I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
I assume that was meant as comment reply? :)
I think in many European countries bicycling is at least a common way for the kids to get around - at least it was like that in Germany, where I’m originally from. There are huge differences in the available infrastructure (which also impacts how many adults stick to cycling) - but also was fine in Germany just by bike.
Infrastructure in Finland is a lot better, though, and cycling in winter also not a problem.
Yeah, I pressed the wrong button here. I’m new to this app, used RIF before and I’m still getting used to how this Works
In any case, I know that bikes in the Netherlands are so normal that I think I was born on one. It’s nice to see that other counties are (getting) there too. I now live between Mexico and Canada and cycling in either country is suicidal, still.
I feel that, with climate change being what it is, car cities are unsustainable and entire cities will require redesigns in infrastructure and uramban layouts to allow for bicycles and pedestrian traffic. Design cities for people, not cars!
I have no earthly idea how to do those things and I’m from Canada. It’s also a gender thing if you’re older like me.
You’re an immigrant or from the city? Everyone from rural areas know how to do it
From the city.
Are chopping wood and starting a fire common activities in the metropolitan area where you live?
Suburbia I’m canda just mean the great outdoors
Simple math like additions and subtractions. Giving change back seems like trigonometry for some. (Note, I actually do enjoy trigonometry. It’s so much easier to calculate angles with fractions of Pi than the random 180°)
My mom didn’t let me use a calculator as a kid and I’m really glad now. I can do simple calculations much faster than if I had to use a calculator.
How to dress for -30C weather. How to get out if you fall through ice into water.
Where I live in the northern Rockies, -40°F is common enough that you kinda forget about it. But it’s also a college town. And every year we get a bunch of incoming students who treat the extreme cold like some sort of game or a challenge to their masculinity.
Same with driving. There’s a reason why the regional natives fastidiously use our turn signals and give a ton of space to cars in front of us. Because each of us has gotten into a fender bender by not doing that.
Seriously. Treat the cold with respect. It can debilitate you in just a few minutes.
TIL there are extra steps if you fall through ice.
Not that it says much, I haven’t even mastered the basic steps.
Carry ice picks (more like ice awls) with you when you travel on ice. If you fall through ice turn back to the direction you came from and start breaking the ice with your elbows (no use trying to get up as long as the ice is so brittle you can easily break it), then drag yourself up and start rolling away from the hole and trace your steps back. Also, try to get rid of the wet clothes as soon as you can.
It’s basically just dont try to stand, stay flat and roll away from the hole. At least that’s how I was taught
Oh you mean after someone has climbed out? That I knew.
Cutlery.
Growing up everyone around me could use a knife and fork, whereas chopsticks were something most people couldn’t use or only used badly. It never occurred to me that the opposite might be true until I shared a meal with some co-workers from mainland China and saw how clumsily they used our utensils.
It wasn’t until that point that I appreciated the amount of dexterity and finesse that goes into using cutlery well, and that I took it for granted because it’s something learned in childhood.This is definitely a generational, regional, ethnic, and class thing.
As a non-Asian kid on the US West Coast in the '80s, I learned to use chopsticks only slightly after learning to use a fork or spoon, even though we rarely ate food from cultures where chopsticks are standard. Heck, I’m pretty sure I was given chopsticks to eat tortellini at least once!
I was somewhat baffled as an adult when a partner’s parents weren’t comfortable using chopsticks … and they (the parents) were from New York City and had grown up eating Chinese takeout regularly.
in the American style the fork is held much like a spoon, a pen or much like an excavator
Shots fucking fired.
In the American style, also called the zig-zag method or fork switching, the knife is initially held in the right hand and the fork in the left. Holding food in place with the fork tines-down, a single bite-sized piece is cut with the knife. The knife is then set down on the plate, the fork transferred from the left hand to the right hand, and the food is brought to the mouth for consumption. The fork is then transferred back to the left hand and the knife is picked up with the right
Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this since it’s cultural, but I feel like if it is possible to use cutlery wrong, then I think the American style is definitely one of the wrong ways.
Never before have a I hoped that a Wikipedia article is part of an elaborate joke.
No one does that. In America we eat the burger or pizza with our hands, like GOD intended. Fries too.
Every American dish can be eaten with your hands: burritos, sandwiches, pitas, hot dogs, fried chicken, BBQ, etc. What do you eat with? A fork, like some Euro pansy?
I had no idea that I’d adopted the European method because fuck all that transferring back and forth.
My family-in-law, all 4 generations, are like 462874th generation American. They use cutlery in their fists like they’re cavemen stabbing at the last mammoth chop.
I definitely do not think chopstick experience is their problem.
That’s fair. Funnily enough, in the discussion that resulted from the meal I mentioned, my Chinese co-workers did say there are plenty of people who can’t use chopsticks well either.
I guess here in Korea it’s eating with chopsticks. In Sweden it was Swimming (especially for my Indian work mates). In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time. In Poland I’m not sure, but probably making those elaborate sandwiches for parties.
In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time.
This goes for Denmark too.
Used to be the case in Switzerland, now most beer bottles have a twist-to-open cap that still looks like a normal beer bottle cap.
Yeah, opening a beer (or other bottpe with a capped lid) is a very cool skill to have (one which I haven’t really mastered since I drink beer very, very infrequently).
I feel that. Always makes me feel like a failed German lol
Is the chopstick thing a dexterity issue? I’m so more inclined for chopsticks that, if eating alone, I’ll use the other ends of my silverware like chopsticks (and I’m not a part of any chopstick culture).
I dont think it’s so much an overall dexterity issue just a practice issue. Someone who doesn’t regularly use chopsticks might have really high hand dexterity but they just haven’t practiced that finger coordination. I.e. its easier to teach an athlete a new sport but a football players gonna have to practice to play hockey well.
The most common mistake I see with infrequent chopstick users is overgripping and a low grip. If you squeeze too hard it not only fatigues your hand but it actually makes them harder to control, same for choking up on them. If feels more secure but it actually gives you worse control. For any one wondering a high grip and only as tight as you’d hold a pen should make it easier to use chopsticks.
I feel like Latin Americans in general take for granted that you’re supposed to pull and push everything to make it work. Sometimes with clever but shitty and overspecific solutions for the problem, or shifting the goals to something more achievable. Some examples:
Three examples:
home oven
The top of the inner part of your oven is partially corroded, so the top heating element does not stay in place. If you leave it as is, it’ll get in the way, burn you, and burn your food. And you don’t have money for a new oven. You’re reasonably sure that the heating element is coated with some elec-proof stuff.
So what do you do? You put a big nail across the hole caused by the corrosion, and hold the element to that nail with some wire. “Just temporarily”. (Nothing is more permanent than temporary hacks.)
Linguistics, field work
Linguistics. You’re making field work on phonetics. You need clear records of speakers speaking their variety, that means good mic + noiseless environment. And yet you’re studying a variety mostly spoken by farmers, and the ones willing to help you out can’t travel, so you’ll need to record them from a cellphone in their farm, and your record will be filled with pigs oinking, birds chirping, and a rooster going “CRAAAA” nonstop.
The solution? …screw phonology, your paper is now about syntax. It’s far easier to detect by ear if the speaker used pronoun reduplication than if he used [ɾ], [ɹ] or [ɻ].
Chemistry, organic synthesis
You got a synthesis route demanding glacial acetic acid (HAc). Except that the HAc bottle is empty, requesting another will take a week because bureaucracy, and oxidising ethanol to HAc through permanganate is bound to get someone screeching at you “YOU’RE WASTING OUR REAGENTS!!!”.
Your solution? Run some quick maths on what’s cheaper: 1) to distil supermarket vinegar, or 2) to use bleach to oxidise ethanol at some loss. Then you do it.
!!< In between the ! And !
On sync for lemmy and probably other apps, there are buttons to do the markdown automatically haha. By the way, a new line is made by giving the previous line two empty spaces.[ ][ ]
New line. I just learned that one, and it’s better than Shift+Enter new lines.These new lines
Waste so much space.
In India we call this sort of engineering ‘jugaad’. And we do it all the time, sometimes to a dangerous level.
Seperating Litter, I guess. Many dont do it correctly anyways, but its worse in other countries.
Speaking English I guess. Not the best, but better than in former eastern countries. But yeah, fuck colonialism, so not really a great thing.
Riding the bike. Everyone should do it, and shocking to see many other countries struggle with that even more.
Which country are you from?
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Guess
Atlantis
Germany?
Wakanda
Elbonia
Speaking more than one language. Being from Switzerland, we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school. So it’s not infrequent to encounter swiss people who speak 4+ languages
Oddly it’s actually very common (and required in some areas) in the US to study more than one language also. What is extremely uncommon are opportunities to use a second language, so very few people actually ever become fluent. It’s a shame really.
Exactly. Unless things have changed dramatically, one or two years of a foreign language is a requirement in high school, and there are more opportunities in lower K-12 these days from what I hear. However, you’re right that this is not especially helpful without some immersion, and the practice of trading your kids to a foreign family for a year is far less common. Then, after K-12, opportunities to practice greatly diminish.
The German mother of a good friend moved to the US West coast when she was a young adult, married, and had my friend. She never lost her German accent. When I was in my early 20s, I had the opportunity to live and work in Germany for a couple of years, and when I came back, I was fairly fluent - enough to pass as a native from a “different region.” I visited my friend when I returned, and tried to have a conversation with her mother in German; she sadly informed me that she had forgotten most of her German, and could no longer converse… there are few opportunities to speak in German on the West coast, and even native language skills attrophy if unused.
In a related annecdote, when I first returned to the states, I’d sometime fail to remember the English words for the odd thing, like “trash can.” All I could remember was the German word for it.
All thay has gone away. Years later, I can barely hold basic conversations in German. Maybe some people have an ability to retain language skills without practice, but I believe it’s far more common to lose fluency you once had.
Reading always helped me to, at least keep the language alive in my head. So reading and understanding were never a problem.
But conversation? That degrades quickly to the point where people ask you from what country you are visiting…
Are you a transplant?
That’s a good anecdote.
For my part I took Spanish from 2nd or 3rd grade all through college. I basically knew enough to be dangerous and it was occasionally useful in online chat where my broken Spanish was marginally better than some people’s non-existent English. But honestly the biggest strength was that I knew enough to be able to tell when Google translate did a bad job conveying my meaning.
Nowadays I’m several years removed from the last opportunity to use it at all and I hardly remember anything. It’s definitely a “use it or lose it” thing.
It also has to do with the wide diversity of languages spoken. The elementary school where my kids go put out a statement during the pandemic that there are 32 different languages spoken by kids at home. They had gotten many requests for school communications in more than just English and Spanish, and had to explain why that wasn’t feasible.
So there are a ton of bilingual kids in their school, but my kids could learn the 4 additional languages spoken by the kids in their classroom, and the following year they would need to learn 4 entirely new languages. They learned to count to ten in several languages, but like you said, they will never have the opportunity to become fluent if they don’t go somewhere less heterogenous.
I can speak a few languages, but only the one I speak right now is useful.
In the UK I was given the option of German or French, but I wasn’t taught very well, and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling. If this is a common experience, as I believe it is, it results in a populace who speaks english only. (Obviously an issue exacerbated by the commonality of English on the internet and popular media)
It blows my mind how inefficient my school must have been. Right now, I can’t imagine learning something for 5 years and retaining nothing.
and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling
Thanks to events earlier last century pretty much everybody at least in Europe/Russia can speak a few basic sentences, and is often more than willing to demonstrate: “Haende hoch!” (hands up), “Nicht schiessen!” (don’t shoot) and a few others.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily that it’s “inefficient”. Moreso that it’s difficult for a language to actually stick and be useful if you’re not immersing yourself in that language. You can go to class all you want, but if you’re not trying to actively immerse yourself in it beyond class, you’re not going to learn the language no matter how good the teacher is.
It’s relatively “easy” to immerse yourself in English language content because English has sort of become the “lingua Franca” of the modern world. Something like Polish, for example, isn’t.
How would a child do that, if no one in their community speaks the target language, outside of the ~90 minute class?
Well that’s exactly my point. It’s pretty “easy” to do it with English because there is so much English media to consume out there. A lot of shows and movies they want to watch are probably already in English. Their parents might speak English for work, etc. Less so with many other languages.
I’m still not multilingual, but this concept made a lot more sense to me as to why I never retained my Spanish classes when I started learning programming. There’s a huge difference between say, reading a book / watching guides / reading tutorials on a programming language (which by itself generally won’t get you anywhere) vs actually following along, trying to make your own projects, etc.
I took Spanish for three years here in the States. Most of the Spanish I know now I learned after high school. This seems to be a pretty common problem in nations with English as the official language…
Common for everybody learning a language in an educational institution without RL practice. Immersion, of course, is the best way to learn a language, - gives good results even if you didn’t know it at all before being, eh, immersed.
Damned be my pervasive mother tongue! I want immersion! Immersion I say!!
It doesn’t help that outside of school, you will never use that language. Even if you go abroad, everyone either wants to practice their English or thinks your French/German is so poor that they’d prefer to just speak English.
Same with French here in Canada. I took French for six years and I still don’t speak it at all, and I actually did really well in my French classes.
Yep. French Immersion was the way to go if you started in elementary school or had above average academic skills for late immersion. I’m still disappointed I had to stop when I moved and getting to the school with the program just wasn’t feasible (had done two years of immersion prior). By the time I moved again it was Grade 10 and the presumed fluency was so high I would have struggled very badly.
Now the best option is dating a French girl, but my wife has reservations.
I spent more time conjugating verbs than actually speaking it.
In Germany it’s also mandatory - but learning the language at school unfortunately doesn’t necessarily mean you can speak it. LucasArts adventures contributed more to my language skills than my first English teacher. I’m always shocked about the lack of English skills in a lot of Germans when I’m back visiting. Rather surprisingly one of my uncles born in the 30s spoke pretty good English, though.
We’re now living in Finland - me German, wife Russian, we each speak to the kids in our native language, between each other English. So they’re growing up with 4 languages.
It’s quite interesting to watch them grow up in that situation. When learning about a new historical figure my daughter always asks which languages they spoke - and few weeks ago she was surprised someone only spoke two languages. So I explained that some people only speak one language - she gave me a very weird look, and it took a while to convince her that I’m not just making a bad joke.
Also Germany.
I learned english in school but only enough to be able to read it.
Once I started reading user submitted short stories (lile fan fics but different) my grammar really improved.
Nowadays the content I consume is basically 90% english based.Just my capitalization and grammar structure sucks. Also my vocal skills as I have no one to talk to.
But: I really have to thank my last Grundschul and Realschul english teachers. Without those two I may have never got into english that well.
Without those two I may have never gotten into english that well.
FTFY. Not a dig, just correcting your already very good English.
It’s got in British English.
For me it was mainly watching films and tv shows in english. I’ve always preferred the original audio on anything, really. So it motivated me a good bit to become more fluent.
The only german dub I didn’t hate was Breaking Bads’, and even then I wasn’t overly fond of it.Can’t get over english cartoons dubs.
Ben10, Avatar ATLA and spongebob sound so much worse in english compared to german to my ears. Could not enjoy it.
Live action movies are usually equal or only slightly worse regarding original vs dubbed german.Now that I think about it, there is one that’s infinitely better in German, and that’s The Emperors’ new Groove
Legendary
So let me specify, I prefer the original if it’s live action
Oh yeah. Kuzcos Königsklasse is awesome.
Especially the villains.
Never watched the series, but it seems good
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That’s a point current generation children are actively working on by following English-speaking streamers, communicating in predominantly English Discords, etc. The worst: my kid chose to prefer American English. Where did I go wrong?
Not if you’re exclusively consuming Black Adder and old Top Gear videos online.^^
I guess you didnt realize until it was too late.
Yeah, I think I’ve lost him (to the Colonies).
Of course I know people that only speak one language.
It’s me.
we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school
This is crazy to me. I studied French at school for years and got to a decent enough level, but then when I tried to take Spanish later on I couldn’t deal with it. Maybe if they’d been concurrent it would’ve been a different story but I just couldn’t keep the languages separate in my brain. Then years later when I moved to a different country the French pretty much left my head as a new language replaced it.
I guess I’ve only got one “foreign language center” in my head and only one language can occupy it at any time.
you need to keep using it. Watch a show or read a book in that language every once in a while. It’ll do wonders to keep the brain on it.
Keeping them separate is a struggle! Especially if they come from the same ancient language. I have troubles separating like German and English, and also Italian and French. Especially when I try to speak German, I end up throwing in lots of English words and structures
In Sweden kids learn English from second grade and a third language from fifth grade.
What really annoys me is how many programmers seem to expect us to only be able to understand one language. I much rather have the program made in English than to read a bad Swedish translation.
As in non swedish programmers try to translate into Sweedish for you?
Presumably what they meant, yes. Sometimes YouTube translates video titles for example. Of course, the video is still in the original language, so it’s completely useless, except for videos without speech.
Every program should have a setting to define in which language you want to interact with it.
YouTube supports multiple audio tracks these days and sometimes it decides that I should listen to a dubbed version of a video. Somehow all media players are very limited when it comes to settings for language preferences.
Yes exactly. Google is a big culprit of this, for instance translating descriptions of apps in Google play or giving me results on Google search in Swedish when I specifically wrote it in English. If I had wanted results in Swedish I would have written it in Swedish. Adding quotation marks doesn’t even help. I miss the time when you actually got what you searched for and not what Google believes that you search for… YouTube has an issue in the app when looking at playlist. Since the word “visningar” is so much longer than “views” the rest of the line is cut off. So you for instance can’t see if the video was posted 1 month ago or 1 year. This is more a failure of gui due to translation than the translation it self though.
On the subject of shitty translations: a budget webpage translated “disabled”, as in “this option is turned off”, as “funktionshindrad” which means a person with a disability. I bug reported it and the initial response was:
We do not currently support this functionality, but will pass your feedback on to our product team, who will make a note of it and try to incorporate it into our product as soon as possible.
Two months later they wrote that it would be forwarded to their product team for “whenever there’s an update in our system”. That was 10 months ago and it still isn’t fixed.
Only speaking one language fluently makes me feel like garbage regularly, none of my schooling really stuck and I can never commit to language or feel enough confidence to use anything I do learn.
Found the Brit/American/Australian? (Delete as appropriate)
Growing up in Australia I was required to learn a second language in years 7 and 8. All I can remember is how to say “and now cumshot” thanks to my friend and I finding his dad’s porn collection.
Dealing with potentially 100°F/38°C summers and sub 0°F/-18°C winters
I can do at least one of those. Very rarely will you see me not in warm clothes.
Flip flops and cargo shorts all year is how.
How to order coffee, get what you want and keep the line moving without any needless human interaction.
I’m from Seattle and so many tourists want to chat up the barista. Go to the stripe and sip coffee stand for that. If you are ordering something that requires more than 10 words, use the app or be prepared to get something left off and move on. For the love of choice don’t try to chat with some stranger in the line.
And that’s one of the reasons why a big part of the rest of the world think that the people living in the USA are rude. It’s not just about needless interactions, you don’t interact at all. No hi, no please, no thanks, no goodbye, no have a nice day, no sorry, no time. I’m glad I never learnt how to be rude and that’s not a skill I’ll try to teach my kids.
Based on the Americans I met, I don’t believe that is generally true. It varies a lot by region and social environment.
I don’t think it’s rude. I’ve been in many places where people just don’t make needless conversation. We interact just fine overall. Specially if you go to some place like southern California. Just Seattle in particular is a lot like the UK not only in weather but in social grouping. People in the UK also don’t needlessly interact.
Actually the opposite is true. Most of the world tends to think that Americans are overly friendly and informal, though obviously there’s a lot of variation.
Having been to quite a few countries in Europe, I’ve heard more about UK tourists than USA tourists, although the few UK tourists I met were friendly.
The USA is a massive country with hundreds of millions of people. There are rude people, but there are also friendly people. It just depends on where you are (and unfortunately in some places who you are). Having been to Seattle, people were generally friendly, but you can’t blame the barista for wanting to get through the line that goes out the door and two blocks down the road.
I’m from Portland and my complaint is nearly the opposite; that the baristas try to be too friendly/chatty with me. I don’t want to talk to you, I want my goddamned coffee and once I’ve had that I might be inclined to chat.
I even tell my employees not to talk to me until after I’ve had my coffee.
Portland and Seattle are fairly opposites. Keep Portland weird and all. Seattle is also a big tech hub and that means a lot of quiet, shy, introverted engineers. Portland has tech but not as much.
Scarcely. This is the tyranny of small differences. Portland and Seattle have way more in common with one another than they do with any other big cities in the US. Sure, there are differences, but to the rest of the world they seem trivial.
It’s notable, for example, that even something so organic as Seattle’s “grunge” music scene actually had its roots in Portland with all of the proto-grunge bands, like Napalm Beach and Dead Moon that came out of Portland’s Satyricon in the 1980s.
It’s still all the one but Seattle has moved into a big corporate city and doesn’t support the same sort of people as Portland does.
Also the barista may not want to talk to you but they are forced to nicely interact because they’d lose their job if they told you to go away.
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It gets really fun if you learn to use it to your advantage. For example, our driveway goes up an incline, so when I shoveled a row all the way up to the sidewalk, I just slide back down.
That way I’m much faster.removed by mod
Their posting history reveals them to be a racist troll.
Your posting history reveals your Nazi liking
How to stay safe in the wilderness. We get too many people that aren’t from around here that think you can do a hike late in the afternoon wearing sandals and only bringing a water bottle. People don’t realize that the wilderness is a dangerous place if you aren’t prepared. Weather can change rapidly and you need proper clothing and footwear to account for it. Make sure you have enough time for the hike and bring the essentials just in case something happens and you need to spend a night outdoors.
And petting wildlife. Or trying to take selfies with wildlife. Or feeding wildlife.
No, no, and no.
Even a cute lil’ chipmunk is a no-no. Bison, moose, and their sweet huggable calves are serious no-nos.
The death valley Germans comes to mind. The theory from the guy who found their bodies was that they thought area 51 would have patrols/guards like US bases in Germany. They didn’t realize that area 51 has a largely unguarded area as part of its “official territory” because death valley does the guarding for them.
Great long form write-up from the guy who found them: Here
I’m somewhat upset at you for having spent literally 8 hours on that wonderful blog. Thank you and also fuck you for that link. People give warnings for movietrope links, I might recommend the same.
Yeah, while I’m not a big hiker myself, being Swiss I know how prepared you need to be.
Walked around in Taiwan when I came across a hiking trail. 1.5 hours, like 150m verticality only, labelled as easy. Cool, but not enough water (only carried a 2l bottle). Went to a local teahouse and got me 4 more bottles to be safe and went for it. Walked past countless others because I was underprepared, and am glad I did because those could have turned out not so nice if I did go.
I’ve also been caught out by this in other places. I was in Hong Kong and went up to The Peak, which has a 3km path around the top. I thought one water bottle was enough for a flat walk in 35C humid summer heat. It wasn’t and ended up rationing water halfway through and chugging two whole bottles of water when I got back to where I could get water again.
For the ice one you mean taking a running start, sliding on it, and yelling weeeeeeeee… Right?
Just like crossing a street.
In Chicago it’s the same thing.
