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This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

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Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#191

Post by anatoly »

phillc73 wrote: post #172
dsrguru wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Yiddish scholar once said that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." It's really true. One might think that mutual intelligibility (ability for speakers of one to make themselves fully understood by speakers of the other) would be the standard for differentiating languages from dialects, but the distinction really ends up just being political. The spoken forms of Hindi and Urdu are entirely mutually in…

I'm not convinced your Polish-Russian-Ukrainian example is correct. My wife is from the west of Ukraine, and her home language is Ukrainian. However, she is totally fluent in Russian, as to be expected from someone growing up during the Soviet era. Both Ukrainian and Russian are written using the Cyrillic alphabet, whereas Polish uses Roman letters. She finds Polish fairly easy to understand, from an aural point of v…

I would disagree with both you and your parent comment.

Russian and Ukrainian are East Slavic languages; Polish is a West Slavic language. None of these three languages is mutually intelligible with any other, but Russian and Ukrainian are much closer to each other than other pairings. For example, Polish words generally have a fixed stress position, which makes Polish speech sound foreign and bizarre to unaccustomed Russian/Ukrainian ears. Many features of grammar and syntax are also much more similar between Russian and Ukrainian compared to Polish.

This basic picture is clouded a little by the split between east Ukrainian, which is lexically much closer to Russian, and west Ukrainian, which is farther from Russian and has very many lexical borrowings from Polish, because west Ukraine had been a part of Poland for a long time. So someone from the west of Ukraine will hear many familiar words in Polish speech, and will find it easier to understand Polish than someone from the east of Ukraine. That's sort of an icing on a cake, however; it doesn't change the basic fact that Russian is still much closer to their native language. If you could find someone from the west of Ukraine who had never been exposed to anything but their native language (and it's rare, as you mention, because almost everybody knows Russian at least to some extent), they would almost certainly find it much easier to learn Russian than Polish.

(my native language is Russian and I grew up in east Ukraine)

(and don't get me started on Belorussian)

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#192

Post by r0h1n »

chris_wot wrote: post #167
r0h1n wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how in any way Google is being "ballsy" here. It is a safe, soppy and relationships-oriented ad - in what world can that ever be "ballsy"? Furthermore, I don't see the parent use the word "evil" in his comment. That said, when a multinational that ferrets around billions of dollars in revenue around the world through obscure countries to avoid paying significant taxes in any of the countries it operates i…

Yeah, except for the fact that they are dealing with relationships torn apart by partition.

They are not "dealing" with those relationships, but merely milking them.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#193

Post by chris_wot »

ankurdhama wrote: post #184
chris_wot wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a remarkably narrow view of what should appear on HN!

I didn't say what should appear on HN (that would make the the set narrow), I just expressed something that shouldn't be here (that leave it wide wide open to many things)

You still narrowed the set of things that should be on HN. By expressing the set of things that should not appear on HN, you actually do dictate what should appear on HN. i.e. anything can appear on HN except xyz.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#195

Post by mariuolo »

nekopa wrote: post #115
dsrguru wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Yiddish scholar once said that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." It's really true. One might think that mutual intelligibility (ability for speakers of one to make themselves fully understood by speakers of the other) would be the standard for differentiating languages from dialects, but the distinction really ends up just being political. The spoken forms of Hindi and Urdu are entirely mutually in…

A side note: as a teenager I spent one summer working in a clothing store in London, with a bunch of Spaniards and Italians. They spoke to each other using their respective tongue, and said they could understand each other. Just basics of course. Maybe someone from Spain or Italy could chime in here?

There is of course some degree of mutual intelligibility.

Still, I find French to be lexically closer to Italian, despite the phonetical differences.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#196

Post by mariuolo »

liviu wrote: post #140
ekianjo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a French I can tell you we can understand most of casual Italian / Spanish conversation just fine (and I believe Spaniards and Italians can understand a good portion of French too). The roots are very similar for most words that you catch it up very quickly.

You are right. Related romance language (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and Romanian) speakers can understand most of the words. As a Romanian I understand best Italian, then Spanish, then French and lastly Portuguese which is little odd for me.

I don't think it goes both ways, though. Romanian is rather obscure to me. Possibly because of slavic influence?

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#197

Post by VLM »

So half a day later, and no one on HN noticed the most interesting fact about the ad was its THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG?

I mean I've had mythtv and commercial skipping for I guess over a decade now and I adblock all browsers etc but do people "out there" really sit thru almost four minute long advertisements? Back when I used to watch them, commercials were long enough for a bathroom break, sounds like commercial breaks are approaching "short workout followed by a shower" or perhaps "cook and eat some hot pockets" length of time.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#198

Post by DanBC »

VLM wrote: post #197

So half a day later, and no one on HN noticed the most interesting fact about the ad was its THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG? I mean I've had mythtv and commercial skipping for I guess over a decade now and I adblock all browsers etc but do people "out there" really sit thru almost four minute long advertisements? Back when I used to watch them, commercials were long enough for a bathroom break, sounds like commercial…

There are plenty of long ads around.

Sometimes they're good, and I don't mind sitting through them. There's one featuring a British Bi-Athlete (skiing, shooting). I have no idea what it's advertising. I looked up the gun he was using and they do a really neat laser & target system. Like Tin Can Alley but for adults.

Long ads are much less impressive when they're repeatedly something I have zero interest in ("It's showtime, you've been coding like a beast "[SKIP]) or when they're lousy ads created by people who don't know what they're doing.

I usually leave them running in another tab until the content is ready. I understand why other people would hate them and want to ad block them.

Also: I have zero interest in gambling, and I never want to see a gambling ad, but I get loads. I wonder what recovering alcoholics or addicted gamblers could do to prevent those ads from appearing, other than using ad-block?

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#199

Post by alan_cx »

jdaley wrote: post #154
r0h1n wrote: post #64

Colour me cynical, but when a corporation is under fire from consumers, regulators and activists, a soppy and heartstring-tugging ad is exactly what the doctors order . It is literally Google saying, "Oh look, cute puppies!" when faced with a global barrage of criticism about its disdain for user privacy or its own past promises.

Why is it such a huge revelation that advertising is created to benefit a business? You've got a beautifully produced and captivating video, which makes no secret about advertising something. People enjoy it and engage with it, but then suddenly catch themselves: "Oh no! What if this advertisement was created... for profit ?" Of course it was! So what?

Motivation is all.

To created purely to give pleasure to people is one thing, it is an act of generosity and altruism, if it is done to manipulate, then it is something very different. PR and advertising are manipulations.

The worst thing is to see something like this, allow it to emotionally effect one, then discover at the end that is is a corporate manipulation. Dunno about others, but that makes me feel used.

Re: This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

#200

Post by marknutter »

r0h1n wrote: post #175
psbp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, large consumer companies release ads all the time, and google is always under fire by consumers, regulators and activists.

a. Google isn't just another "large consumer company" b. Google being "always under fire" by consumers, regulators and activists is no reason to start letting it off the hook. In fact, it should be the converse.

I'm sure the people (read: individuals) who thought up this ad and executed it had their hearts in the right place. Just enjoy it for what it is. Not everything has to be viewed with such cynicism.
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