291–300 of 377 posts
Is it more or less beneficial to birth a Korean child on December 31 so they can be two years in Korean Age ASAP? Thinking about their career prospects, certain legal requirements etc. if older is better, it seems like you’d want to hit that December 31st birth date.
I find it surprising actually how much these seniority rules are well-defined in many cultures, but in Brazil there is strong variation - even in the same geography. For example, a colleague who is learning Brazilian Portuguese was under the impression that "você" and "tu" were the equivalent of "vous/tu" or "Sie/du". In reality, they are just different regional ways of saying the informal you. In Brazilian Portugues…
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…
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But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO
My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition). These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Most people would think working on AI models for computer vision problems is a perfectly reasonable outcome for a STEM PhD, even if it's not a direct continuation of the thesis research.
Turning a physics PhD into any sort of modeling, statistical analysis or engineering work is pretty normal in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more physics PhDs working in finance than academia and government research labs.
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Spaniard here; addressing someone by the last name looks really outdated.
In Portugal it's very associated with military service. I don't think I've ever been addressed by my last name here.
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Don it's very outdated unless you address a very important person.
I agree it's more likely to be used by older generations but it's not uncommon to hear it around either, especially when addressing or refering to elders
And even with that, people under 35 will just stay at the informal (normal you) "tu" case.
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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 jur…
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Just the fact that they lived so much longer. And are usually more wise in life experience. That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general. But the default for me is paying respect for the elders. Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
> Just the fact that they lived so much longer. That's not a reason, you're just repeating the question. "Having lived long" is a value neutral statement of fact. How do you derive value from that? > And are usually more wise in life experience. So is that your true/only reason, a statistical probability of "knowing more"?
It is a reason in itself.
I don't know if I manage to live 10 years more, not speaking of 50 years more.
Living long is a achievent on its own, not be brought down early by life. Because there is a lot that life has to offer to bring you down.
That requires a minimum of wisdom.
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Interesting, as a German (which also has a similar system), I am the complete opposite, I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name. And the worst part is having to figure out how to address others, especially people you've known for a while but aren't really close to, e.g. say long-time neighbors I rarely meet. Luckily, in the IT industry, it's common to just use first names with everybody.
Tangent: My father's family is German and all of the males in the family only used their middle name for everything except legal and financial documents. For example, Carl Hans Schmidt (to pick a semi-made-up example) would introduce himself as Hans to everyone he met, and the family would refer to him as Hansi. I always wondered if that was a German (or regional) tradition, or a fun family quirk. (The males have all…
Francisco -> Paco from Saint Francis holding a Pater Comunitatis title in Latin.
But, as a weirder case:
José María -> Chema
Luis María -> Luisma
Juan Manuel -> Juanma
José Manuel -> Chema/Josema
Juan Ramón -> Juanra
María José (women's name) -> Marijose
As a young man many years ago I happened to be in Seoul, in a shoe store. I was casually asking prices in English and noticed the salesman or owner was getting visibly angry with me. So much so that as I went around the corner of the store I clearly saw that he had begun advancing toward me, with every intention of physically attacking me. I put my hand forward to stop him and as I did, I shouted loudly, again in Eng…
Umm... I'm not sure I follow. You were casually asking prices in English and the shopowner jumped to the conclusion that you were trolling him by using English when you were fluent in Korean? If it was around that time, most Koreans were not good at English, and it's not exactly hard to tell a native English speaker from a Korean who learned "I'm a boy, you are a girl" in middle school. Sounds like the shopowner was…