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Why is Chile so long?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

241–250 of 468 posts

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#241
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea. Also there is no standard spanish even in Spain. Like Andalucian spanish and Domenican spanish have a lot in common but vary greatly with other forms of spanish.

There literally is a standard Spanish, no? I understand it to be based on Castilian. However I understand your point that even within the country of Spain there are many dialects which diverge from "standard".

The royal Academy of Spanish has the mission of promoting language unity, the American vocabulary is huge so a lot of words are really puzzling for people in other countries, but there is a common root that can be used.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I live in Chile, but not a Chilean national(nor of similar ethnicity), and certainly not a historian. The dispute is seen differently in Chile and is not as simplistic as Chile invading a port. In general i've gotten the sense that the general populace believes that Bolivia(with its secret alliance with Peru) had other intentions. >In February 1878, Bolivia increased taxes on the Chilean mining company Co…

Chilenos weones

Yup, this is what happens. All the time.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#244
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.

I read it before on Twitter, it’s probably adapted to fit into the 280-character limit.

Bingo. For all its flaws, Twitter threads can be a nice way of delivering a point. I think the character limit implicitly encourages a kind of brevity which you wouldn't get anywhere else.

https://x.com/tomaspueyo/status/1807380049605091537

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#245
post #223

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…

Rather, go to Atacama, in Chile. It's a desert with pretty transparent air and little to no clouds, far from anywhere, and easier to traverse than a forest. It's also rather closer to the South pole, so not as hot as Amazon.

Apparently the desert in Kashmir (I think Ladakh specifically) is also excellent for astronomy for similar reasons - a dry desert, cool due to its altitude, and also benefits from thinner air causing lesser distortion.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#246

How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35, then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of th…

Dialects can mean very different things hence the old joke "a language is a dialect with its own army and navy", recognizing that the issue is really political rather than linguistic. Many Chinese dialects (like Mandarin and Cantonese) are considered dialects of the same "Chinese language" for political reasons but are mutually unintelligible, whereas Danish and Norwegian (the majority bokmal dialect anyway) are cons…

You don't even have to go all the way to China. The English countryside has multiple so called "accents" that are basically unintelligible to a speaker of London English, with plenty of famous examples in popular media (e.g. [1][2]).

Similarly, Germany has plenty of mutually unintelligible dialects. They are all related to each other and any two geographically adjacent dialects are mutually intelligible, but as distance grows it becomes harder to bridge the gap (which is why everyone learns Standard German nowadays). Luxembourgish meanwhile is in every sense a dialect of German with French influences, but due to having an army is considered its own language.

1: https://youtu.be/Hs-rgvkRfwc

2: https://youtu.be/Z660sool2L4?t=49

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#248

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.

There are royal academies in each Spanish speaking country. Is a very old institution that creates diplomatic links and a help net between countries on everything related with the Spanish dictionary. They solve doubts for free, or publish American Vocabulary dictionaries (so American people can understand other American people).

If you want to understand Spanish this is the best resource available

https://www.rae.es/

Not all people in this academy descend from the Borbons. Not all people there are from Spain. All are voted by their peers based in their perceived merits. Is a meritocracy, not a monarchy.

Some people appreciate the fact that there are experts on Spanish language trying to help everybody. Other will keep saying the equivalent to "Experts thing that are better than me" or "Death to conquerors. Mine is better, Murica!!". Everybody has their own choice, but the reward is ending with a language that nobody will understand. A very silly prize.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Goddamn, is that what professional news outlets sound like? It sounds like a YouTuber trying as hard as possible to sound cool or edgy. Dude, leave the coke for after the broadcast.

Re: Why is Chile so long?

#250
post #200

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…

Not really, that would probably be the north of Chile on the Atacama desert, there's a reason why the Extremely Large Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope and Vera C. Rubin are being built there.

i'm going to assume that commoners like us don't have access to that telescope.
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