Random Culture Thread

This forum is to learn about foreign cultures and habits, because language skills are not everything you need as a world citizen...

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby dEhiN » 2017-03-14, 21:08

Osias wrote:
dEhiN wrote:I assume by H-language you mean heritage language?

I think he is talking about the opposite of a L-language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2017-03-14, 23:00

Wait, shouldn't be "an L"? :hmm:
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Dormouse559 » 2017-03-14, 23:53

Osias wrote:Wait, shouldn't be "an L"? :hmm:
In writing, a lot of people will put "a" before a consonant letter, like you did, even if its name begins with a vowel sound. I would write "an L", and I think that's what's recommended by the Associated Press (a U.S. news organization with a popular journalistic style guide). In speech, people use "an L".
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-15, 1:48

dEhiN wrote:Also, does Bengali have more prestige in Pakistan than Punjabi ?

Short answer: No, but it did used to have official status.

Longer answer:

The region where Bengali is primarily spoken is called Bengal. Today, it includes both Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, located just west of Bangladesh. Under the British, it was part of (British) India.
Image
The British tried to divide the people of British India along religious lines to help weaken opposition to their colonial rule. In 1905, they partitioned Bengal into West Bengal, which had a Hindu majority, and East Bengal, which had a Muslim majority.
Image
This initial plan was short-lived, but Bengal was partitioned again a few years before independence, and British India in general was partitioned into India and Pakistan. This time, East Bengal would become part of the Dominion of Pakistan, and it was later renamed East Pakistan, even though it was located pretty much on the other end of South Asia from West Pakistan and basically had nothing in common with it apart from the fact that both happened to have a Muslim majority. (Even that is misleading since Bangladesh has more Hindus than any country in the world other than India or Nepal). As a result, Pakistan had three official national languages: English, Urdu, and Bengali.
Image
However, East Pakistan was heavily marginalized within the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1974, following an extremely deadly civil war including attempted genocide against the people of East Pakistan by the Pakistani Army, East Pakistan won its independence from West Pakistan and was renamed Bangladesh.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Saim » 2017-03-15, 3:00

dEhiN wrote:Also, does Bengali have more prestige in Pakistan than Punjabi ?


I was talking about a hypothetical alternate history where Pakistan was pluralistic and didn't drive the Bengalis out (although I think they might've split off in the end anyway due to logistical concerns).

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby dEhiN » 2017-03-15, 5:19

vijayjohn wrote:Short answer:
...
Bangladesh.

Huh! Thanks for that explanation. I vaguely knew about the British splitting of India to create Pakistan. I mistakenly believed that the British had also split India again to create Bangladesh, although I remember hearing the terms West Pakistan and East Pakistan and then also about a war that happened between (now) Pakistan and Bangladesh. But I never knew the full story.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2017-03-15, 14:13

Dormouse559 wrote:
Osias wrote:Wait, shouldn't be "an L"? :hmm:
In writing, a lot of people will put "a" before a consonant letter, like you did, even if its name begins with a vowel sound. I would write "an L", and I think that's what's recommended by the Associated Press (a U.S. news organization with a popular journalistic style guide). In speech, people use "an L".

Thanks.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2017-03-30, 13:03

Pour devenir français parle bien ta langue d’origine:

http://lavventura.blog.lemonde.fr/2017/ ... -dorigine/
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2017-08-24, 18:58

Parasols! (I.e. umbrellas when it's not raining.) When's the last time you've seen someone use one?

These were not really a thing growing up. People carried them on tv shows set in the Wild West. If you saw someone with an open umbrella on a sunny day, you thought they just had some weird aversion to sunlight. Now I see someone wielding one almost every day. It's almost always on campus and the person is invariably East Asian in appearance. If I overhear them speak, the language is usually Mandarin. So I guess they're still a thing in China? What about other parts of Asia?
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-24, 19:23

linguoboy wrote:Parasols! (I.e. umbrellas when it's not raining.) When's the last time you've seen someone use one?

[...] So I guess they're still a thing in China? What about other parts of Asia?

They're pretty common in India, and probably the last time I saw one was in an Indian movie. On Onam, the annual Malayalee harvest festival that is starting in two days and ending on the 6th this year, legendary king Mahabali, better known as [maːˈʋeːli], is almost always shown carrying one. This is also how he is consistently portrayed in sketches and advertisements, especially around this time of year. See several of the pictures here for examples.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Antea » 2017-08-24, 20:24

I saw women used parasols in Tokyo when I was there. They even had special places in some buildings entrances to let them.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2017-08-24, 20:33

Antea wrote:They even had special places in some buildings entrances to let them.

To leave them, you mean? (In British English, "let" means "rent", but is generally only used of real estate; portable items would be "hired".)
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Car » 2017-08-24, 20:35

linguoboy wrote:Parasols! (I.e. umbrellas when it's not raining.) When's the last time you've seen someone use one?

These were not really a thing growing up. People carried them on tv shows set in the Wild West. If you saw someone with an open umbrella on a sunny day, you thought they just had some weird aversion to sunlight. Now I see someone wielding one almost every day. It's almost always on campus and the person is invariably East Asian in appearance. If I overhear them speak, the language is usually Mandarin. So I guess they're still a thing in China? What about other parts of Asia?

I've seen reports on TV here how people in China try to avoid getting tanned at the beach and do their utmost to stay under parasols. They also had one where they showed a new kind of swimsuit that was supposed to protect you against the sun (again in China) that looked an awful lot like a burkini.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Antea » 2017-08-24, 20:54

linguoboy wrote:
Antea wrote:They even had special places in some buildings entrances to let them.

To leave them, you mean? (In British English, "let" means "rent", but is generally only used of real estate; portable items would be "hired".)
.

Yes, thanks. "To leave them", I couldn't find the right word :roll:

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2017-09-09, 23:50

Car wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Parasols! (I.e. umbrellas when it's not raining.) When's the last time you've seen someone use one?

These were not really a thing growing up. People carried them on tv shows set in the Wild West. If you saw someone with an open umbrella on a sunny day, you thought they just had some weird aversion to sunlight. Now I see someone wielding one almost every day. It's almost always on campus and the person is invariably East Asian in appearance. If I overhear them speak, the language is usually Mandarin. So I guess they're still a thing in China? What about other parts of Asia?

I've seen reports on TV here how people in China try to avoid getting tanned at the beach and do their utmost to stay under parasols. They also had one where they showed a new kind of swimsuit that was supposed to protect you against the sun (again in China) that looked an awful lot like a burkini.

My grandmother says that was rather common when she was a kid back in the 20s-30s. People just went to the beach to swim. Tanning wasn't still a big trend at the time. Being tanned was equated with being poor and working on the fields at the time.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-09-10, 3:24

The last time I saw a parasol was in this song clip from the Tulu movie Kadala Mage (2006), whose title means 'son of the sea'. The song is called "Paddayi Gange." I'm not really sure what that means, probably something having to do with the Ganga River (a.k.a. Ganges), but it's clearly a wedding song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahQdq_7QSFM
The clip begins with the bride's relatives/friends/whoever smearing turmeric powder all over her body so she'll look whiter (since turmeric powder dyes everything yellow) and then washing it down at the local well with water freshly drawn from there and decorating her hands with henna. Then the bridal procession proceeds towards the wedding venue, and someone (possibly her sister or something) holds a parasol over her so the sun won't ruin her complexion or anything. Once they pass the gate around the building, though, they fold it up because there's a shaded area between the gate and the door. Then at 1:47, you can see the groom in the background, where someone else is holding a parasol over him until his own procession enters the gate as well.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2017-11-16, 15:59

A discussion of Teutonic quirks led to a German friend posting this article and telling us that, no, he wasn't ever taught it was impolite to stare.

I remember the stares I got in Germany and even more the ones I garnered in China, because the Chinese were so unabashed about it. Once I was waiting at a bus stop chatting with my husband and our tour guide while waiting for our driver as a small band of men stood nearby and watched us intently. I finally turned to them and asked in Chinese, "What are y'all doing?" and one smiled brightly, looked me right in the eye, and replied, "Listening to you!"

What were you taught about staring?
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-11-16, 17:29

Not a lot, to be honest. When I was younger, if I was staring at someone, my parents would tell me not to stare. From what I remember, they never explained why and would just say something like "it's not polite."

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2017-11-17, 13:26

I can't remember being taught this or seeing any parent teaching this to kids, but the rule is here, anyway. If people notice they are being noticed staring at you, they move the head or the eyes.

Maybe is a different rule, more "don't want to be seen as a creepy who stares" than "staring is rude", maybe a little of both, maybe both things are the same somehow, I have no idea.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Naava » 2017-11-17, 19:46

Osias wrote:I can't remember being taught this or seeing any parent teaching this to kids, but the rule is here, anyway. If people notice they are being noticed staring at you, they move the head or the eyes.

If I interpreted that sentence right, then it's the same here. If someone's staring at me (either on purpose or by accident) and I notice it, they will turn their gaze or head away.

Staring is also a way to tell you that you're doing something you're not allowed to do. If someone's staring at me, the first thing to cross my mind is that there's something odd on me, like I forgot to wear my jeans today or something, or that I'm doing something "wrong" like cutting the line or ignoring the red lights at a crossing or talking too loudly in a public place etc.


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