obtain a competitive edge. In the Frankish town of Verdun, for instance, the Jewish merchants who had their headquarters there were renowned for their facility with the gelding knife. A particular specialization was the supply of 'carzimasia': eunuchs who had been deprived of their penises as well as their testicles. Even for the most practiced surgeon, the medical risks attendant on performing a penectomy were considerable - and yet the wastage served only to increase the survivors' value. Exclusivity, then as now, was the mark of a luxury brand"

--- The Forge of Christendom / Tom Holland


Luckily Slavs have better things to do than complain about how they are oppressed by language.