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Why is Chile so long?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

231–240 of 468 posts

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#231
post #4

Is there a name for this simple style of writing? It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it, like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.

> Is there a name for this simple style of writing?

4th grade English

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#232
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to many places around the world from the Amazon rainforest to the Atacama Desert in Chile to right around Africa. Without a shadow of a doubt, the interior of Australia is STAGGERINGLY the best for stargazing. It's not even close. This was a single 8 second exposure. [1] and I'm not a great photographer. The milky way was so bright it kept me awake in my tent. [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz/

Australian here, spent my youth in the deep West. I found your description inspiring. I remember feeling, once, that night time was when everything in the universe could be seen, and daytime was when we slept in the shade of the sun, away from it all.

I grew up in rural Australia.

We had Japanese exchange students in High School, and the teachers stayed in our house (Mum & Dad were teachers). Even though I was only ~15, I have a very strong memory of the 50, 60 and 70 year old Japanese people staying outside until all hours stargazing.

They had never seen stars before.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so the article is wrong for using that bit of data for the argument. It doesn't tell you much about how well two people from two different places will understand each other. If two people are in the same place and one says to the other "¿me das la veleta?", but the other would have called the object "molinete", chances are they could probably understand what the other person is saying. What makes different dial…

True, but that's like saying a British person wouldn't be confused by the phrase "the trunk of my car" said by an American even if they would would say "the boot of my car" themselves. The fact still remains than "trunk" is US dialect and "boot" is British, and that the dialects are different.

Shouldn't that comparison be weighted by how frequent the words are? For example words in the top 100 usage would count for more than the top 1000 and the top 10000.

It would be a much different story if British English and American English had different words for "a car". Which, by the way, happens in Spanish dialects ("el coche" vs "el carro").

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is that pretty much the only place you'll see formal chilean is in like, the news, or official government communication. We're not very formal people, so even in workplaces or school we wouldn't use 100% formal register.

Sure, that is largely true. But, to state that the formal register of Chilean Spanish is “probably one of the most understandable ones, accent-wise” of all available Spanish registers is, in my humble opinion, quite a stretch.

I don't know, here's a random news segment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfvrmrYG_-c

But I think chileans are ok with people saying we don't speak well, so it doesn't matter too much.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#235

My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles. That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar. That last graphic about the Western US being the o…

You should have very dry air for the best place, which I guess with all that Amazon rainforest thing, would not be your best option. Chile has the one of the driest deserts in the world.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#237

My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles. That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar. That last graphic about the Western US being the o…

I've lived on both the eastern and western slopes of Colorado. They are still practically two different states culturally and economically.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#238
post #135

That is a really nice bit of information communication. Hat's off! I feel like I learned a lot and that always makes me happy. One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Ba…

And the real history in 1493 by Charles C. Mann. Samurai were documented as guards on galleons brought to Mexico. It needs to be a movie.

I was recently watching some YouTube videos about early contact between Europeans and Japanese. A lot of that was contact with Portugal, and from there they had contact with Spain and Italy, so they did go to Iberian colonies in the new world.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something? If you look at the time zone map, they just as easily could have had the whole mainland country on one timezone. Bolivia, Paraguay, and parts of Brazil share the same timezone as the northern part of Chili and are just as far east as the southern parts of Chili. Easter Island makes sense, you don't necessarily expect islands that are f…

> I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something? It has to do with differences in latitude. In winter, the southernmost region of Chile[1] was completely dark at around 4 PM with the old time zone. Staying on summer time for the whole year gives its inhabitants an additional hour of sunlight. [1]: Which includes, but is not equivalent to, Antarctica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…

ah, interesting. I hadn't even thought about the latitude.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RAE is supposed to be the prescriptive source for Spanish, but no one cares about it outside of a subset of Academics in Spain.

Thanks god we don't care. Spain wanting to dictate what's real "spanish" is like the King of England telling a jamaican that their english is wrong.

Agreed! Prescriptive language bodies are dumb and prevent languages from organically evolving.
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