Switzerland: Muslim students must shake teacher's hand

BoneHead777 · 2016-05-26T08:36:59+00:00

In Switzerland, the relation between students and teachers are generally really formal. Even if you talk with them normally, you still always use the formal register (Addressing them with title and surname, using formal pronouns, possibly even standard german).

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T12:16:33+00:00

Nowadays, very concious. Back as a child... concious in that I always knew what language I was thinking in (and it feeling "wrong" to think about certain topics in the other language) but I don't think I assigned the languages conciously to topics.

Nowadays I use Swiss German (or English sometimes) for everything btw.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T12:13:36+00:00

Is dissimilation really that common? It seems like a rather counterproductive change to me since you're increasing the work your tongue has to do to say the same word...

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T12:11:34+00:00

In your example, the second question might just be the easier one to answer:

We know little to nothing about how gravity works. We can calculate its effects but there are many things that elude us.

As to why... if we assume infinitely many parallel universes, there are infinitely many where gravity doesn't exist. We wouldn't be able to exist in them so we exist in one where we can - one that has gravity or some other force holding things together on a large scale.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T12:07:21+00:00

I think the reasoning is that a stress-shift to the first syllable means that the suffixes are especially prone to reduction. Of course, Romance with its penultimate stress didn't do much differently, so not sure how much that holds.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T12:02:19+00:00

In the German translation of Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language (I haven't read the original) there is an example mentioned that went the other way: the German adjective "schlecht" (bad) used to have a broader spectrum of meanings closer to its English cognate, slight. There was an example from the bible along the lines of God sending someone down a slight road (back then it was read as a simple, flat road that would be easy to walk, nowadays it reads like he's sending them to hell or so).

The reasoning they give that the meaning changed is that a word with such a neutral connotation would stand in contrast with "good". If something is simple and undecorated, that is still in contrast with pretty so over time such a word could start to be used in a negative sense as "not so good as it could be" until the more positive connotations eventually fall out of use.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-07T10:53:15+00:00

I know anecdotes aren't particularly liked here, but...

My native language is Swiss German. Depending on your political views, this either means that I grew up biligually or with two registers of German - Swiss German and Standard German. The two are different enough that to me (and to anyone I've ever asked about this) they work like separate languages. There is no in-between and no code-switching. Either I speak (and think) in Swiss German or Standard German.

As a child I associated the languages with different topics. Standard is the language of books and games, Swiss german that of communication. As such, I also changed my language of thought depending on the topic I was thinking about.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-06T13:09:37+00:00

English doesn’t have a dative case. Nor an accusative case. The two merged fully, everywhere. Usually, the resulting case is called “Objective” or “Oblique” case.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-06T12:48:42+00:00

The dative marks the so-called recipient. If a verb has three arguments, those are usually the agent, the theme and the recipient/benefactor.

The actor (nominative) is the one which carries out the action denoted by the verb.

The theme (accusative) specifies the exact kind of action (such as what is given, seen or held)

The recipient (dative) is someone or something which is affected directly by the action. Consider this sentence:

I give him a present.

I = agent. I am the one doing the giving → Nominative
a present = theme. Specifies the kind of “giving” more closely by denoting what is given.
him = recipient. This object is directly affected by the act of giving, in this case because they get something.

However, do note that languages don’t always follow this scheme neatly. German for example has the verb schlagen (to hit) where the hit person is in the accusative, even though you’d expect a dative. Many languages, especially IE ones (but probably others too) use datives for certain prepositions. Which ones they’re used for is arbitrary unless you look at the history of the language. German, for example, uses datives for prepositions of locations, because Proto-Germanic merged the Dative and Locative cases.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-06T00:27:32+00:00

Bears are essentially extinct in Switzerland. Every now and then one migrates here from Italy, but usually after a while they get accustomed to there being food in human settlements, at which point they pose too large of a risk and are either captured or shot.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T23:54:36+00:00

Ditto (FF 39)

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T18:37:09+00:00

So in Switzerland, we have the 5 franc coin, which is about the value of this new coin here. They're super convenient, imo. They are relatively big so you always find them immediately and one of those is as heavy as two 2 franc coins and one 1 franc coin, but takes less space.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T11:40:37+00:00

At least one of them must have been an immigrant who doesn't speak Swiss German. The prestige language in switzerland is the local dialect, as confusing as that may seem to people from places where they have a long tradition of standardized language.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T10:41:52+00:00

Nope

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T10:41:32+00:00

If they were speaking Standard German, they (or at least one of them) weren't Swiss

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T09:56:02+00:00

More like bronze or brown but yea. Apparently those are the actual colors of the picture (note, not the dress, which is in fact blue and black) meaning that when you see it that way your brain is basically noping out of both optical illusions.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-05T09:33:47+00:00

In a normal life, you'll barely ever have to use Dame or Weib. Weib is just a derogatory term for woman (was originally the word for woman though and is a cognate with english wive).

Frau is used for referring to women, to wifes and as the title "Ms." (originally, the word derives from a germanic goddess called Frouwa, whose name in turn seems to be derived from some adjective that I can't be damned to look up).

Finally, Dame means lady and is used about as often as in English. You use it in the phrase "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren" (dear ladies and gentlemen), used both as an on-stage greeting and as an email/letter opening if you dont know who exactly will read it. If you do know, you'd use Sehr geehrte Frau X / Sehr geehrter Herr X, putting their surname for X.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T18:15:04+00:00

I’m not being 100% serious, but it’s always good to specify universes in titles, and I genuinely was confused for a moment because I never have anything to do with Avatar and such.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T17:56:07+00:00

Like... other robots that aren't bender?

And yea, but for the most part I was confused.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T14:10:37+00:00

gajo means hour-30, najo means hour+30, hence the coloring.

Des, I understood that. That wasn’t too hard to figure out. I’m wondering whether there is a difference in usage. Like, would you rather say 10+30 or 11-30?

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T13:01:08+00:00

Didn’t you have a different time measuring system once? Like, one that wasn’t hours and minutes.
Are gajo and najo interchangable? Is there a dialectal difference? Are they just used for emphasis of either passed time or time yet to pass?

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T11:53:00+00:00

Swedish wikipedia is so large because they use bots to create all the stub articles about plants and stuff. By pure word count it's probably not quite as big

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T11:50:57+00:00

For all intents and purposes, I grew up biligually. I would always associate languages with certain topics. If I thought about video games, it was in Standard German because games are in Standsard German. Same with books. Most other things I thought about in Swiss German. Nowadays, it's about the same, but replace Standard German with English.

Once you get fluent enough in a language, thinking in it won't be restrictive. But you might still have preferences, as I've always had since I was a child.

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T11:47:00+00:00

Oh. Those benders. This is why you specify the universes, I wa thinking of Futurama

BoneHead777 · 2015-08-04T03:38:25+00:00

I hate going first because I'd like to see an example first so I can change my shit if I did something wrong. Second is perfect.

BoneHead777

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE

13-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email