Russia invades Ukraine

[Ares Land]

Indeed. Here in France people who lived in certain areas in 1986 tend to have thyroid trouble. (I don't think much has been proven but that's one area where I feel free to be a bit of a conspiracy nut.)

Then again, hey, maybe nuclear winter and global warming will cancel each other out!

[hwhatting]

Indeed. Here in France people who lived in certain areas in 1986 tend to have thyroid trouble. (I don't think much has been proven but that's one area where I feel free to be a bit of a conspiracy nut.)

Then again, hey, maybe nuclear winter and global warming will cancel each other out!

That mentioning of Chernobyl awoke memories… to lighten the mood, one hilarious moment was when they interviewed people on NDR (the public broadcaster in Northern Germany) and asked one guy whether he was afraid of eating vegetables from his garden. He answered Nee... den Atom koch ich ab ("No... I will boil off the nucular"). Shows that people not having a clue is not just a phenomenon of the social media age.

[Raphael]

Belated pedantry: I'd translate "nee" as "nah" rather than "no". Matter of taste, though.

[hwhatting]

Belated pedantry: I'd translate "nee" as "nah" rather than "no". Matter of taste, though.

I did consider that; but, in my experience, for many Northern German speakers with a platt / missingsch speaking background nee is the default form when they aren't in a formal speech situation, and in that case doesn't contrast with nein; the man was speaking with a broad Hamburg accent.

[Travis B.]

Belated pedantry: I'd translate "nee" as "nah" rather than "no". Matter of taste, though.

I did consider that; but, in my experience, for many Northern German speakers with a platt / missingsch speaking background nee is the default form when they aren't in a formal speech situation, and in that case doesn't contrast with nein; the man was speaking with a broad Hamburg accent.

Can you encounter Low German in places like Hamburg today, or has it mostly died out or been thoroughly diluted outside of some rural areas today?

[hwhatting]

Can you encounter Low German in places like Hamburg today, or has it mostly died out or been thoroughly diluted outside of some rural areas today?

In the part of Northern Germany where I grew up (Ostfriesland), Low German was already limited to rural areas when I lived there 40-50 years ago. At that time, a significant part of the children in the villages still often had Low German as L1 and learnt Standard German only at kindergarten / elementary school. According to teachers I know, that situation has changed, and for at least 20 years elementary school children speak Standard German among themselves and not Low German anymore. People speaking Platt will be of around my generation or older (I myself don't speak it, as I wasn't born there, but understand it), or enthusiasts. When I last visited the village where I grew up a couple of months ago, my mother and some neighbours were admiring one of our neighbours' flower garden; one of them was an old woman (I guess 70-80 years) old who only spoke Platt, but understood Standard German. Such people are an absolute rarity today.
As Ostfriesland is a relatively rural and "backward" area, I guess that the situation of Low German is even worse in other parts of Northern Germany, and especially in a big city like Hamburg I wouldn't expect to encounter much Plattdeutsch in everyday life. There is a small Platt industry that caters to the remaining speakers and enthusiasts, publishing magazines in Platt, putting up plays, radio programs in Platt etc., but I'm not sure that this will ensure the survival of Platt when the generations born before ca. 1980 will die off.

He answered Nee... den Atom koch ich ab ("No... I will boil off the nucular"). Shows that people not having a clue is not just a phenomenon of the social media age.

Was he clueless or sarcastic? It would also work as a pretty witty answer to a not terribly smart question

You never know for sure, but he sounded quite serious; that's why it stuck with me and why I still remember that interview.

[MacAnDàil]

He answered Nee... den Atom koch ich ab ("No... I will boil off the nucular"). Shows that people not having a clue is not just a phenomenon of the social media age.

Was he clueless or sarcastic? It would also work as a pretty witty answer to a not terribly smart question

It reminds me of a !Kung person in two anthropology books. They were asked what they did before pots and pans and replied "We must have died". I read two versions of the interaction, one mentioned a wink and the other didn't which changed the implications of the answer.

[MacAnDàil]

Can you encounter Low German in places like Hamburg today, or has it mostly died out or been thoroughly diluted outside of some rural areas today?

In the part of Northern Germany where I grew up (Ostfriesland), Low German was already limited to rural areas when I lived there 40-50 years ago. At that time, a significant part of the children in the villages still often had Low German as L1 and learnt Standard German only at kindergarten / elementary school. According to teachers I know, that situation has changed, and for at least 20 years elementary school children speak Standard German among themselves and not Low German anymore. People speaking Platt will be of around my generation or older (I myself don't speak it, as I wasn't born there, but understand it), or enthusiasts. When I last visited the village where I grew up a couple of months ago, my mother and some neighbours were admiring one of our neighbours' flower garden; one of them was an old woman (I guess 70-80 years) old who only spoke Platt, but understood Standard German. Such people are an absolute rarity today.
As Ostfriesland is a relatively rural and "backward" area, I guess that the situation of Low German is even worse in other parts of Northern Germany, and especially in a big city like Hamburg I wouldn't expect to encounter much Plattdeutsch in everyday life. There is a small Platt industry that caters to the remaining speakers and enthusiasts, publishing magazines in Platt, putting up plays, radio programs in Platt etc., but I'm not sure that this will ensure the survival of Platt when the generations born before ca. 1980 will die off.

That's such a shame. A Bavarian I know says that even her children don't reply to her in Bavarian, even though she speaks to them in it. I should make more effort myself to forder biocultural diversity.

[Travis B.]

Can you encounter Low German in places like Hamburg today, or has it mostly died out or been thoroughly diluted outside of some rural areas today?

In the part of Northern Germany where I grew up (Ostfriesland), Low German was already limited to rural areas when I lived there 40-50 years ago. At that time, a significant part of the children in the villages still often had Low German as L1 and learnt Standard German only at kindergarten / elementary school. According to teachers I know, that situation has changed, and for at least 20 years elementary school children speak Standard German among themselves and not Low German anymore. People speaking Platt will be of around my generation or older (I myself don't speak it, as I wasn't born there, but understand it), or enthusiasts. When I last visited the village where I grew up a couple of months ago, my mother and some neighbours were admiring one of our neighbours' flower garden; one of them was an old woman (I guess 70-80 years) old who only spoke Platt, but understood Standard German. Such people are an absolute rarity today.
As Ostfriesland is a relatively rural and "backward" area, I guess that the situation of Low German is even worse in other parts of Northern Germany, and especially in a big city like Hamburg I wouldn't expect to encounter much Plattdeutsch in everyday life. There is a small Platt industry that caters to the remaining speakers and enthusiasts, publishing magazines in Platt, putting up plays, radio programs in Platt etc., but I'm not sure that this will ensure the survival of Platt when the generations born before ca. 1980 will die off.

That's such a shame. A Bavarian I know says that even her children don't reply to her in Bavarian, even though she speaks to them in it. I should make more effort myself to forder biocultural diversity.

I feel the same way myself. Here I invariably speak the dialect I grew up with at home, which my daughter understands perfectly, but what she speaks is, while not General American per se, is clearly more standardized than what I speak. (However, she has some noticeably non-standard features that I do not have, such as using ain't (which is absent from the dialect I grew up with), often pronouncing other as [ˈʌːdʁ̩ˤ(ː)]~[ˈʌːɾʁ̩ˤ(ː)] (and another similarly), and often pronouncing /aɪ/ as [ɑe̯] (where I have [ae̯]).)

[Raphael]

Here I invariably speak the dialect I grew up with at home, which my daughter understands perfectly,

Is the "daughter understands it perfectly" part surprising? I had the impression that US English dialects had never really diverged to the point of being mutually difficult to understand, except for some varieties of AAVE and maybe some extreme forms of white Southern drawls.

[Travis B.]

Here I invariably speak the dialect I grew up with at home, which my daughter understands perfectly,

Is the "daughter understands it perfectly" part surprising? I had the impression that US English dialects had never really diverged to the point of being mutually difficult to understand, except for some varieties of AAVE and maybe some extreme forms of white Southern drawls.

You do have a point. What I find is that when speaking in dialect, other people who grew up in the US can understand how I speak without a problem, even though what I speak differs considerably from General American, but people who grew up outside the US (i.e. many of my coworkers, many of whom are from India or China) have considerable trouble with how I speak. Consequently, when I'm at work I normally speak closer to General American when people from India or China are listening. Also, I have a habit of speaking closer to General American when speaking on the phone (or Teams or like), as even I tend to perceive that as "clearer", and often call center people are outside of the US. Note that when I say "closer to General American" I do not mean General American but rather something intermediate between what I speak at home and GA.

[Raphael]

Meanwhile, on the original topic of this thread, Putin is now explicitly blaming Ukraine for the explosion on that bridge. This is getting more and more worrying.

[Travis B.]

Meanwhile, on the original topic of this thread, Putin is now explicitly blaming Ukraine for the explosion on that bridge. This is getting more and more worrying.

The problem is not that he is blaming Ukraine for it — it's a war, a war he started, so of course Ukraine will do such things — but rather that he is willing to use nuclear weapons as something to make threats with.

[Ares Land]

So apparently Putin answered with a drone and missile barrage.

The nuclear threat seems to be a propaganda thing; it looks like the idea is to scare popular opinion in some Western countries into dropping support for Ukraine.

[Raphael]

Now the nuclear anxiety seems to be getting higher again.

Here's a piece from the BBC on that:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63414324

[Raphael]

Apparently Russian missiles have hit Poland and killed people. This is getting really grim.

[WeepingElf]

Calm down, Raphael. A few badly aimed missiles don't make a war between Russia and Poland. Sure, this can't really be shrugged off as "meaningless", but the war is running badly for Putin already, so the last thing he wants to get into is a war against the NATO, I think.

[alice]

It was one missile and two people, and it was hardly likely to have been deliberate. It might have been fallout from a successful interception.

[Ares Land]

It was one missile and two people, and it was hardly likely to have been deliberate. It might have been fallout from a successful interception.

It's more or less confirmed it was from an Ukrainian defense system.

[Linguoboy]

It was one missile and two people, and it was hardly likely to have been deliberate. It might have been fallout from a successful interception.

It's more or less confirmed it was from an Ukrainian defense system.

At this point, the only party I can see who still disputes this is Ukraine, which feels embarrassed, and they'll probably concede after they send some specialists to examine the blast site. The US and NATO are like, "Accidents happen, and this one wouldn't've happened if Russia weren't raining down missiles on Ukraine like candy from a piñata."