Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Koreans ask what year you were born

bryanhogan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 377 posts

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#101

Post by nosebear »

valenterry wrote: post #97
k07b470n wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how you write "Du" and not "du". I'm French and I've been living in Germany for 20 years. I understand and use "du/Sie" more or less appropriately (we have the same dichotomy in French). What I still cannot wrap my head around after all this time is why/when some people use "du/Du", "dein/Dein", "dich/Dich" in writing (to be clear: not at the beginning of a sentence). I guess "Du" is somewhere inbetween "…

"Du" and "du" are generally 100% equivalent. Regular casing-rules apply, e.g. in the beginning of a sentence it's "Du" but inside it's "du". "Kannst du mir helfen?". "Du kannst dir doch selbst helfen!" Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling co…

>It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.

That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect. In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#102

Post by valenterry »

nosebear wrote: post #101
valenterry wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Du" and "du" are generally 100% equivalent. Regular casing-rules apply, e.g. in the beginning of a sentence it's "Du" but inside it's "du". "Kannst du mir helfen?". "Du kannst dir doch selbst helfen!" Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling co…

>It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from. That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect . In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I l…

Fair enough.

> Since then you are allowed to write it either way

Okay, my interpretation is that it doesn't really make sense within the language rules, so they changed it but allowed to use the old style to make the transition easier. ;-)

> I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.

Impossible to keep up with all the Rechtschreibreformen anyways.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#103

Post by lipowitz »

makeitdouble wrote: post #94
miki123211 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean snail mail address, no it wouldn't. It's common to share these between people who have the same last (or sometimes first) names. Things get really fun when it's. both, e.g. a man marrying somebody who has the same first name as their sister. This actually happened in my (distant) family. If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.…

> If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing. I was going for the principle that we're not trying to mimic human emotions when it's a mail to remind you to accept the latest TOS. So, no "Dear", no trying to come up with something socially acceptable, just plain "miki123211@hn.xx, please review…

Earlier everything was based on 'handles' and using them was fine and expected.. As networks adopt everyone and become used for formal things it's gotten more complicated to integrate rules of different systems.

I've started to prefer messages that just start with "Hello,".

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#104

Post by dustincoates »

yurishimo wrote: post #90
dustincoates wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least when I was growing up, it was still the norm in the South/Texas. My parents would have never referred to the elderly in our neighborhood by their first names.

I also great up in Texas (30yo now). I was raised to always say sir/ma'am but for most adults that I knew well, we were on a first name basis. Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role. Teachers were always addressed by Mr/Mrs/Ms and this extended into Scouts as well.…

> Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role.

That brings up an actually interesting exception. At my church, the pastors were the only adults we'd ever call by their first name, sort of. Our pastor, for example, was always Brother Mike, not Pastor .

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#105

Post by 4gotunameagain »

cess11 wrote: post #99
4gotunameagain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical cultural superiority bias. Every way has its pros and cons. Having an age related hierarchy might have benefits like societal coherence or stability. I am not a proponent of it, I just acknowledge my inability to fully grasp the impact and ramifications as to label one as superior and the other as "perverted".

If you think hierarchy is natural and good you're a conservative or some other kind of reactionary. Hierarchies invite revolt and need a lot of force to keep in place.

I did not talk about natural, I did not talk about good.

If you think there are no hierarchies everywhere, then we have a completely different worldview.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#106

Post by mytailorisrich »

makeitdouble wrote: post #45
bambax wrote: post #6

> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.) I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name. Being "on a first name basis…

Would addressing you by your mail address work ? Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things. Accepting t…

When I was in university, a friend of mine used to address me by my unix username.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#107

Post by srean »

Muromec wrote: post #44
netsharc wrote: post #4

A friend (not Korean) said on his 29th birthday that he's starting his 30th year of life. It was an interesting perspective, because in general we celebrate our nth birthday after completing n years of life.

Seventh hour is everything between 6:01 and 6:59, yes.

Yes.

That is why half open sets, half open intervals, are convenient.

If a bus leaves every 10 minutes starting at 1 PM, how many buses leave per hour ? Do we include the 2PM bus in the first hour ?

It helps to cover the space by non-overlapping equal intervals.

Shows up in 0 indexed for loops as well i < n

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#109

Post by esseph »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #106
makeitdouble wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would addressing you by your mail address work ? Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things. Accepting t…

When I was in university, a friend of mine used to address me by my unix username.

This rules and your friend is awesome

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#110

Post by skyscraperman »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #95
whensean wrote: post #89

From the perspective of national and social development, this is definitely a dross culture. This system similar to hierarchy seemingly increases the courtesy among people. However, it more often leads to age bullying, blind obedience to the elders, and hinders resistance and innovation. Influenced by Confucian culture, China doesn't have such a perverted etiquette system at all.

Typical cultural superiority bias. Every way has its pros and cons. Having an age related hierarchy might have benefits like societal coherence or stability. I am not a proponent of it, I just acknowledge my inability to fully grasp the impact and ramifications as to label one as superior and the other as "perverted".

[flagged]
Post reply on HN