|
When did people actually figure out that there's no land under the North Pole ice shelf, and how?
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2013 12:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:24 |
|
|
Forgive me if this sounds ignorant, but why do so many Americans seem obsessed with calling themselves Irish-, German-, Italian-American or what have you? I get wanting to trace back your ancestry, but to me it seems that with a few quirks and exceptions, white Americans definitely all belong to the same macro-culture and have more similarities with each other than they would have commonalities with the people of their supposed ancestral homelands.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2013 09:03
|
|
|
I'm aware that self-perception on ethnicity and culture is a layer cake, but indeed it's the hyphenation that strikes me as odd. But, come to think of it, plenty of third-generation immigrants in Belgium who are not recognisably West-European and part of a large enough group get labeled with a hyphenated identity as well. This is a relatively new phenomenon, though, and I'd wager it's part racism ("they can never be true Belgians so we will label them as such") and also because they've retained a lot of aspects of their ancestral culture, such as religion, food, social habits, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2013 10:24
|
|
|
More language maps! First one shows languages in Europe in the 19th century, second more or less today. I found the first one in GIS on Stormfront, so make of that what you will, but it probably wasn't made there.   Of course, the results of WW2 in Europe are readily visible. A couple of things I find odd, though: - I'm skeptical that Ukrainian stretched that far East in the 19th century - Both maps seem overly generous in showing the spread of some minority languages such as the Celtic languages - No Turkish in Bulgaria in the 19th century? - Was Armenian really that widespread in Turkey? Apparently, the two maps are also at odds whether Low German is a distinct language (it is) or whether Bulgarian and Macedonian are all that different (a contentious issue). Same with Flemish and Dutch, though the two were arguably wider apart in the 19th century than they were today.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2013 10:57
|
|
|
This might seem like a dumb idea but wouldn't it be a good idea if some of these states in the Middle East and Caucasus did a population swap à la Greece and Turkey in 1923? Sure, it wouldn't be an ideal situation, but at least I suppose it would alleviate some regional tensions.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2013 13:51
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Interesting that there's no Yiddish anywhere on the map when there should be a lot of it in eastern Europe, particularly The Pale. Good point. You'd think that this being posted on Stormfront, it would actually include Yiddish so they could point at how the Jewish Threat was actually A Thing.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2013 15:44
|
|
|
True as that may be, those areas shouldn't be monocoloured though. I suspect that a majority of people in Wales still has English as a first language, and that would be even more true for Scotland and Ireland. It's like how they colour the northwestern corner of France as Dutch-speaking, while in reality only a minority of people there has Dutch as a first language. Speaking of which, apparently something odd is happening in the Pas-de-Calais and Nord region since they decided to offer Dutch courses. The traditional dialect of the Dunkirk area is West-Flemish and only old people speak it, but the young people who learn Dutch get taught Standard Dutch, meaning that they probably still can't communicate with their grandparents! I also heard there's a rise in people who feel culturally 'Flemish', despite the fact cities like Lille were never Dutch-speaking. Half a year ago I met two guys from that area who rejected the 'Ch'ti' label in favour of feeling Flemish instead.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2013 13:12
|
|
|
It's not racist to say that Roma are pretty far removed from mainstream society and thus have a real hard time adapting to its customs and habits, which are frequently at odds with their own lifestyle. It is racist to say that they'd be naturally more inclined to do crime or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2013 00:16
|
|
|
I know, I know, memes, but this world map is actually pretty clever and funnier than some other purportedly funny world maps.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2013 02:46
|
|
|
I'm guessing the reason Norway and Canada are often mentioned together is the Arctic Council? e: And that they don't get that much mention otherwise, at least not like the other members on the Council do.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2013 07:47
|
|
|
Belgium is highly unlikely to ever split up because of Brussels. An independent European district sounds good, but no one will want to pay for it. Negotiating a split of Belgium would be absurdly difficult for a number of reasons, but Brussels is the biggest reason. There is virtually no support in either part of the country to join a neighbouring country. The funny thing is that there is some support in the Netherlands to take aboard Flanders, just like some French wouldn't mind if Wallonia joined France.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2013 12:42
|
|
|
made of bees posted:I think the line is supposed to be Netherlands/Belgium border. His joke is that the border was drawn wrong, I think.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2013 14:40
|
|
|
The whole notion about what is a dialect is pretty hazy anyway. For example, modern German is the 'roof language' of several High German dialects (which it descends from) as well as Low German, which is genealogically closer to Dutch than to High German.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2013 08:54
|
|
|
System Metternich posted:And now keep in mind that Europe is the continent with the smallest languages/people ratio. Man, I loving love linguistic diversity. Thank you so much for this, very cool. Though really, smallest ratio? I thought that would be North America.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2013 12:22
|
|
|
Boiled Water posted:Which has the highest? Papua New Guinea, I'd wager. e: So, Oceania.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2013 12:36
|
|
|
I might as well ask here: why has Czech culture and language remained such a persistent island when it's been constantly surrounded and influenced by the (much bigger and traditionally more influential) German culture and language?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2013 08:37
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:Sure, but there is a major difference still: France didn't control the Netherlands throughout the 19th century. France annexed Belgium after the Austrians were defeated, and turned the Netherlands into a puppet state after the Napoleonic conquests. Anyway, Phlegmish's post referred more to Flanders anyway, which had always been in France's sphere of influence, first as a vassal of the French king, later under the Dukes of Burgundy, who actually unified the Low Countries for a brief period.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2013 08:26
|
|
|
Yeah, also that map has no idea how to handle Switzerland and Belgium, apparently.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2013 18:33
|
|
|
This is just anecdotal, obviously, but I used to live in a large student dorm with a lot of foreign students, and in my experience, the students who were the absolute worst at foreign languages were the Spanish. A friend of mine who teaches Dutch at university level says the same, and adds that the Spanish also tend to vastly overrate their own skills at foreign languages due to the average skill in their home country being so lovely. Dubbing and the way languages are taught definitely play a role, but so does motivation. For example, I've known several British people who smugly said that there's no need for them to learn any other language because many people speak theirs, and then proceeded to make fun of foreign accents.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2013 11:53
|
|
|
Antti posted:Striped red/blue - Countries which occasionally produce own dubbings but generally using dubbing versions of other countries since their languages are quite similar to each other and the audience is also able to understand it without any problems. (Belgium and Slovakia) Eh, the true reason here is that French-speaking media in Belgium dub (or used to dub a lot, it's improved in recent years) and Dutch-speaking media always use subtitles.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2013 11:56
|
|
|
I think another reason why Scandinavians, the Dutch, Flemings and Slovenians (apparently) prefer subbing over dubbing is because the actual physical or cultural distance to 'bigger' cultures is smaller, so they're more familiar with how other languages sound. If you grow up in the middle of nowhere in France, you're unlikely to be confronted with anything that isn't French, whereas in Flanders, you usually have to travel less than 60km to hit a language border at some point.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2013 08:36
|
|
|
Lord Tywin posted:That doesn't any sense at all since Norway and Sweden is among the largest countries in Europe. Yes, but most major population centres are fairly close to other countries and their populations are quite small. All of Scandinavia, if one country, would still be less populous than Poland or Spain.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2013 12:10
|
|
|
LP97S posted:Do what most Americans do and convert it in your head, it's easier than asking some assholes on the forum change federal laws. I suppose, but you have to admit that it's silly: 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2013 08:23
|
|
|
Re: Middle East maps, yeah, they're terribly lazy. Also, does anyone seriously think breaking up countries is going to solve anything? As if Iran and Turkey would be cool with an independent Kurdistan? And something tells me that multiple small and unstable Shi'a-majority states, as well as the break-up of Saudi Arabia, would play into the hand of Iran, something that I thought was pretty much against the US's vested interests in the region. I'm simultaneously in awe and angry at how clearly incompetent and stupid people along the likes of those who make maps like that, get to keep their jobs and are often even rewarded for their incompetence. I mean, a dedicated Victoria II player could probably produce a better map that was more in line with current geopolitical realism. Deceitful Penguin posted:That ain't a map though, so I'll post a pic of my favourite marginally functioning democracy: This map is baffling me on several levels: - It lists most major cities in Flanders, but only one in Wallonia - Namur is pretty small compared to Charleroi and Liège, neither of which are shown - Mechelen and Kortrijk have dots, but apparently no names - The map is apparently labeled in English, but uses Dutch names for the Flemish cities - An attempt is made to label the German cities in German, but the map maker had no umlauts left or something (it's 'Köln')
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2013 08:09
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:He just googled for 'map of Flanders' and ended up on notorious right-wing blog The Brussels Journal. Mystery solved. We... we did? But... how? Also no true right-wing fantasy map of Flanders is complete without this bit: 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2013 09:28
|
|
|
AKA Pseudonym posted:To what should we attribute Lesotho's lack of immortals? AIDS is a huge problem in Lesotho.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2013 21:30
|
|
|
Peanut President posted:Yeah most of spain is hot and dry, thanks to the North African winds. Geologically speaking, the Iberian and Italian peninsulas are both part of Africa anyway  .
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2013 09:20
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:And why did the Walloons not get absorbed into France, considering they're all Catholic and (kinda)Francophones. Apart from what others have said, there's also a few historical reasons. The western part of Wallonia historically belonged to the Seventeen Provinces and large swathes of it had belonged to the County of Flanders, and the eastern part had either belonged to the Bishopric of Liège (theoretically a part of the Papal States) while Luxembourg was just one of the many little duchies within the Holy Roman Empire. France did succeed in nibbling bits of future Belgium permanently from the 17th century onwards, most notoriously French Flanders under Louis XIV, though I don't know for what reason he wanted the territory other than to be a jackass to Spain. Kurtofan posted:Was Brussels even Francophone at the time? The process was already set in motion, though it would only really pick up speed in the 20th century. The Great Powers didn't care much for linguistic or cultural borders at the time. Namur wasn't German-speaking either.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2013 10:36
|
|
|
Why the question mark on that map? Does it have a function in the game?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 09:43
|
|
|
Arguably Denmark did control Scandinavia for a short period of time, so it's not that weird.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 15:27
|
|
|
Golden_Zucchini posted:Except the bird it was named after is actually native to West Africa. It's just that all trade from West Africa came through Turkey to get to Europe so Europeans assumed it came from Turkey. After the confusion with the American turkey the original turkey was renamed the guinea fowl under the new assumption that it came from Guinea, which is in East Africa. Still wrong, but at least they got right continent. Nice to know: in Dutch, the word for 'turkey' (the bird) is 'kalkoen', derived from the city of Calcutta in India (though I think nowadays the preferred name is Kolkata).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2013 09:57
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:A couple people got Luxembourg. One girl even got Andorra. Nobody got Liechtenstein, San Marino or the Vatican. what always bugged me about the tv series is that the one time they actually bothered to visit belgium, the only image they had was of some nondescript dude just pointing at Carmen Sandiego with his mouth ajar, nothing else i suppose that's marginally better than some hollywood movies depicting belgium as wholly french-speaking or the netherlands as german-speaking, but still
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2013 02:50
|
|
|
I never really quite got why people like in the Apartheid regime thought minority rule was going to work out forever (let alone do something batshit crazy like spread it to the rest of Southern Africa). I can think of no historical example where an ethnic minority continued to rule over and oppress a majority without falling from power (usually violently) or violently mixing with the majority and adopting part of their culture/ethnicity.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2013 08:59
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:It was destined to fail. I think apartheid can only be sustainable in the long run if the dominant ethnicity is not dependent on the excluded population's labor. That was definitely not the case in South Africa, where whites employed plenty of black servants and manual laborers. On the other hand, a more 'pure' and less hypocritical version of apartheid, as in the case of Israel, can probably last for a very long time. Yeah, but Israelis are not a minority in Israel so they can use their own people to rely on for labour, which is something Afrikaners and British South Africans would have never managed - barring all moving to a territory significantly smaller than the actual state of South Africa and giving up control over the rest.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2013 16:15
|
|
|
I think it's similar to how people love playing as Germany in the more modern games, just to imagine what might have been. Speaking of Paradox games and nationalism, I've always found it kind of odd that in Victoria II, they took care to even distinguish obscure cultures like Picard or Sorbian/Kashubian (Western Slavic, it's called in the game), but they apparently did not consider Scottish or Welsh to be cultures separate from 'British'. Same with 'Swiss'.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 09:00
|
|
|
Picardiens, Occitans etc. never actually revolted either. e: or at least not in a way that was still relevant by the time the 19th century rolled around.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 10:08
|
|
|
Koramei posted:"No spitting, swearing, or speaking Welsh" I'm not an ethnographer but out of cultures I'm familiar with, I noticed Frisian was also absent. And as mentioned earlier, the game treats 'Swiss' as one culture, while I'm pretty confident that German-speaking Swiss people see themselves as belonging to another culture than inhabitants of la Romandie. Doesn't mean they both can't feel Swiss nationalism, of course.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 16:16
|
|
|
catfry posted:All seemingly sparked of because of the arrest of Hannibal gaddafi for domestic violence. Pretty ironic since Switzerland's track record for women's rights is among the worst in Europe. Meanwhile, have this Medieval fever dream. Not gonna delve into the map's oddities, but it's interesting to see how, over time, 'Flanders' has come to denote an area different from what it used to. Practically speaking, it was most of the land from the North Sea to the Scheldt river, but apparently in the 19th century, when Belgium was formed and the westernmost parts of Flanders had long been lost to France, they decided to name the entire Dutch-speaking area of Belgium Flanders. I'm guessing they didn't call it Brabant or Limburg because the Netherlands also had provinces with that name. At any rate, that's the reason why within the State of Flanders, the provinces of West- and East-Flanders are the two westernmost provinces. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 18:43
|
|
|
I didn't know that that nomenclature had been around for that long. Do you happen to know why they didn't use Brabant instead when Antwerp and other Brabantic cities rose to prominence in the late Middle Ages / early Renaissance?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2013 09:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:24 |
|
|
DarkCrawler posted:Soviets really hated Montana though. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2013 15:58
|
|
