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fluffysaurus
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17 Jun 2018, 1:48 pm

shlaifu wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
shlaifu wrote:
another similarity I guess: "politeness".
However, having lived in the UK I have to say: comparing politeness between languages and cultures doesn't work.
A culture is a somewhat closed framework and something that sounds relatively polite to an outsider can still be a scathing insult -or fauxpas- to someone who understands the connotations.

oh yeah: regarding the UK being mixed and international: they did conquer the world and forced their comparatively simple language on everyone (It's also friendly to accents). The japanese only tried ti conquer china, again and again. and their language/writing system is stupid complicated and foreign accents make it hard to understand for native speakers..... that's why japan is 99% japan...

Do you mean English is simple in comparison to Japaneses? Wouldn't it depend on which language you were familiar with already ie one with the same alphabet. English is the larger language.


japanese is painfully hard, due to them having borrowed chinese characters, and chinese vocabulary, at different times - meaning there is usually at least one japanese reading of a character, and at least one chinese- yet often there's more than one chinese reading, stemming from different times or regions of china.
That, in combination with a alphasyllabaric system that has a rather limited range of sounds and doesn't allow much in the way of clustering consonants.
then there's different vocabulary for different speakers - female, male - and different vocabulary depending on status - whether you're speaking down to someone or up.

hell, I once failed to order 4 cups of coffee because I used the wrong word for "4" ( there's three different words I know of)

even chinese is easier, it has one only one reading per character - yet chinese pronunciation is sooo hard.

yes, of course it makes a difference whether one starts with the same alphabet - but really, one should say: it makes a difference if one starts with an alphabet at all.
chinese ideograms were great across asia, because they allowed for a shared writing system that was independent of language used - but that only meant that people could roughly read what was written in the other language, using the same ideograms.
When the aliens come we need to put them in isolation with both languages and let them decide which one is harder :alien:



fluffysaurus
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17 Jun 2018, 1:53 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
Trueno wrote:
I frequently curse my constant and irrational fixation on The Code of Chivalry... I blame the French!

Any other fascinating parallels you'd care to share with us?
:D


ALWAYS...blame the French! :lol:


Hey, I'm mostly German, so "blame the French" is pretty much second nature to me!
:lol:
They've been number one in Europe for almost all of the last thousand years, so yea, we pretty much all like to blame them for everything, and steel bits of their country, of course.



Peacesells
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17 Jun 2018, 2:32 pm

fluffysaurus wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
fluffysaurus wrote:
Trueno wrote:
I frequently curse my constant and irrational fixation on The Code of Chivalry... I blame the French!

Any other fascinating parallels you'd care to share with us?
:D


ALWAYS...blame the French! :lol:


Hey, I'm mostly German, so "blame the French" is pretty much second nature to me!
:lol:
They've been number one in Europe for almost all of the last thousand years, so yea, we pretty much all like to blame them for everything, and steel bits of their country, of course.

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:



TwinRuler
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18 Jun 2018, 5:27 am

The Knights, and their Code of Chivalry, are very interesting.



fluffysaurus
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18 Jun 2018, 7:35 am

TwinRuler wrote:
The Knights, and their Code of Chivalry, are very interesting.
William Marshal is my favourite, he's known as the The Greatest Knight.



kraftiekortie
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18 Jun 2018, 7:52 am

I used to want to be like the Knights of the Round Table (in Arthurian legend).



TwinRuler
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19 Jun 2018, 4:01 am

I fear that The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall one day disassemble into its components: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Intriguingly, exactly like how the Germans refer to themselves as Europeans, hoping others in the EU shall do the same; the English have for years referred to themselves as British, hoping the rest of the UK shall do the same.

Assure me that will never happen!



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19 Jun 2018, 4:09 am

Believe me, a very high percentage of Welsh and Scottish people are happy to regard themselves as British. Most Unionists in Northern Ireland seem to proclaim a stronger 'British' identity than the English.


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fluffysaurus
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19 Jun 2018, 7:38 am

DeepHour wrote:
Believe me, a very high percentage of Welsh and Scottish people are happy to regard themselves as British. Most Unionists in Northern Ireland seem to proclaim a stronger 'British' identity than the English.
Agreed.

Also devolution wouldn't change the fact that we're all inter dependent due to our geography and shared attitudes. British isn't a nationality, it's meant different things at different times to different people. Being British is not dependent on us being a united kingdom.



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19 Jun 2018, 10:46 am

TwinRuler wrote:
I fear that The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall one day disassemble into its components: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Intriguingly, exactly like how the Germans refer to themselves as Europeans, hoping others in the EU shall do the same; the English have for years referred to themselves as British, hoping the rest of the UK shall do the same.

Assure me that will never happen!


I am sure that NI will leave the UK at some point (and therefore the UK will cease to exist) but I don't see it happening anytime soon. It's likely decades away.

Wales will simply never leave England's side, it's quite laughable to think they might try.

Scotland on the other hand were 40/60 in favour of staying in the UK on their independence referendum. That in my mind is close enough to swing the other way if things in the UK changed dramatically and they didn't like it. and they are a proud people with strong culture.



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27 Jun 2018, 12:17 am

TwinRuler wrote:
The British, the English in particular, seem like the European equivalents of the Japanese.
Because they're both roughly the same size? Because they're both islands a short distance from a continent?


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fluffysaurus
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27 Jun 2018, 7:17 am

RetroGamer87 wrote:
TwinRuler wrote:
The British, the English in particular, seem like the European equivalents of the Japanese.
Because they're both roughly the same size? Because they're both islands a short distance from a continent?

Since Brexit everyone seems to think we are isolationist xenophobes. It's funny how balking at bonding with people on the basses of them being geographically close and looking like us is interpreted as we hate other countries and were racist.



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27 Jun 2018, 7:57 am

People in the UK today, I have found, are usually more progressive than many Americans. Even the “right wing” types are not as extreme in their “wingnut-ness.”

If they are racist, UK people are usually less vociferous in their racism. There is not the history of extremely violent racism as found in the US.



Daniel89
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27 Jun 2018, 8:08 am

I wouldn't say British people hate foreigners. Its just that we have never had a revolution so allowed the upper classes to keep hold of vast amounts of land and wealth. The only economic and political power the working class has is the value of labour so when the government imports millions of people they devalue the power and wages of the working class. It also pushes up rent and strains public services. Then you have immigrants and the children of immigrant telling you that you have white privilege and it angers people.



RetroGamer87
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27 Jun 2018, 8:51 am

Daniel89 wrote:
I wouldn't say British people hate foreigners. Its just that we have never had a revolution so allowed the upper classes to keep hold of vast amounts of land and wealth.
Unlike America that had a revolution and so allowed the upper classes to have vast amounts of land and wealth.

Wait, doesn't the Glorious Revolution of 1688 count as a revolution?


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kraftiekortie
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27 Jun 2018, 8:58 am

The Glorious Revolution was a nonviolent revolution, primarily.