@Færd you do realize the footage is sped up, right? :-D
@Robusto that's the thing. I always find such graphs not just hugely unhelpful, but hugely misleading.
Good luck being from Texas and trying to understand someone from Newcastle. Or being from Canberra and trying to understand someone from Baltimore.
Yet the graph lumps all these people together.
You might as well lump together English and Swedish with Swiss German, then.
What is even the point.
Half of the Chinese pie can't even understand the other half.
And for some of the pies like Italian or Arabic, every single person in there speaks a totally different language from every single other person in there.
Only for the French, Japanese, and Russian pies can you claim any kind of mutual intelligibility within.
And only the Russian pie can actually be extended. To all of Slavic. Because all of those are mutually intelligible to a frankly obscene degree.
Someone from Sofia will have less trouble understanding someone from Warsaw than a Socal will have trying to understand a Geordie.
Even though Polish has six cases, no articles, and nasal vowels, and Bulgarian has no nasal vowels, only two cases, and a definite article.
And now that tchrist is here, he can weigh in on the mutual intelligibility between Catalan and Cuban.
@RegDwigнt Yeah. Actually that was my passive-aggressive way of expressing jealousy. It's awesome that their public transport relies so heavily on bikes.
I'm even more triggered now to pay a visit to frustrate them by my less-than-excellent biking skills.
@Gigili Duolingo courses are all introductory ones. A typical Iranian can either use the site in English to take an introductory course in other languages (of which French happens to be the most popular) or not use the site at all (unless they can use it in Arabic etc, but those folks are a relative minority).
@Robusto Though there are areas that you would be wise to steer clear of, I think you would be safe travelling in much of the Arab world, even as an American. The degree to which you'd feel welcome wiould indeed vary.
On the other hand, I've heard a number of Americans say they found Iran one of the most "pro-American" countries they visited. I'm happy that it's not the other way around, but it's hard to explain. It's kept me thinking.
@Robusto Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE are accessible. For the rest, most anybody in the world would have similar qualms to yours.
@Gigili That's what I figured. But French does seem like a strange 2nd. Could be, as @Færd alludes, that English is really popular in school and not French, so Duolingo is a good easy cheap way to learn French outside of school.
@M.A.R. Also a requirement for many international jobs.
@M.A.R. I suppose not. Languages in school are more imposed (but I suspect that English is on the top for desire to learn most everywhere nowadays in order to understand Taylor Swift lyrics).
So what I was getting at is that French, as on a lesser tier than English nowadays, might be the most desired 2nd place if English weren't considered (because it is already taught in school so why bother with Duolingo. Kids aren't bothering with Duolingo, it's mostly only used by post school adults.
@M.A.R. He's so old school. Lil Uzi Vert is more up to date.
Ha, love the reviews. Critics are oddly verbose when it comes to him.
> It's like someone is repeatedly poking you in the parts of your brain that register mere sensation, and keeps hammering away until a line of drool drops from your downturned lip.
but I have a hard time watching them. They hurt my eyes. Literally. I have to rub my eyes a lot because of all the flying pieces. It's like a Sudoku game but the screen is moving all the pieces everywhere.
Whereas in the John Wick series, where the body count is best expressed in splattering head shots per second, you totally care about JW. And his dog. And his allies. and his fighting dog allies.
His movies kinda entrance you. It's kinda hypnotic, but in another way, and you enjoy every moment of it. But it requires that you pay attention to the movie
Also, leave glucose alone. Glucose is perfectly fine, and so is fructose. The whole point is that we don't ever consume any of those anymore. We all shovel saccharose into us instead. And that shit is just evil.
You can't eat twenty BigMacs, get a heart attack, and then blame it on the olive oil.
@RegDwigнt: I was just listening to music and woolgathering about it, and something I've thought about for some time popped into my head. I think there are certain "character traits" (I'll call them) for instrumentalists that are similar to national traits that citizens of nations buy into.
Flutists buy into the idea of trills and fluff and sixteenth-note runs with a rest on the downbeat, trombonists flaunt their pedal tones, bassists are inured to their !-V-!, strings consume spiccato like spaghetti, percussionists strut and fret their 15 seconds of climax and then are heard no more.
And these are as characteristic as Linzer torte mit schlag to the Austrian, wine and argument to the French, vodka and winter to the Russian, running and laughter to a Kenyan, gun culture and country music to a redneck ... and so on. These things define cultures. So do the limitations of instruments define cultural characteristics for musicians.
Anyway, just some idle, wine-flown thoughts for the end of 2019.
Bassoons are OK with farting. So are tubas. They are the Limburger cheese of the orchestra.
@Robusto I was just listening to fireworks and pondering what a misguided alien might ponder that happened across this rock today of all days, observing this madness from low orbit.
Like, why even fire fire into the skies. Why not paint all our rivers green, say. Or morris dance around a baobab.
But yeah. About your thing. I wonder how much about those character traits is inate and how much is acquired through years of study. How many of them violinists would be much happier playing a French horn, it's just that the thought of trying never crossed their mind.
"Du bist, was Du ißt", they say in German.
Maybe you also become what you play.
I wouldn't know, myself. My attention span is that of my two-year old younger godson. The moment I play three notes on any instrument, I am fully satisfied with myself and go play three notes on something else instead.