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Why Koreans ask what year you were born

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Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#271

Post by NL807 »

GreyMolecules wrote: post #42

This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year. For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to…

No disrespect to Korean people, but as an outsider, this kind of gymnastics for establishing a time point for something seems really absurd to me.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#272

Post by anonymars »

ignoramous wrote: post #172
socalgal2 wrote: post #53

This "high power distance" culture contributed to several airline crashes in the 80s and 90s because people under the captain wouldn't dare to question the captain's decisions. One in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801

Also: PIA 8303 https://www.dailyo.in/variety/pakistan-flight-crash-pia-flig...

BTW, the magnificent Admiral Cloudberg has an article on this one:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-...

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#273

Post by rhapsodic »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #236
xenadu02 wrote: post #210

In the USA as a low-level employee address the company CEO as "heya phil, hows it going?". Then address your friend with "Hello Mr. Smith". In most cases you won't get a positive reaction out of either one of those (yes exceptions exist). How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs ", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say " you…

A few years back I had a long back and forth (and productive) email exchange with an older engineer (in his 50s, like I was at the time) on a matter of a particular old computer. He lives in a former soviet state. At some point he mentioned job prospects in his country are limited and was willing to relocate. He had excellent English and as a fellow nerd who loves getting into the low level details, I thought he migh…

[dead]

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#274

Post by balanced2 »

Llamamoe wrote: post #130
bitbasher wrote: post #128

Japanese also has a number of social systems and expectations that can be tricky to navigate as an outsider. When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50). I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan. One…

> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary... I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan.…

It's not surprising at all because I guess as one would expect, schoolyard rules applies in a game, not company rules. Seniority is still going strong at school, perhaps since the age difference is low or because there is lower opportunity for merit-based respect.

At companies, basically everyone should be speaking polite Japanese regardless of seniority. Harassment has been a big deal and companies have gotten a lot stricter on it these past years, so at large corporations there will be far less of senior members talking down to low members as did happen before. One reason companies can change like this is at most, HR is a much stronger org than product, i.e. the ideal career path for a manager tends to be to move from product to HR, at least at the ones we wouldn't refer to as "tech companies".

SMBs will still feel quite old though since they don't have strong HR like the big companies. I don't know much about government but do have the impression that they would also still have these issues. But I think corporate Japan has gotten a lot better than you might be thinking.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#275

Post by jfinnery »

encom wrote: post #221
umbra07 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems sort of like calling other people ma'am and sir in America. Everyone knows what those words mean, but younger people will almost never use them (except in specific American subcultures). Some people may be offended if you call them sir/ma'am.

The YouTube algorithm has seen fit to serve me a bunch of American police bodycam videos lately. I find it super bizarre that a policeman will address everyone as sir. Including some deranged crackhead, without pants, charging at him with a sword. Decidedly not a "sir". In Denmark nobody adresses each other formally, unless you're royalty. Parliament also does it during debates, but that's pretty much it. It's weird…

The way US cops talk is a whole thing. It’s one of the most-distinctive job-related American English variants. Even more so than white-collar “business English” (“let’s take this offline and circle back to it, as per my prior email”)

Some of it’s weird posturing (I’d put the “sir” thing in that category) and a bunch of it’s a combination of actually-effective and folk-supposed-effective ways of speaking to dazzle jurors, plus probably some other motivations and influences thrown in (some Hollywood-military turns of phrase and vocabulary, certainly)

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#276

Post by jfinnery »

canjobear wrote: post #147
cafard wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think American high school kids often refer to and address one another by surname. It was the case when at my son's high school, as I recall at my own, and I think at my wife's. It might have been the case at my father's, and perhaps my wife's parents--I'd have to look at the yearbooks.

This was absolutely not the norm I experienced in the 2000s.

It’s mostly a thing among kids heavily into sports, in my experience.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#277

Post by dctoedt »

beAbU wrote: post #199
rayiner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent almost 10 years trying to avoid calling my mother and father in law by their first names. In my home country's language there are words for "mother in law" and "father in law" you can use in a second person context, but English doesn't have any. My wife has the opposite problem. She's gotten stuck calling my parents "Mr. XYZ" and "Mrs. XYZ."

My inlaws are addressed "mom" and "dad" - is that weird?

Mumble years ago I started using "Mom" and "Dad" as soon as we got married; my wife did the same with my folks — and my folks did the same with my grandparents.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#278

Post by extraduder_ire »

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.

Starting from one is more accurate in a pedantic kind of way if you're counting how long you've been alive. Since the average human pregnancy is about 40 weeks.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#279

Post by dserodio »

yxhuvud wrote: post #266
inerte wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the judge who sued his condominium demanding its employees call him "doutor" (Your Honor)... As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him…

The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.

But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#280

Post by MrLeap »

Llamamoe wrote: post #130
bitbasher wrote: post #128

Japanese also has a number of social systems and expectations that can be tricky to navigate as an outsider. When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50). I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan. One…

> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary... I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan.…

I co-run a guild in WoW right now on the anniversary server with >150 members.

It's people who play these games and almost any weirdness you can imagine that could exist in a person in real life gets brought into these games.

Often it's magnified because of the pseudo anonymity. We've only been "big" for a few months and a handful of things we've already ran into would make you not want to visit several western hemisphere countries if held to the same standard. :)

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