This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #85

baldfat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well that anti-Islam rant might work IF there was no Islamic nation that wasn't peaceful.

If I said that "much of the problems in the deep South in the United States are due to the prominence of Christianity in their culture" nobody would bat an eye, and nobody would read it as being anti-Christian. Denying that there are very real problems within the Islamic world, some of which are core to the religion, is an example of naivete, ignorance, or propaganda.

> If I said that "much of the problems in the deep South in the United States are due to the prominence of Christianity in their culture" nobody would bat an eye

I would.

There's a complex two-way interplay between the particular forms of Christianity that are common in the deep South and the deep seated history of conflict, division, etc., in the region, but to portray the problems as the result of Christianity qua Christianity is, at best, simply useless.

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

#242

Post by xixi77 » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

anatoly wrote: post #191

phillc73 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, all three are pretty close. The thing about Polish is that in Polish words that are similar and understandable to Ukrainians are pronounced a little differently. My background is similar to yours, and it only took very little practice hearing Polish to adjust and start recognizing them -- and a lot of people from Western Ukraine, such as in the example above, have had that practice.

Similarly, a lot of Russians from Russia proper who have never been exposed to Ukrainian, find spoken Ukrainian very difficult to understand.

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

#243

Post by dublinben » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:36 PM UTC

tcgv wrote: post #185

selmnoo wrote: post #2

This is the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE - be sure to have subtitles on (unless you understand Hindi). One interesting observation about the ad: the search results that the girl deems to be good and informative are almost all Wikipedia hits. It's actually pretty similar to my situation: Google is basically a better Wikipedia searching tool than what Wikipedia provides.

A bit off-topic here, but I would say the same thing applies to stackoverflow. Everytime I want to search something within stackoverflow I use google and specify the "site" operator[1]. Something like: fast string search algorithm site:stackoverflow.com [2] The results are much better than SO's custom search. [1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en [2] https://www.google.com.br/search?q=string+se…

DuckDuckGo also has the !so shortcut.

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

#244

Post by xixi77 » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:36 PM UTC

dmytrish wrote: post #234

phillc73 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm agree that the grandparent example is, uhm, weird: it rather reflects Poles' and Ukrainians' knowledge of Russian language than some unbiased inter-intelligibility. Polish language is quite close to Ukrainian in regard of vocabulary and maybe grammar, but is quite different phonetically and does not use Cyrillic like Russian. Still, I can't agree that Ukraine is _ethnically_ divided in halves, ethnic Russians are…

it's very hard to find someone who does not understand Ukrainian and Russian at the same time

Hard to find in Ukraine, since most people (both Russian and Ukrainian native speakers) have been constantly exposed to both, very easy to find in Russia :)

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

#245

Post by dsw2 » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

coolsank wrote: post #205

harichinnan wrote: post #33

As a fellow Indian, I just want to point out that this video and any other efforts to develop people-to-people relationships between India and Pakistan have zero effect on the ongoing conflicts between the nations. Indians love Pakistani singers, cricketers, food, their language(Weird, I'm not a native Hindi speaker. But people tell me that Pakistani's speak better Hindi than most Indians). I've heard from Pak friend…

By that extension, lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia, and Egypt was the root cause of all Islamic terrorism. Saudi's actively promote a version of Islam that promotes religious discord in Muslim populations across the world. I disagree with this statement. Saudi Arabia (& Egypt for that matter) can't be held directly responsible as one of the root causes of the current Islamic terror situation. Their idea to spread I…

I was looking at some information about my grandparents (fairly wealthy second generation South African Muslims of Indian descent) and I expected to see a bunch of socially backward, repressed people. To my surprise, they were involved in poetry appreciation societies, sporting clubs and valued education highly. They wore western suits and hats and played cards. They were somewhat religious, but religion seemed to be more a pursuit for women. Many of that generation were involved in the anti-apartheid movement.

Interestingly, since the rise of the Tablighi Jamaat in the 1970s the general mood of wealthy South African Indian Muslims has become a lot more conservative. Beards and headscarves everywhere (it isn't unusual to see women with full face veils in the swankiest Johannesburg and Durban shopping malls), and even among the less religious, the mood is generally more conservative. Political participation seems to be in decline, except for Muslim-centric issues like Palestine. Since the end of apartheid, insularity has, in many ways increased. Recent Turkish immigrants provide some liberal religious influence, but they are outnumbered by conservative Paskitani immigrants. But even without these immigrants, the trend was becoming conservative.

In all, there seems to have been a worldwide shift to conservatism and insularity amongst Muslims in the past few decades. Not just in backwaters like Afghanistan. Saudi money cannot be the only explanation.

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

#246

Post by saraid216 » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

wrongc0ntinent wrote: post #217

saraid216 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not surprise me if Google actually was taking action. They've been known to chime in on national politics here and there.

What magical action did you have in mind?

I don't, really. My point is that Google has shown that they're willing to act.

Here's the article that was submitted to HN about a recent thing:

http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=12330&MediaType=1&Ca...

Here's the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213162

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

#247

Post by guyzero » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

hudibras wrote: post #75

guyzero wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official languages of India are Hindi and English.

And the official languages of Pakistan are Urdu and English. ...And, yes, I just Googled this question and got the answer from Wikipedia.

Well, yes, yay Google+Wikipedia, but at any rate it's not surprising to see English used in ads produced for India and/or Pakistan.

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

#248

Post by mietek » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 6:15 PM UTC

anatoly wrote: post #191

phillc73 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please do go on about Belorussian. This is quite interesting.

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

#249

Post by at-fates-hands » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

dsw2 wrote: post #245

coolsank wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that extension, lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia, and Egypt was the root cause of all Islamic terrorism. Saudi's actively promote a version of Islam that promotes religious discord in Muslim populations across the world. I disagree with this statement. Saudi Arabia (& Egypt for that matter) can't be held directly responsible as one of the root causes of the current Islamic terror situation. Their idea to spread I…

I was looking at some information about my grandparents (fairly wealthy second generation South African Muslims of Indian descent) and I expected to see a bunch of socially backward, repressed people. To my surprise, they were involved in poetry appreciation societies, sporting clubs and valued education highly. They wore western suits and hats and played cards. They were somewhat religious, but religion seemed to be…

up until the 1970's the Middle East and Afghanistan was actually quite progressive:

http://englishrussia.com/2011/07/21/the-afghanistan-of-the-5...

From one of the caption: "The campus of the University of Kabul has changed little since then. It’s people who have changed. In the 50s-60s, the students preferred Western style clothes, and the young people of both sexes could freely communicate with each other."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/01/28/podlich-afgh...

Caption from the #7 photo: "Afghan girls coming home from school. "Afghan girls, as well as boys, were educated up to the high school level, and although girls (and boys) wore uniforms, the girls were not allowed to wear a chadri (burka) on their way to secondary school. Able young women attended college, as did the men." - Peg Podlich"

I'm not sure why exactly the pendulum swung so hard to conservative side, but it's been there ever since, much the determent of the people living there.

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

#250

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 6:38 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #249

dsw2 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at some information about my grandparents (fairly wealthy second generation South African Muslims of Indian descent) and I expected to see a bunch of socially backward, repressed people. To my surprise, they were involved in poetry appreciation societies, sporting clubs and valued education highly. They wore western suits and hats and played cards. They were somewhat religious, but religion seemed to be…

up until the 1970's the Middle East and Afghanistan was actually quite progressive: http://englishrussia.com/2011/07/21/the-afghanistan-of-the-5... From one of the caption: "The campus of the University of Kabul has changed little since then. It’s people who have changed. In the 50s-60s, the students preferred Western style clothes, and the young people of both sexes could freely communicate with each other." http://…

> I'm not sure why exactly the pendulum swung so hard to conservative side

In Afghanistan, because in the wake of the Soviet takeover, the US (and Pakistan and some others) threw lots of money into funding religious extremists to fight the Communists, which was eventually successful, at least to the extent of forcing out the Soviets and establishing something like control by the religious extremists of much of the country (though competing warlords were still a factor.)

To a certain extent, similar factors are present in the Middle East (at least to the extent of religious extremism being a product of forces that were backed by superpowers for geopolitical reasons during the Cold War.)