Random Culture Thread

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-12-02, 9:04

I have never heard of this greeting in my life, and IMO Malayalees tend to avoid greetings as much as possible.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Car » 2018-12-02, 12:19

md0 wrote:Couldn't find it in German.

I really can't think of anything like it in German.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-12-02, 12:35

I assume then that Gute Woche is also not available as a greeting.
So far it looks like a Greek and French thing.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Dormouse559 » 2018-12-02, 15:24

md0 wrote:Would you expect to hear that as a greeting at, lets say, your workplace on December 3rd when you return?
Or are they strictly written greetings?

I'd say they're mostly written. I can imagine asking about someone's month as a variation on "How are you?" For instance, "How's [month] treating you?"

Also, having slept on all the phrases I've brought up, I think most of them would be said in the context of something significant about the month, either between the speaker and addressee or in the cultural context. Like, I might say, "Hope your December is going well," because there're a lot of holidays in this month, so people tend to have more on their plate.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-12-02, 15:39

I see. By comparison, the Greek greetings are as cliché as "good morning", and the only acceptable answer is "Thanks, you too".

In the end, in my email I went with "kalo mina" in romanised Greek, and I got the answer "Kalo mina kai se sena!" (Good month to you too). The rest of the communication was in English.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Car » 2018-12-02, 20:49

md0 wrote:I assume then that Gute Woche is also not available as a greeting.
So far it looks like a Greek and French thing.

You could use stuff like "(eine) schöne/ erfolgreiche Restwoche noch" ("(still) a beautiful/ successful remaining week) and similar wordings involving a remaining week or a good start into the week, that's common enough, but not just a good week. A nice weekend, yes, that's absolutely possible.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-12-02, 21:51

Some of the greetings that have been mentioned so far are familiar to me, but none of them are established in my mind.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby księżycowy » 2018-12-03, 17:53

Dormouse559 wrote:
md0 wrote:Would you expect to hear that as a greeting at, lets say, your workplace on December 3rd when you return?
Or are they strictly written greetings?

I'd say they're mostly written. I can imagine asking about someone's month as a variation on "How are you?" For instance, "How's [month] treating you?"

Also, having slept on all the phrases I've brought up, I think most of them would be said in the context of something significant about the month, either between the speaker and addressee or in the cultural context. Like, I might say, "Hope your December is going well," because there're a lot of holidays in this month, so people tend to have more on their plate.

I, on the other hand, would say those phrases would more likely be spoken, rather than written.

I could easily see it being said, for example, to a new hire as a passing question.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-12-10, 8:05

On cultural appropriation:
I read this last night
Who owns words?
Basically, one queer writer made the claim that the widespread use of 'partner' as a non-gendered term for a significant other regardless of state-sanctioning of said relationship has come to be because queer people who badly needed such a word to be in common use. So straight couples you use the word 'partner' for their significant others are appropriating this use for the term even though they didn't have to fight for it.

Now, my immediate reaction is to dismiss it as frivolous, and also say that this is the first time I heard about this being an issue - I wouldn't be surprised if the quoted writer is the only person to ever have objected to the use of 'partner' by straight people. The only debate I've witnessed was "whether straight people can be called queer" (eg because they choose not to get married, or because they are poly, etc).

I can sympathise with the part that queer people have to get crafty with their terms for partners, to maintain plausible deniability in hostile environments or to workaround grammaticalisations of semantic gender and so on. I remember being 17 and having to use some bizarre and stilted expressions that purposefully used neuter nouns like "the person that I am dating".

But the rest is indeed unreasonable. The blog author did the historical and theoretical work to debunk the claim that the word, or even that specific use of the word, 'belongs' to queer people. I guess what I have to add is my opposition to 'queer separatism' or 'queer nationalism'.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Saim » 2018-12-10, 8:09

Doesn't the fact that straight people use it too make it easier to be ambiguous about your partner's gender if you want to be?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2018-12-10, 8:15

This is one of those things where everyone benefits, whereas the problem with appropriation is that one group is harmed by it, so I don't see the problem. Words don't belong to anyone through some mystical force.

As for straights being queer: nah. In my experience this is often just straights who happen to have a kink.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby md0 » 2018-12-10, 9:11

Saim wrote:Doesn't the fact that straight people use it too make it easier to be ambiguous about your partner's gender if you want to be?


One of the author's complaints was that they are now not able to tell if the person who uses 'partner' to refer to their partner is indeed non-heterosexual.
So for them the ambiguity is not desirable any more. And that's why I tie it to queer separatism.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby mōdgethanc » 2018-12-10, 9:40

I don't know why anyone would even care unless they didn't like The Straights and wanted to avoid them.
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-12-10, 16:46

Plot twist: Most of the queers I know are quasi-assimilationists who are marrying their partners and dropping the term "partner" in favour of "husband"/"wife". So it's all yours now, straight folks!
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-12-10, 18:09

md0 wrote:
Saim wrote:Doesn't the fact that straight people use it too make it easier to be ambiguous about your partner's gender if you want to be?

One of the author's complaints was that they are now not able to tell if the person who uses 'partner' to refer to their partner is indeed non-heterosexual.

If only people in a same-sex relationsip used the word partner, wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of using a genderneutral term?
It also sounds a bit like gatekeeping. Who gets to decide who's "queer enough" to use the word?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-12-10, 19:07

Why was "partner" needed in the first place? Is boyfriend / girlfriend not appropriate after a certain age? Or are there other reasons?

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Johanna » 2018-12-10, 19:28

IpseDixit wrote:Why was "partner" needed in the first place? Is boyfriend / girlfriend not appropriate after a certain age? Or are there other reasons?

When used to describe agender and genderfluid people? No, they aren't appropriate.

When a bi person talks about their past and/or potential future relationships, it's a lot more cumbersome to say "boyfriend or girlfriend" all the time than simply "partner". Or "husband or wife" instead of "spouse" for that matter.

It's pretty much the same reasons that make "they" a better choice than "he or she".
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby linguoboy » 2018-12-10, 19:49

IpseDixit wrote:Why was "partner" needed in the first place? Is boyfriend / girlfriend not appropriate after a certain age?

In addition to what Johanna said, I found it very odd to refer to men who were literally twice my age as my "boyfriends"--so much so that, for my second partner, I began using the term "gentleman friend".

In my college years, "S.O.", an abbreviation of "Significant Other", was very common among people of all persuasions. Not only was it gender- and age-neutral, but it also lacked a lot of the baggage of "partner". (Some people find that word too "businesslike". Others find it implies a long-term--perhaps lifelong--commitment that they don't necessarily have with their chief romantic interest.)
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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-12-10, 20:12

Johanna wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:Why was "partner" needed in the first place? Is boyfriend / girlfriend not appropriate after a certain age? Or are there other reasons?

When used to describe agender and genderfluid people? No, they aren't appropriate.

When a bi person talks about their past and/or potential future relationships, it's a lot more cumbersome to say "boyfriend or girlfriend" all the time than simply "partner". Or "husband or wife" instead of "spouse" for that matter.

It's pretty much the same reasons that make "they" a better choice than "he or she".


I know I didn't specify but I was asking about cis gay people.

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Re: Random Culture Thread

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-12-10, 20:27

Then why didn't you specify? If you're only talking about a particular subset of people to whom something could apply, it doesn't make sense not to specify. If you don't, you make it seem like that particular subset isn't a subset, but the whole set.


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