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b9gv40 | Why are roses so popular? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's cultural, many countries associate it with something, for examples the in ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite's."
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b9iksi | Why was cursive taught before the prevalence of typing in most workplaces? It's it supposed to be faster printed characters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its much faster to write in cursive, and if you are using a fountain pen it helps the ink flow better.",
"Ever use a pen that hasn't seen action in awhile? You have to scratch it around on some paper to get the boogers of dried ink off and get the ink flowing again. Writing in cursive keeps the ink flowing at a steady state, flowing from letter to letter. The constant flow makes it easier to write in a straight line on un-lined paper. With practice, it's also faster to write when you're taking notes or trying to get work done quickly. Plus it looks all fancy. Can't be writing like a pleb when you're billing at $200/hr.",
"So just to piggyback along and make something clear for younger redditors: back in the day people put a TON of effort into having really good handwriting. Why? Because that's how you did like 99% of professional communication. Having shitty handwriting would absolutely solicit negative judgement. Write your bank officer a sloppy letter? Kiss that 2nd mortgage you need to fix the roof goodbye. As an old fart that lives and works on a laptop, I'm steadily losing my penmanship. I'm totally ok with that.",
"Wait, does it mean that in your country, you don't have to write in cursive? What fo you use when you hand write something?",
"Cursive used to be the mark of an educated person. And you were less likely to break the nib of a feather or reed quill, unlike in block printing, you didn't have to lift the pen off the paper as frequently. Modern pens removed those issues, and mass public education means everyone can read and write. So being able to write in cursive isn't as big an issue",
"Mid 30's guy here. It's much faster to write in cursive than to print. In terms of what I do now? I still write in cursive when I'm in meetings for the speed but also do it because things stick in my head better when I physically write them down rather than printing. At times it's just a means to better remember it later without having to look at the note later on. Typing however is much faster than writing cursive but I don't feel I soak the info in as much."
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b9khxq | Why do onomatopoeias look different/are pronounced different in other languages? | I've noticed in different languages, their onomatopoeias are spelled oddly, and don't convey an actual sound similar to what they're replicating. Is this an actual phenomenon, and if it is, why? Or am I just not reading shit right lmao. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Onomatopoeias are still words, and therefore must follow the phonological rules of their language.",
"My best guess is something has been lost in translation. The word may not be pronounced the way it appears to an English speaking reader. The character Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh is a decent example. People who speak English in most parts of North America pronounce \"R\" in all forms. British people often drop the R sound from words. (People with Boston accents do this as well. (Car keys become khakis) . Eeyore is an onomatopoeia of the sound a donkey makes. In North American we usually say \"Hee Haw\" to represent braying. Since A.A. Milne is British, he would not pronounce the r in Eeyore's name. Pronouncing it the British way sounds a lot more like a donkey. The American reader, however, will likely pronounce the r, and miss the point of his name."
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b9zf4j | why is colonel pronounced like “kernel” | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not been asked for a while, but [here's the search]( URL_0 )."
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ba2cqf | Why does China / the Chinese people seemingly have no regard for littering, pollution, animal rights / welfare, conservation etc? [/sweepinggeneralisation] | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Littering, pollution, animal rights/welfare, conservation, etc. are all luxury policies. They're political and ethical views that are only adopted by relatively prosperous people who have otherwise managed to handle the more pressing needs of survival. The Chinese people are generally either poor or 'nouveau riche', meaning they haven't had the time to adopt these sorts of attitudes.",
"The average US citizen emits more than twice the amount of CO2 than the average Chinese citizen. Blaming China for pollution is just a slight of hand trick by US lobbyists utilising population size to muddy the waters: [Per Capita CO2 emissions (in metric tons):]( URL_0 ) Country|2014 :--|:-- USA|16.5 Japan|9.5 China|7.5 [The US is the single greatest cumulative emitter of CO2 in the history of the world.]( URL_1 )"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita",
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ba4pu0 | Whay are yelling commentators so popular? | From sports (e.g. Stephen A Smith) to politics (e.g. Bill O'Reilly) to cooking, is there a scientific explanation why highly emotional commentators are so popular right now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Human's love anything sensational. It's like the old marketing saying, \"Sell the sizzle, not the steak\"."
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ba6oom | Why do "eleven" and "twelve" have special names instead of being oneteen and twoteen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We really aren't certain. And it likely doesn't have anything to do with base-12 or counting on finger joints, but lies in ancient language number structures. Eleven and Twelve are derived from an ancestor language of English and German, and one theory is that the origin, ancient language number system that this is derived from stops at 10. This is with much precedent on other languages, as it was common for ancient societies to not care about big numbers, they just referred to them as \"more\" or \"many\", etc. so for a system to stop at 10 would be quite normal. For example, even the biblical reference of \"~~30~~ 40 days and ~~30~~ 40 nights\" doesn't mean actually 40-days... it was a meaning for \"a long time\", not specifically 40, and for ancient societies, a term which just meant \"alot\" or \"more\" or \"long\" didn't need to be defined to exacting standards, as we think of numbers today. Originally, there is a theory (with much debate) that 11 and 12 were part of this earlier Germanic language number system stopping at 10, but with 11 being \"10 with 1 more\", and 12 being \"10 with 2 more\", but why it stopped at 12 instead of say 13 or 17 we have no idea. But things above 12 were just \"more\", which was quite fine for an ancient society. Our current English and German eleven and twelve (modern German: elf and zwölf) are probably derived from this ancient language. But we really, really aren't sure in any case. Edit: dumb me wrote 30-days, was supposed to be 40",
"Bah, apparently I can't just post a link here, so I will also include a brief quote: > \\[The\\] English *eleven* and *twelve*, or the German *elf* and *zwölf*, but these have been traced to *ein-lif* and *zwo-lif*; *lif* being old German for *ten*. & #x200B; See [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"Our numbers are based on base 10 (counting on 10 fingers). But some are based on base 12 (dozens, counting on 10 fingers and two complete hands or feet). Thirteen gets a different (systematic) name because we have run out of convenient appendages to count.",
"in portuguese we have up to 15 as \"own names\" (still derived from the numeral though)... then it is just \"ten and six\", \"ten and seven\"",
"Well my comment got removed. But there is a video from Name Explain called, Why is eleven not called oneteen? Explained it better than I ever could, and explain 12 too"
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baeclk | What is 'Agency' and 'Structure' in terms of social science? And how would you relate them to the concept of 'Power'? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends of which social science you're referring to (e.g. sociology, anthropology, psychology, social work, archaeology or subfields within them). Can you give us some more context? I happen to have a social work textbook in front of me (because I'm browsing Reddit while I procrastinate from uni work, so I'll provide my lay definition and then relate it back to the author's definition to give you a more thorough answer. The understand any of those three topics, you first need to be familiar with levels of analysis, the micro (individual), messo (groups or communities) and macro (all of society levels). It's also important to understand that patterns at the micro and messo levels create change at the macro level, and vies versa. \"Agency\" can refer to a few different things, such as an organisation or an institution, but one of its most common uses in the social sciences relates to a person's capacity to cause change, whether at the micro, messo or macro levels. To use the definition provided in \"Engaging with Social Work\" by Jim Ife, \"agency is the ability of people, individually and collectively, to influence their own lives and the society in which live.\" \"Structure\" also has different meanings depending on the context and which social science you're analysing it through, but generally it refers to the way that society is set up. The term in general refers to all the different ways that society is structured at the messo and macro levels, but usually when someone uses it they're referring to the structures applicable to a specific subset of society relevant to their context. Ife notes that structural context includes \"the way in which social institutions, laws, policies and practices allocate goods and services while restricting the access of marginalised groups.\" (The social sciences tend to analyse most things in terms of inequality and oppression. It's our thing.) For example, 60 years ago Western societies was structured in a way which severely limited choices for women compared to now, e.g. no welfare payments made women financially dependent on husbands, no childcare centers required women to stay at home, laws allowed women to be paid less than men, women were expected to stop work once they got married, and it was harder for women to seek secondary and tertiary education (because what would be the point when you're going to get married in a few years?) \"Power\" like the other words, depends on the context. Power usually refers to an ability to influence people and/or events. The social sciences often analyse power at the macro level, particularly how people with power often use that power to reinforce the societal structures which brought them to power. To use an extreme example, the people who are most likely to supported slavery in the 1800s were most likely to be people who benefited from having slaves. They used their power to fight against the introduction of laws which banned slavery to keep themselves in a privileged position. Another important buzzword in this field is \"culture.\" Culture is a very multifaceted concept, but in ELI5 words I would say \"culture is a shared way of doing things, and shared reasons for doing them that way. Sometimes the reason that everyone does something in a particular way is because everyone else does it that way.\" Culture impacts individual people's behaviour at the micro level. When groups or whole societies of individuals behave in the same way (for cultural reasons), they use their agency to either support or dismantle the power structures within society. Another thing to be aware of is the use of the word \"critical\" in the social sciences. \"Critical\" is often used to mean \"seeking to change the power structures within society,\" not \"critical thinking.\" Sorry this is so long! I hope it makes sense."
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baisq7 | Why are certain, seemingly random words emboldened in superhero comics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are for emphasis. For instance, a popular sentence for it is, \"I never said she stole my money.\" Depending on what word you stress, you get 7 different meanings. & #x200B; 1. ***I*** never said she stole my money - Someone else said it, not me. 2. I ***never*** said she stole my money - I never said it. 3. I never ***said*** she stole my money - I wrote it down, or hinted at it, but never said those exact words. 4. I never said ***she*** stole my money - Was someone else completely. 5. I never said she ***stole*** my money - She borrowed it. Or I loaned it. 6. I never said she stole ***my*** money - She didn't steal my money, it was someone else. 7. I never said she stole my ***money*** \\- She stole something else, like my phone or laptop. & #x200B; & #x200B;",
"They're not random. The writers chose those words. They are meant to be read with emphasis. Most italicized words go well with a sassy or sarcastic tone. Bold words are meant to be louder or read faster. Kind of like an exclamation mark but for one word. Also comic books will highlight important plot words like places or items to help them stick in the readers mind."
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bakfsm | Why is it that in many languages (for example Germanic ones, like English or German) have their "noble" words, and almost exclusively the noble words, derived from Latin, whereas the common words are from the original (Germanic, in this case) language family? | EDIT: Yes, in English there are also many latin origin words in the common tongue, but English is also often called the "dirty bastard" of Germanic languages, meaning that it is also heavily influenced from Romance languages | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back in the day, like today, not everyone was equally educated. The most educated members of society got to learn more than just simple, everyday language. (German, English etc.) The Catholic Church performed their rituals in Latin. The clergy and the nobles were some of the best educated people in the land, so they got to learn Latin. They would speak to each other using little bits here and there from all of the languages that they knew, including Latin. This kept going long enough that everyone, even the less-educated, picked up on the changes. Even though everyone would use the mixed language, they still knew that the Latin sounding words were associated nobles and other highly educated people.",
"In the case of English a big part of it is due to the Norman conquest. Following the Norman conquest the upper echelon of nobility were all supplanted from France and so spoke French (from the era), which is of Latin origin. So French became the language for formal use and the natives just had to adapt to that. There was around a four hundred year stretch where the monarchy spoke French, until a transition to (what was then) English between Henry IV and Henry V. During the few centuries leading up to that the French merged with the Anglo-Saxon (both linguistically and also ethnically through inter-marriage), with the French derived words keeping their role as the more formal words and Anglo-Saxon words ended up as the more casual and informal side of the new language’s vocab."
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baliix | Why are special agents/detectives/FBI agents in movies always wearing a fancy suit or clothes that are totally not useable for doing the job? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"FBI agents and detectives are often wearing a suit or similar business formal clothes because their jobs are typically desk jobs, or relatively physically minor. They don't usually go around kicking in doors with guns drawn or chase down criminals, they do stuff like interview people or look through documents. That TV special agents look inappropriately dressed is more a symptom of their portrayal in the media being unrealistic.",
"It depends on the specific jobs that they are doing. You will see on shows FBI agents in wind breaker jackets and jumpsuits when collecting evidence, or in bullet proof vests if they are a SWAT unit. But those that are in the lead of an investigation, that are talking to people rather than gathering physical evidence, etc dress appropriately for that job by wearing suits. Suits are seen in Western society as a symbol of propriety and authority. By having those in charge or who talk to people with suits makes those people trust them easier and makes them listen and \"obey\" them more quickly."
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bao2s9 | How are music genres defined? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> But anyone could take a singular piano loop and apply different percussion instruments behind it and label it as a different genre. That's actually what happens.",
"When you have a bunch of people that agree on something they tend to stick. That's how genre classifications work. People kinda just decide what something is based on the patterns of previous works. There's not much science to it, you can't exactly make a flowchart the perfectly decides the qualifying factors.",
"Things like instrumentation, harmonic progressions, rhythms, and song structures typically help to group music into different genres. Some genres share aspects with eachother, but still have unique things to set them apart. Think of lofi for example. Does most of lofi have similar tendencies? It usually involves minimal instrumentation, samples from other songs, heavy filtering, etc. How does lofi compare to, say, traditional hip hop? Hip hop can share rhythms and sampling with lofi, but has other traits like more varied chord changes or emphasis on lyrics that set it apart. In other words, we group songs that have a bunch of similar musical tendencies together, and while some of these groups share things, they have other unique aspects that make them their own genres. Maybe not the most clear explanation, but i hope it helps."
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barw4q | Why are shows with fake laughter so succesful? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Laughter, like yawning, can be an \"Infectious\" reaction. We hear it, and there is often a compulsion to join in, and that in turn can trick some people into thinking something is funnier than it might have been if just dropped as a line on it's own.",
"The entirety of the big bang theory is recorded in front of a live studio audience and doesn't use canned laughter, so at least in the case of this show, you clearly have a different sense of humour to other people, because some people enjoy it. For other shows it might vary, but for this one at least, you just have a different sense of humour.",
"It allows the viewer to become completely passive and not have to think about whether a joke was funny or not. You laugh because others are laughing. The other issue with laugh tracks is that there has to be a joke or \"zinger\" every few seconds to keep the live audience engaged (or the laugh track). I, too, prefer shows like 30 Rock and AP Bio where there isn't a laugh track or live studio audience."
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bavkso | Why is the fall of the Roman empire considered the turning point between antiquity and the European middle ages, and why is the fall of Constantinople considered the turning point between the middle ages and the Renaissance? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're not, really. In either case, they're convenient rules of thumb if you're just trying to do some very coarse divisions of the last 2000 years into eras, but it's just a loose convention to organize European history, not something with real historical meaning. & #x200B; Also, Constantinople is only very rarely used to mark that boundary, which is usually a century or so earlier. & #x200B; & #x200B;",
"Because they are well known events that a lot people have heard of, even if they didn't actually change much overnight. The fall of the western Roman Empire and the beginning of the European middle ages wasn't exactly a single day event that changed how everything was governed. It was a decades and centuries long process of the Western Roman emperor delegating away power and territory that he no longer had the ability to effectively rule. Many of the major powers in a post-roman Europe already existed as major powers. The beginnings of serfdom and feudalism began way before the fall of the western empire, as part of the major changes to the economy and taxation made by Diocletian. None of these things suddenly occurred overnight when Romulus Augustulus was deposed and the warlords who had been propping him decided against asking the Eastern Roman empire to acknowledge a successor. With the fall of Constantinople, it is again an oversimplification. The city and empire were way past their prime by the time the Ottomans actually managed to conquer the city. It was an easy historic simplification to just say that the invasion caused all of the scholars to flee the Italy and start the renaissance, but again these were long running processes. Italy had already been working to become the main power on the Mediterranean, and the wealth allowed for greater and more elaborate construction, art, and scholarship. Italy had already been rebuilding itself with many major trading and banking institutions, and after the fourth Crusade (which led to a European conquest and sacking of Constantinople) Italy had become the preeminent trader on the Mediterranean."
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bbefl7 | how did hell become so tied to burning and fire? Why is there this almost unanimous depiction of eternal hellfire and not many icy, frozen-over hells? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the bible Hell is called the lake of fire. There are other torments described in Hell but it is mainly fire that never goes out. Gehenna from the Greek refers to the \"Valley of Hinnom\", which was a garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem. It was a place where people burned their garbage and there was always a fire burning there.",
"Probably the most famous depiction of Hell is the Divine Comedy, there’s a lot of ice there.",
"After the fall of Rome the catholic church became progressively more focused upon acquiring wealth. Early on it was tithes and donations but as time went on the idea of buying your way out of heaven became popular among the wealthy. This gave way to what where called indulgences, basically a fee you could pay to expedite the purgatory process before entering heaven. A group of cardinals saw they where making good money but as greed so often does they felt compelled to see if they could make more money so they started passion plays. These plays described the horrors one would face in purgatory, This is where many of the characters we know today as vdemons (in western society) got names and faces ie the red devil, swarms of pitchfork wielding creatons and pig faced devils. These plays would go hard on the terrors in hell but good news! You can just buy your way out. As theatre progressed over the centuries many motiefs where preserved and acclimated into television and media.",
"various cultures had icy \"hell\" but its mostly because the divine comedy was mainstream to christian audience and christianity was mainstream religion (at least when you consider ideas and laws implemented in cultures around the world by colonizers)",
"Interestingly, the original words in the Bible that the pagan church leaders later translated to hell meant grave. The dirt, 6 feet under, dead. Nothing else. But when the church went all corrupt in their teachings and wanted to include more and more pagan teachings because it’s popular (still happening today) then you ended up with teachings like the immortal soul and thus hell which is convenient so you can scare your follows into never leaving or speaking out against the church."
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bbwl4m | Why do people have 'a drink' when having conversations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Psychological analgesia. It makes one more comfortable and lowers the stress of small talk. Plus it opens the door to share a vice and bond over getting blind drunk together after business is settled."
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bc4i1l | Whats the difference between an asylum seeker and a refugee? | I know that the terms are interchanged often and can be wrongly interchanged. So what is the difference? Can one be the other or are they completely separate terms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Refugee refers to someone displaced from their homeland by a cause outsode their control - war, famine, acts of God, etc. An asylum seeker is a refugee petitioning the right to remain in a country due to valid concerns for their safety and wellbeing which would almost certainly be jeopardized by returning to their nation of origin.",
"If you apply for a job, you are a candidate. If you get the job, you are an employee. If you apply for asylum, you are an asylum seeker. If you get asylum, you are a refugee.",
"From amnesty international: Asylum seeker An asylum seeker is an individual who is seeking international protection. In countries with individualised procedures, an asylum seeker is someone whose claim has not yet been finally decided on by the country in which he or she has submitted it. Not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognised as a refugee, but every refugee is initially an asylum seeker. Refugee A refugee is a person who has fled their country of origin and is unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."
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bc72e8 | Why do the pianists always shake the hands of the first violinist in the orchestra when they are performing a piano concerto? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The first violinist is the concertmaster/symbolic leader of the orchestra and it's a way to thank the entire orchestra."
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bco5l7 | What evidence do we have of the existence of an Indo-European language? | I was reading an article the other day, and people in the comment section started disputing the existence of an Indo-European language, saying that the Greek language does not derive from any other language yada yada yada. I know that this is false, but I wanted more information so I can strengthen my arguments. Thank you in advance. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed hypothetical language acquired using the comparative method. We have no solid evidence of this language being spoken or written, and thus rely upon similarities between other languages grouped together and systematic sound changes. Greek has some words that may have a non-Indo-European substrate, but overall it exhibits sound changes from Proto-Indo-European quite well."
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bcq96k | Why are white Americans not called European Americans? Similar to Asian Americans and African Americans. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We should not use any of these segregating terms. We should simply use the term Americans instead.",
"Historically, “American” was used by people in power in the US to refer to white Americans Something else-American was to identify non white people. White people were the default, essentially Now, we say white Americans because we know white shouldn’t be assumed. Many people prefer black Americans instead of African Americans because that’s actually what people mean. Not all people from Africa are black Caucasian is the white equivalent of African American Does that make sense?",
"Because some other white people got mad about us calling black people black. So they made up a new term, even though not all black people are African, and not all African people are black.",
"African-American is a relatively new term and part of what is commonly termed a 'Euphemism Treadmill'. What happens is that you've got a word to describe a group and that word acquires negative connotations from that association. So you change the word and the process starts all over again. A better example would be how we refer to the mentally disabled, where yesterday's word becomes a slur about every 2 - 3 decades because there's never going to be a polite way to say \"dumber than average\". However, African-American also falls into this category. Neither 'colored' nor 'black' are strictly offensive in the way that 'retard' or 'imbecile' would be, but they were viewed as being negative terms so we got a new one. Asian-American is slightly different. A first generation immigrant would almost never refer to themselves this way because it's vague to the point of meaninglessness. People from Bangalore, the Hmong highlands or Seoul have no real unifying characteristics - they're from wildly different cultures with dramatically different appearances and Old World experiences. However, despite the presence of large numbers of people with Asian ancestry in the U.S., no single cultural group from Asia makes up a significant percentage of the population. Thus, Asian-American became a political term of art to amplify the importance of the faction. \"People of Color\" or \"LGBTQ\" are similar in nature - they merge wildly disparate groups with wildly disparate interests and backgrounds in an attempt to create common political cause (with minimal success in the former case and slightly more success in the latter)."
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bcser3 | What is the process for illegal immigrants in America? | At the border, are they processed, given a future court date, and then released and then allowed to go wherever they want to go in America? And then they just have to show up for their court date to start their path to citizenship? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are several ways to be in country illegally. The predominant way across all immigrants demographics to come here legally via air, plane, car, pass thru immigration with a vacation visa or student visa or etc. And once the Visa expires, never leave the country. For the much talked about southern border, those illegals come over by sneaking across checkpoints or walking past less secure areas on foot. There's almost 2000 miles of border, and only about 700 miles of various kinds of fencing/walls. Imaging if your neighbor had a fence that only went around 1/3 of their property line. Illegal immigrants don't have an established way to legal residence. They may be granted immunity by some politicians occasionally but it comes and goes as political landscape changes."
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bctdp8 | Why do use machinery terms to describe our emotional states; all wound up, blow a gasket, out of steam, fueled up, not firing on all pistons, ad nauseam. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ekt9n1w"
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"text": [
"Because we use *all kind* of metaphors to describe human emotions. Almost anything we are familiar with might be used. Colors: feeling blue Animals: feeling catty, feeling squirrelly Temperature: feeling frosty Military: under siege"
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bctu20 | How did ancient people from different civilizations communicate between each other? | It is my understanding that trade was a major aspect between different nations. How did people get over the language barrier? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Multilingualism and pidgin languages. You still see this today in many parts of the world, where the traders speak a really poor man's trading English, just enough to haggle and barter with tourists. From wiki: > A pidgin[1][2][3] /ˈpɪdʒɪn/, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language.[4][5]"
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bcws0q | Why a class of 45 students is considered a bad school and a lecture of 450 student is considered hogher education? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"45 children who don't want to be there are harder to control then 450 adults who are paying to be there.",
"There are different methods to teach children and adults. Children of different age groups tend to learn differently. Teaching a child vs an adult is a completely different process. Classrooms in K-12 are better suited to a hands-on approach where a single teacher can spend more time with individual students to help them catch up. K-12's have a mandate to help educate and pass as many children as possible in order to make them productive members of society. Colleges on the other hand are research institutions first, schools second. Professors teach often only because they are required too by the school to generate income for research. Colleges prefer the lecture approach where a single teacher crams as many students as they can into a lecture hall and talks to an entire class and usually has very little time for individual students. It is assumed that people attending a college are adults and responsible for managing their own education. Colleges are considered entirely voluntary and are more interested in conducting research than passing students. On average 30% of students will drop out of college in their first year."
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bczwxe | How do linguists decipher newly discovered written languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There are a whole bunch of techniques. Sometimes there are similar languages that we know well enough to use. Sometimes there's a \"rosetta stone\" situation, where we have a side by side translation. Sometimes it has to do with cultural context, or the context of where the writing was found (on a clay tablet in a barn as a opposed to in an armory, carved on a gravestone, etc) things like that. Sometimes there are still a small handful of native speakers or specialists. I'm sure there are many more ways but those are just ones I could think of off the top of my head."
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bd7ihj | Why did Americans enslave African people who come from overseas, and not the indigenous people of North America? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ekw99yf"
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"text": [
"They did. Or at least they tried to. The problem was that they were seen as weak and susceptible to disease (which is probably true enough) and didn't make good slaves."
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bdghwd | What is "family love" and why is it so different from "romantic love"? | My family has always said that there's never a situation in which we should not love each other. But, I've never understood why this "love" exists or what it is. And why is it different from romantic love? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You could define love in 7 types. I wouldn't say it's the only way to look at love, but it's seem pretty logical and it this idea have origins in work of Plato and Aristotle, that's why the name sound Greek. & #x200B; The 7 types of love would be : \\- Eros : which is sexual or passionate love. Basically, my heart beat fast and I'm horny when I look at the person I love. \\- Philia : friendship love, basically you like spending time with someone and feel distress when something bad happen to him. Usually it's about mutual benefit, companionship, trust, etc. \\- Storge : Familial love, it's usually unilateral or asymmetrical, meaning that the love the parent have for his child, isn't the same as the love the child have for his parent. Eros and Philia is about the quality of each individual and is usually mutal. Storge is about familiarity, meaning you spend so much time with them that you end up loving them, or dependency, meaning that you alway come back to them in your moment of pain or difficulty. Eros can mutate into storge, the attraction giving place to familiarity. People that stay together for a long time, tend to not sleep together as often, but stay together because of the stability and familiarity that this relationship provide. \\- Agape is universal love. You don't need attraction, familiarity or friendship. It's the love for stranger, it's what we define today as altruism. It what give you this good feeling when you help other people. \\- Ludus : It's casual love. It's the thrill of dancing, flirting, seducing, teasing. It's fun with no string attached. It's the friend that you see once of year, but go wild for a night with and have the time of your life, but that you will never rely on if you are in trouble. It's the hot one night stand that you will alway remember even if you never saw her again. \\- Pragma : It's the practical love that you have for someone because of your compatibility, shared goals, interest, etc. It's the work friend that you like to work with, because you form such a good team, it's the internet friend which whom you play hundred of hours in a game, it's the political relationship that is mutually beneficial. \\- Philautia : It's self love, which can be good or bad depending on the level. & #x200B; Obviously, you most likely have more than one type of love in a relationship. You know the ''my wife is my best friend'', well that's Eros and Philia. & #x200B; Also, the type of love can evolve with time. A love can start from Eros or Ludus, but over time become storge (familiarity) or Pragma (practical)"
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bdojzl | What is the actual significance of the Notre Dame cathedral? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ekzomvw"
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"text": [
"\" I get that it's a huge loss of culture and history, but I just cannot bring myself to wrap my head around why it's actually so significant. \" & #x200B; It's a huge loss of culture and history. That's why it's actually so significant. Read particulars here: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
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bdopq0 | How have the Sentinelese maintained their “uncontacted” status throughout history? | I was reading today about the [Sentinelese]( URL_0 ) and how they’ve managed to avoid contact with the outside world since ancient times. How did they manage this? I can understand tribes in the Amazon staying isolated since they’re surrounded by miles of dense rain forest in every direction, but the Sentinelese seem to be smack dab in the center of the most populated area in the world. How did somebody not decide their island would make a nice outpost for their clan/kingdom/nation-state at any point in history? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From articles I've read to say they're not contacted is not accurate. Somewhat recently a Christian missionary was apparently killed trying to contact them but it wasn't the first time he was there, and was successful in visiting them before. Their tribe part of the Andamanese and is one of several tribes on those islands. In the 1700's and 1800's the main island was colonized as a penal colony by Bengal and then the British. Ultimately the islands developed a bad reputation for cannibalism and attacking anybody who came near. Many battles were fought between the islanders and outsiders; the Bengals, the British, the Japanese occupied them in WW2. I think ultimately the people of North Sentinel Island were hiding in plain sight for hundreds of years while the Andamanese the next island over were being ravaged by colonizers and occupiers. Then when India gained independence after WW2 they shut town the penal colony and made the islands a tribal refuge. Nobody goes to North Sentinel Island because it is illegal to do so, they're now protected, and it's dangerous as the people will kill you and eat your eyeballs.",
"There's nothing on the islands worth settlement, and they will kill anybody and everybody who tries to roll up. The end.",
"ELI5. They don’t have anything worth taking, so nobody big goes over. Your friends get mad if you go, so you probably don’t. If you do go, they kill you anyway. Novelty."
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bdq9gm | Why were the Native Americans so far behind cultures on the other continents? The Europeans has ships sailing around the world, agriculture, rode animals (e.g., horses), had firearms, etc., while the Native Americans are usually portrayed as barefoot hunter gatherers with little technology. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I understand the question you're asking, but it's not a very good one. There isn't one timeline of human culture, where some communities are closer to \"advanced\" than others. Native communities had the technology they needed to cook and communicate, and the knowledge to travel by boat and use plants as medicine. It wasn't important to them to travel far away from home to see what was out there. Their networks were what mattered. Unrelatedly, no large animal native to the americas could be domesticated for riding. This is a problem of biology and the evolutionary timeline, not a failure of a people.",
"> had boats. Boats aren't exactly the most useful thing if you live in the great plains, or the pueblo. > agriculture Native agriculture is somewhat lost to time. Natives culture passed down the overwhelming majority of their knowledge verbally from one generation to the next. That said what we do know about the new worlds agriculture is usually pretty impressive. For example, the Incan people would literally carve flat land into the side of mountains to increase the amount of arable land. While terrace farming is no way unique to them, it is still very impressive. > rode animals Not a whole lot of ride-able animals in the new world. Llamas are pretty much the only animals that could be domesticated in the new world. Buffalo will trample you, deer are too frail, etc. > had firearms. Most scientific discovery is the results of the clashing of two empires. Europe unified, broke apart, reunified, broke apart again, so much that empires where in constant interaction. Guns are the results of these constant interactions. Not to imply that the new world civilizations where a peaceful land, but usually civilizations where spread far enough apart that there wasnt the constant threat of a war breaking out.",
"Native Americans had a huge amount of untapped land for hunting and gathering. However, if you spend most of your time getting food, you don't have much time to think about other things. In contrast, agriculture developed very early in the Middle East and spread to elsewhere in Europe and Asia. More food means more people. More people not spending all their time gathering food means more ideas. More people also means less space so more conflicts arise. More conflicts means the better weapon made from those ideas wins. All these help speed technology. Europe and Asia also had more domesticated animals to boost food and trade routes to boost technology transfer."
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bdsr79 | As a non-American, I don’t understand the concept of tipping. Shouldn’t the employees receive enough money from salaries/wages? Or is tipping an excuse for the boss to underpay their employees? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've supported myself on tips before. I've worked in 3 different restaurants that varied in quality. It really depends on the restaurant. In the nicest restaurant I worked 3 or 4 hour shifts 5 days a week. Dinners only. I'd bring in $150-300 per night in tips. It was amazing and one of the sweetest gigs I've ever had. The restaurant would not be able to pay me nearly $100/hour to make up for the tips I was getting. They would likely pay the servers ~$20-$25/hour and the servers would be in much worse financial position compared to tip based pay. In the shittiest restaurant I worked doubles, lunch through dinner, 8 hour shifts, 5 days per week and averaged $60-$100 per day. In the shitty restaurants I still made more than minimum wage. But I would have preferred a steady paycheck of about $12/hour. But given the quality of the restaurant it would likely have been a minimum wage job and the servers would still come out worse than tip based pay. A law that eliminates tip based pay would have absolutely killed me financially in every restaurant I worked at. I was making more than my friends with hourly jobs. Other servers experiences will vary. I do not speak for all servers, that's just my personal experience.",
"Is seems like you understand it perfectly. Yes, employers should be the ones responsible for paying their employees’ wages. This arrangement benefits the employer greatly while hurting the employee and the customer. For reasons I don’t understand, they are allowed to pay lower wages to servers, then leave it up to social pressures on the customers to subsidize the difference between the low wage and the required minimum wage. This hurts the customer by increasing their bill by 10 - 20%. This also hurts the employee by giving an unpredictable income that can make it difficult for a lower income person to plan bill paying, and it also creates a higher burden for the employee at tax time since the employer may not have paid any portion of the taxes due on tips as they would have been required to do with standard wages. This arrangement encourages employees to under-report tips earned to reduce taxes owed, but that also has negative effects such as a lower documented income when you need a home or car loan and lower social security benefits later in life due to the decreased taxes paid.",
"You are correct. It's weird here. Some local restaurants are moving to paying their folks a real wage and tell patrons not to tip. It's not only an excuse for employers to underpay, but wait-staff are also exempt from minimum wage laws. Well, sort of. Supposedly if they don't hit minimum wage with tips the employer is to make up the difference. But in reality, if someone asks for that they will be fired the next day.",
"If tipping wasn't a thing, the cost of your meal and/or drinks would increase. Either way, you're going to pay.",
"People who work in the service industry have the opportunity to always make more money in a shift, depending on business and how hard they work (personable, busy, etc). Many people like this job for this reason - their income is not confined to how many hours they work, but actually by how hard they work within those hours. While not everyone tips well, some people tip really well which makes up for any poor tippers, generally. The industry is flexible and people are often able to work 25 to 30 hours per week and still have a livable income.",
"Nope. If you are good at your job, you can make more than management off of tips. When I served (back when minimum wage was $4.50, I made nearly $27 an hour from tips. There was an article by NYC wait staff telling Hollywood actresses to stay out of of this crap, they don't know what they are talking about."
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bdxlpo | What is hypermodernity, I would some explaination of the wikipedia's definition if possible? | From [wikipedia]( URL_2 ): & #x200B; > **Hypermodernity** (**supermodernity**) is a type, mode, or stage of [society]( URL_0 ) that reflects an inversion of [modernity]( URL_1 ) in which the function of an object has its reference point in the form of an object rather than function being the reference point for form & #x200B; hmm very interesing, maybe someone maybe can explain us this sentence? & #x200B; any hint would be great, thanks | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Basically, make a thing and then figure out what it does, rather than make a thing to perform a certain task."
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be84a2 | Why is the JFK administration referred to as "Camelot"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"el3ozpd",
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"text": [
"Camelot refers to the overly romanticized story of King Arthur, a young dashing king with his beautiful queen at his side. It seemed to encapsulate the overly romanticized notion of Kennedy, a young dashing president with his beautiful first lady at his side. It was just an euphemism to describe the aura that they projected.",
"It was a term used by Jackie Kennedy to describe the administration, related to a Broadway musical of the same name. I think she intended for it to be complimentary."
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beezxi | The modern concept of 'Mindfulness' and it's applicability to present day? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"el5crtf"
],
"text": [
"Great minds think alike. I've sailed far and returned ta port with this booty. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: What is 'Mindfulness'? ]( URL_6 ) ^(_19 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What is mindfulness? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Meditation and mindfulness ]( URL_5 ) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [ELI5:Why and how does Mindfulness Meditation help ameliorate symptoms of stress/anxiety/depression etc.? ]( URL_7 ) ^(_6 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What is mindfulness? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [[ELI5] What exactly is MINDFUL meditation? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_1 comment_) 1. [ELI5: what's the difference between concentration and mindfulness? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ElI5 Meditation and what it accomplishes ]( URL_3 ) ^(_5 comments_) See also /r/Mindfulness"
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"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/631wv6/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_concentration/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pxfd2/eli5_meditation_and_what_it_accomplishes/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rualy/eli5_what_exactly_is_mindful_meditation/",
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bepw6x | Is there a reason we associate “nerdy” people with having allergies or asthma? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's typically an association in reverse. When someone is highly allergic or has asthma, it discourages them from being out and about, enjoying the outdoors, participating in physical activities. So the stereotype is for them to turn inwards and find more indoor activities like reading, computing, videogames, and similar.",
"It's a fairly dated stereotype because typically if someone has major respiratory issues, they're not going to be the types that are going to be running around outside with kids all the time earlier in life, or doing the stereotypical opposite of \"being a nerd\" which is playing sports. It's a contrast to being \"cool\".",
"Likely a couple of reasons: 1. Inhalers and such are inherently considered \"uncool,\" and having one (or admitting to having one) could degrade your social status. Popular kids were unlikely to admit to having one, while unpopular kids were unlikely to care if people saw them using their inhaler. 2. Jocks are Jocks because of their athleticism; those that can entertain themselves with physical sport are unlikely to need inhalers, and those that need them usually occupy their time with mental activities rather than physical ones. 3. Physical flaws have proven affects on the psychology of people around them. People are almost always subconsciously willing to give \"pretty\" people more respect and believe they are better than ugly/unhealthy ones. This is known as the Halo Effect, and it's why good-looking celebrities can often get away with things that would normally attract scorn."
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beygvz | Why is it called "Good Friday"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"el9erbm"
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"text": [
"Good can have the meaning of \"pious, holy\" and that is from that the name of the day is. Most of the time if the words in names do not make sense it is because the usage of word changes overtime and it is the usage in a archaic sense."
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bezewk | Why is it that Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects of Chinese but Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French are considered separate languages and not dialects of Latin? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's a saying in linguistics: \"A language is a dialect with a flag and an army.\" The field of Linguistics does not actually define what is a \"language.\" Linguistics definitely has the concept of a dialect, and can discuss whether two groups of people speak the same dialect or different dialects. It has concepts of things like mutual intelligibility, i.e. can native speakers of two dialects understand each other. But the idea that two dialects are part of the same \"language\" is a question that linguistics entirely cedes to the field of politics. So, the answer to your question: China considers itself a single political unit, and they place a high value on considering themselves unified. France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal consider themselves distinct political units from each other, and modern Italy considers itself distinct from the Roman empire. It's also worth noting that people from different regions in Italy sometimes can't understand each other, because dialects of Italian have a very large spread. Again, they're considered the same language because Italy wants to perceive itself as a single unified cultural entity. Were one of these regions of Italy to become independent, it's likely they would consider their dialect to a language over time, although that process would likely involve doubling-down on the regionally-distinct features of that dialect, and probably having a distinct literary tradition as well. Something like this [already happened]( URL_0 ) when Norway became independent of Denmark.",
"In Arabic, we speak in really different dialects. For example, a Yemeni and a Moroccan would need a translator between them even though they're both officially speaking Arabic. Why? Pan-Arab Nationalism. Lebanese actually tried to be its own language once but that never caught on.",
"It is political. The different so called Chinese dialects are unintelligible to each other. Others have mentioned the Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian example but something similar happened with Romanian. In Moldova they speak Moldovan and Erie it in the cyrillic alphabet. Why? Because when they became part of the USSR it wad decided they didn't speak Romanian and they had to come up with grammar books for Moldovan using the cyrillic alphabet. Other times it's not so clear cut. Depending on who you ask galician is a dialect of Portuguese or a separate different language. For context, a galician and a Brazilian can have a conversation with each speaking their own tongue they just can't speak each other's tongue.",
"I speak Cantonese and I’d argue that despite sharing a common written system, Cantonese and Mandarin are two separate languages, not dialects. Sure, if I listen carefully I can pick up a Mandarin word here and there but the two are basically mutually unintelligible. There are many, many variants of both languages throughout the region, and I’d say that those variants are the actual dialects. From another perspective, many people tend to class Mandarin as a language and Cantonese as a dialect. Cantonese is actually far closer to Middle Chinese than Mandarin is - so perhaps it’s the other way around.",
"No one is explaining like you’re five. “Dialect” is the wrong word, but the Chinese leaders use it because they are one country and they think they think one country should have one language. They are in fact “languages”— this is the finding from people who study languages for a living. People speaking Mandarin and Cantonese or other Chinese languages to each other can not understand one another. They all use Chinese characters to write, but consider how many people speaking different languages that all use the ABCs to write. Some languages don’t have writing systems at all! So they aren’t languages even if their writing is similar.",
"So, other excellent answers have highlighted that there is no hard distinction between dialects and languages, but I wanted to add one thing in. I am really not sure that Mandarin and Cantonese are considered dialects. Yes, a lot of people in the west would refer to a person as 'speaking chineese', but wouldn't think of mandarin and cantoneese as the same language, rather were just being imprecise with their word choice earlier.",
"In addition to the answers which have been already provided, I'd also like to point out that before the 20th Century, spoken language in China wasn't standardized, so all spoken varieties of Chinese were considered dialects. In maps, you see distinctive areas of the map marked off, with \"Mandarin-speaking\" areas and \"Cantonese-speaking\" areas with sharp boundaries between them, but in reality it's a gradient of thousands of dialects spread out over a wide geographic area. The people in the \"Mandarin-speaking\" area weren't all speaking school-taught Putonghua, but local Mandarin dialects, many of which might not be understandable to people who only speak school Mandarin. & #x200B; The Chinese word for dialect, \"fangyan\", literally means \"speech of a place\", and dialects are typically identified by the place they come from, ie \"Beijing dialect\", \"Nanjing dialect\", \"Sichuan dialect\", \"Shanghai dialect\". When every single place has a slightly different speech, but with readily-apparent similarities, as opposed to a foreign language like English or Mongolian, it's a little bit easier to contextualize why they're so ingrained in the popular imagination as dialects. If you can understand 90% of what your neighbors speak, are they speaking a separate language or a dialect? What about the people a little further off for who you can only understand 70%? What about people across the country, and you can still understand 50%, and still have a somewhat understandable conversation if both sides limited themselves to simpler words? & #x200B; As an example, my wife from northern Jiangsu speaks a Mandarin dialect that's local only to one district of one city of that province. The differences are similar enough to standard Mandarin that it sounds and is identified as Mandarin, but I still understand only 50-60% of what's spoken (think of a California speaker trying to understand pure, un-diluted rural Scottish) and have to ask her family members to switch to Putonghua (standard Mandarin) when speaking to me. Same when traveling to Yunnan, on the opposite side of China. On maps, they speak what linguists call \"Mandarin\", and I hear lots of similarities, but neither of us understand enough and locals have to use standard Mandarin with speaking to us. This situation is reflected even at the very leadership of the country; Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao were the first modern Chinese leaders to speak Mandarin without any accent. Their predecessors, Jiang Zemin, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, etc, all had extremely heavy provincial dialects, if they even spoke Mandarin at all. & #x200B; For my own situation, my family are Cantonese and Cantonese speakers, but \"Cantonese\" actually refers to only the dialect of the provincial capital (and Hong Kong), though because of its status many people in the province speak it also, and it's also become a language of media and culture. My grandparents come from the rural countryside of the \"Cantonese-speaking area\", and while they spoke Cantonese to me, among themselves they spoke their own village dialects, which while linguistically classified as Cantonese, isn't actually understandable by people who only speak standard Cantonese of the capital.",
"In imperial china, many different spoken languages existed all throughout the country. Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, etc. Were all spoken in different regions, similar to spoken languages in Europe were. Most people didn't care about written chinese during those tines because most people couldn't read. The largest portion of people who could read were all government employees who received/sent scrolls to/from other provinces or from the capital. These people only spoke whatever the regional language was, unless they interacted directly with other provinces or the capital (in which case they would learn their regional language, or Mandarin in the case of the capital), however everyone could understand the written form regardless of their spoken language because of a mutual consensus on what each individual character meant. This would mean that someone could dictate in Mandarin to write on a scroll, then the scroll could be sent anywhere in the empire and could be read by anyone able to read regardless of what their spoken language is. If you go to china today, you will only see chinese characters everywhere because chinese is the written language. You can read the same passage written in chinese in any spoken (chinese) language, and it will mean the exact same, even if the spoken language is different. It is this unification on writing which defines the chinese written language. The Chinese government has slowly tried to replace all other spoken languages in china with Mandarin over the past few decades, so minority languages like Shanghaiese or Hakka may go extinct in the coming years, but any writings will still exist and will still be understandable because of the character consensus.",
"Some good answers all around, but I think a big distinctiin that eurocentric redditors may be missing is that in chinese there are two different words for language. One is for written language 文字 and the other is for spoken language 语言; they are distinct but related concepts. While it is easily argued that Cantonese and Mandarin are different spoken languages, the official and academic texts are all called Chinese. Barring colloquialisms, there isn't a precise sense in which high register text can described as \"Mandarin\" or \"Cantonese\"",
"To build off this: how come as a Spanish understander I understand Italian but I have no idea wtf French people are saying",
"Mandarin and Cantonese aren’t considered dialects of Chinese though. Say that to any most Hongkonger and they will disagree with you. Here’s why they aren’t really dialects of each other: they are different languages with different phrases and different grammar structure. Yeah there are words that sound familiar just like how there are words between Spanish and French that sound similar enough to know the meaning but that doesn’t mean we can make out enough to understand the other language completely. Now I know Cantonese but mandarin sounds pretty foreign to me. Some actual dialects would be something to like Taishan.",
"Chinese stands for the written language. Mandarin and Cantonese are the spoken language. It is this shared written characters that bond them together. Meanwhile these other Latin alphabet based languages began to differ in similarities",
"The shortest answer is that Mandarin and Cantonese are not considered to be dialects of a single language. And there is no such language as Chinese.",
"Because China = 1 country. You are also forgetting that inside each country, geographic distances and relative isolation created languages that evolved slightly over time into different dialects. For example, German spoken in the south of Germany sounds very different from German spoken in the north. Also, Italy had many different dialects and it wasn't until Dante's *Inferno* was published and widely disseminated that his dialect became de facto \"standard\" Italian. With television, radio, and other communication media, regional differences (dialects) in a language are minimized, but still present (in the midwest of the USA people say \"pop\" where in the east, people would say \"soda\", just one example.)",
"Actual ELI5 version: Because Mandarin and Cantonese use the same written language. Mandarin isn’t close enough to Cantonese for a Mandarin speaker to understand Cantonese. But they could communicate just fine by writing down what they wanted to say.",
"Wellll actually Mandarin and Chinese are not the same language at all. Mandarin is basically the \"common tongue\" in China, and Cantonese is a different language altogether. Cantonese is the one with dozens (hundreds?) of different dialects.",
"I live in Hong Kong. Many of us consider HK Cantonese a separate language to mandarin not only for the differences in how the characters sound, but the fact that it has its own different grammar, slang, phrases which are absolutely non existent in mandarin, and the usage of traditional chinese.",
"I think there is a flaw in the question you are asking. Mandarin and Cantonese are considered different languages, not different dialects.",
"It’s not just political. A newspaper printed in Chinese can be read by everyone who speaks a Chinese dialect— it’s just pronounced very differently.",
"I studied Mandarin for several years and lived in China for seven. There are multiple languages that are as different as French and Spanish even an hour drive apart. The line I always get is that the Chinese government uses dialect instead of language to promote national unity. It's really fun learning some words of different dialects and Chinese people are always so happy when you try something in their dialect!",
"As others have said, Cantonese(广东话） and Mandarin (普通话）are really quite different. Most linguists consider cantonese to be more related to Vietnamese than Mandarin. The reason it is considered a dialect of Mandarin is mostly political. Something else to remember: Same writing system doesn’t equal the same language in this case. They use the same written language, but because 中文 (Zhōngwén) or written Chinese is mutually intelligible doesn’t mean that the languages are related. For example, both Korean and Japanese partially use the Chinese writing system, and even Vietnamese used to use chinese characters before they romanized their writing. Because 中文 is pictographic and not phonetic, it is largely disconnected from the spoken language. Because I know Mandarin, for example when I travel to Japan, I’m able to read a lot of signs and random words, and totally understand the meaning, but I wouldn’t know what they sound like. So if I see a sign that says “動物園” I would know that it says ‘zoo’, without actually knowing how to say ‘zoo’ in Japanese. The same idea applies in Chinese and Cantonese.",
"I had a teacher that actually called then just dialects of Latin. OK, this guy knew 63 languages, so his view on languages in general might differ from ours...",
"Mandarin and Cantonese use the same written language but the characters are pronounced differently. Spanish, Portuguese, etc have different written languages in addition to being spoken differently.",
"The distinction between \"languages\" and \"dialects\" is more of a political distinction than a linguistic one. Real languages are rarely so simple as this. I'll use the Scandinavian countries as an example. The differences between Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish in normal conversation are not formalized by borders. It's a continuum of change across Scandinavia, and most speakers can adapt fairly easily to the changes, depending on how far away from home they are. One exception is Danish, because most people in Denmark understand other Scandinavian languages far easier than other Scandinavians understand Danish - Danish adds a bunch of guttural sounds to words that aren't detectable by spelling. So there exists a state of *asymmetrical intelligibility.* Now add to this that Norwegian is actually made up of two languages: a formal written form, and a less formal conversational form. That's called *diglossia.* And the written form is a lot closer to Danish than the spoken form. Add to this the Icelandic language - it exists today almost unchanged from its oldest form, which is the language that Norse settlers brought with them. It sounds like an extremely archaic form of Norwegian, but with very little mutual intelligibility between Icelandic and modern Norwegian. Now, take all this, and consider that China has 1.4 billion people, of wildly different ethnic groups, speaking languages that aren't even of the same language group (meaning they have no historical link at all.) See? It's messy and complex, and does not care to be put in neat little boxes and labeled. But your question does have merit, because there is very little mutual intelligibility between Cantonese and Mandarin despite them having a strong historical link and many similarities.",
"Mandarin and Cantonese shouldn’t really be considered part of the same language. They are completely different from each other and a Mandarin speaker would have no idea what the hell a Cantonese speaker is saying. They’re separate languages.",
"I'm a language enthusiast who does Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. It's probably better to use the words Chinese and Arabic like we use the term Romance in reference to language. The dialects are so different that they are essentially all different languages.",
"A buddy from Liaoning says that Northern Mandarin is basically a simplified version of Chinese that was created for Manchus and Jurchens who were learning Chinese as a second language after the conquest. He says he can't understand any Southwest Mandarin at all. Apparently the phonology of beifanghua are really close to Manchu.",
"I was on a road trip in Europe once and had a Dutch friend and a friend that spoke Flemish in the car and we had long conversations about how they can speak to each other, but there are a lot of times they have to stop and work out what a particular word or phrase means as sometimes it's different enough to cause some pretty funny misunderstandings. They also had debates about what certain town names actually meant, etc. It was pretty fascinating to experience.",
"These kind of posts remind me to appreciate Russian language and it's absence of dialects at all. It is the same everywhere.",
"I was told that there is no \"Chinese\" and that Mandarin and Cantonese are indeed their own languages :P Is that true or false?"
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bf2fu6 | In ancient times how one tribe could communicate with another | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same way you would try to communicate with someone who diddnt understand you. You cant just use words anymore, so you eithrr teach them small phrases or switch to nodding yes or no as well as using touch for everything. EX: 1 tribe isntrading woth another. Tribe member 1 wants to trade his pelt for tribe member 2s axe. He holds up his pelt and points to the axe. Tribe member 2 pushes the axe towards 1 and takes the pelt."
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bf2xd4 | How did Easter, the celebration ending arguably the most sacred time of year for Christians, became, in most places, about bunnies and chocolate eggs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Springtime is the time for fertility festivals - hence rabbits and eggs. Christianity just liked mapping over pagan stuff with Jesus stuff, but it never quite managed to erase the previous beliefs and traditions.",
"Christianity has a long history of co-opting pre-existing pagan festivals. It was easier to try to convert them to a Christian meaning than try to force people to stop celebrating it and presumably punishing people for doing so. Easter celebrations are based around customs from a number of spring festivals that celebrate rebirth and renewal. Bunnies, eggs and the like represent springtime. Priest: \"Ok, you can keep doing this festival so long as you squeeze in worship of Christ somehow\"",
"Easter began life as a pagan fertility festival (to the goddess Ēostre) celebrating new life, such as bunnies (which are born in spring) and eggs (which hatch in spring) and lambs, (which are also born in spring). Christianity tried killing people who did not conform to their imposed faith but the buggers found their own religions were more powerful and refused to give up their celebrations, no matter how many were punished. Eventually the church decided it was smarter to co-opt the existing holidays into the Christian faith, thus allowing pagans to keep their celebrations and still be Christians. This is why Christmas still has pagan symbols such as pine trees and yule logs, because Yule was the pagan winter celebration. And it's why easter still celebrates young animals, because it was a celebration of fertility, not resurrection."
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bf5r7o | Why are most women crazy about shoes? Is there a reason? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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bf79si | If Chinese letters represent meaning instead of pronunciation how do they write foreign words like air conditioning or computer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They represent both meaning and pronunciation. So when expressing a loan word, proper noun, or brand in Chinese, you would ideally find characters that convey the sound and meaning as close as possible. Here's a [page about that ]( URL_0 ) that expresses the concept well. \"Coca-cola is one of the most popular soft drinks in China. It’s called 可口可乐 (kě kǒu kě lè.) The character “口,” for “mouth” suggests that the brand is a food or beverage. The character “乐” means “joy.” Literally translated, it would be “can be tasty, can be happy.” 可口可乐 sounds very similar to Coca-cola, while giving the brand a light-hearted and happy essence.\"",
"by meaning. what does the foreign word mean. air conditioner 空调 空 = sky / space (as in \"this spacious room\" ) 调 = adjust / change computer 电脑 电 = electric / electronic 脑 = brain"
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bfa5ja | - Why do some languages have male and female words? Eg German. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An important thing to take note of is not to put too much weight in to the words \"Masculine\", \"Feminine\", and \"Neuter\". these conventions are less trying to apply gender to objects and more trying to group similar words together in to word classes. it would be no different if we'd call these words \"Black, White, Gray\" words, or \"class-1, class-2, class-3\" nouns. This is the difference between natural gender and grammatical gender. Natural gender is what gender you are, grammatical gender is the class the word describing you falls in to. Words that are in the same class share certain properties. for instance masculine words in icelandic tend to have the definite artice \"-inn\", often take on the suffix \"arnir\" when in plural, and all use the masculine declinitions of adjectives (i.e all blue masculine objects are \"blár\", whereas feminine words are \"blá\", and neuter \"blátt\"). knowing the gender of a word helps you knowing how to use that word, and what other words in the language it behaves like. it also is suspected to aid with sentence processing. If you mishear or miss a part of what someone is saying to you the other words in the sentence can help you deduce what you just missed, and gender helps narrow down the possibilities. Finally it helps with language clarity and usage a bit. In english you always use \"it\" for things without a natural gender (unless you personify things like your boat). So, when talking about a mug on a table you say \"It was placed on it\". While this is easy to deduce from context it isn't instantly clear if the mug is on the table or the table on the mug. However in icelandic you would say \"Hann er á því\" (He is on it). The mug is masculine, and the table is neuter. Even if you're unsure of how tables work you instantly know which object is being referred to, because the table can't be a \"he\" and the mug can't be an \"it\".",
"As a Spanish native speaker, please let me ask precisely the opposite: how is it that there are languages without this kind of nuances?",
"This comment section seems to be full of partially informed answers from non-experts! (And arguments for some reason.)",
"Indo-European languages inherited grammatical gender from PIE. This is one specific example of the general phenomenon of noun classes. Some languages have different bases for noun classes (see the person upthread who mentioned Ojibwe) and some have lots more than 3 (Swahili, for example).",
"Okay so I’m a linguist. In short, thousands of years ago, when language was first developing like we know it, they categorised things into animate and inanimate. A tiger would be animate, a boulder inanimate. As times changed, the systems changed too, and the systems got replaced. There’s evidence of this in that some languages have classifiers instead of genders, some have neither but used to, some still do, and some have neutral gender as well.",
"There's proper answers in this thread already, but for some other tidbits on the topic there's a neat [video]( URL_0 ) from Tom Scott. The title isn't relevant to most of the video, it's mainly about grammatical gender.",
"In Greek we also have gendered nouns, and it feels like there's some logic behind the assignment, moreso than German or French. For example, adopted words from other languages or more modern words tend to be neutral in general. Assignment of gender to proper names stems from the gender of the kind of entity they name (is it a bank, a service, a ministry, etc). Most of the words are gendered based on the Ancient Greek assignment. I guess for most languages this assignment goes back thousands of years, so I'd love to know how it came to be in each case.",
"The best study I can find on this issue is [here]( URL_0 ) but since this is ELI: The theory is that all languages with gender evolved from one single language, back before recorded history. And to these ancient speakers, the idea that a rock and a forest were somehow female (as they are today in French) but that a fire was somehow male (as it is in Italian), meant something to these early speakers from pre-history. And then over time the reasons for words being masculine and feminine faded and speakers of the current languages almost arbitrarily assigned gender to things, so that the whole system is muddled and makes no sense.",
"I was trying to learn a Germanic language once, my partner is a native speaker. He was so confused why I was so confused by gender. Me: Like a car. What gender is a car? Him: What do you think it is? Me: I mean, female? Cars and boats are usually referred to as she, so that's my guess. Him: *bewildered stare* That doesn't make any sense. Obviously it's a \"him\". Me: *blink* Me: Um, ok. Well, how about a tree? Him: What do you think it is? Me: Uhhhhh.... Male? Him: What?! A tree?! Me: Ok, then obviously it's female? Him: *facepalm* NO! IT'S A TREE! It's neuter, of course! Me: *gives up on the language forever*",
"In pulp fiction does brad refer to marsellus Wallace using female words in these languages when translated? If not then why did he try and fuck him like a bitch?",
"Just to add a distinction, grammatical gender is usually masculine, feminine or neuter. Male or Female applies to biological sex (and again I specifically mean sex, not gender. In original use sex referred to biological sex, as in male or female whereas gender typically referred to grammar or to societal/cultural role, manner etc. and was described using the words masculine or feminine.) EDIT: perhaps I should have made the above \"in the context of this post, gender is usually masculine feminine or neuter. In other words I was just making the distinction between sex (male/female) and gender (masculine/feminine/neuter in this context). Obviously we now recognize many more social genders and how people identify as well as many languages which have different gender scales (animate/inanimate, neuter and uter, etc.)",
"Just think of it as “type A”, “type B” or “type C” words. Masculine, femenine, neuter, common, etc., are just words to denote words that require different treatments; they have nothing to do with biological gender. “Gender agreement” is just using a “type A” noun with a “type A” article and a “type A” article and so forth. For instance, in Spanish: la casa blanca es limpia y bonita (the white house is clean and pretty) - notice how every other word ends in “a”, which denotes the femenine in Spanish. It all has to match for the sentence to be grammatical. In the Bantu languages there can be up to 20 “kinds” of nouns (classes), all with their own little sound marker, which is tagged onto every word in the sentence for agreement.",
"Keeps things more simple, theoretically, by maximizing the info that you articulate while minimizing the words you use. There are female forms to describe all female group activities, same for male, and there are different ones for mixed groups. It makes learning the words more annoying.",
"That's one of the main fights of spanish feminists, it's call'd \"inclusive language\" and it's supposed to end distinctions between mans and womens",
"There are divisions in the Russian language. And mass division happened not so long ago, about 50-80 years ago. This is due to the fact that in the USSR on a profession where worked the same number of men and women was added female analogue of the title.(For professions where women were not so many, the division is officially lacking) Such division tried to introduce earlier, but many women did not like it as they considered it reduces their importance as the professional & #x200B; p.s Sorry for bad english, used the help of Google translator",
"I wonder if there are languages that don't have a classification in male and female words. I speak Dutch and while it might not be well-known, there are also male and female (and neutral) words in my language. The difference is not that noticable as the article for male and female words is the same, but when referring to a word in another sentence, there is a difference. I have noticed that this is really hard for people learrning Dutch.",
"Are you talking about the difference between German and Gerwoman???",
"Punjabi, which somes from sanskrit, has the same thing, on steroids. Speaking it only at home, I messed up genders of innanimate objects all the time until about 8 or 9. And on top of that, every familial relation has ita own word. So with one small word, I know whether it is my aunt/uncle that is younger/older on my mom/dads side.",
"Because they hate adult learners. That's why... Not that I'm bitter and gave up any hope of being able to figure it out while I was still a teen. I asked a Spanish lady and French speaking African on my course at uni ( not a language course) how they knew and neither could tell me. So what bloody chance do I have?",
"There is a theory that in Proto Indo-European, the original distinction was between nouns for animate and inanimate objects, but then things got very confused. You don't see much gender agreement across IE branches (Romance, Germanic, Slavic). English is kind of an outlier, since we can't be bothered. That's probably because Norman French and Anglo-Saxon genders didn't match, so we just gave up trying.",
"Italian fucked me up. Everything is either feminine or masculine, I couldn't grasp the concept of \"it\" on objects for such a long time in English. Even in one of the explanations from icelanding here I read \"mug\" I thought a feminine article in my head and for a bit shook that mug is actually masculine in Icelandic. I love the existence of \"they/them\" in english",
"None of these answers are right and they’d confuse the hell out of a five year old. Some languages have male and female words because that’s how they’ve been speaking for a really long time and nobody has felt like changing it. English used to but people from Norway came and then people France came and a lot of people were getting confused so they all decided to stop having male and female words.",
"Cannot tell you exactly why but it's just easier to communicate as it transfers more information. It makes for some \"funny\" word plays though, for example: tree in Lithuanian is \"medis\" (pronounced \"meh-diss\") and if you wanted but you actually cant you but you can make it female - \"medė\" (pro. \"meh-deh\"). A tree is neutral in English but is masculine in Lithuanian. Other examples would be \"man - vyras\" though you can also make this masculine word feminine by changing the ending to \"vyrė\". It's fun",
"I have read this whole thread and some of OP answers, and I have noticed this is not something that can be answered just with an ELI5 way. It's not you, who's learning a language, that gets to decide what is important or not, what's best or not. It's the cultural background of that language, culture and language are intrinsically connected in way you can't just split them. As an English speaker, you can't look at German or any other language that works differently than yours and say \"English is better\". It displays a huge level of ignorance to a narcissistic degree. It's obvious, the language you are natively fluent is always going to be your best language and any other language might be a little difficult until you embrace it's culture in your learning to fluency. OP made 2 questions: Why do some languages have male and female words, like German? And what does it add to the language? The answer for the latter question is easier than the former: Because it adds another layer of information, whether this is relevant to you or not depends heavily on context. As for why, it's about how to separate certain words for conjugation, which includes sound and cultural reasons. If you are asking this because you are currently learning German, I suggest that you stop worrying about it and get fluent before trying to get into the historical and philosophical parts of language Now if you are asking this because you legitimately curious about it, I suggest you to take a language course in University or even major at it, not only you will find such answers but also you are going to be presented with different questions that might require you a lifetime of research."
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bfgmmm | what dictates whether we say “river” first or last when referring to a river? Examples: River Thames vs. the Nile River | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a British English vs American English thing. hope you can shed light on something that has bugged me ever since I noticed it. Here in the UK, rivers are referred to as the “River Thames,” “River Avon,” and so on, whereas in the US they are referred to as the “Potomac River,” “Mississippi River,” etc. Is there a reason why? Once upon a time, river names in English usually included the word “of.” So instead of “River Jordan” (in modern British usage) or “Jordan River” (in American usage), you would have found “River of Jordan” (written something like “rywere of Iordane”). Many of the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citations for names of rivers, dating from the late 1300s, include “of.” Chaucer in 1395, for example, wrote of “the ryuer of Gysen.” This practice of including “of” in river names, the OED says, wasn’t the only way of naming rivers, but it was “the predominant style before the late 17th cent.” At that point, “of” began to drop out of river names, and British and American practices started to diverge. In proper names, the word “river” commonly came first in Britain, but last in the American Colonies. In other words, most English speakers simply dropped “of,” but Americans reversed the word order as well. While “river” has occasionally appeared at the end in British writing, this was “uncommon,” the OED says. Most of Oxford’s citations for “river” in last place are from the mid-1600s and after, and most are from North American sources. As things now stand, the OED explains, the word “river” appears first “chiefly in British English referring to British rivers and certain other major, historically important rivers, as the Nile, Rhine, Ganges, etc.” In North American usage, however, “river” comes at the end except sometimes in “certain other major, historically important rivers” like the ones mentioned above. But we haven’t addressed the question “Why?” Why does usage differ in Britain and America? Why did the Colonists prefer “James River” and “Charles River” to the reverse? We can’t answer that. But certainly the style adopted by the Colonists wasn’t unknown in the mother country. The earliest OED citation with “river” following a proper noun is from about 1460, in a poem by John Lydgate mentioning the “Rodamus Ryuer.” And as late as 1612, the historian and cartographer John Speed mentions the “Thames Riuer.” All we can say is that somehow a usage that was uncommon in England was transported to the New World and took hold. As for earlier etymology, “river” can be traced to the Latin riparius(of a riverbank), from ripa (bank). It has more distant ancestors in the Greek ereipein (to plunge down) and in an ancient Indo-European root reconstructed as reip. Interestingly, as John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, “A heavily disguised English relative is arrived, which etymologically denotes ‘come to the shore.’ ” “River” entered the language by way of Anglo-Norman and French, first appearing in written English around 1300, the OEDsays. But the word was part of people’s names as far back as the 11th century. The OED says it is “attested earlier in surnames, as Gozelinus Riuere (1086; 1084 as Gozelinus de Lariuera), Walter de la Rivere(c1150), Johannes de la Riviere (1166), Willelmus de la Rivere(1200), etc.” However, Oxford adds, “the early examples certainly, and the later probably, reflect the Anglo-Norman rather than the Middle English word.” If you’d like to read more about rivers, we had a posting in [2011]( URL_1 )about selling someone down the river, and one in [2010]( URL_0 ) about the differing US and UK pronunciations of Thames. Finally, all this river talk may have left you wondering about the name “Riviera,” which we now use for the Mediterranean coasts of southeastern France and northwestern Italy. That name, first recorded in the 18th century, comes from an archaic use of “river” to mean a coast or seaboard. URL_2"
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bfik3q | Why is Judas and Pontius Pilate considered evil, if Jesus’s death was part of the God’s plan and someone had to do that anyways? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Religion has countless plot holes. Maybe instead of trying to find explanations for them, you should wake up and realize that it's bullshit. (Like Axmantim said, but without the sugar coating)."
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bfk6o7 | In a church setting, do older people still call young priests "father," and do younger priests call older people "my son" etc.? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think it's a Catholic thing. In Baptist and other churches, we might say Pastor Smith or Reverend Jones. An elder of the church might be referred to as Brother Don or Sister Susan. We don't have lady preachers yet."
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bfyuxm | Why the indo-arabic writing system doesn't look very similar to Arabic or Indian Subcontinent Languages? | I learned that the writing system most of the western civilization uses, is based from the indo-arabic writing, but I don't see any similarity between them (arabic and sanscript[?]). | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Phoenician alphabet is an early ancestor: URL_0 It was then spread around the Middle-East and Mediterranean. In the West, it morphed into Greek, and from that, Etruscan and later Latin alphabet. In the Middle-East, it morphed into Aramaic which slowly evolved into Hebrew and Arabic alphabets. The important common factor is the use of alphabet, letters corresponding to sounds. So it's not hieroglyphs, cuneiform or the Chinese writing system.",
"the sanskrit script is called Devnagari, just wanted to add/correct that. Even im interested in the answer tho."
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bg7jpr | Why is it that Netflix wants us to spend as much time as possible on their platform? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you stop watching, something else will grab your attention, and eventually it'll take Netflix's place.",
"I think their goal is more about keeping you coming back to their platform, not necessarily keeping you on the platform for so many consecutive hours. But to accomplish that they want to make sure you have enough material to watch that 1) you can easily justify paying their subscription fee and 2) that you don't feel the need to also subscribe to their competition. So the more they get you to watch, the more likely it is that you'll stay."
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bg7r3o | where does the heart symbol comes from and why it isn't shaped like the organ. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We aren't 100% sure. There has been quite a bit of research into this but the heart symbol has been used by various cultures for 1000's of years and the exact origin isn't known. Theories regarding this are often nothing more than speculation, with many of them having been put forward as recently as the 20th century. These include that the symbol represents stylized female genitalia, butt cheeks, or plants that were once used as contraceptives.",
"From what i have read/researched: There was a fruit called the Silphium which was heart shaped and had heart shaped seeds. It was used by the ancient Greeks for a multitude of medicines including as a contraceptive. I believe that the ancient Greeks farmed/ate them to extinction and they nolonger exist. This is one of the theories of where the origin of the heart shape came from, as the fruit was seen as a symbol of love/love-making. TLDR: Fruit used for sexy-time is our symbol of lovey-time."
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bgrct8 | Why is the word 'drinking' associated with alcohol? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you don't need to clarify that you were out drinking alcohol from 8 30 til after midnight. No one makes an occasion out of drinking any other substance.",
"Well when going out \"drinking\" in social gatherings most people pretty much always drink alcoholic beverages also because alcohol changes how you behave and makes you kinda more confident where as going out drinking water or juice sounds lame and doesn't make you more interesting. In the end it's just a cultural thing."
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bgvggy | How did Popcorn become the go-to food for movie theaters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a cheap snack that became popular at theatres during the depression, but the main reason it got so big is that it doesn't crunch like chips or other foods so the sound of people eating didn't ruin the moviegoing experience.",
"Street vendors could easily make and sell popcorn -- back in the early days of film, you bought snacks outside of the establishment. It was like a fair. It was also one of the first places with Air Conditioning. You'd buy a snack, go see a film, and just sit in the cold room of wonders.",
"\"Although early theaters weren’t equipped to handle popcorn machines, independent vendors were quick to jump at the opportunity of selling directly to consumers. Corn kernels were cheap, so popcorn was inexpensive (ranging from five to ten cents a bag) and patrons who were not well-off could enjoy a bag of the goodness. Vendors began selling popcorn to people outside of the theater, allowing for a double profit of simple passersby and film-goers alike. The snack was everywhere. Soon, vendors could, for a small fee, sell popcorn in the lobby directly to people entering the theater.\" URL_0 Hope this helps friend.",
"In the beginning before talking films theatres didn’t want popcorn because they wanted food. They were geared towards educated and sophisticated crowds. But with the invention of talkies, it was something that everyone could enjoy. URL_0"
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bh30r6 | Why is the alphabet ordered the way it is? Who’s to say that ‘R’ isn’t the first letter? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's right there in the word: \"alphabet\". \"Alpha\" is the first letter and \"beta\" is the second. This comes from ancient Greece. Alpha = 'A' and Beta = 'B', etc.."
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bhg0oc | I have heard many times that Mozart was a generational genius who significantly changed music. What was it that he did that was so different than what came before? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He added far more style, by means of bouncier melodies with a lot more going on. It would be like only having stringed instruments and then bringing in the brass and woodwinds but on a larger scale. The complexity/intricacy, the mood, and his ability to keep producing rocketed him to the top of the classical charts.",
"While I think it was Beethoven that was truly transitional for music there are a few things that Mozart did that were unique to the time: 1. He wouldn't really stick to melodies if he wasn't going to use it for the rest of his story. 2. When he composed, he composed a story, be it in opera, symphony, or sonata. 3. In many of his works, every theme would serve a purpose and he could weave them together in some amazing examples of counterpoint. 4. He could audiate so well that he once copied an entire musical work by memory on the long carriage ride home (if that isn't impressive to you, remember that he not only had to memorize the melody, but the harmonies and instrumentation as well, off of only hearing it once). 5. He introduced some romantic era concepts of fairy tale and story telling into his work.",
"He was basically a savant at writing the music he heard in his head onto paper -- his ability and to evoke a certain feeling or mood with a composition came naturally to him."
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bhkbwb | How do translators deal with unavoidable puns? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is one of the things that makes translation challenging and exciting. Not only do you need to know two languages, but you need to be a wordsmith with your target language. When encountering puns, we first have to determine if the humor is essential to the meaning of the passage. If not, we can just gloss over the pun and convey the overall meaning of that section in straight-forward language. & #x200B; If the humor is essential, than we have a couple of strategies. Is there a similar pun in the target language? If there isn't, then can we switch out some of the words to create a pun in the target language while still maintaining the feel of the original? Failing that, can we just replace it with a completely different pun that can still be humorous in this situation? & #x200B; Sometimes, though, the language pair you are working in can make puns easy to translate or neigh impossible. With so many cultural similarities and shared vocabulary, working between, say, French and English would be much easier. Working between Japanese and English, on the other hand, presents serious challenges, as the languages and cultures are drastically different. Ultimately, though, all languages are complex, organic creatures. There is no fail-safe strategy to translating puns, and it is something you really just need to approach creatively on a case-by-case basis. & #x200B; Edit: Added a sentence for clarification.",
"Like an Asian simultaneous interpreter once did: He \"translated\" it as \"The president made a joke. You should laugh now.\"",
"You never translate perfectly, that's a fact. When it comes to puns, you try to find something close enough. You try to aim for similar themes, similar structure, or to find an idiomatic way to wrap the thing up. And sometimes, you're not even aware the name of someone is a pun. You only discover that much later when they are kindly asked to hold a door. GOT translators had a very, very bad day when they found out. Believe me. But we always manage something. It's what makes it fun. Translating songs is a bit like that, only more flexible. If you go and literally translate Disney songs from different language, you'll find they are the same, but different. But still the same.",
"I was translating a speech over in Malaysia given by an American from English to Malay, and the speaker said, \"it's a jungle out there.\" It was funny in English because that's a saying and we were literally in the middle of the jungle. I paused mid-translation, and decided to just say that it was \"absolutely not like America outside of this building\" so that I could get them to laugh so that the guy thought that I did a good job translating it. So. Live translation makes it a little more difficult.",
"Some puns can be translated, some cannot. There are even translators who try to make a pun somewhere else if they cannot make it in the same place as the author (like the Czech translator of Terry Pratchett's work). It's what I love about translating - how creative you need to be."
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bhxzcl | Will someone please explain the origins of British tea culture and it modern significance ( if any). | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The British creation story states that the seas were all once tea that turned to water when Gary Lineker dunked the first biscuit."
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bi00rg | Why are Germans seen as the standard for efficiency? Where did this start and why does it continue to this day? | In Europe at least, Germany is well known for its efficiency when performing tasks. Making cars etc they are known for being very well built, where did this all begin? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When the Prussians adopted Lutheran Protestantism in the early 19^th century, they became fascinated with rules. Unlike the Catholics, where arbitrary decisions by distant Popes were the basis of behavior, the idea of the rule of rules was adopted. By the 20^th century, Germans got really, really good at following the rules. If you've ever opened a German office window, perfectly balanced with a lever that will still be functional in 500 years, you can see how great a feature this can be. Go to a German airport, where the weather doesn't follow the rules really well, and you see something else, something I wouldn't call efficiency.",
"“Efficiency” is not the right word to describe this quality of German work. In my opinion, “Thoroughness” explains it more clearly. By this lens, it’s easier to understand how, while results are safe and of great quality, they are also often slow, methodical, iterative and inflexible. That said, slow and steady usually wins the race, except when compared with brilliant, driven work, so it is fair to call it “efficient”.",
"It is because culturally, Germans put a very high emphasis on the quality of their products, on efficiency and productivity, and on punctuality. Of course it's a generalization, and Germans also know how to relax and have fun and de-stress. This is in contrast to neighbors such as Italy where trains often run late and people are a little more relaxed about getting things done."
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bi9j6y | With all the money poured into the movie industry nowadays, why is Titanic, which was made in 1997, still the second highest grossing movie of all time? | With all the money poured into the movie industry nowadays, why is Titanic, which was made in 1997, still the second highest grossing movie of all time? It doesn't really make any sense with all the blockbusters. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think budget automatically equals a good movie. It's just what is appealing to the audience. Some high budget movies are rather disappointing and some low budget movies are great. It just depends on the story, acting and general quality.",
"Are you confusing gross (income) with cost of making the movie?",
"Mostlikely one of the major factor is choice. Back in 1997, there were a lot of films, but not that many good or talk-of-the-town films. Nowadays, with new big movies coming literally every few weeks. People have more choices. And too many choices mean people have to choose what to watch and what to skip due to time or money limitation. Or sometimes, they just stop watching movies all together because there are just too many of them (read more: Paradox of Choice). Another big factor is the popularity and the decrease in cost of home theater systems, as well as the increase in quality of streaming services, internet, and video storage technology (from tapes in 1997 to blue-ray and 4k nowadays). This means people may choose to skip the theater viewing and wait a few months for the blue-ray release (with potential of uncut/director edition)."
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bids1a | When people say that they called “their lawyer” when they need assistance with random legal matters or even after getting arrested, do they have someone hired beforehand? Does the average person need a general attorney ready to call at all times? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some people and businesses have a lawyer \"on retainer,\" meaning that they pay the lawyer a fee to have them available should the person/business ever need the lawyer's help in the future. People in certain professions or who deal with lots of contractual issues may have lawyers on retainer, but it's rare for a typical person to have such an arrangement. When an average person says \"my lawyer,\" it likely refers to a lawyer to be picked later, a lawyer who they previously hired (even if the lawyer hasn't agreed to take the new case), or a friend who is a lawyer and would be likely to assist them.",
"As a former police officer I can say that a good number (not all) of people use that as a scare tactic or to make themselves appear like they have some protection so that accusers will back off or take a lighter approach. The fact being that unless you’re in a job which affords you an attorney on retainer and you’re using that attorney for advice on work related issues, the “I’m calling my lawyer” statement is bullshit. Or this person has been in enough trouble that they are using this as an out. When a person has told me “I feel I need to contact a lawyer before we talk” then it makes total sense. That’s not defensive compared to “I’m calling my lawyer”. It’s like “ok fella, let me know how that works out for you”. It’s all in the context and posturing. I bought a new house 2 years ago and hired a lawyer to go over all the paperwork with me. He is “my lawyer” with regards to the sale of the house. And when I hit a brick wall with the developers on some warranty issues I called him “my lawyer” for sale of the house and issues pertaining to the house. If I got arrested for shoplifting and needed a lawyer, he would not be my lawyer. I dunno if he’s even seen the inside of a court room. He handles real estate law. Both my cousins and my uncle are lawyers. None of them are “my lawyers” other than being family lol. As I said, it’s all context and usually a statement made as a defensive tactic rather than reality.",
"Got a call from a client one day, I answered to hear him say, \"Oops, I hit the wrong speed dial button.\" There are some clients that use services often enough that you're pretty clearly their lawyer.",
"Some people (usually very wealthy or who are in court a lot) keep a lawyer on retainer. Otherwise most people saying that probably just have a phone number. Maybe they've worked with that lawyer before too.",
"Very few people have lawyers standing by: it's called having them \"on retainer\" and almost no \"regular people\" do it. Mostly just larger businesses, the mega wealthy, or people who constantly use lawyers on a regular basis for whatever reason. In almost all cases, they either A) mean they're going to call \"**a**\" lawyer, and saying \"my\" lawyer just sounds more impressive, or B) are simply lying in an attempt to be intimidating.",
"You can call most lawyers to briefly inquire into your matter. This doesn’t mean you’ll hire them for that matter, but a lawyer will likely be willing to provide very basic information in hopes you will retain them. Later, the person may retain the lawyer to assist them with the matter. Otherwise, they’re probably talking about a lawyer they’ve dealt with or hired before. They’ve briefly called them and have had some sort of preliminary conversation about the matter. The lawyer is probably hoping they’ll retain them again.",
"I work in insurance claims. We get this all the time from people who think it's going to scare more money out of us. Truth is, your adjuster would rather deal with a relatively sane lawyer instead of your crazy high maintenance ass. So we ask them for the lawyer's name, and 9.5/10 they don't really have one.",
"I have a lawyer on retainer just in case. I paid him 1k a couple of years back and it just sits there. If I ever need something from him, I have him do it, then bring the retainer back up to 1k. When I pass away, I have directions on what he is to do with the retainer in my will (which he prepared), so I don't lose the money. It's like having a lawyer credit card.",
"If you are in business in the US, do over 500k a year and/or have employees or write contracts you should have a regular lawyer. You don’t need one on retainer, but it is great to have one that is somewhat familiar with your business.",
"I have a CPA to help with tax preparation since I have more than copy/pasting w2 boxes. I've signed over \"Power of attorney\" for him to talk to the IRS on my behalf if they come knocking. They did come knocking once, claiming I hadn't even filed like 2 years previously. It turned out it was a F up on their end. That was the closest \"talk to my attorney\" situation I've had. And clearly that's a very specific domain, not someone I'd be calling up if I ended up in jail. Edit: Well if I ended up in jail for tax related reasons then he'd probably be involved.",
"Sister is a lawyer, so if I ever get into a situation she has friends that she can refer me too.",
"If you know a lawyer that you normally hire for your matters, that's \"your lawyer\" the chances of that person needing to be on constant retainer is extremely low, but some people do need that, and keep it. It's the same as saying \"my contractor\" is the one person I call when I need work done."
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bj03jh | What does Mary sue means? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The term actually originated from Star trek fan fiction, or more accurately a parody of star trek fan fiction. > character type and sub-genre originated with “A Trekkie’s Tale,” a short piece of satirical Star Trek fanfiction which famously began, “‘Gee, golly gosh, gloriosky,’ thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise.‘Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the Fleet — only 15 1/2 years old.’” It continues > The very short story was written by Paula Smith in 1973 for Menagerie, a Star Trek fanzine for which she was an editor. In a 2011 interview, Smith explained that, as an editor who read a significant amount of Star Trek fanfiction (written by women, in particular), she noticed a pattern of recurring adolescent female characters who were the youngest ever in their Starfleet position, irresistibly yet uniquely attractive, and uncannily talented and capable in every adventure she and the crew dared endeavor. Basically a way of the author, particularly an adolescent inexperienced author, inserting themself into a story. There's some controversy as to whether or not it's mysoginistic. If female characters are scrutinized more closely than males. As in \"what do you call a male Mary Sue character?\" \"A protagonist.\" Ironically, Westley Crusher in Star Trek TNG was criticized as being a Mary Sue character, both in terms of his natural abilities, intelligence and knowledge that equals those of senior engineers on the Enterprise, despite being 15 years old, and the idea that Wesley is just Gene Roddenberry inserting himself into the story.",
"A \"Mary Sue\" is a term for a character in fiction that is unnaturally good at anything or everything with very little explanation. They easily overcome obstacles that either other characters are stopped by, or that are described as or shown to be insurmountable.",
"There are certain groups of people who like to write and share amateur fiction. Some writers choose to use their fiction as a sort of personal wish-fulfillment fantasy. They will introduce a principle character (who is almost always intended to represent the author) and endow the character with all sorts of fantastical traits and skills. In short, the character is always perfect and beautiful and flawless, always does everything right and solves all the problems in the story. The rest of the characters are reduced to drooling sycophants who follow the main character around and shower them with praise. The phrase 'Mary Sue' originated among fanfiction writers as a parody of a character who is so perfect as to derail the rest of the story. Nowadays, 'Mary Sue' is used pejoratively to mean a character who is overpowered, flawless, and dominant to the point that the story is no longer interesting to read/watch."
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bj2ow5 | Why were monocles used when most cases of vision loss affect both eyes? | I can only assume it's because it was the fashion of the time, but I can't understand why you'd sacrifice clarity in one eye for the sake of looking on top of attitudes and trends. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're more like modern reading glasses, you keep the monocle in your front pocket and bring it out to read fine text. Nobody actually wore them around all day, it just became a symbol of rich old people because that's who would typically have the need for one."
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bj7mp0 | Why do people put so much personal significance and build a culture that lasts a lifetime around where they went to school for four years? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I’m like you, I don’t get very attached to my schools. But I do see the merit in some of these events where they allow you to network and meet people who you be able to reach out to later in the future. College for some people is just a place to network, and those events are an extension of that. Of course there are also some that are just for fun.",
"There are a few reasons. 1: the colleges try to foster this sort of thinking because, as those emails you received might suggest, it's useful for fundraising. 2: people make a lot of friends, and are often at their most free (pre-retirement) in their college years; this means those years are the ones that will be looked back on with the most nostalgia 3: Germaine to point 2, college is a place where a lot of people make contacts, and it can be a useful source of networking, both during and after attending. Being enthusiastic about your school can be a deciding factor in the attitudes of others with a similar viewpoint's attitude towards you. (like helping you get a job with a fellow alumnus) 4: it's a sort of instinctual tribalism- we're predisposed to associate with others who are similar to us, and going to the same school is an easy way to be similar to someone else. 5: for more prestigious schools, being able to identify as going to one of these schools can make one feel superior to others, either academically, or class-wise, and people like to be able to feel superior.",
"Many folks build relationships in HS and College that last a lifetime. You may not have been able to experience this side if it however. I’m very close (consider them framily) with some of the people I met and went to college with and still converse with people I went to HS with. It’s all about your experience going through these institutions. While the institution itself is a stepping stone it’s about the people you meet and grow relationships with that make the difference. It’s OK if that doesn’t happen, but for many these connections are more than just “transactions”.",
"Because the Cornhuskers are the best goddamn thing baby jesus has ever blessed this country with.",
"I think this is maybe a very American thing? My college and university only contact me as an alumni about donating or sponsoring really, or the occasional corporate discount for services because of being an alumni. I also didn't have much of an identity wrapped up in where I went to school and I think it was a pretty common theme. Maybe I'm wrong though, I'm interested to hear what people from countries other than the US think (I'm Canadian)",
"For me, college was the first opportunity I'd had to truly experience something different. I grew up in a small, rural town that not many people end up leaving. Very conservative, less-than-stellar economy, and poorly educated. I went to a large public university only 45 minutes from my home town, but it might as well have been on the other side of the world. Meeting and getting to know people from others towns, much less other states and countries, was not really something I had experienced prior to college. The breadth of viewpoints and overall progressiveness of university is something I look back very fondly on and is something that has shaped my current worldview. I've talked to others from similar backgrounds who had similar experiences. I wasn't into sports so much (which was unusual for my college), but I still place a lot of stock in the non-educational aspects of college."
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bj9enh | How come symbols for interpunction are (largely) universal, even though languages can have completely different alphabets/word-symbols? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Modern globalization. Plenty of languages (those read right to left in particular) historically didn’t use any punctuation."
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bjb202 | if you are born abroad at your country’s embassy are you your home countries nationality then? Do traveling people try to be born in the jurisdiction of their home/other country? Is that even a thing. I imagine pregnant women trying to give birth in embassy offices. Help. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most nations grant citizenship based on blood, not geography. In fact outside of the Vatican I cannot think of a single country that doesn't grant automatic citizenship to newborn children of their citizens - assuming the paperwork will be filled out eventually. If your parents have the citizenship of a country you will have that citizenship as well, regardless of where in the world you are born. A german mother will give birth to german children no matter if she goes in to labour in germany, Canada, or Thailand. Her children might *also* get the citizenship of the country they are born in depending on the nation in question (some nations, mostly in the Americas, will grant citizenships to anyone born in their juristiction, regardless of their parents citizenship)."
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bjday1 | Why are Judaism, Christianity and Islam consider different religions, but e.g. Catholic and Protestism are both considered part of the same religion, i.e. they're both Christian? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Catholicism and Protestantism are based on the same primary belief. That God (Jehovah) is the Almighty and Jesus is his Son. Judaism believes that God (JHVH) is the Almighty, but doesn't believe that Jesus was his Son, just that he was a teacher. Islam believes that God (Allah) is the Almighty, believes Jesus was a prophet, and that Mohammad is his Messenger. They share many of the Old Testament beliefs, making them all Abrahamic religions, but they differ enough that they are not the same religion.",
"To add to these other good responses, both Judaism and Islam also have denominations or sects within them like Catholic and Protestant in Christianity.",
"tl;dr version: * Islam - the Quran, as told to the prophet Mohammed * Judaism - the Torah, Moses' Wild Ride * Christianity - the Bible, Jesus Christ on the Cross * Protestants and Catholics - different interpretations of the Bible, but both believe in Christ as the son of God."
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bjdcw3 | can you describe the muller report and who this Barr guy is? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Mueller report is the culmination of the Investigation Led by Special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed by US congress, to investigate whether the 2016 elections were messed with by an outside force. William Barr is the Current US Attorney General Nominated by Trump, and confirmed on Feb 14th, after the Last Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned Nov 7,2018."
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bjharh | why do cops need to request vehicle registration and drivers licenses to give a fine, but bylaws can just write a parking ticket without all the identification? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When a car is parked, it doesn't matter who drove it to that place -- all that matters is who owns it, which is linked to the license plate. A moving violation is written against the driver, who may not be the owner."
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bjhia8 | Why are some compulsions so common yet so specific? | For example I have had debates with a lot of people about what volume is okay on the TV - most say evens are okay, some say multiples of 5, and a rare (correct) few say that primes are also admitable. Is there a reason that this behaviour is relatively coherent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The human brain is fond of patterns. It's as simple as that. & #x200B; We need patterns to filter out unimportant sensory data and focus on the relevant. Our brain evolved to become good at seeing and liking patterns to the extend that we see patterns where there are none (that are meaningful). We see a face in the moon and the outline of objects in clouds, for example. & #x200B; Patterns comfort us. The world is a less chaotic place if you can categorise and codify it. We tidy up. We line up things or place them at right angles to each other. We like when things balance out or follow a pattern such as even numbers or multiples of five. We look for patterns and we create patterns. & #x200B; Although the obsession with patterns can lead us astray sometimes it is helpful enough of the time to be an advantage. I would argue that racism is an example of people imposing a false pattern (this race equals bad things)."
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bjiqv5 | The Korean Cultural Concept of Han | Not referring to this 韓 Han, I'm referring to this one: 恨 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I took a class in university, and the teacher briefly touched on this. There were 3 different characteristics that make koreans Korean. 1 is han (한), the 2nd is heung (흥), and I forget the 3rd. I believe Han is the bond that koreans share due to the hardships their people have faced, as they have been attacked and invaded a lot throughout history, and as recently as WWII and the Korean War. It's like a collective suffering/ sadness they have have faced, which has built them up culturally to who they identify as now. Heung I remember best, as it is Koreans positive energy, and their shared love of song, dance, and celebration. At least that's how the professor put it. I'm not sure how much this applies to the current young generation, or if I'm even correct in what I remember about Han. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong!"
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bjri6r | I’m confused on how Jewish people are defined apart from the religion they practice | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For a long, long, long time, Jews only married other Jews and didn't proselytize (attempt to convert other people into Judaism). As a result, Jews because a relatively closed ethnic group - an [ethnoreligious group]( URL_0 ). If you were born to Jewish parents, you were Jewish, no matter whether you actually believe and practice Judaism. Cultural Jews and secular Jews are Jews in the ethnic sense (i.e. they are descended from Jews), but they don't actively practice Judaism. They would usually celebrate Jewish holidays and sometimes even go to the synagogue, but they don't follow all of the Jewish laws (for example many don't eat kosher).",
"There's an old joke: two Jews will have 3 opinions between them. That's accurate. Wikipedia has a good introductory article if you have time: URL_0 There seem to be two components to yuhasin (Jewishness): descent (from Jews) and assent (to conversion and the Law.) The requirements for each component vary from community to community. *Descent* requirements can range from \"both of your parents have to be Jewish\" (Karaites) to \"born to a Jewish mother\" (Orthodox and Conservative) to \"born to a Jewish parent\" (Reform and Reconstructionist.) If you're in a community where your descent doesn't count (say, your dad is Orthodox, your mom is a non-Jew) you may have to formally convert - and the strictness of that varies from community to community, too. The Orthodox do not recognize conversions into other denominations unless they *done the Orthodox way* It can be a headache. I grew up around Jews, and every one I've ever met or spoken to considers somebody who is: 1. Born to Jewish parents (converts or not) Or 2. Converts to Judaism (whichever community that may be) AND 3. Considers themselves Jewish To be a Jew. With all that said, Jewishness as an ethnicity is distinct from, but overlaps with Judaism as a religion - because anybody who is Jewish by descent is considered Jewish *no matter what religion they practice.* Tl;Dr: everyone who practices Judaism is a Jew. Everyone born to Jewish parents is a Jew, no matter what religion they practice and no matter what other nationalities or ethnic identities they also have. Jews can be: - black (Bene Israel from Ethiopia) - Latino (Sephardim from Iberia and Italy and their descendents and converts in the New World) - Asian (Jews of Kaifeng) - white (Ashkenazim, Sephardim) - Arab (Mizrachim, Karaites, Yemeni Jews) - Non-religious (Asimov!)"
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bjzo70 | Why did Latin stop being commonly-spoken while its derivations remained? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say what key is that its not that its derivations remained, its that they developed. The roman empire was massive. But it feel, with Latin being the dominant language all over. Now when it collapsed it broke into separate kingdoms. With time comes change. However the kingdoms would not change uniformly. The comparative isolation meant local dialects began to evolve into new languages with a common base. Now add in that they each had to deal with outside political forces. The Spanish had more north africans to deal and trade with meaning they would be more affected by them than the eventual french would be by their respective non-latin neighbours. Over time they all developed differently, creating derivations.",
"Language is constantly evolving, phrases and words can go obsolete as quickly as 10-20 years. If you try reading conversations from even the 1700-1800s, you'll realize how much even the english language has changed.",
"I see latin phrases being used in the church and in the courts. Is there a linguistic connection between the two?",
"When the Roman Empire covered most of Western Europe, everyone spoke Latin. But every city spoke its own slang dialect, affected by the nearby locals, and all those versions were a bit different. No big deal, they could all still speak with Rome and with each other, sort of. Rome declined and fell between 400 and 476 AD. Now there was no central point of reference. The various dialects, now also affected by whoever was invading in those days, grew apart. The only people speaking Classical Latin by now were monks and priests, who prayed in it. But lots of people spoke a dialect, by now a bit changed over 400 years. By then, Classical Latin sounded to them like Shakespearean English sounds to you now. 400 years later in 842AD, the dialects were different enough from each other and from Classical Latin that you needed translations. See the Oaths of Strasbourg ( [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 ) ) which were written in Latin AND Gallo-Roman (a dialect partway from Latin to French) and you can really see the difference by now. And by the way, the Oaths are also written in Old High German, which was as close as anyone got in those days to English. It's a direct ancestor. So if you want to know how far French has changed since the Oaths of Strasbourg, it's about the same as the difference between Old High German and modern English. Meanwhile the monks and priests kept Classical Latin alive (though the pronunciation of that changed some too), and nobody had spoken it since the fall of Rome. Then again, nobody has spoken Old High German since the 10th century either.",
"People didn't go to school, they learned whatever people around them spoke. Language developed. Thus, if you're still reading the same 1000+ year old book, most of it is probably incomprehensible (Heck, I find it hard to read 100 year old books now, where the language is set in stone by schools). This and many other problems led Martin Luther to fund the protestant church",
"Follow-up question would be so doeas this mean Italian is the closest language to Latin?",
"Because languages evolve, spoken language much faster than written. Think of how much modern communication is slang and cultural references that someone from 1919 would not remotely understand (and vice versa). \"I'm gay.\" or \"He's queer.\" had entirely different meanings 100 years ago. When Hamlet said \"Get thee to a nunnery!\" what do you think he was talking about? Convent? Or whorehouse...? Now multiply that over centuries. People in a given region talk to other people in that region, but only rarely with people outside it. Written language doesn't evolve so quickly, because it is written down, and more formal so it doesn't pick up so much slang and topical reference. So... over time the local languages spoken in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Romania, and France drifted from the 'pure' Latin (from 'latinium', the region of Italy Rome is in, btw), especially once the Empire fell."
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bjzppo | What is the actual reason behind why American's speak English with a different dialect than the British? | Since the British were the forefathers of the American nation, I'm wondering why their dialect/accent didn't stick. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"At one point we did speak it the same way. 200 of years of living apart has allowed the language to change independently over time. Even in the United States we have multiple dialects: think southern, country, hillbilly, New England, even city folk from different major cities have their own style of speech.",
"> I'm wondering why their dialect/accent didn't stick. Nobody's dialect stuck. The British of today don't speak how they did 200 years ago, and neither do the Americans speak the same as they did back then. At the time of colonization the dialects were much the same but they both diverged from that point. That they didn't diverge in the same way isn't terribly surprising.",
"Honestly, language changes a lot within just a country, let alone across an ocean. Just think of the way that someone in California speaks versus someone in Minnesota, or Alabama, or Connecticut. Or the way that a Londoner would speak versus someone from Manchester, Liverpool, or Cardiff. In the UK, there's a different accent like every 50 miles. The way that we speak just didn't stay the same between areas, even when they're under the same government. So it's more accurate to say that the English that was spoken by the first English settlers in North America wasn't the same as the English that was spoken close to two centuries later, by either the Colonists or by King George. And the accent that King George had at the time of the Revolution probably wasn't the same as the accent that Queen Elizabeth has now. Nor would George Washington's accent likely sound like my American accent. And none of them would sound like the dozens of other accents that are present in either of our countries. Any time that two groups of people live apart, the way that they speak starts to change.",
"Why would Americans speak the same as the british when the British don't even speak the same as the British",
"\"British\" is NOT a dialect. London, Yorkshire, West Country, Mummerset (invented), Cockney, Received Pronunciation (invented), Aristocratic, Irish, and Scottish are distinct accents. Southern US, Northern US, Minnesota, Louisiana... there's no one \"American\" accent",
"For a minor correction since this question has already been answered here: There is no singular \"American\" or \"British\" dialect. Depending on what arbitrary point you draw a line for a dialect, there are dozens of dialects throughout the US and Britain. In the same way that you may have learned one way to pronounce \"route\" (\"root\" vs \"rout\"), others have learned that word and many other words differently. In the same way you may use the term \"pop\", others may instead choose \"soda\". These choices are influenced by those around you."
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bkepb9 | When and why did MTV move from a platform for music/music videos, to one of entertainment/reality programs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"MTV was a subscription channel, the idea was to get people to pay every month for the music videos. By 1994, the end of the VJ era, this business model had clearly failed. Not enough kids would tell their parents \"I want my MTV\" and there were just too many other music and music video outlets for MTV to command a premium. Out of HBO's league and back on basic cable, the programming needed to hold your attention for longer than a 4-minute music video. That meant 30-minute and 60-minute shows. This lead the shift to reality, because that's the cheapest form of programming like this."
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bkqw1i | why is Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can painting so highly esteemed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"^^Edit: ^^Kids ^^ & ^^test ^^takers ^^version: ^^^ URL_1 Bright, poppy art was popular....and Warhol is pointing out consumer marketing is starting to dominate the culture. While we would consider a can of Campbell's soup to be rather mundane. So is a bowl of fruit: URL_4 * The design of a can of Campbell's soup is not arbitrary. It's still using visual reaction to create an emotional effect....just like art. Certain products had becoming solidified in the mind of American public by this time period: Coke & Campbell's were just one of many competitors when they started...now they were becoming *widely recognized & dominant brands.* You immediately recognized the subject *6 decades later*...so Warhol was right to pick it. The idea of a consumer society was being established. Brand advertising as we know it is a modern era (1600 - 20th century) thing that arose alongside the increased availability of goods as ships started trading goods across the world & then the industrial revolution put competition into overdrive. When print was the only medium & it was expensive.. products were sold blandly & honestly: \"For sale. Oak Dinner Table. $4\" URL_3 Compare that to how many different images you get in a 15 second ad today! *The symbols, advertising, and marketing of goods are all based in artistic creativity....and *certain brands quickly dominated the human experience thanks to mass consumption & society choosing a few dominant products among it. Marketing is *erasing* the colors, art & designs of our previous culture...and Warhol is noting that by only including the product marketing in the painting. * We don't see the soup. We don't see the family sitting and enjoying the soup. We just see the thing that gets them to buy the most popular soup . * Some art is important not just because its attractive, but because its portrays culture or important events. The dominance of consumer goods in American life is being noted here. Its ahead of the curve: Most of us don't know the words to our patriotic songs. But we all have at least 5 to 10 ad jingles in our head that will never go away, songs we can start singing along with immediately. That's a huge change in a culture. Warhol is noting that, consciously or not^1... while swimming in the pop art movement. You could also ask r. mutt: URL_2 ^1 Divinum_Fulmen notes below that Warhol himself said the choice was random. This upends my view - or does it? URL_0",
"\"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.\" - Andy Warhol I like to think that his viewpoint extended to the Campbell soup cans. An ad of Campbell soup in a magazine or online costs nothing, but one painted by a famous artist will cost millions. However, they're essentially the same thing. I guess it represents class mobility in the American Dream. Started from the bottom, now we're here in a sense.",
"It's an interesting question, actually, because art is subjective, but everyone thinks they have an answer. I've personally fluctuated between whether I love or hate Warhol for a couple decades, so I've tried finding opinions on his work from others, and have seen all the following as reasons his work is important/groundbreaking - He was making a statement about what is valued in art. Traditionally, art had to show a level of skill in capturing life or experience, and usually had some level of aesthetic value. But is a bowl of fruit, in and of itself, valuable to the human experience? And why would something more common have any less value? Thus, a soup can is as worthwhile as any other still life. - He was making a statement about pretentions within the art world. How many people walk into a gallery and see something that connects with them on a personal level? It might be pretty or thought provoking, but does it actually engage the viewer into bringing their own experience into it. He said somewhere that he always had Campbell's Soup as a child, so just seeing a can filled him with warm feelings. If a person is walking through a gallery, they'll be in the midst of intellectually observing paintings when they suddenly see this image that connects to emotional and sense memory of something they've actually experienced. - It was to point out the artistry in items that are never really thought about, because they're so common as to be mundane. Much of his work is centered around commercial imagery, which everyone is familiar with. However, put it into a different context and people are forced to actually pay attention to what has gone into it. - It was part of a larger scheme to brand himself. There were a huge number of pop artists, but how many are even discussed anymore in popular culture? Warhol, though, knew that shaking up the system would embed himself within the zeitgeist. His work is specifically meant to make people question the value of his work, which causes them to focus on it more. It's helped by the fact that it's easily describable (try to describe the uniquity of Starry Night to someone who doesn't know art; it's complicated. Now try to describe the soup can; it's easy, *it's a Campbell's Soup can*). Now, if the question was why people like him, I would answer that it amuses me to think he was just trolling, like the guy who made millions off of his abstract paintings, only to reveal they were the scribblings of his four-year-old. It's a sterile painting of a soup can, without any flourishes or artistic changes, and it only has deeper meaning because he claimed there was. It's one step removed from gluing a picture of a soup can to a blank canvas, but it took the art world by storm. Literally anyone with the capability of copying the colored portion of a pre existing product could have done it. There's no emotion, statement, or context *within* the piece, and it feels pointless as a result. Dude basically became famous for bare bones photocopying, and how much of that was intentionally screwing with the system is equivalent to how much I like him.",
"Three things: Firstly Andy Warhol had been a popular artist and illustrator for years at that point. He wasn't some dude who showed up with a bunch of cans, he was a popular commercial artist who wanted to also get fine art acclaim. Secondly he showed up at the right time since this was the era culture really began to take it's modern shape and transition from being about class and style and emphasizing a dressed down nature. This is when men went from wearing suits to T-Shirts and brands went from being a thing you buy to really concerning themselves with style, with this being emphasized more and more later on. Andy Warhol basically got in at the ground floor of the new movement. Lastly, Andy Warhol lived and died dramatically. The quality of a piece is probably less important than the mystique surrounding it. The only reason we revere the Mona Lisa and not one of Da Vinci's dozens of similar portraits is that it has a dramatic story to go with it. He was openly gay in an era when that was absolutely not considered ok. He was shot by an associate who was a radical feminist and that event has basically been a talking point about feminism ever since. He threw lavish parties and had media attention. The soup cans basically embody all of this. Of all Warhol's work they attract controversy because they're such a mundane subject matter. They attract controversy because Warhol attracts controversy. They attract controversy because despite looking simple and using simple methods they took a lot of effort to get that uniform despite intentional differences. If you wanted to point to a good Warhol piece the cans are what you'd use. Not his work on the Kennedy assassination or his films or anything more \"significant\" that he did.",
"We take pop culture malappropriation for granted now because it’s so common, at the time though to take a mass produced image, reproduce it as a work of art, this was very very new. It was a cultural mashup between middle class mundaneity and high society elitism. He forced cultural elitists to pay an absurd premium for something available to any muddle class family off the shelf at the local super market. And not only that but the elite thought they were in on a secret while the middle class thought they were just the punchline. Check out Marshall Mcluhan, medium is the message.",
"Warhol's thing was taking an iconic image and through repetition, made it meaningless. It was the basis for Shepard Fairey's \"OBEY\" campaign which propelled him to his current stardom today. It's kind of like why you're asking about it now. SOUP CANS. SOUP CANS. SOUP CANS. WTF is it about these SOUP CANS???? That's what Shep did and it worked. You wanted to know. WHAT is this and WHY is this? That's called art. Made you ask a question right? A painting made you ask a question to yourself. I think that's art.",
"The original Campbell soup painting actually consists of 32 cans in a grid, standing side by side to each other like you would see them in a grocery store. Instead of painting one single item, Warhol painted the same item over and over again to symbolize consumer culture. The reason it became highly esteemed is because he was unique in doing this during a time when consumerism had come to dominate the American life",
"His art wasn't anything spectacular but the man knew how to brand himself. He knew how to make art about him and his ideas as opposed to his art being great in its own right. BillHicksScream provided a good explanation of what the painting is supposed to represent, but this isn't an explanation that can be concluded by looking at the painting alone. The only way anyone would know the painting is supposed to represent branding is if they're told what the painting represents or they're already familiar with Warhol's work. If you look at the art of Iron Maiden or Molly Hatchet albums, you'll probably be impressed by the imagery even if you didn't know anything about the bands. But if you look at The Beatle's album cover of *Let It Be*, you'll notice it's just a portrait of each band member arranged in a square. If you didn't know who The Beatles were, this work of art would mean absolutely nothing to you. But if you're a huge Beatles fan, then you may find these pictures aesthetically pleasing because the images mean something to you. I don't care about Andy Warhol, and I don't have an affinity for \"pop\" art. That's why I find his work to be simplistic and boring. But people who admire Warhol or have an affection for pop art will find his work to be pleasing to their eye because the style means something to them despite its total lack of substance. Or, in 5 year old terms: Sometimes people like art more for what the art represents or who created it than the art itself.",
"Warhol’s work was influential and a product of its time. The era was a product of Warhol as well. He was the first to do art like this. It’s kind of a mirror and reflection of the time. Warhol started as a commercial artist. Banksy is a descendant art wise. It’s a blowing up of the art world and what communication is. A soup can is full of information, literally and figuratively. It’s a part of memory, culture and space.",
"Its more about disposable trash art, questioning what art really is. The responses above are the thoughts of overzealous critics finding meaning in the trash, exactly what Andy wanted. It was the 60\"s, a rebellious time to question everything."
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bks9vf | What just happened at the Kentucky Derby? Why did Maximum Security get DQ'd? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He got spooked by the crowd, couldn’t be controlled and kicked another horse twice in the back leg. Could have been a horse pile up with the potential for putting down several horses if injured."
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bkvffb | Why did the Mona Lisa become as famous as it did? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because it was stolen in 1911, cue a massive hunt for it and media furore that a masterpiece had been stolen from under the French's noses. Suspected the Kaiser had it, or Rockefeller, but turned out it was just these 3 Italian guys who swiped it. They had it for about 2 and a half years then tried to sell it to some art dealer, who set up a sting and got it back."
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bkwb28 | what does a music producer actually do? | I just watched an amazing documentary about Quincy Jones, trailer is here: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) He is responsible for decades of hits, but I'm not sure what that exactly means. Dr Dre says he became a producer because of Quincy, but in what ways are they the same? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The producer’s role is to oversee the creative elements of the project and manage the budget. It’s a term largely misused in some genres where every person who walks in the studio gets a producer credit, but as an official music industry gig, it comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. The producer is the glue AND the lubricant for taking the artist’s vision and turning it into a sellable product. Some are more musically hands on while others are fairly administrative, and the way that plays out generally depends on the artist. In the case of the greats like Quincy Jones, there is a musical depth and a sound they’ve become known for and artists will seek them out to our that signature on their music for them. More mundane, the producer manages the budget and deals with the label on the business side. The super creative types will have a production coordinator who helps navigate those things while the administrative types might use a PC to help wrangle studio scheduling and such. In reality, a music producer is no different than a sandwich producer or a house producer. They get paid to make something great out of loose parts and the great ones are few and far between. Source: 25 years in the music industry.",
"As a guitarist, I know all the licks and how to play them and make them sound good. When I go into the studio, the producer basically tells me which licks he thinks will work on the song and where to put them. He might not be able to play those licks himself (thats why I am there) but he knows what will sound good and fit the song. Thats a very basic explanation of what goes on. Think of it as an architect designing a whole building and telling the painters what color and style he wants the exterior."
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bkyp2e | Why is it that there are a huge amount of movies that have low critic scores but also have a lot of high and positive audience scores? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Audience scores are usually higher because people only go to see movies they think they will enjoy, while critics see all movies. If everyone was forced to see a movie, the percentage of the audience that enjoyed it would be much lower.",
"First, audience scores have a self selection bias. If you thought a movie was just meh, are you going to feel the need to go online and submit a review for it? Not really, because of this audience scores/reviews are going to bias toward the extreme ends, while critics are going to write a review of what they watch regardless of the actual judgement of it. Second, critics are more knowledgeable about what makes a movie good or bad while an audience is operating on more of a gut-feel. A movie can paper-mache over problems that someone who doesnt know where the seams in a movie are wouldnt be able to pick up on or quite 'know' why something doesnt feel right, while a critic would. Three, audience scores are susceptible to dramas and marketing. If you are aware of the video game space and the phenomena of 'review-bombing' games over whatever the drama is that week, you can see how factors outside the movie itself can influence public reaction to it, while a critic is far more likely to judge the movie in isolation."
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bl010n | Why is Douglas MacArthur so famous in the Korean War? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The landings at Inchon that beat back the North Koreans when they occupied most of South Korea, but mostly for being outright fired for refusing the orders of the president. MacArthur was a military genius but so morbidly politically ambitious he honestly planned to retire from the Army in 1944 before the war was over and run for president against FDR.",
"His Island Hopping campaign strategy against the Japanese during WW2 was brilliant and was covered extensively by the press. He would simply bypass any strongly fortified Japanese strongpost islands and move on to attack the ones behind it which were much weaker. Then, with their supply lines destroyed, the strongpoint islands were left to starve and wither for a few months. When they finally *were* attacked, the defenders were too weak from starvation to mount a credible defense.",
"MacArthur was held in wide esteem after WWII because, as mentioned, he led the island hopping campaign that was ultimately instrumental in Japan's defeat. Besides being a successful commander, he was also a great orator, winning over both his troops and the public with his speeches. As the commander of US forces in the Korean War, he turned around what started out as a dire situation for South Korea, pushing the North Koreans almost all the way to the Chinese border. However, as a consequence of this China sent thousands of troops across the border to aid the Noth Koreans. MacArthur favored escalating the conflict, using tactical nuclear weapons to halt the Chinese advance, and continue the invasion northward into China. President Truman opposed this, and when MacArthur publicly denounced this decision, he was forced into retirement."
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bl1opx | How did Cinco de Mayo become so popular in the US when it's not all that significant in Mexico? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to Encyclopedia Britannica: URL_0 \"In the mid-20th-century U.S., the celebration of Cinco de Mayo became among Mexican immigrants a way of encouraging pride in their Mexican heritage. Critics observed that enthusiasm for the holiday celebration did not take off with a broader demographic until it was explicitly linked with the promotion of Mexican alcoholic beverages and that many U.S. festivities tended to both perpetuate negative stereotypes of Mexicans and promote excessive drinking.\" Which matches with my own experiences. I never heard of it until Beer ads started promoting it. (also why are there 8 comments but none showing?)",
"Same way St Patrick's Day did here when it's not all that significant in Ireland: Americans want another day to go drinking.",
"The celebration Mexican Independence from Spain actually falls on September sixteenth, the day of \"El Grito\" (\"The Shout\"). The fifth of May, \"Cinco de Mayo\", commemorates the Battle of Puebla, in which Mexico defeated the French forces of Emperor Maxmillian. It's not a national holiday in Mexico, and is officially observed only in the Mexican State of Puebla. In the States, it's become a commercial holiday to promote the sale of Mexican beers and food.",
"Makes me wonder how the rest of the world justifies their alcoholism? We Americans obviously do it with holidays (ingenious if you ask me).",
"Basically every American holiday is built up around spending money. If there could be more expensive festive Veteran and Memorial Days we would do it.",
"Commercialism, basically. But hey, it's as good an excuse as any to find a taco truck or authentic restaurant and get some tacos al pastor with a can of tecate.",
"It makes sense that a cultural heritage festival like Cinco de Mayo is going to be more important to you if you're a minority ethnic group - there's an aspect of cultural preservation and celebration that just isn't as necessary when you're the majority ethnic group. When you're surrounded by people of the same culture it doesn't feel necessary to celebrate or preserve it, but when you're surrounded by a \"foreign\" culture, it does. As others have mentioned, the same dynamic applies to St. Patricks; and I'm from Chicago where we have [Casimir Pulaski Day]( URL_0 ), which nominally celebrates a Polish cavalry officer from the Revolutionary war, but is essentially the same thing for Polish heritage. (Yes, as with all holidays the commercial aspect (buy more beer!) erodes some sincerity of the holiday, but that's true of all holidays to one extent or another, so I don't think such a cynical view is necessary.)"
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bl77c1 | Why do some albums sound kind of meh on the first few listens, but then fire after several more? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The brain likes patterns. And after a lot of listening, the brain starts to recognize these patterns and rewards itself with dopamine."
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blbuw2 | Why is it that we hear the minor key as sadder and darker, but the major key as happier | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's not universal. You are the product of the Western tonal tradition, so you have absorbed a lot of associations. But it's not necessarily associated that way in other musical cultures, or even throughout the history of Western music. & #x200B; But interestingly, Hindemith wrote that the minor triad is inherently stressful, because it is not found in the harmonic series, whereas the major triad is in partials 4-5-6."
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blfsqw | What is the point of Picture Day when you can just take a photo of your kid yourself? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"So the trick is that a professional photographer with special equipment, lighting and training will make a better photo than just you on your phone. Yes, you will pay more money for it, but for many parents it's worth the money to have a really high quality photo done for you rather than having to do so on your own."
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blnk51 | why does art get better throughout history? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"In most cases, old art is highly valued because it was the first of its kind. It used a new technique, a unique style, ... and influenced how future artists paint. Only the unique, pioneering artists become famous and highly valuable. Reddit charcoal artists make very nice art, and a lot of people may be willing to pay good money to have one in their living room. But it's just not that innovative, and none of them will be remembered in 500, or even 50 years."
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blqfbe | why do mobile websites load, and load again, and change their spacing again? Oops, and there's an ad. Better jump the screen around a bit. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Can't speak for other developers, but in order to load some of our ads we need third party code which needs to be downloaded too. These scripts take longer to load than other smaller assets, like text and images. So the content will jump around a bit to account for the ads that have loaded in the meantime. & #x200B; The jumping around could be resolved by using placeholders of the exact same size as the ads, but we don't always know which banner size we will load ahead of time.",
"The page is just loading. Some parts of a page, like text will load faster while videos and images and ads take slightly longer.",
"Bad design. The spaces where ads will appear ought to be sized correctly beforehand to prevent the jumping around and just have a fallback basic graphic in case they don't. Although some companies will do this intentionally because it means people accidentally click adverts and they get revenue",
"In order to fit on screens of many sizes, and make it easy to \"plug in\" new elements to a standard format (like mad libs), web page layouts aren't static, they're dynamic. What this means is each element is placed in *relation* to another element. And different elements load at different times. So say an article loads first, and it's supposed to be right below a video (which hasn't loaded in yet). Then the video loads and the article says oh, that video has taken up more space I better move down so I stay right below it. Then an ad loads and the article says oh that's taking up even more space, I better move down some more. Then a picture loads in and the article says oh I'm supposed to be to the right of this picture, I better move to the right. But until those things load, the article doesn't know how big they're going to be, so it has to wait until they load to figure out its position. So as different elements load in, everything on the screen moves around. If everything loads in super fast this isn't a problem, since everything figures out its position almost immediately. But if everything loads in at different times, it looks like it's all jumping around."
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blubar | Who gets to determine what is redacted in a Special Counsel report? How do we know they are doing it right? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There were two versions of the report made. One for the general public, and a second for congress' eyes only. The one for the general public, the AG testified to congress that he used his own judgement to remove many categories of content. Some of it was required to be redacted by law, others was his choice. This is the version many people are questioning if he did it right, or if there were errors in the redaction. The second report prepared for congress eye's only, the AG said he redacted ONLY the grand jury elements, and left in everything else. Grand Jury testimony is protected by law because it is sensitive and is not a public record. Only three groups are legally permitted to review them: (1) Government attorneys who are working the case, (2) certain staff and others who are working with those attorneys using the grand jury testimony to enforce criminal law, and (3) certain special investigators for things like terrorism and financial crimes. That's called Rule 6(e). [Here is some more about that.]( URL_0 ) The Attorney General can view the testimony because he's the first person on that list. Limited members of his staff can view the report because they're the second group on the list. But Congress is not on the list of three groups allowed in Rule 6(e). The rule can be overturned if a federal judge overseeing the situation rules it is necessary. Without a court order or a change to the law adding Congress to the list of exceptions, it would be illegal for the AG to release the grand jury testimony."
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blyqfj | Why do the spires on gothic cathedrals have those knobs on them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The spires are called [pinnacles]( URL_2 ), and the knobs are called [crockets]( URL_0 ), and are ornamental. According to this [PDF]( URL_1 ) they help direct the flow and drip of water away from the walls (no eaves)."
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blz00w | Why is Russia so huge? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of that land is the inhospitable area known as Siberia. It's a desolate wasteland of tundra that even the Mongolians don't want, and it would foolish to try and take over. After all, one should never start a land war in Asia.",
"Cause when was the russiam empire it expanded and most of the Asian parts are unliveable and they sold the part in america(alaska)",
"Actually Russia is not as big as it seems on the map. It is hugely stretched out on the map, especially on mercator projection (which almost all maps use). Basically to put a spherical Earth on a flat map - you need to stretch parts closer to the poles (because Earth gets smaller and smaller then you get closer to poles for obvious reasons). That's why Russia looks so big on a map. So does Greenland, by the way. Then in reality those places are considerably smaller and just look huge because they are so far noth. Turkey is also located on 2 continents, despite being much smaller then Russia:) And answer to your other questions was already given by other nice people:) P.S. here's a size comparison of Greenland and Africa on a typical map and on a globe (real size) URL_0",
"Most of the Russian population lives in the western part between the Caucasus and Scandinavia. This was also the historic centre of the Russian Empire before Ivan the Terrible began the conquest of Siberia in the mid-16th century. By the turn of the 19th century Russia had conquered all of its modern-day territory plus parts of Ukraine and Mongolia, the Caucasus countries, and central Asian countries as far south as Afghanistan. Most of the central Asian territory was and still is very sparsely populated and extremely expansive without much infrastructure. Basically, there simply was no threat of invaders in the central area because a. there was no power/people who could attack and b. there was not much there to attack or gain by attacking there in the first place - it's just so far out of the way of anything. The only threats were European powers attacking from the West (Poland 17th-18th century, Sweden early 18th century, France early 19th century, Germany in WW1 and WW2), the Turks from the South via the Caucasus/Black Sea (1820s, 1850s, 1870s and WW1), and Japan from the far East (1904/5, WW2)."
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blznv2 | What's the point of including "silent letters" in words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The pronunciation of the word changes. Knight used to be pronounced: k-nigt. Spelling always lags behind how words are peonounced."
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blzxpr | During World War II, how were American companies with investments in Axis countries affected? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally speaking, they lost them. Some could be recovered to some degree after the war, but most of the Axis nations got bombed flat so there wasn't much left. Fun fact: Fanta was invented by Coca-Cola Germany during the war as imports of Coke syrup from the US were impossible. Coca-Cola regained control of the plant, along with the recipe and trademarks, after the war."
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bm1h4g | Why can the US Military charge and convict someone of adultery like a crime? | I agree cheating on your spouse is awful, but i don't understand why something like that is a punishable offense by the military. & #x200B; Please be gentle, first time posting. Edit: thanks everyone, I now understand. Makes sense to me. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a law because the military has to maintain discipline in its ranks. A legal means of discouraging servicemembers fucking their battle buddys'/ shipmates' spouses is useful if honor isn't enough. Additionally, the military pays people differently if they have kids, so having a kid from an adulterous relationship would throw a wrench in that system. E: they can also go after you for home-wrecking a civilian's marriage. The military is very sensitive to any misconduct that will strain the relationship with a host nation like Japan.",
"Cheating on your spouse makes you susceptible to blackmail, which is a big problem if you have a security clearance or have access to military hardware and weaponry",
"David and Bathsheba. Basically, you don't want the guys in to worry that the guy sending them into battle is sleeping with their wife.",
"It has to do with maintaining discipline and order, and to a lesser extent the image/reputation of the military. So here's a couple relevant quotes from Article 134 of the UCMJ* (which includes adultery). > To constitute an offense under the UCMJ, the adulterous conduct must either be directly prejudicial to good order and discipline or service discrediting. > Adulterous conduct that is directly prejudicial includes conduct that has an obvious, and measurably divisive effect on unit or organization discipline, morale, or cohesion, or is clearly detrimental to the authority or stature of or respect toward a servicemember It goes on to talk about discrediting the service, but I think the discipline bit is more important. In eli5 terms, you're not in trouble for simply sleeping with someones spouse. You're in trouble for sleeping with someones spouse *and* damaging order/discipline/morale/etc. within the unit or making the military look bad. Discipline/order is obviously very important for the military to maintain, and that's why they have rules like this. *UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice. Our laws basically.",
"Basically when someone joins the military they agree to follow all the rules and regulations. One set of that is [UCMJ]( URL_0 ) that’s where adultery and other stuff comes in.",
"The legal rules are different for people in the military. They have, to a large degree, given up many of their constitutional rights, such as free speech, free association, right to move around, when and where they sleep and eat, what they wear. It's all to make them a good and useful fighting force. One of the rights they give up is also committing adultery; I know that committing adultery is not explicitly a 'right' but sleeping with who you want to, regardless of the social / relationship / marital effects is a result of your constitutional rights."
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bmcm8i | What is camp? | It was the theme of the Met Gala and after research I don’t entirely get it? Is it just ironic/different, a subversion of expectations? What am I missing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Camp is the idea that if you take some piece of art to the extreme, making it extra lively, theatrical, and exaggerated, right up past the point where it can't be taken seriously, then it becomes funny and appealing in a weird, ironic sort of way. Think of musicians like Liberace or Elton John - very talented performers who performed onstage in incredibly elaborate costumes. Their costumes were always too bright and bold to be considered daring fashion choices (like many pop stars would choose) - they were worn because they were silly, and that silliness was a part of their persona. Or the classic example of campy television - the Batman show that aired in the '60's. Batman stories were considered too gritty for television, so the show was exaggerated until it became a weird sort of action-comedy. The fights were filled with crazy music, sound effects, and animated \"BLAM!\"s, the heroes spouted silly puns and catchphrases while they investigated *actual freaking murders*, the villains were mostly incompetent and bumbling, and Batman's trademark utility belt was stuffed with hilarious gizmos for every situation like \"Bat-Shark-Repellant.\" If you look at it simply as a Batman story, you'd say it was terribly written with the wrong tone. But if you look at it as a wacky, campy comedy, it hit the nail on the head and became incredibly popular - even affecting the tone of Batman comics for decades.",
"It's not really a subversion of expectations. It's more like fulfilling expectations to an extreme or exaggerated extent. Camp is what happens when you make something that is deliberately silly in an ironic way. The Batman example has already been mentioned, because it is pretty much the textbook definition of 'Camp.' It wasn't that the producers were incompetent or inept. They were making it *deliberately* look inept for the point of comedy. Another good example is Austin Powers. The first Austin Powers was not a low-budget movie with bad sets and silly costumes. It was *deliberately imitating* the look of early James Bond movie with bad sets and silly costumes. Let's compare the 60's Batman to the more recent Chris Nolan Batman: * 60's Batman wore grey - and - blue spandex - Camp. * Nolan's Batman wore futuristic military armor with bulletproof plates - Not Camp. * 60's Batman had a belt full of silly gadgets - Camp * Nolan's Batman used ninja weapons and designed his gadgets to be practical - Not camp. * 60's Joker was silly and buffoonish - Camp. * Nolan's Joker was goddamned terrifying - Not Camp. I could go on, but I think you get it."
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bmfogp | Why is fountain soda the norm in US restaurants, while restaurants in (much of) Europe serve it in individual bottles or cans? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe it is because soda and free refills are the norm in most of the US and the restaurants can buy the stuff for fountain drinks for a lot cheaper and it goes a lot farther.",
"Soda drinks were developed and popularized in the US. The US had Puritan traditions (see Kellogg corn flakes) that influenced diet. Because of these consumption of alcohol, beer, wine was seen as bad (see prohibition). The US didn't have a cafe culture. This left a void. Where could young people go to socialize? The soda fountain was a popular thing, a social phenomenon, and had a whole culture of young people around it in the mid 20th century. During the mid 20th century Europe had cafe culture, had a tradition of good beer and wine that had been produced for centuries, and didn't have Puritan traditions that looked down on moderate drinking. Even children used to have watered down wine or a low alcohol beer.",
"Fountain soda is WAY cheaper, but you need the infrastructure to support it. Given the larger market for soda and larger network of restaurants, it’s a system that works better in the US.",
"I think in Europe we are motre of water, beer and wine, while in the US sodas are more commonly consumed.",
"Because American restaurants serve enough soda and in large enough quantities to justify a machine for it. Individually bottled/canned beverages cost more individually, but you don't need any real specialized gear to deal with them; just pop the top, pour over ice and you're ready to go. Once you get to a certain volume, though, it becomes worthwhile to get machinery involved; the expense of buying and maintaining the machine (assuming the beverage company doesn't just lend or lease it to you) ends up covered by the reduced per-unit cost of buying the syrup and carbonated water in volume."
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bmndsb | What is meant by "restaurant style" or "cantina style" on a bag of tortilla chips? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means \"We think you will be more likely to buy these specific chips, and/or even pay more money for them if we use a term like \"Restaurant\" or \"Cantina\" because it sounds fancier\". tldr - Marketing Edit: typo"
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bmq3my | Why do ‘good’, ‘mood’ and ‘blood’ not rhyme? | Basically, why is the English language so inconsistent when it comes to pronunciation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Language changes based on how people use the words. And sometimes it has to do with the word origin. & #x200B; Blood is Blut in German and blōd in Old English. So in Old English that would have been spoken the way we say the word Blowed (or bloat), and then the pronunciation changes over time. Also spellings of words that came before printing can change over time based on the scattered different printings of words. & #x200B; This makes the word good interesting because it used to rhyme with blood (like go-d, blowed), and in German it's like Goot. & #x200B; The last point to make is to never trust English. It doesn't strictly follow rules like other languages because it's a mish mash of a bunch of different languages which get changed over time based on how people use the words. The words Knife and Knight used to pronounce the K and it became lazy to say the word without the K and that stuck. Like people saying Wanna instead of Want To.",
"1) English is much more casual than most languages about adopting words from other languages, and it often approximates the original pronunciation of that word even if its spelling doesn't match English norms. 2) The Great Vowel Shift. Basically, a lot of the pronunciations in English started changing around the 1400s-1600s, but spellings of those words were still standardized based on their 1300s pronunciation. For example, the word \"meat\" used to be pronounced like \"met,\" then \"mate\", and now like \"meet,\" but its spelling never changed, and there are similar examples for most English vowels. Therefore, there are lots of ways to spell the same few sounds because historically those spellings were different sounds."
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bmuuep | why didn't Germany invade Switzerland? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Switzerland was friendly with Germany, so there was no reason to take it. There was no real tactical reason to take Switzerland either. German and Italy could both reach into France without going through Switzerland, Switzerland doesn't have any tactical nautical locations because it's a landlocked country. Switzerland isn't exactly an industrial powerhouse, nor do they have many crucial resources that the Germans needed. If Germany wanted to invade Switzerland for ideological reasons, it would be a long and costly war. Switzerland is mountainous, which means that Germans key tactic of moving fast and hard would be limited. Switzerland is also very militaristic. It may be a small country but they still have an effective and dedicated military. They Swiss would fight a defensive guerrilla war. They would blow up their key bridges, tunnels and roads, and grind the advance down to a halt. Additionally, the Swiss are key financial figures. Had Germany invaded them, I have feeling that a bunch of German wealth would have simply disappeared.",
"1) Switzerland is essentially a naturally occurring fortress. A handful of soldiers could defend a pass from hundreds preventing invasion by land. The height of the mountains makes invasion by air nearly impossible. 2) Switzerland has long had a policy of having most of the populace military trained and armed in case of need. This means that it would be very hard to invade as every single citizen immediately become a soldier. 3) Switzerland being a neutral country was a way for Germany to trade with other nations in secret. This was very valuable for them as Germany itself is fairly resource poor. Which was one of the major reasons for the invasions they did to begin with. 4) Switzerland had a good secure banking system that prided itself on customer security and secrecy. So using them to hide looted gold, art, and other valuables was of great use as a security buffer should they lose the war. 5) It likely was on his \"to-do list\". Just after he had conquered the rest of Europe.",
"There's a joke... a Swiss Bundesrat discusses with the german chancellor. Chancellor says if we invade we do it with 10 times the numbers you have. Bundesrat answers: good to know, so we hand out 10 bullets per soldier. Came to mind even though irrelevant.",
"They had no need to, Switzerland was already quite friendly with them, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, Germany was fighting a war on two fronts, so they had other things to do. Taking care om minor nations like Switzerland or Sweden wasn't a priority. On the other hand, if Britain and Soviet had fallen, I'm pretty sure that those surrounded countries would have got \"an offer they couldn't refuse\".",
"Switzerland is *really* hard to invade, particularly if you're heavily into tank warfare. It is bridges and tunnels, all of which are rigged with explosives. Furthermore, what makes Switzerland valuable are all things that are easily destroyed by warfare. There's no natural resources valuable for war: no oil fields, no aluminium refineries. Finally, Switzerland is not strategically important. Switzerland controls no major transport routes, rivers, or ports.",
"1. Switzerland was neither a threat nor a primary objective of Nazi Germany. They wanted to defeat France and Great Britain first to neutralize them before invading Russia to get the 'Lebensraum' Hitler always dreamt of. Switzerland was a small, neutral country that posed no threat to the Reich. To achieve the goals listed, Nazi Germany saw no need to proceed through Switzerland. 2. Switzerland's industry, financial sector and intact infrastructure aided the German war effort. Switzerland exported lots of goods to Germany, its banking sector exchanged gold for money and its rail network let German trains pass through to Italy and vice versa, even those with tanks on them as long as they were sealed at the border. Nazi Germany greatly profitted off Switzerland and Switzerland avoided an invasion by collaborating more or less. 3. Switzerland's army was small compared to Nazi Germany's, but they made it clear that they would not simply capitulate like Austria or Denmark. In an invasion scenario, the Swiss army doctrine was to delay the enemy at the border and retreat with the gros of the army into the bunkers of the Swiss Alps, where they could hold out for several years, blocking the vital passes that link Northern and Southern Europe. Invading Switzerland would have required a million troops, several thousand armored vehicles and hundreds of planes and not even these numbers could guarantee a victory in the foreseeable future. Theoretically, Nazi Germany could have met these requirements, but at the cost of postponing their primary goals or threatening their success once they were underway.",
"It's essentially a question of if the juice was worth the squeeze. Switzerland offered very limited resource and industrial benefits to Germany that couldn't be accessed peacefully. It also didn't allow Germany to access any countries that were on the \"hit list\" like Belgium did. It's also worth mentioning that an occupation of Switzerland would be a drain on already limited military resources. The entire country isn't mountains, the most useful parts are the plains. That being said, the Heer would be fighting a long term insurgency in the mountainous regions of the country, or would simply not occupy them and suffer constant raiding from active military formations within the mountains, the same would apply to any Italian effort as well. It's almost certain that a concerted effort by Germany to subdue Switzerland would be successful, but it would simply not be worth it. If we assume a post 1940 campaign then it's either going to delay Operation Barbarossa or take away vital troops from the operation. Switzerland mobilized, at its height, nearly a million men that would be dedicated to the defense of Switzerland. This means the Germans would probably need more than a million men to bring the war to a semi-swift conclusion. That is a quarter of Operation Barbarossa. Tl;Dr: There was no point throwing a million men against a bunch of pissed off guys in the mountains for basically no improvement to your long term strategic position.",
"Better answers above but it can't be overstated how *hard* a country like Switzerland is to invade. They just have the most amazingly defensible terrain, and I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that they have caches of explosives hidden around to blow up the key entrances to the country in a pinch if they have to. Also, don't invade your bank. Ever. Not smart.",
"Most top level answers are very off. & #x200B; Switzerland was on Hitlers to-do list, and in fact it was very HIGH on his list. He demanded plans to invade Switzerland to be drawn up immediately following the France armstice, and started rhetorical talk against the Swiss state and people, calling them a \"pimple on the face of Europe\" and \"a misbegotten branch of our Volk\". & #x200B; Battle plans were drawn up, and revised called Operation Tannenbaum. We don't really know, and it can be highly debated, why Hitler never authorized the invasion. However the most common theory is that other fronts and operations had much more importance at the time.",
"It's worth to note that Germany was totally going to invade Switzerland: [Operation Tannenbaum]( URL_0 ). In particular, Hitler and the Nazis despised Switzerland and couldn't fathom superior Germanic people willingly and democratically sharing a country with inferior Frenchmen. They considered it as a country that had lost any right to even exist. There were proposals to split Switzerland in three parts to be annexed respectively by Germany, Vichy France and Italy. Germany started preparations to invade as soon as France fell. This is a quote from the head of German high command Franz Halder: \"_\"I was constantly hearing of outbursts of Hitler's fury against Switzerland, which, given his mentality, might have led at any minute to military activities for the army._\" Germany wasn't visibly impressed by the \"impenetrable fortress in the Alps\" that is constantly parroted nowadays. Indeed, as they were getting ready for the invasion, they even downscaled the invasion force from 21 divisions to a mere 11. Effectively as the war went on, they estimated that only half of what was originally planned would still be enough to take Switzerland. Basically in 1942-1943 everything was ready for an invasion, including cooperation from Italy. Hitler never gave the green light ... and of course, the battle of Stalingrad, the invasion of Italy and the Normandy Landings meant that Germany had much higher priorities than seizing a tiny neutral country that was already collaborating with them to some extent.",
"Everyone jumping on the gold argument and conveniently forgetting Tannenbaum. Acts as a resource proxy? US oil made its way to Germany via Standard Oil in Venezuela. Safe haven for Nazis and their wealth? Look at Switzerlands record and compare it to Liechtenstein. Sweden sold licensed military equipment to Ireland and other nations of German design. Nazis loathed the Swiss. They didnt invade because its a fortress. Nothing more. Nothing less. [ URL_0 ]( URL_1 )",
"Germany developed a plan to invade Switzerland called [Operation Tannenbaum]( URL_0 ). Hitler, who was furious with the Swiss for dealing with the Allies, was dissuaded by cooler heads who pointed out that the huge losses bound to be incurred by the military and the fact that the Swiss would destroy their own infrastructure far outweighed any gain. Besides, the Germans could grit their teeth and still do business with them.",
"Here a Swiss documentary about the Reduit plan with interviews of soldiers stationed in the bunkers and a historian who was part of the Bergier-commission who looked into the Swiss dealings in WWII. The auto generated English subs are fairly good: URL_0",
"Why is nobody pointing out, that Switzerland was making sure that Hitler knew that they might destroy the Gotthard tunnel in case of aggression? Switzerland was one of the most important transit countries for nazi germany. Destroying the Gotthard tunnel would have been devastating. Source (although in german): [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"The Germans had a plan in place to invade Switzerland, called Operation Tannenbaum, and they would have *loved* to have held it. The reason they didn't invade is somewhat complex. The very, VERY short answer is that both Switzerland and Turkey (another country the Germans would have liked to hold) remained **scrupulously** neutral throughout the war. It might seem counter-intuitive, but Germany was a stickler for the law, and they never invaded another country without a \"valid reason.\" Yes, those reasons were usually bullshit, but they never just stormed into another country \"just because.\" Switzerland and Turkey knew this, and took extraordinary measures to remain 100% neutral. Neither country ever gave them even the flimsiest, most bullshit excuse to invade. The people who are not very familiar with history typically make these claims: --The Germans were friendly with the Swiss. Good go no. Hitler had this to say about the Swiss: \"Switzerland possessed the most disgusting and miserable people and political system. The Swiss were the mortal enemies of the new Germany.\" --There was no tactical reason. Good god no. Switzerland was a mountain fortress, and a major route through Europe (Turkey was an easy path to the Arabian oil fields). Retaking Switzerland from the Germans would have been VERY difficult. --They couldn't have done it because all the roads, bridges and tunnels were rigged to explode. People haven't checked timelines. There was a time when this was indeed true (Switzerland has been dismantling that system in the past couple decades), but the bulk of that system didn't get constructed until *AFTER* WWII, and when they did, it was partially because they realized that the Germans might have invaded. And then, they looked forward to the Commies invading.",
"Didn't Switzerland provide Germany with steel during WW2?"
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bn8dq8 | Why does every language have different words and characters, but still use the same numbers? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Surprise: not all languages use the same numbers. But the Arabic number system, invented in India, refined in Arabia and then fully embraced by the west, became the number system of trade. As a result, most literate nations at least have to understand it. Since few nations develop a complex written number system of their own, it’s easier just to use the Arabic system — unless you’re in non-Indian Asia.",
"Actually, there have been several attempts to organize universal languages: Esperanto, Loglan, Solresol, Volapük, and many others. The problem is that language is highly complex, nuanced, and diverse compared to numbers. Numbers don't tell stories, or feature much in poetry. They don't capture history, or emotion. Also, historically, there has been no driving force, no strong need, to develop a universal language. As long as you could talk to the folk in your neighbourhood, you were good. Numbers are quite simple in comparison. Numbers, the base 10, place-value based numbers you know and love, were invented less than two thousand years ago. Before that different cultures used different systems - the most famous is the Roman numeral system, a system that is still used quite frequently. The driving force behind the adoption of a single number system was trade. Money, prices and costs, exchange rates, and the like are easily represented and manipulated using numbers. Although language is used in trade, words and language are a bit \"fuzzier\" and less well defined. For example, consider the phrase \"5 litres of milk\". 5 has a well defined meaning. So does litres. Milk could be goat's milk, camel's milk, cow's milk, etc. It could be skim milk, 2 percent, homogenized, or something else. Language is primarily driven by the conquering powers. Lately, that has been the British Empire, and since WWII, the American. Now with that historical backdrop, and the ubiquitousness of the Internet, English is becoming the universal language."
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bn9gzg | Why hasn't Russia had any repercussions against them for shooting down MH17 and murdering 298 people | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Burden of proof is on the accuser. And to prove they did it will require a full scale investigation in russia, which is sure to run without any problems",
"Why didn't the USA have any repercussions shooting down Iran airflight 655?",
"Because they're just too powerful for normal law, and those with the power to punish them, aren't all that interested or are scared of backlash.",
"Ultimately the UN has no real authority due to countries sovereignty. They can pass resolutions making things illegal and they can \"charge\" people with crimes for violating these laws and try to hold them accountable in world court but ultimately participation in this system is entirely voluntary. Most are not going to volunteer themselves to go to jail. You may have 100% evidence that Russia supplied weapons to the people that shot down the plane but really what are you going to do about it? However in these situations we punish the country by instituting sanctions. The US has a significant say in how global markets function. Many countries do business with each other but pretty much every country does business with the US or with each other through the US. With a sanction we say, \"if you want to do business with that person/company/country then you won't be doing business with us\". Ultimately they make more money doing business with the US so not wanting to hurt that they don't do business with that country. This hurts the person/company/country as their pool of customers begins to dry up. Which then, theoretically, sways them to change their ways to have the sanctions lifted. This plane being shot down was a big deal but is only one instance in a long chain of events in which Russia has violated Ukrainian sovereignty. In the time since this all began the US has applied several sanctions to Russia targeting their Defense, Energy and Financial sector. The sanctions have cost Russia a lot of money. But Russia is a big country with lots of money. Short of going to war that's really all that can be done, which would not benefit anyone. Ultimately it's up to Russia's people to hold their government accountable.",
"What could you do? What can you do against nations who don’t want to (or don’t have to) play by the rules? The know the US/UK/France won’t nuke them."
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bnuwwy | How do restaurants, and similar business, deal with Ramadan in Islamic countries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I can only speak from my own experience. I’m not Muslim but I was in Istanbul once during Ramadan. People would gather together every night to break their fast when the sun went down. You couldn’t get a seat in a restaurant because they were all fully booked with large parties eating together at sunset. It looked like they were doing very good business to me.",
"Depends on the owners. Where I live, different businesses offer different services during ramadan. For ex most fast food places are closed all day, opening only 2 hours before iftar and give ramadan promotions. Its not bad business. Restaurants are filled for the next 4-5 hours. Cafes on the other hand are open all day. This is kind of due to the number of non muslims living in the area who need their daily coffee fix, as I have observed. For seheri, only a handful of restaurants stay open, also providing promotional offers.",
"Depending on the country, open cafes/restaurants also use curtains to block their windows so customers eating inside can’t be seen from the outside - out of respect for those fasting.",
"Currently in Qatar- Restaurants are closed throughout the day, and open at 6pm for seating and won’t serve food until after sunset. From what I’ve seen routine activity remains such as car shops, medical/ dental, and construction. We visited the mall, able to walk around inside but no stores opened until 730pm, however, they were open until 2 am or later."
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bnxdhs | Why do most languages count things using base 10? Why not any other base? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Look at your hands. Count your fingers. Your standard issue human comes fully equipped with two hands with ten fingers. Easy to count when you have sonething to count with.",
"listening to Sapiens book rn, he talks about how the Sumerians developed base-6 which was used in dividing a day into 24hrs and a circle into 360 degrees."
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bo0i1f | In sport, why are transwomen still able to compete with biological females? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They often aren't, and this remains a controversial issue that hasn't fully been worked out. Right now, there are few transgender professional athletes, and not competing at the highest levels in high profile sports, so it remains mostly a theoretical issue. If a transgendered woman dominates a sport largely because she used to be male (say a 7' basketball player), it will likely force the issue.",
"Unfortunately, politics and science don't necessarily walk hand-in-hand. Our best information from the science is that no one should be transitioning until well after puberty (the DSM recommends 21 years of age) and that transwomen have an enduring advantage over biological females in terms of most athletic competition. As a result, to preserve the underlying purpose of women's athletics, transwomen must necessarily be excluded. However, many people view this as a civil rights issue for transgender individuals and prefer to ignore this. That being said, the category of 'woman' in sports is an increasingly difficult line to measure. Not only are there natural variations that preclude some women who would otherwise qualify as biological women but there are a wide variety of 'grey area' practices that confer considerable advantages to women they wouldn't otherwise possess yet circumvent whatever rules are put in place."
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boixkr | I'm from Europe and can't process the size of USA. How does it feel to move from a state to another in USA? In terms of climate, culture, distance from your relatives... Is it life changing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Differences: * Culture can be very different, but I believe there are fewer differences than changing country in Europe. What is considered polite in one state might be rude in another. * The \"political norm\" can vary a *lot* - if you were considered left-wing in one state, you might be considered right-wing in another. * Food - Some of the food will be different, particularly the restaurant options. It should all be pretty familiar though, no drastic changes like going from French cuisine to Greek. * Climate - in Miami (southern Florida) it rarely drops below 18C even in winter. In North Dakota -20C temperatures are common in winter. * Distance - If you move across the country from your family, you are looking at a 6-hour, $400 - $1000 airplane flight to visit home. * Laws - What is legal in one state might be extremely illegal in another * Cost of living - Even if you ignore the city vs. rural differences, your rent and food might be 50% the price in one state compared to another. Salary differences tend to match, though. The Same: * Food - 80-90% of what you see in the grocery store will be the same. You can probably get your favorite cereal anywhere. * Language - this is huge. Accents and local dialect/slang vary, but you can speak the language almost anywhere (in a few places, French or Spanish might be more common, and I've been to a town where all street signs were in Polish, but these are exceptions). * Laws & basic rights - Most laws are the same depending on where you are. Your basic rights are guaranteed by the federal government. Your driver's license and other documents apply everywhere. * Standards - I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US everywhere uses the same electrical outlets, the same gasoline, etc",
"What part of Europe? This matters because traveling between distant states in the US is roughly comparable to traveling between the edges of Europe. Wisconsin to Texas? That's roughly like traveling from Denmark to Sicily. New York to Washington State? Russia to Ireland. Granted, the US at least has more cultural and linguistic commonality between its far corners, but this gives you an idea of the raw scale of size you're dealing with. And Russia and Canada are *still bigger*.",
"Often a move from state to state can be drastic. You have to account for difference in accent, cost of living, and in some cases laws. If you move too far in any direction, depending on where you started from, you could be looking at the cost of an entirely new wardrobe. Driving from one end to the other could take days, so family contact is likely to be stunted unless you have money for faster travel. Even just a state away can feel very far apart (think EU countries away). Hope this helps!"
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