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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Naava
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Naava » 2018-01-23, 13:43

Prowler wrote: Maybe Finland?

I was going to ask why Finland but then I remembered my dad has an air rifle. :lol: Also I kinda forgot owning a gun means also guns used for hunting.

Anyway, I'd like to see the statistics of how likely it is that someone owns a gun in Europe/the USA/somewhere else. :hmm:

Also, I think that even if you were statistically more likely to do X, it still doesn't mean you would actually do X - for example, I don't like sports even though my whole family loves F1 and Finnish baseball. It's up to your personality, experiences, parents, friends, and lot of other things that decide what you like/do and what you don't. Statistics don't show this, they only show the average. That's why it's hard to say what your life would be like if you had been born in another country.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Luís » 2018-01-23, 13:49

Naava wrote:Anyway, I'd like to see the statistics of how likely it is that someone owns a gun in Europe/the USA/somewhere else. :hmm:


There you go.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Naava » 2018-01-23, 13:51

Of course there's a Wikipedia article! I honestly didn't think it'd be that simple. Thanks. :)

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-01-23, 14:37

Luís wrote:
Naava wrote:Anyway, I'd like to see the statistics of how likely it is that someone owns a gun in Europe/the USA/somewhere else. :hmm:

There you go.

I just explained in my previous post why knowing the number of guns per capita tells you nothing about the chance of any particular individual owning a gun. And in case you missed that, you have this caveat right there in the article you link to:
These numbers do not clarify which percentage of the population owns those guns.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Prowler » 2018-01-24, 0:22

Why do so many people in USA feel the need to own several firearms? If I needed to own a gun and carry it outside I think that'd be a bad sign. Not feeling safe without a firearm.

Everyone has the right to defend themselves and I don't even oppose firearm ownership by civilians... but there's no need for a civilian to own an assault rifle. Also, I assume most people who own guns haven't actually shot anyone before. If a criminal who owns a gun assault you or breaks into your place he's gonna have an advantage, since it's very likely he has shot people before.

Many people in the European continent legally own guns sure, mostly farmers and policemen. But I don't see Europeans glorifying guns like so many Americans seem to do. Gun lovers creep me out tbh.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-01-24, 12:37

Prowler wrote:Many people in the European continent legally own guns sure, mostly farmers and policemen.

Police officers can't be said to own a gun if they are only allowed to carry it when on duty, have to leave it in the station the rest of the time, and hand it back when they leave the force.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-01-24, 15:21

Prowler wrote:Why do so many people in USA feel the need to own several firearms?

Why do people feel the need to own multiple knives? Or multiple dogs? Or multiple cars?

Prowler wrote:Also, I assume most people who own guns haven't actually shot anyone before. If a criminal who owns a gun assault you or breaks into your place he's gonna have an advantage, since it's very likely he has shot people before.

You might be shocked to find out that many Americans have an exaggerated notion of their own degree of competence.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-18, 1:42

I think it was a few years ago that someone from a certain country not very far from India told me something like "I don't mean to be rude, but I have noticed that Indians stare a lot." I probably didn't pay much attention to that comment at the time, but today, I noticed myself doing the same thing, which made me start thinking about why I did that. I think when we stare at people, we don't mean to be creepy even though we may well come across that way; in reality, we're probably just curious but worry that it would be even more rude to actually blurt out all our questions.

In my case, today, I was having lunch in the break room. There was a TV on with a baskbetball game on a fairly large screen, but I never pay almost any attention to that. At some point, a co-worker of mine came in and starting heating his own. Most people these days seem to fiddle around on their phones while they're doing something like this, but this guy just sat there staring at the wall, and I in turn started looking at him rather than at the TV or my own lunch or whatever. I really just wanted company for lunch, but it doesn't seem very easy to get yet since everybody has different schedules and a lot of people seem to just eat at their own desks or somewhere else unbeknownst to me.

Of course, none of this means I have to stare at people or anything. I could just try to mind my own beeswax and focus on lunch.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby atalarikt » 2018-04-01, 13:27

I just noticed that many African people who have migrated to the USA and (to some extent) UK are somewhat vigorous to keep their mother language(s) alive, at least judging from what I can grasp by seeing YouTube videos.
وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ خَلْقُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِلْعَالِمِينَ۝
"And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge." (Ar-Rum: 22)

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-01, 14:48

I used to be under the impression that most immigrants here try to keep their mother languages alive and Indians are the exception. I know that's not quite right, either, but it's kind of hard for me to shake that idea off.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-04-12, 11:04

This is the worst use of the concept of cultural appropriation I've seen so far. "Why is the Appropriation of Greek Culture Considered OK?"

I can't engage with it in good faith after the part where it says that the use of Greek letters for variable names in algebra is cultural appropriation.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Osias » 2018-04-12, 11:20

It reminds of Ned Flanders coveting his own wife.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-04-12, 11:33

The plot thickens, because my brain dug up a decade-old memory of me doing algebra in school, and there we appropriated the Roman letters x y z for variable names, and very insensitively pronounced them /çi psi zi(ta)/ as if they were the modern Greek letters χ ψ ζ.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-04-12, 12:34

md0 wrote:[url=https://medium.com/@petkakis_/why-is-the-appropriation-of-greek-culture-considered-ok-6ad5772b8fc6]


The title should be: how to conceal your xenophobia and supremacist ideas under the guise of a complaint about cultural appropriation.

It is a set of beautifully sounding words, bound by rigid yet scalable grammar and syntax. You can almost see the reflections of Plato, Sophocles, Archimedes, Homer, Sappho, Eratosthenes on it , as it combines utility and grace so flawlessly that it feels like it was hand-crafted by some higher power. The Ancient Greeks built this culture so we could inherit it, not for the ever-dominant West to corrupt it.


I'm more and more amazed at how you can write any mumbo-jumbo about language and get away with it. I can't think of many other subjects where this would be possible.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-04-12, 14:32

IpseDixit wrote:

The title should be: how to conceal your xenophobia and supremacist ideas under the guise of a complaint about cultural appropriation.

Mixing in some sexism as well, because why not.
► Show Spoiler


IpseDixit wrote:
It is a set of beautifully sounding words, bound by rigid yet scalable grammar and syntax. You can almost see the reflections of Plato, Sophocles, Archimedes, Homer, Sappho, Eratosthenes on it , as it combines utility and grace so flawlessly that it feels like it was hand-crafted by some higher power. The Ancient Greeks built this culture so we could inherit it, not for the ever-dominant West to corrupt it.

I'm more and more amazed at how you can write any mumbo-jumbo about language and get away with it. I can't think of many other subjects where this would be possible.

Have you ever read anything promoting alternative medicine? Or anything on esotericism?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-04-12, 15:00

So it gets even worse after the "Insensitive Science" section. I didn't even bother reading after that.

On the diametrically opposite side of this, a few weeks ago I read a Greek translation of this article: Ghosts of Yogas Past and Present
It's exactly a critique of cultural appropriation complaints which come from supremacist ideas, exactly like Ipse noted.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-12, 15:14

md0 wrote:On the diametrically opposite side of this, a few weeks ago I read a Greek translation of this article: Ghosts of Yogas Past and Present. It's exactly a critique of cultural appropriation complaints which come from supremacist ideas, exactly like Ipse noted.

That was a really interesting take. Thanks for sharing!
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-04-12, 15:26

The Greeks understood that women and men are equally important in the preservation of a society.


OMG too much smartness. Thank god there were the Greeks who figured that out.

Aurinĭa wrote:Have you ever read anything promoting alternative medicine? Or anything on esotericism?


Right, that stuff didn't come to my mind in the slightest when I was writing my post. Nonetheless I'm still under the impression that "linguistic quackery" is way more accepted in the mainstream than other kinds of quackeries such as alternative medicine. I'm quite sure that you could make almost any claim about a certain language and 99.9% of the mainstream public wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-12, 15:56

IpseDixit wrote:Nonetheless I'm still under the impression that "linguistic quackery" is way more accepted in the mainstream than other kinds of quackeries such as alternative medicine. I'm quite sure that you could make almost any claim about a certain language and 99.9% of the mainstream public wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

+1. Too many times I've had the experience of hearing someone make claims about language which were absolute bollocks when the same person would be all over you if you tried to make some false statement about medical science or social behaviour or whatever else. They can be empiricists in all other disciplines, but when it comes to language, suddenly whatever their middle-school English teacher told them is the gospel truth, all counterevidence to the contrary.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-04-13, 1:48

Case in point: I'm having a stupid argument with someone who pronounces gif with /g/ because using a "soft 'g'" there is "not how English works" because this is a convention that we "borrowed".

But on the plus side I'm joking around with some guys about the GVS because apparently it was mentioned on RuPaul's Drag Race.
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