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Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

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Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#91

Post by dqv »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #31
fogetti wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “But I’m not a shareholder!” A surprising amount of Americans are shareholders in large financial institutions. Do you have an IRA? Does it invest in e.g. mutual funds? If you own a mutual fund or index fund, you are highly likely to beneficially own fractional shares of US financial institutions. Someone who owns 0.01 shares is a shareholder; welcome to the magic of capitalism. I like this guy. He has great insigh…

> I like this guy. He has great insight I'm sure customer service people and healthcare professionals love people coming on premises and throwing their weight around with exaggerations and half-truths. The people I know would put you on the bottom of the list.

Yeah...

It's a warning sign to be ultra-defensive and strictly adhere to protocol (and document every action taken). In any normal situation, there is room for adjustment, but not if you're interacting with someone who seems to have a superiority complex (doesn't mean they actually do, but it seems that way). No one is going to scare me into doing it wrong so I can get reprimanded for it later.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#92

Post by gnufx »

jordansmithnz wrote: post #50

I’ve given thought in the past to some sort of ‘support reputation system’. After calling tech support, they’d rate your manner and how capable you seemed, and this would feed through into your future calls (e.g. calling an ISP with a genuine + very technical question might mean you go straight to the highest tier of tech support next time you call). It would save time for tech support workers too; no need to vet ver…

Once upon a time when we'd ring up support for Sun, SGI, etc., they did know that, for instance, they could just send a new part to swap ourselves when we said it was broken. (That was after GEC, at least, no longer actually had an office on site.)

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#94

Post by gnufx »

aasasd wrote: post #29
netcan wrote: post #10

This is (hopefully not) obnoxiously off-topic... As a Hebrew speaker, I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. laoned idioms are inherently exotic, and this one is worth demystifying It means any choice of word (or pronunciation, in the literal example) that clearly identifies the speaker's group affiliations. A good modern example is "LondonDerry/Derry. This'd b…

> I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. [...] A good modern example is "LondonDerry/Derry. This'd be my choice for an English translation of shibboleth. Well, the thing is, I'm not an Englishman so have no idea what's the deal with ‘Derry’ is, but I know what a shibboleth is. It has become an English term—and btw not an idiom in English since it has no other m…

Actually, being English might not help.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#95

Post by netcan »

sukilot wrote: post #57
netcan wrote: post #10

This is (hopefully not) obnoxiously off-topic... As a Hebrew speaker, I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. laoned idioms are inherently exotic, and this one is worth demystifying It means any choice of word (or pronunciation, in the literal example) that clearly identifies the speaker's group affiliations. A good modern example is "LondonDerry/Derry. This'd b…

I'm not Irish, so Derry is just as exotic as shibboleth. English is made of Greek and Latin and German and more; it's weird to say that one of those languages is exotic, but weirder still to level that complaint against the oldest known word whose meaning hinges on it being intentionally exotic. Finally, Londonderry/Derry is a disagreement, not a shibboleth. Shibboleth is about having the ability to pass as a native,…

It's also a disagreement.

In practice and common language though, the choice of words gives you information about the speaker.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#96

Post by heartbreak »

rdl wrote: post #25

Interesting USG shibboleths are using the correct acronyms, especially for insider stuff (TDY, "allowances", "authorities", and referring to NSA as NSA and not "the NSA", CIA as CIA and not "the CIA", State for "the State Department", etc.)

A friend at NSA deliberately uses “the NSA” when speaking about the agency online because of course they do.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#97

Post by michannne »

nkrisc wrote: post #68
notacoward wrote: post #67

I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technic…

This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway. Recently I had a corporate ins…

I do support along with my usual dev work and interface with users daily. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "I'm pretty sure it's because of..." followed by something completely unrelated, along with a stubborn resolve to not try the professional's recommended solution

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#98

Post by purple_ducks »

aasasd wrote: post #61
netcan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Terms become terms and we can't change it. I just meant that idioms tend to be richer when the source is material. Point taken on finding an example that everyone understands. Any political context creates shibboleths by the dozen. The UK is good for making ones that stick around. "Nationist" and "National" political movements, for example, are apposite (and opposing).

Yeah no, don't do that. After reading about the Derry thing, I realized I better forget all about it and never mention it in the presence of an Irishman, a Northern-Irishman or anyone else from GB, and especially not botch my reference to any one side. ‘Shibboleth’ has the nice quality that no Ephraimites recently had, or are likely to soon have, misfortunes because of the phenomenon, and the whole affair was three t…

> never mention it in the presence of an Irishman, a Northern-Irishman or anyone else from GB, and especially not botch my reference to any one side

It's really only an issue in written form.

In spoken form, the London part is silent so they're both just pronounced Derry..

Signed,

An Irish person.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#99

Post by leipert »

hprotagonist wrote: post #46
FabHK wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly, during the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi forces commencing on May 10th, 1940, the Dutch used "Scheveningen" or "beschuit" as a shibboleth to distinguish German speakers from Dutch. I don't quite understand that, as most Germans don't speak Dutch, full stop, and it would be trivial to distinguish them thereby, while presumably if you have gone to the trouble of learning Dutch, you'd know how to pronou…

> while presumably if you have gone to the trouble of learning Dutch, you'd know how to pronounce "Scheveningen". It’s actually hard to do. This is a good choice of shibboleth. I’d propose “squirrel” as an english word to find german speakers. Famously, pacific theater allied forces occasionally used “lollapalooza” as a shibboleth, also for fairly obvious reasons.

Ha. That is nice, because Eichhörnchen (squirrel) is also a hard one in German.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#100

Post by freehunter »

coldtea wrote: post #71
netcan wrote: post #10

This is (hopefully not) obnoxiously off-topic... As a Hebrew speaker, I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. laoned idioms are inherently exotic, and this one is worth demystifying It means any choice of word (or pronunciation, in the literal example) that clearly identifies the speaker's group affiliations. A good modern example is "LondonDerry/Derry. This'd b…

> As a Hebrew speaker, I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. laoned idioms are inherently exotic, and this one is worth demystifying Well, it was neither translated, nor transliterated. It was adopted as an english word, with its own dictionary definition and everything. The definition happens to coincide with the Hebrew, but it could just as well not (there a…

That's (for better or worse) an almost defining characteristic of the English language. We take words from other languages and adopt them as English words. It doesn't matter if the word in English means the same thing as the original word, it doesn't matter what language it came from, it doesn't matter if we're combining two words from different languages to make a new word (television is the Greek word 'tele' combined with the Latin word 'visio').

English is an incredibly dynamic language with very loose rules. If a loanword sounds exotic, well that's half the fun.

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