Random Thread

[Raphael]

I'm kinda baffled by this juxtaposition in Moose-tache's latest post:

Pro-tip, if you're scraping ancient sectarian schims off the bottom of the barrel, you're functionally out of differences.

We could apply a general culture test here:
What language do people speak?

So what kind of things people believe (or are socially expected to pretend to believe) is irrelevant and doesn't result in actual functional differences, but what kinds of sounds and symbols people use to communicate about what they believe is relevant and does result in actual functional differences?

Sorry, but that doesn't make the slightest amount of sense to me. It's as if someone would seriously argue that a strategy game and a word processing app that were written in the same programming language are the same software, while two word processing apps with near-identical user experiences that were written in different programming languages are very different from each other. As far as I'm concerned, people's attitudes towards life and major issues are more relevant than the specific sounds that come out of their mouths when they talk about their attitudes.

And - a list of supposedly relevant traits that doesn't list attitudes towards sex or sexuality? WTF?

[Travis B.]

to non-Hispanic Americans, almost any Latin American countries seem identical.

Name, like, literally one single human who thinks that. I've never met anyone that stupid, and I've been to Waffle House.

Umm non-Hispanic Americans often have a tendency to simply refer to "Hispanics" or "Latinos" as if they comprised an amorphous mass of people without internal variation. If they do see them as having internal variation it is usually in the form of things such as picturing Peruvians as going about in ponchos and having llamas or alpacas, and maybe thinking of the Day of the Dead as a specifically Mexican thing.

[alynnidalar]

Honestly, as someone who considers myself pretty "worldly" (in that I greatly enjoy travel, learning about other cultures, etc.), if you asked me to write a list of unique differences between, say, Uruguay and Paraguay, pretty sure I couldn't do it. Intellectually I'm aware there are many, many differences, but practically, I've never been there, I don't know anyone from either country, I've never read a book specifically focusing on either place, etc. How much more would you expect from people who aren't into studying culture?

(I'm not even entirely certain I'd call that outright stupidity--if the things you know about two countries is that they speak the same language, are on the same continent, and were colonized by the same empire, is it really so absurd for someone to assume they have a lot of similarities? (obviously anyone who assumes they are literally identical is an idiot, but this whole discussion has been about countries that are similar, not identical))

[Raphael]

Hm, one difference that I could think of without looking it up is that I've heard that in Paraguay, most people are L1 speakers of one specific indigenous language - though I couldn't name that language without looking it up.

[Travis B.]

Hm, one difference that I could think of without looking it up is that I've heard that in Paraguay, most people are L1 speakers of one specific indigenous language - though I couldn't name that language without looking it up.

That, and I had always associated Paraguay in particular with yerba mate...

[Raphael]

Moving from my earlier insistence on recognizing differences, even if outsiders often dismiss them, to the other extreme, I'd say all those countries mostly populated by white people who speak a Germanic language are in all kinds of ways very similar to each other.

[Travis B.]

Moving from my earlier insistence on recognizing differences, even if outsiders often dismiss them, to the other extreme, I'd say all those countries mostly populated by white people who speak a Germanic language are in all kinds of ways very similar to each other.

I would have to say that I largely agree there.

[Raphael]

I was a bit hesitant to even say that, because, well, glorifying these countries as a whole is fairly common among far-right extremists, but, well, similarities are similarities. Beer. Sports (though different ones in different places). Being obnoxious tourists. Being embarrassed about sharing a nationality with obnoxious tourists. Often disliking one's own culture's traditional foods and preferring those of other cultures. Often very ugly histories. All kinds of ways - good, bad, and ugly - of handling those ugly histories. A certain amount of legalism and assumption that things will be done according to some set of rules (though with differences in how exactly this is expressed). Lots of wealth. Which, however, usually doesn't result in general happiness. Large amounts of secularism in most places, though not all.

[Travis B.]

I was a bit hesitant to even say that, because, well, glorifying these countries as a whole is fairly common among far-right extremists, but, well, similarities are similarities. Beer. Sports (though different ones in different places). Being obnoxious tourists. Being embarrassed about sharing a nationality with obnoxious tourists. Often disliking one's own culture's traditional foods and preferring those of other cultures. Often very ugly histories. All kinds of ways - good, bad, and ugly - of handling those ugly histories. A certain amount of legalism and assumption that things will be done according to some set of rules (though with differences in how exactly this is expressed). Lots of wealth. Which, however, usually doesn't result in general happiness. Large amounts of secularism in most places, though not all.

All of these vary place to place overall, but in general I must say this is generally true despite such variation. E.g. traditional food in the UK is oftentimes more looked down-upon than traditional food in the US. But all in all, such things are only details.

[Linguoboy]

So what kind of things people believe (or are socially expected to pretend to believe) is irrelevant and doesn't result in actual functional differences, but what kinds of sounds and symbols people use to communicate about what they believe is relevant and does result in actual functional differences?

Um...yeah?

What language you communicate in has a huge impact on your views by limiting and filtering the media you're exposed to. Recently, Last Week Tonight had a very interesting episode on the rampant spread of misinformation among minority-language communities in the USA and the particular difficulties combatting in given the lack of alternative channels and fact-checking sites. (There isn't an equivalent of Snopes for most languages and social media platforms like Facebook are overwhelmingly concentrated on policing content in English at the expense of everything else.) Frankly, the idea that, say, the worldview of a Vietnamese-dominant speaker in the USA would be the same as, say, a Spanish-dominant speaker even from the same neighbourhood of Houston is bonkers to me. (The whole software analogy makes not a lick sense to me. What is the analogue of the "user experience" if not the language-moderated interaction between speakers or between speaker and text?)

[Raphael]

What language you communicate in has a huge impact on your views by limiting and filtering the media you're exposed to. Recently, Last Week Tonight had a very interesting episode on the rampant spread of misinformation among minority-language communities in the USA and the particular difficulties combatting in given the lack of alternative channels and fact-checking sites. (There isn't an equivalent of Snopes for most languages and social media platforms like Facebook are overwhelmingly concentrated on policing content in English at the expense of everything else.) Frankly, the idea that, say, the worldview of a Vietnamese-dominant speaker in the USA would be the same as, say, a Spanish-dominant speaker even from the same neighbourhood of Houston is bonkers to me. (The whole software analogy makes not a lick sense to me. What is the analogue of the "user experience" if not the language-moderated interaction between speakers or between speaker and text?)

Fair enough. But keep in mind that I was responding to a post by Moose-tache that seems to contain a claim that people's beliefs aren't that important. If your point is that language is important because of its impact on people's beliefs, then our disagreements on that point aren't that big.

[zompist]

to non-Hispanic Americans, almost any Latin American countries seem identical.

Name, like, literally one single human who thinks that. I've never met anyone that stupid, and I've been to Waffle House.

Your idea that white Americans have an innate ability to discourse on the differences between Latin American countries is baffling. For exceptions, I invite you to consult the telephone directory. You'll be lucky to find someone who can correctly guess what language is spoken in Brazil.

Or if you need a specific example: me, forty years ago. I was writing a future history and had South American countries joining up together— I certainly couldn't explain how Chile, Peru, and Ecuador differed. A Peruvian friend very kindly set me straight.

So far, I feel very vindicated that people who live in a country are eager to point out that the very-different-people in the next country over are distinct in that they hold their crab spork at a 43.7 degree angle, instead of the 44.9 degree angle that God intended.

So Americans are intimately familiar from birth with the differences between every Latin American nation and yet all differences are also completely trivial.

Instead of asking fake questions, why not just issue a decree giving your One True Indisputable Answer, and then bask in the startled yet admiring applause?

[Moose-tache]

Saying that people exaggerrate local differences does not mean there are no differences that matter. There is, for example, a difference between Wahhabism and Methodism. But to a Southern Baptist, the difference is primarily one of spelling.

And you're just being silly about Latin America. Your claim was that any pair of Latin American countries seem identical to 265 million people. That's just blatantly false, and when I called you on it you pretended I was making a completely different argument, which is not classy. I'm sorry if you feel like you were especially stupid in your late thirties, but that's on you. Besides, Peru and Ecuador are not "any pair" of countries. Ask someone to distinguish Peru from, say, Cuba, and you'll get more detail, not just from Americans but from anyone.

My point is simply that if you ask a Peruvian or an Ecuadorian to compare their countries, they will talk as if each country inhabited a separate planet, and are far more different from each other than either is from, say, Greenland or Lesotho.

[zompist]

And you're just being silly about Latin America. Your claim was that any pair of Latin American countries seem identical to 265 million people. That's just blatantly false, and when I called you on it you pretended I was making a completely different argument, which is not classy.

I don't think you get to pretend not to understand a very mild exaggeration, when your every word stretches the definition of hyperbole, e.g.

So far, I feel very vindicated that people who live in a country are eager to point out that the very-different-people in the next country over are distinct in that they hold their crab spork at a 43.7 degree angle, instead of the 44.9 degree angle that God intended.

My point is simply that if you ask a Peruvian or an Ecuadorian to compare their countries, they will talk as if each country inhabited a separate planet, and are far more different from each other than either is from, say, Greenland or Lesotho.

I'm kind of still hoping this comedy routine has a punchline... what are the magic countries that are more alike than any other pair? You're obviously not interested in anyone else's answer, since any difference that is not Moose-Approved(tm) is trivial in your eyes.

[Raphael]

Hm, when Moose-tache posted a partial list of questions to ask about countries, all the questions listed were about how everyday life looks like for ordinary people in the country, not about the country's role in the world. If that's the standard we're going by, I'd go back to my earlier idea of "Italy and San Marino".

[Raphael]

Saying that people exaggerrate local differences does not mean there are no differences that matter. There is, for example, a difference between Wahhabism and Methodism. But to a Southern Baptist, the difference is primarily one of spelling.

That's a problem with Southern Baptists, not with Wahhabists or Methodists. Like it or not, the difference between Wahhabism and Methodism is not just a matter of holding your crab spork at a 43.7 degree angle or a 44.9 degree angle.

[Qwynegold]

I have a question for the Americans here. I bought this sarsaparilla drink. I was thinking "now I finally get to know what sarsaparilla tastes like". When I opened the bottle I was taken aback by the smell of dentist clinic. And it tasted like flouride wash. Or a little bit like chewing gum. Is this what sarsaparilla is supposed to taste like? What abour rootbeer?

[Travis B.]

I have a question for the Americans here. I bought this sarsaparilla drink. I was thinking "now I finally get to know what sarsaparilla tastes like". When I opened the bottle I was taken aback by the smell of dentist clinic. And it tasted like flouride wash. Or a little bit like chewing gum. Is this what sarsaparilla is supposed to taste like? What abour rootbeer?

I've never had sarsparilla, but root beer doesn't taste anything like the flavors of mint that mouthwash typically come in to me.

[foxcatdog]

I've had sarsparilla and it doesn't taste anything like mouthwash but certainly doesn't taste like anything i would want to drink again.

[Ryusenshi]

I have never seen a sarsaparilla drink in real life. The word makes me think of the Smurfs, who enjoy eating it: I think raw sarsaparilla leaves are toxic to humans, but we can assume that Smurfs have a different physiology.