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 vijayjohn » 2021-04-20, 6:38

Varislintu wrote:I'm dreading birthday parties among kids in my kid's future in the sense of presents. I've read online that nowadays the expectation is that you bring a material gift, like a toy, to the birthday child, even if we're talking kids under 7 years old. I find that pretty bonkers. If a kid has a party with 10 invitees, they all should bring a toy? That stays in your house and your kid's room, or worse, is not to their liking and you need to donate it or throw it right away? Why?? And the parents need to hunt down something age and gender appropriate every single time there's a friend's birthday? Oh my god...

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2021-04-28, 18:26

:D :D :D

I never saw a kid that disliked a toy from birthday that you should throw away. But I remember my nephew touching a t-shirt or something wrapped in present paper and being outraged: "tem uma roupa no meu presente!!!"
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Aurinĭa » 2021-04-28, 18:49

Varislintu wrote:And the parents need to hunt down something age and gender appropriate every single time there's a friend's birthday?

Gender appropriate? I thought you were trying to raise your child in a more gender-neutral way?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2021-05-03, 13:17

md0 wrote:I'm curious what's everyone's default interpretation of "your name", when you are asked to provide it for identification reasons at reception desks. Do you give your full name, your last name, or your first name?

A specific scenario, the one that got me wondering. I had a coronavirus rapid test appointment this morning. That's pre-booked and I scan a QR code to be let in the testing centre. The person at the desk asks me for my name, as some basic authentication. I gave just my last name. In all situations vaguely similar to that, I just give my last name.

What would you do?
Mostly first and last name, though I would rather give my last name for two reasons: 1. don't want publicly "dox" myself if I can avoid it; even though there's likely no harm in doing it, it just feels weird and 2. like with linguoboy, my last name is uncommon and more specific. The thing is that also for some damn reason, no one can pronounce it right even if I say it aloud a bunch of times - and it's not even one of those Polish names, it's five letters long. At work I have to undergo a rapid screening every time I go in. The lady who does this on Saturdays has seen me come in for months and has yet to get it right.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-05-03, 13:59

My first name is extremely common but my last name is rare. If I'm at a restaurant or someplace where they just need a name to call out to identify me when my table/coffee/whatever is ready, I use my first name because it's easy, and the initial of my last name if needed (my first name is a common name after all; sometimes there is already someone there with the same first name and they need to distinguish between us).
If it's someplace where they need to really identify me, like a doctor's office, I give my first and last name. I say my first name very quickly - they'll get it. I say my last name with more emphasis and then immediately spell it, emphasizing the part of the spelling that they'll otherwise invariably either mis-hear and/or spell wrong and mispronounce.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2021-05-03, 14:15

Same. I'm so used to spelling it after saying it that it's almost something I do unthinkingly now. Trying to stress how to say it out loud never seems to work though. I don't understand what is so hard about two syllables.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Varislintu » 2021-05-04, 12:39

Osias wrote::D :D :D

I never saw a kid that disliked a toy from birthday that you should throw away. But I remember my nephew touching a t-shirt or something wrapped in present paper and being outraged: "tem uma roupa no meu presente!!!"


Hehe, soft presents, the horror! :mrgreen:

Well, it's not so much direct dislike but just the quick disinterest. My son sometimes gets flee-market-bought toy vehicles from his grandparents. By now that he's approaching five they fill two drawers and one shelf already. Just the cars. If you ask him, he can not part from any of them. Does he play with all of them? Nope... I sometimes smuggle some into the "donations box", but he has a memory that spans like two years into the past when it comes to toys, so it's hard not to get caught (and feel ashamed). So if he starts having birthdays where he gets stuff from us, his grandparents and his friends, we're going to need more space soon. :P

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Varislintu » 2021-05-04, 12:44

Aurinĭa wrote:
Varislintu wrote:And the parents need to hunt down something age and gender appropriate every single time there's a friend's birthday?

Gender appropriate? I thought you were trying to raise your child in a more gender-neutral way?


We are, but the physical toy stores nowadays are pretty gendered to the max. If you need to grab something quick, it's not easy to find something that doesn't scream boy/girl in a really excluding way. Online you can order awesome unisex things, but then you need to know you need it well in advance, for delivery time.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Yasna » 2021-07-02, 3:20

A nice primer about a term that gets thrown around a lot these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKC2bOQMeYE
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2021-08-06, 5:36

Before watching that I hope it acknowledges that it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory at least briefly.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-28, 19:13

Some Indians seem to really hate the rest of us self-identifying as Asian just because "Asia" is an arbitrary concept of European origin. Funny how the one I was arguing with is also one of those people who thinks it's possible for us to be racist against white people, saying we aren't is itself racist, etc.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby azhong » 2021-10-14, 3:57

(A writing practice basically, but I also try to say something meaningful.)

How do people in the country where you were born or you are living now see the senior citizens? And how about you yourself? Do you consider it comfortable for an aged person to stay in your country for the rest of their life?

It's Sep 9 today in the Chinese calendar, a customary festival for the elderly, though it was never an official day off AFAIK.

September is the ninth month, and "nine" in Chinese, 九, is homophonous with "long", 久. The only double-nine day then turns into a day wishing the elders long lives, also to remind young people of respecting, helping and cherishing the aged. After all, everyone would get old eventually.

In the recent years the birth rate here in Taiwan has been decreasing, and thus the rate of elderly people is rising and is a potential outcome burden, though not yet as serious as in Japan.

I am living in a small town with few good job chances, and most young adults born here choose to stay in bigger cities for better development. Some of them come back to visit parents only occasionally on important festivals. I see some of the elders live alone, some live with a foreign worker who pushes their wheelchairs and cooks for them, and another some live involuntarily in nursing houses.

About five years ago a plan of day-caring centers was widely practiced. The elders, especially those who lived alone but could still walk on their own, were encouraged to join a center near them as if students go to school. They would have some activities there in several mornings and then ended with having a lunch together, so as to have some social interactions. It's halted, however, due to the epidemic. This plan is a good start, but I think Taiwan still has its way to go in taking better care of senior citizens, both physically and mentally.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-14, 22:51

azhong wrote:(A writing practice basically, but I also try to say something meaningful.)

I think I would say "basically a writing practice exercise but I also mean to ask a question" (if I understood you correctly).
How do people in the country where you were born or you are living now see the senior citizens? And how about you yourself? Do you consider it comfortable for an aged person to stay in your country for the rest of their life?

I would say "see senior citizens" without the "the."

Americans often discriminate against senior citizens. These days, many younger Americans blame climate change on previous generations. It seems far more common for children to send their parents to homes for old people than to take care of them themselves.

Indians are exactly the opposite. In traditional Indian societies, older people usually have a lot of authority over younger people as long as they are alive. Some Hindu legends even say we are supposed to worship our parents like gods. Child abuse is common and usually ignored, but treating anyone older than yourself badly seems almost unforgivable. Children are expected to take care of their parents when they get old. Parents think that children who don't do this are spoiled, stupid, and ungrateful and don't love their parents. Many parents even want their children to live with them for the rest of their lives.

I intend to take care of my parents myself once they get too old to take care of themselves because I don't think they would trust a stranger to take care of them and I can't assume my brother will do everything necessary to take care of them by himself. I want to make sure I live close enough to them that I can at least visit fairly often and make sure they're okay. Otherwise, I will end up in the situation my father was in. My grandmother lived in India and was a hypochondriac, but he lived here in the US. Whenever she said she was very sick or going to die, it was difficult for him to tell from so far away to what extent this was true.
It's Sep 9 today in the Chinese calendar, a customary festival for the elderly, though it was never an official day off AFAIK.

September is the ninth month, and "nine" in Chinese, 九, is homophonous with "long", 久. The only double-nine day then turns into a day wishing the elders long lives, also to remind young people of respecting, helping and cherishing the aged. After all, everyone would get old eventually.

I would say "...'nine' in Chinese, 九, is homophonous with 'long', 久, so the double-nine day turns into a day wishing elders/older people long lives as well as to remind young people to respect, help, and cherish the elderly. After all, everyone will get..."
In the recent years the birth rate here in Taiwan has been decreasing, and thus the rate of elderly people is rising and is a potential outcome burden, though not yet as serious as in Japan.

What do you mean by an "outcome burden"?
Apart from that, I would say, "In recent years, the birth...the number of elderly people is rising..."
I am living in a small town with few good job chances, and most young adults born here choose to stay in bigger cities for better development. Some of them come back to visit parents only occasionally on important festivals. I see some of the elders live alone, some live with a foreign worker who pushes their wheelchairs and cooks for them, and another some live involuntarily in nursing houses.

I would say "some...others...and still others..."
About five years ago a plan of day-caring centers was widely practiced. The elders, especially those who lived alone but could still walk on their own, were encouraged to join a center near them as if students go to school. They would have some activities there in several mornings and then ended with having a lunch together, so as to have some social interactions. It's halted, however, due to the epidemic. This plan is a good start, but I think Taiwan still has its way to go in taking better care of senior citizens, both physically and mentally.

I'm not quite sure whether I understood this part correctly, but if I did, I would say, "About five years ago, many people put older people in daycare centers. Older people...near them like students going to school/like they were students going to school. They would have some activities for them to do in the morning several days a week, which would end with them having lunch together so they could have some social interaction. However, this has stopped because of the pandemic. The plan is a good start, but...has a way to go..."

azhong

Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby azhong » 2021-10-15, 7:55

vijayjohn wrote:
Azhong wrote:In the recent years the birth rate here in Taiwan has been decreasing, and thus the ratio of elderly people is rising and is a potential outcome burden, though not yet as serious as in Japan.

What do you mean by an "outcome burden"?

I intended to say that the rising ratio of the elderly people is becoming a potential burden of government fiscal expenditure. Is the narrative fine?
I made a joke. I suppose outcome is the opposite of income and I misused it to mean expenditure/expenses. XD

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby aaakknu » 2021-10-15, 16:14

vijayjohn wrote:I still believe that the imposition of Western music on the rest of the world is a product of cultural imperialism just like the imposition of the languages, food, clothing, transportation systems, etc. of the West was and that it should be denounced, not to mention the cultural appropriation inherent in much of modern Western music. Pretending this is only a matter of personal preferences is as absurd as pretending that colonial powers didn't impose their own dress codes on their colonial subjects just because I like shorts.


(I don't know who and when started this discussion, and what've already been said, cause I rarely visited this part of the forum, but...)

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of months, cause I've become much more interested in music than I previously were. So I was glad to find your comment about it.
What I think is that music is like language. Instrumentation, playing / singing technique, structure and tuning all give this musical language its distinctive sound (its grammar, so to speak). Now, with all the fusion genres, and the influence of Western music (Western instruments, Western tuning), a lot of musical languages are "creolised" and lose the features that make them unique. I think it's a tragedy, but a lot of people call it "modernization" Mixing of different styles is encouraged and praised as something unique and creative. People in non-Western countries like following Western trends, cause it's fashionable; people in Western countries like stealing elements of non-Western music and incorporate them into their songs, because they think it's cool. As a result, we get some sort of global musical Esperanto, which is sad, because nuances are lost in such music. Modern music is very standardized, unlike traditional oral music with its richness of variation, improvisation, tunings, musical dialects / dialect continuums. From what I've seen, the concepts of Western music theory seem to have influence on how non-Western music is perceived (and maybe even performed? who knows). For example, a lot of people online say that Arabic music uses 24 TET, which is a gross oversimplification, since the tuning is much more nuanced and varied, AFAIK based on just intonation, and differs from one region to another.
Here is an interesting video on the topic:
https://youtu.be/F9Zv6MGdh7Y
And another one:
https://youtu.be/Kr3quGh7pJA

Also, Western composers compose microtonal music and pretend it's their own innovative idea. Like, what? Microtonal music has always existed all over the world, please give it appropriate credit!

P. S. I don't know much about music, so maybe some of what I've written above isn't quite accurate, this is just based on my current understanding.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby aaakknu » 2021-10-17, 19:28

I found something interesting!
https://ethnomusicologyreadinggroup.wordpress.com/
I joined it, hope it's gonna be interesting.

Another find:

A cool new invention - fluid piano. Enables you to change the tuning mid-performance, therefore play Indian ragas, for example:
https://youtu.be/X7ti6HUX5xQ
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-21, 23:28

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I can recall right off the top of my head a story in which a host who has no other food to offer commits suicide so the guest can feed on their corpse.

:shock:

Really late, but I probably should have clarified this (I couldn't decide at the time whether to or not). The host in this story was a bird, and the guest was a bird-catcher who had already caught his wife anyway.
But yeah, pretty extreme!
azhong wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
Azhong wrote:In the recent years the birth rate here in Taiwan has been decreasing, and thus the ratio of elderly people is rising and is a potential outcome burden, though not yet as serious as in Japan.

What do you mean by an "outcome burden"?

I intended to say that the rising ratio of the elderly people is becoming a potential burden of government fiscal expenditure. Is the narrative fine?
I made a joke. I suppose outcome is the opposite of income and I misused it to mean expenditure/expenses. XD

Ratio doesn't make sense unless you're comparing the number of older people to something else, and it's not clear what you're comparing them to.

I would say I meant to say that the rising number(?) of older people is becoming...expenditure. Is this phrasing okay?
I made a joke. I guessed that
outcome was the opposite...
aaakknu wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I still believe that the imposition of Western music on the rest of the world is a product of cultural imperialism just like the imposition of the languages, food, clothing, transportation systems, etc. of the West was and that it should be denounced, not to mention the cultural appropriation inherent in much of modern Western music. Pretending this is only a matter of personal preferences is as absurd as pretending that colonial powers didn't impose their own dress codes on their colonial subjects just because I like shorts.


(I don't know who and when started this discussion, and what've already been said, cause I rarely visited this part of the forum, but...)

Oh, I started this. I once got into an argument about it with two of my best friends on this forum! So yeah, I feel pretty strongly about it.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of months, cause I've become much more interested in music than I previously were. So I was glad to find your comment about it.

I'm glad you were glad! :)
What I think is that music is like language. Instrumentation, playing / singing technique, structure and tuning all give this musical language its distinctive sound (its grammar, so to speak). Now, with all the fusion genres, and the influence of Western music (Western instruments, Western tuning), a lot of musical languages are "creolised" and lose the features that make them unique. I think it's a tragedy, but a lot of people call it "modernization" Mixing of different styles is encouraged and praised as something unique and creative. People in non-Western countries like following Western trends, cause it's fashionable; people in Western countries like stealing elements of non-Western music and incorporate them into their songs, because they think it's cool. As a result, we get some sort of global musical Esperanto, which is sad, because nuances are lost in such music. Modern music is very standardized, unlike traditional oral music with its richness of variation, improvisation, tunings, musical dialects / dialect continuums. From what I've seen, the concepts of Western music theory seem to have influence on how non-Western music is perceived (and maybe even performed? who knows). For example, a lot of people online say that Arabic music uses 24 TET, which is a gross oversimplification, since the tuning is much more nuanced and varied, AFAIK based on just intonation, and differs from one region to another.

To be fair, this is a comparison between basically modern Western music and traditional music worldwide, so of course, there is far more variation in traditional music all over the world than there is in modern Western music. That being said, it's also true that by now, the influence of modern Western music is virtually everywhere.

I agree overall; a lot of traditional musical styles are dying out, and I think that's a shame.

azhong

Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby azhong » 2021-11-28, 3:11

(I also take this post as my writing practice, so I thank you in advance if anyone of you correct my sentences.)

What will make you consider some UnilLanger or some person you meet in the cyber world as your friend, but not merely a cyber-pal you bump into on the internet? What more does the word friend mean to you compared to "acquaintance", "person", or "guy"? Or "office co-worker" in the career space ? Or maybe there are some other words used in English that I don't know to express more subtly the relationship between two persons.

When will you consider a person as a friend is surely very subjective regardless of it relating to the culture background or not.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-11-29, 15:06

Personally, I make a distinction between friends and best friends. A friend to me can mean basically anyone I get along with, but a best friend is someone who I can talk to about any problems I'm experiencing and who I trust not to judge me when I do that. An acquaintance, person, or guy isn't necessarily anyone I even get along with; an acquaintance would simply be someone I have interacted with more than once, and a person or guy could mean anyone.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2022-01-14, 14:22

Replying to something from this thread.

Naava wrote:For me, from my Finnish perspective, we're all strangers who are here because we need something from each other: help in learning a new language. We can also chat about other things than languages because Internet in general has slightly different rules for interaction between strangers and because there's threads that are dedicated to a certain topic. If you go there, you know these people wish to talk about X with you, so it's fine.
[...]
But even so, I still see you [Unilangers] as strangers or tuttu at best (and I've been here since 2012!)**. We do not talk about how we feel or what we think about each other with tuttus. We hardly do even with our ystäväs; it's just not a topic you can easily handle in Finland. You're supposed to show it, not say it. And we certainly do not talk about deeply personal topics with tuttus.


I see you invited azhong to reply to you in the Random Culture Thread, I hope I'm not being nosey, rude or creepy by replying to you myself as I found this interesting and wanted to ask a follow-up question about this. For anyone else reading this, I'd advise you to read Naava's post in the link above for context.

I've been on UL the same amount of time as you more or less (my previous username was Ciarán12), and although I don't necessarily think of people on here as friends in the same way as people I know IRL (not least because I don't argue so much with my IRL friends), it seems strange for me to put people here in the category of "stranger" or what you described as "tuttu". As you alluded to, people on here do talk about much more than language learning, many people share a lot of personal opinions and feelings, we have whole threads dedicated to happy moments, sad moments, frustrating moments, our sex lives, and everything else that interests us. As for "needing" each other for language learning, I really think this forum is more about sharing a passion for language learning than it is about actually helping each other in some sort of practical way. You might say that the moral support is itself a kind of help, but if you're going to go that far I think you could frame most functions of a friendship in terms of utilitarian exchanges of "help". As for not sharing your feelings - the post you made from which I took the above quote was quite emotional and personal, and is exactly the kind of thing that makes it seem odd to me to categorise you and other people here as "strangers". I reserve the word "stranger" for some person on the street I don't know and have never interacted with. I have many acquaintances (a term usually used for people you'd probably refer to as tuttu) IRL who I know far less about, have far less in common with, have "talked" to less (if you consider text communication "talking") than people on UL and have known for far less time.

The reason it seemed especially odd to me was that from what you described about Finnish society and Finnish people's distant social norms, they seem more or less similar to here (which you kind of alluded to as well when you said that you think a lot of countries are like that), although I'm fully prepared to believe that it's a sliding scale and that Finns are more like this than Irish people are.

Lastly, I understand that what you said had a more specific context in that you were commenting on an interaction between azhong and woods - my comments above are taking your words in a more general sense, so if what I'm saying doesn't apply outside of the context of that discussion I stand open to correction of course.


EDIT:
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:I found this interesting and wanted to ask a follow-up question about this.

Rereading my post, I realise I didn't actually ask any questions :P I suppose I just wanted to know what your thoughts are on what I said.
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