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Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#191
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have a huge culture industry yet (or at least, not one that appeals to English-speaking audiences), but they’ve become a lot more prominent on the internet in the last 5 years due to better infrastructure and integration into various English speaking social networks (via both social media and people travelling in and out of Indonesia). It’s a Muslim majority country and very conservative, so a lot of the t…

> both developed their own internationally-competitive culture industries Korea definitely, but China? Seems like most of China's modern cultural export came from Hong Kong, and even that has stopped. Conventional wisdom is that the Three Body Problem couldn't be published today. I'm curious what (homegrown) Chinese cultural products are internationally competitive today. China seems to be punching far below their we…

> Seems like most of China's modern cultural export came from Hong Kong, and even that has stopped.

You’re probably right. I’m just saying that 20 years ago the label of being “Made in China” meant something was cheap and bad. The business culture still isn’t great from what I hear but people are more comfortable than ever buying Chinese products and I’ve been hearing that more exchange students have been going to China to study.

The impression I had of China’s cultural exports was mostly from having seen more Chinese expatriates and immigrants openly engaging with e.g. Chinese music and fashion influencers. This wasn’t particularly common 20 years ago; I started noticing it around 2019.

The other thing I should note is that when I said internationally competitive I primarily meant outside of the Anglosphere. K-dramas are an interesting one because you can find women (it’s almost always women) of all ages from all over the world who watch them. Korean media is not unheard of in the Anglosphere but it is not nearly as popular as it is outside of the Anglosphere.

It’s possible China doesn’t have anything like this yet, and maybe it never will due to being comparatively censorious, but my perception is that sentiment towards China has improved quite a bit outside of the Anglosphere. I haven’t done reading on that; it’s just a hunch.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#192

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

> lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10 I'm curious, what does a beer or a glass of wine cost?

Alcohol is more expensive than other countries, in general.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clean safe water from the sink is not something you'll find in most of the world, in fact. It's not just SEA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safe_drink_tap_water_map.... So basically it's only safe to drink tap water in western countries + Japan, Singapore, Chile, South Korea, and a few of the rich Arab countries. I would argue that even the blue areas here would be speckled with lots of non-drinkable areas if yo…

Any idea why that is? Why is safety of tap water high(I hope) priority in some parts of the world and not the others? Is it simply the economics of water purification and delivery or something else?

Bottled (mineral) water is a big business in Indonesia. Not sure if "people" are incentivized to change that anytime soon.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on. My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound exactly the same to my ears... I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.

In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never. Advice: Ignore it when nati…

Says it’s overrated and non semantic… on authority of what? Being foreign to it and not knowing the language, naturally

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on. My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound exactly the same to my ears... I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.

In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never. Advice: Ignore it when nati…

Japanese actually has a much smaller set of phonemes (~half as many as English), resulting in extensive homophones. When combined with its greater tendency toward ambiguity, correct use of pitch can actually have a larger impact on intelligibility, as compared to many other languages.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never. Advice: Ignore it when nati…

>How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar It confuses the hell out of me when non-natives misplace stress in Ukrainian and use wrong cases. It's that I want to gatekeep, but above certain rate of mistakes it's just difficult to follow what is being said.

Since the war, we have a lot of Ukrainians at our Flemish school. We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on. My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound exactly the same to my ears... I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.

Japanese pitch accent actually varies across regions. Some have no pitch accent at all! I think this shows that it's not very important unless you want to sound like a native speaker. I never bothered to learn the "standard" pitch accents but I tend to imitate the Kansai pitch accent of my wife :)

Kagoshima where there is no pitch accent is like a different language entirely though, and nearly unintelligible

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#198
I don’t understand the point of concentrating everything in a megacity. Take New York as an example: the cost of living is through the roof, while the quality of life is often the opposite. Corporations should stop renting offices in the most expensive areas of the country and instead prioritize locations where housing is affordable and people don’t have to spend more than 10 minutes commuting to work. The state should de-prioritize NYC and encourage companies to invest in smaller cities. This would bring jobs to those areas, reduce pressure on NYC, and support broader infrastructure development. Apply that approach across the country, and suddenly the entire nation can function more efficiently instead of relying on a few overloaded hubs.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#199
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jakarta has a noise problem. I offer a practical template: has a noise problem. When you say "temples", do you mean masjid (mosque)? It is pretty normal anywhere in the Islamic-majority world to sing prayers over a loud speaker a few times a day.

U.S. cities have noise laws. I don’t think Tokyo is considered loud. Yes, temples blasting prayers.

Neither the US, nor Japan are considered developing countries. I'm confused by your comment.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#200
post #114

For Europeans wanting a megacity experience within weekend jaunt range, Cairo can be kind of a mad experience, with things like the Garbage City https://www.adventuresnsunsets.com/cairo-garbage-city/ and cave church https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/blog/egypt-attraction... plus the usual pyramids etc. Very cheap Ubers like $8/hr.

Try not to be a woman

Or gay
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