Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 398 posts

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#271

Post by yen223 »

fragmede wrote: post #263
CapricornNoble wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I would think AT LEAST Jackie Chan is a household name due to the Rush Hour movies, and for anyone who grew up watching Hong Kong action flicks, they'd probably also know Jet Li at least, and Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, and maybe Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung too.

Don't forget Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu, Donnie Yen, Jason Tobin, Olivia Cheng, Dianne Doan, Lucy Liu isn't famous in China but she is in the US. Not Chinese but recognizable because of HBO's The Warrior: Andrew Koji, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim (I cheated, my parents are from Hong Kong.)

Not sure if I'm being whooshed here, but a large chunk of those people are not from China.

Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian

Bruce Lee is American, baby

A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from before Hong Kong was returned to China

(Probably should've specified Chinese as people from China, specifically the mainland)

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#272

Post by yen223 »

aurareturn wrote: post #256
yen223 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about China tbh Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?

The west deliberately blocks Chinese media. In asia, China's culture is far more prevalent and gaining quickly.

Japan and Korea, yes. China, not really.

Unless you want to include Hong Kong, but even then

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#273

Post by fragmede »

yen223 wrote: post #271
fragmede wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu, Donnie Yen, Jason Tobin, Olivia Cheng, Dianne Doan, Lucy Liu isn't famous in China but she is in the US. Not Chinese but recognizable because of HBO's The Warrior: Andrew Koji, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim (I cheated, my parents are from Hong Kong.)

Not sure if I'm being whooshed here, but a large chunk of those people are not from China. Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian Bruce Lee is American, baby A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from before Hong Kong was returned to China (Probably should've specified Chinese as people from China, specifically the mainland)

Yeah, Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco and had a US passport, but he grew up in Hong Kong. Point is, Chinese diaspora exists and can be seen for those who want to look. Projecting a viewpoint that no one knows about China or Chinese people because you don't want to think they do, so you feel slighted, and can then rage against that; it just seems kind of hollow to me.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#274

Post by michaelscott »

jack_tripper wrote: post #252
BlaDeKke wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're comparing apples to oranges. Kids learn foreign languages much faster than adults, plus get a lot more support and less judgement on mistakes from adults since school kids don't operate in a highly competitive environment. But good luck reaching proficient fluency in a foreign language in your 30s where you'll face a lot more gatekeeping especially on the jobs market. Many western nations still gate-keep caree…

You're conflating 2 issues here: judgement of adult attempts at a new language and the time required to learn it. The first is just a cultural thing, although it is sometimes valid for understanding a speaker (cases in Slavic languages, pronunciation in a homonym-heavy language like French, tones in Asian languages). Problem is that it's oftentimes more "cultural" than "valid" critique, which helps no one.

The second problem is more practical and it's not the only difference between child and adult speakers; the vocabulary required in most day-to-day settings for a child is considerably easier to master than the adult equivalent, regardless of language (describing symptoms to your doctor or getting through a bank or tax appointment will be much more difficult than describing the weather or what you want for lunch). Adults in general are just as good as children at learning new languages, it's just that life has different requirements from that age group.

Edit: that said, I actually am agreeing with your general sentiment

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#275

Post by danielscrubs »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #132
duffyjp wrote: post #122

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…

I correct my kids when they do mistakes, how else would they improve?

Calling people racist when they try to be helpful might say more about you than them.

I mean what I say and say what I mean is also something worth striving for.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#276

Post by adrian_b »

asmosoinio wrote: post #95
duffyjp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time. The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a…

> ...which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know. Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.

They are both Austronesian languages (also related to the Polynesian languages), so the similarity is not due to coincidence. In SEA there are also other completely unrelated language families besides Austronesian, e.g. the Thai language and the Khmer language belong to different language families with no relationships to Austronesian languages, like Malaysian (besides recent linguistic borrowings between neighbors).

All Austronesian languages are simple phonetically. Also the phonetic simplicity of Japanese is likely to have been caused by an Austronesian substrate related to that of the aborigine Taiwanese people.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#277

Post by mortarion »

mcmoor wrote: post #162
ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.

Everytime I see the ocean of scooters, I wonder how horrible it'd be if scooters weren't invented but instead everyone use cars like in America. Either it'll make the most legendary traffic jam ever or GDP will be cut in half since no one can move anywhere. With our already overcrowded public transport, it's practically the only alternative. I actually wonder how much better American traffic would be if scooters are…

The Netherlands had over 1000KM (621 miles) of traffic jams Monday morning.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#278

Post by yen223 »

fragmede wrote: post #273
yen223 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if I'm being whooshed here, but a large chunk of those people are not from China. Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian Bruce Lee is American, baby A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from before Hong Kong was returned to China (Probably should've specified Chinese as people from China, specifically the mainland)

Yeah, Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco and had a US passport, but he grew up in Hong Kong. Point is, Chinese diaspora exists and can be seen for those who want to look. Projecting a viewpoint that no one knows about China or Chinese people because you don't want to think they do, so you feel slighted, and can then rage against that; it just seems kind of hollow to me.

I was hoping to talk more about (Mainland) China being uniquely bad at exporting pop culture, especially when compared to the success of Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent, Taiwanese pop culture.

The fact that nearly all celebs you mentioned were famous from HK film seems to at least confirm that.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#279

Post by mlrtime »

vladgur wrote: post #167
esperent wrote: post #159

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?

It's expensive to control the quality of water from source all the way to tap. Just having visible clean running water is hard.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#280

Post by jack_tripper »

michaelscott wrote: post #274
jack_tripper wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Kids learn foreign languages much faster than adults, plus get a lot more support and less judgement on mistakes from adults since school kids don't operate in a highly competitive environment. But good luck reaching proficient fluency in a foreign language in your 30s where you'll face a lot more gatekeeping especially on the jobs market. Many western nations still gate-keep caree…

You're conflating 2 issues here: judgement of adult attempts at a new language and the time required to learn it. The first is just a cultural thing, although it is sometimes valid for understanding a speaker (cases in Slavic languages, pronunciation in a homonym-heavy language like French, tones in Asian languages). Problem is that it's oftentimes more "cultural" than "valid" critique, which helps no one. The second…

Sure some few adults can learn languages as fast as kids, but you completely missed my main points around gatekeeping that language skills always has on adults and less so on kids.

Because statements like the original I was replying to of "no time for gatekeeping" are simply not true, but more like the poster doesn't notice it because he (or his kids) are not affected by that gatekeeping.

Post reply on HN