What SL teaches about other countries/cultures

[Silent Mistwalker]

I used to live in Central Time and was always missing out on things in SL. Then, 16 years ago I moved to Pacific Time (SLT). Nothing changed except I still can't get a decent night's sleep. My body clock is forever stuck in CST.  

[BelindaN]

29 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I used to live in Central Time and was always missing out on things in SL. Then, 16 years ago I moved to Pacific Time (SLT). Nothing changed except I still can't get a decent night's sleep. My body clock is forever stuck in CST.  

One day, I would like to stage a late night/early morning away mission into the REAL SL. But sadly laptops in bed has never been my thing.

One more thing about my long time Dutch friend. He attempts jokes in English and sometimes misses the spot totally. Maybe a marker of fluency is the ability to hit the joke spot every time!

[Sukubia Scarmon]

I love me my dutchies. From my experience, they're pretty cool peeps. And I'm not just saying that because I live so close to them I can almost taste the vla. 

Other than that, I learned that I do not mesh well with most of my fellow Germans.

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Nick0678 said:

Glad the UK left the Eurozone...

Ummm... the UK never joined the Eurozone.

[ChinRey]

14 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Interesting. How old are these stats?

[ChinRey]

8 hours ago, Abnor Mole said:

They don't sell personality on the Marketplace.

They don't? Now, that's an interesting business prospect if ever there was one!

But on a more serious note. Our body language is an important refelction of who we really are of course and back when I was really hooked on SL, I sosometimes caught myself imitating my avatar's AO movements. That was eerie but even worse: sometimes she imitates me!

[Nick0678]

1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

Ummm... the UK never joined the Eurozone.

Right, God BLESS THEM for avoiding all that EU nonsense. (ERM, EEA.. ) EFTA is good.

 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

My dad was an engineer (mechanical) and he hated metric. 

What's the equivalent of a misogynist vis a vis the metric system? Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure your dad was in the minority. I and almost all of the engineers I worked with preferred the logic of the SI system.

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

This robbery has a nice economical name though: price optimization: Charging what people are willing to pay, not what the actual costs + a small profit are

And that's not just a Euro problem, Sid. I saw a news piece over here the other day that showed a lot of the inflation we're experiencing is simply gouging. Corporate profits are up way over what they were before we ever heard of Covid.

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

No, you don't just use them. FFS. My dad was an engineer (mechanical) and he hated metric. 

If humanity ever learns to leave well enough alone the planet might have a fighting chance.

Ummm, you do know that that the metric system is older than imperial, right? The metric system dates back to the 1790s, imperial was established in 1824 and as far as I know never officially adopted in the USA. Yes, the names of the various units in the imperial system are older but their meanings were different and not at all standardized.

As a Norwegian I find that particularly frustrating. We still use the old measures casually in Norway, so for me a foot is 1.29363517 imperial feet, an inch is 1.36614173 imperial inches and a mile 7.18387616 imperial ones.

And since I'm a musician who used to specialize in pre-classical and early classical music, I have to relate to various historical measurments too. The Brunswick foot is particularly important there since that's what Praetorius used in his Syntagma Musicum. So for me a foot is 0.918635171 feet or 0.892572522 feet or...

Still, it could be worse. If you lived in pre-metric Bourdeaux for example. They used to have different feet for farmers and townspeople there. The farmer foot was the biggest of course.

Edited February 22, 2022 by ChinRey

[Syo Emerald]

1 hour ago, Sukubia Scarmon said:

Other than that, I learned that I do not mesh well with most of my fellow Germans

And I love being the exception! 🥰

But yes... I do understand what you mean, although I could never pin point why.

[ChinRey]

28 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

Right, God BLESS THEM for avoiding all that EU nonsense. (ERM, EEA.. ) EFTA is good.

Let's not get political here. Let's just accept the fact that there are historical reason why the old national valuta names are far more important to the Brits and to us Scandinavians than to most other Europeans. (Denmark and Sweden are the other two EU nations who never adpoted the Euro and never will).

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Sukubia Scarmon said:

I love me my dutchies. From my experience, they're pretty cool peeps. And I'm not just saying that because I live so close to them I can almost taste the vla. 

Other than that, I learned that I do not mesh well with most of my fellow Germans.

I live about a mile from the German border and to be honest I totally feel at home when I'm in Germany.
More than half of my vacations are spend there. What can there be better than a nice cold Weizenbier in a German Biergarten on a sunny Sunday morning or afternoon?
Okay, maybe if there is a view over the Alps included.

Edited February 22, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Nick0678]

4 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

and Sweden....

Ahhh.. yes, my beloved Sweden.

I used to date a fine Swedish girl in RL back when i was in my 20's (we worked in the same company), can recall her fine blonde hair, those big blue eyes, that white skin.. so many nice memories...

[Lindal Kidd]

22 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

...and a mile 7.18387616 imperial ones

This must do crazy things to speed limit signs. Or perhaps one could argue in traffic court, "But Your Honor, I was only going 13 miles an hour!"

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

The current inflation is caused mainly because commerce grabs whatever they can get hold of due to the corona pandemic. This robbery has a nice economical name though: price optimization: Charging what people are willing to pay, not what the actual costs + a small profit are.

Not all businesses are that greedy.  I ready this article yesterday about pricing and inflation:

https://news.yahoo.com/smashburger-president-strategic-about-inflation-theres-a-point-where-people-wont-pay-210130154.html

[ChinRey]

21 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

This must do crazy things to speed limit signs. Or perhaps one could argue in traffic court, "But Your Honor, I was only going 13 miles an hour!"

Oh yes. Our Norwegian mile is in a different league than the puny imperial one, That's just the land mile though. A Norwegian nautical mile is the same as the current (but not the original) imperial one and that's hard to fathom.

[Madelaine McMasters]

6 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

...that's hard to fathom.

Or...

• that's hard to 6 feet?
• that's hard to 1.8 m?

[StrongZer0]

On 2/21/2022 at 11:19 PM, Phil Deakins said:

Since English isn't your native language, I want to point something out to you.

The word that I've bolded should be THAN, not THEN. Too many native English speakers get it wrong, but it's either because they can't spell very well, or it's a typo, or where they live they pronounce 'than' the same as 'then' and they don't learn any better. Whatever the reason, it's not uncommon, but it is never correct. It is never a choice or an alternative. It is always wrong.

When two thing are being compared, the word is 'than'. E.g. this costs more than that. In your sentence, you are comparing the way something is meant with the way it is perceived - the way something is meant is often different than the way it is perceived.

I wrote that because you see 'then' used wrongly so often here that you may think it is a correct use of the word. It isn't.

 

On 2/22/2022 at 1:52 AM, Rat Luv said:

These are all facts I learned from SL...

Americans are the most generous nation on SL for tips and giving you items 😍 but they think chips are crisps  and can't believe Brits have to pay for a TV licence...

The Dutch really love pickled fish! They all go out to celebrate the new barrels of herring every Queen's Day 👑 

All the Irish people you meet on SL are actually American * 😀

Los Angeles has a tube system but hardly anyone uses it because they all have cars!

"Bless your heart!" means "What a plonker" in the Deep South 😮 But "honey chile" means they like you 🙂

 

(* I'm joking! But it is quite a lot...)

Ummm....George Speck...a eumelanin flavored brotha invented the potato "chip" in 1853. Soooo. Just because yawl think fat french fries are chips and potato chips are crisps and you mispronounce aluminum...let me stop. LOL

When I lived in the UK, I had a sales guy working with me that said two things that I still find funny today.

1. England would be a great country if we only had a roof

2. We reading signs like driving into Reading or going over the bridge across the Thames he would ask me how I would pronounce the words. Then would say "if we could only spell". 

 

I must admit though, I love the corner chip shops and I miss London Taxis. Living in Japan is much better though. 🙂

[Madelaine McMasters]

29 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Oh yes. Our Norwegian mile is in a different league than the puny imperial one, That's just the land mile though.

Ack, how could I have missed this. Your mile would have to be three land miles to be in the land league.

You get a gold star for intended measurement mangling, Chin!

Edited February 22, 2022 by Madelaine McMasters
Changed unintended to intended, as I realized Chin was way ahead of me.

[StrongZer0]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

No, you don't just use them. FFS. My dad was an engineer (mechanical) and he hated metric. 

If humanity ever learns to leave well enough alone the planet might have a fighting chance.

There is actually a very good reason that the US for the most part does not use metric. With that said, when I was in uniform we used metric in the Corps to measure distance and we all use metric to measure ammunition. 

At any rate, if I'm remembering it correctly, metric was invented in the late 17th century and took nearly 200 years to take root. At the time that Europe was begrudgingly accepting metric as a standard, the US was well on it's way to an industrial revolution. Adopting a new measuring system would have had 19th century manufacturers refitting new factories and re-casting new farm equipment. New businessmen were not going to start using the system because their predecessors did not, and that kept the US well on track to maintain the old imperial measurement system; for the most part. I would go so far to say that we have a mixed system. However, if you think we are bad, some on asked me how many stone I weighed when I lived in the UK...I had to ask about the size of the rock.

[Rolig Loon]

9 minutes ago, StrongZer0 said:

Then would say "if we could only spell". 

It's easy to poke fun at Brits who take an easy-sounding name like Chumley and spell it Cholmondeley, but that invites the Brits and everyone else to taunt us for Des Moines, Tucson, and Poughkeepsie.  We can't spell either.

[StrongZer0]

1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

It's easy to poke fun at Brits who take an easy-sounding name like Chumley and spell it Cholmondeley, but that invites the Brits and everyone else to taunt us for Des Moines, Tucson, and Poughkeepsie.  We can't spell either.

The sales guy was British...is? I hope he is still alive an kickin'. Damn, i need to check up on him.

Nevertheless, the names you mention are Native American and can easily be pronounced with some understanding of First American name pronunciation. Granted, I'm sure that we have murdered the language, spelling and pronunciations. Most First Nations languages is very difficult to pronounce. This is why code-talkers and the Navaho language was instrumental in helping the US win in WWII. 🙂

Me like history. lol

 

[Sid Nagy]

34 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

It's easy to poke fun at Brits who take an easy-sounding name like Chumley and spell it Cholmondeley, but that invites the Brits and everyone else to taunt us for Des Moines, Tucson, and Poughkeepsie.  We can't spell either.

Almost every language has more sounds than there are letters in the alphabet.
And sometimes pronunciation is regional as well. So we have to make the best of it.
For the Dutch language we even created a few extra letter combinations like the ij, oe, ooi, aai and the ui. And some are pronounced differently than internationally expected like the sch.

Edited February 22, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[ChinRey]

26 minutes ago, StrongZer0 said:

Ummm....George Speck...a eumelanin flavored brotha invented the potato "chip" in 1853. Soooo. Just because yawl think fat french fries are chips and potato chips are crisps and you mispronounce aluminum...let me stop. LOL

The word chips seems to have been used the English way in England even before 1853. Dickens used the word that way in 1859 and from context it seemed to have been well established by then.

As for aluminium/aluminum, blame it on Charles Martin Hall.He was one of the first to develop a method to extract the metal at a reasonable cost but he could never make up his mind how to spell it so he used both variants on different occasions.