[HN Gopher] Antarctic English
___________________________________________________________________
Antarctic English
Author : benbreen
Score : 165 points
Date : 2024-02-28 22:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| What's "sleeping chamber"? Is that the same thing as bedroom?
| caseyohara wrote:
| "sleeping chamber" struck me as unusual too. If you search
| wikipedia for it, this Antarctic English article is the first
| relevant result.
|
| I think "bedchamber" is probably what was meant.
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bedchamber
| tokai wrote:
| Variants of sleep chamber is a normal term in North Germanic
| languages. Maybe it comes from them.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I would just call it a dormitory...
| NamTaf wrote:
| Functionally yes, but it's likely more specifically referring
| to having one in a temporary structure, e.g.: a demountables.
|
| "Donga" is used commonly within Australian mining and
| construction industries (and presumably also overseas) to refer
| to a demountable/transportable structure like you might see on
| a commercial construction site. Sometimes in FIFO mine sites
| they're used to house the workers. I'm guessing the same things
| are used in Antarctic research stations to house the personnel.
|
| These things: https://dostonhouse.com/office-donga/
| itronitron wrote:
| Sounds more like a cryostasis pod.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Not related to Antartic English but I am a proponent of the
| theory introduced by Professor Faarlund [1] that English should
| be categorized as a North Germanic language like Swedish and not
| West Germanic like Dutch and German.
|
| [1] "Language of the Vikings" by Faarlund
| asimpletune wrote:
| Interesting, what is the difference?
| ksaj wrote:
| One is closely related to the German that you hear in Germany
| today. The other is more closely related to the Amish
| Mennonite German, which is very different. There are
| similarities, but they are different enough that some people
| feel they are as similar to each other as English is to
| German.
| medstrom wrote:
| Are you talking about Pennsylvania Dutch?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch_language
| triyambakam wrote:
| Faarlund's argument for classifying English as a North
| Germanic language is based on syntactic evidence and
| historical contact between Old Norse and Old English. He
| suggests that the extensive Viking presence in the British
| Isles during the Viking Age led to significant linguistic
| influence that shaped the development of English. This
| influence, according to Faarlund, is profound enough to
| warrant reclassifying English away from its traditional West
| Germanic grouping into the North Germanic category. He points
| to structural similarities between English and the
| Scandinavian languages that are not found in other West
| Germanic languages, arguing these are the result of Old Norse
| influence rather than shared Germanic heritage.
| SllX wrote:
| What does Faarlund say about Frisian then? Frisian is also
| a West Germanic language, and to my understanding is very
| closely related to English to the point that it is possible
| to speak a grammatically correct sentence in English and
| IIRC West Frisian simultaneously.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
| causi wrote:
| Dutch sure sounds a lot more like English than Swedish does.
| The famous "Geef me een klap papa" comes to mind. Quite a bit
| of Dutch sounds nearly as close to English as, say, Scots does.
| "Zet de televisie aan." "Waar ben je?" "Ik heb honger, wanneer
| gaan we eten?"
| BirAdam wrote:
| I grew up hearing German, Schwaebisch, English, Latin, and
| French regularly. Dutch is readable for me, but hearing it is
| sometimes completely foreign.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I don't think this works well. English is absolutely "Germanic"
| but it doesn't neatly fit into any grouping grammatically,
| lexically, or audibly. The influence of French, and milder
| influences of Gaelic languages have transformed the language
| considerably. Those two have as much influence as does Norse.
| The Angles and Saxons were West Germanic, and they started the
| language. Reclassification of English as North Germanic would
| be about as accurate as reclassifying it as Romance.
| kergonath wrote:
| But it would be more romantic. I was struck by how much a lot
| of English people _really_ want to feel like Vikings. French
| people tent to be looked down upon, or considered as weird
| eccentrics. Some people really don't want to realise how
| close the English and French cultures are in actual truth.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > Dead-Penguin Tours (a type of tour in the late summer after
| penguins have abandoned weak chicks to die, leaving their bodies
| in popular tourist destinations, which causes grief in tourists)
|
| I went on one of those and never realized I was supposed to feel
| bad about that. Am I a terrible person?
| archsurface wrote:
| I don't know that you're a terrible person, but I'd say you
| have a characteristic I'll leave others to identify, because
| what you write sounds like you consider emotional reactions to
| be prescribed enactments rather than automatic reactions.
| You're not _supposed_ to feel bad as if according to some
| rules, but most people automatically would.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I mean the alternative is to go when the chicks are alive and
| watching them get swallowed whole by skuas. Antarctica is no
| petting zoo, but maybe some less serious tour operators make
| it out to be one and this is the result of that.
| lazide wrote:
| I think it's more a common tourism problem, which is
| thinking what the experience will be like is quite
| different than actually experiencing it.
|
| or as the highly experienced Mr. Tyson put a not too
| dissimilar situation so eloquently - "everyone has a plan
| until they get hit in the face"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think it's okay to mention that as a possibility, but odds
| are you're reading way too far into that common wording.
| archsurface wrote:
| I can't say that I agree with you in the slightest.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not in the slightest? Because I'm _pretty sure_ asking if
| you were "supposed to" feel something is in fact a
| common turn of phrase.
| archsurface wrote:
| Not where I live. Not in the slightest.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Supposed to can mean "expected to". In fact, that is more so
| the original meaning.
| jyscao wrote:
| >Words include tabulars (large flat-topped southern icebergs
| that break off from the Antarctic ice sheet and are usually
| over ten miles long)
|
| You must've derived your username from those trip(s) too I bet.
| dadoum wrote:
| If you want some fun there is also
| https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taafien (the article is in French
| as it's a French jargon).
| kergonath wrote:
| Speaking of weird French varieties, the Foreign Legion
| developed its own idioms and accent, from the wide variety of
| languages of its soldiers. I don't have a handy Wiki link, but
| there are several examples on YouTube.
|
| [edit] having worked there, seeing "Shadock" being used for
| "Personnel du Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies
| alternatives" really made my day. Now I know how to call former
| colleagues!
| hammock wrote:
| I spent some time looking for a video documenting the actual
| accent. Couldn't find one. But this tiktok has some examples of
| how the pronunciations differ from American English. They're very
| subtle
| https://www.tiktok.com/@human.1011/video/7257164158033038635
| orblivion wrote:
| It seems like people come and go a lot so I'm curious how it
| would be the same Antarctic English described in the Wikipedia
| article. This video talks about an experiment where it seems
| like an accent was formed by a new group of people.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Couldn't watch that on my browser, but yt-dlp works. Mirror, in
| case someone is having the same problem:
|
| https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2024/human1011_antarctic_acce...
| orblivion wrote:
| It occurred to me that there is already such a thing as a modern
| Israeli accent given how recently a lot of the people moved there
| from all over the world and resurrected a dead language. Maybe it
| doesn't take that long.
| playingalong wrote:
| How much of it is it still relevant? With today's travel I
| _guess_ there 's substantial turnaround in the staff there.
|
| So my naive couch potato thinking is... Nicknames? Sure, The Ice,
| Big Eye. I can believe it.
|
| Different pronunciation? Well, likely the international English,
| same as in your big mega corp HQ.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| You have the summer workers, then the ones who winter over. I
| suspect you'll find a lot more of a unique culture developed
| amongst the ones who weather (pardon the pun) the winter dark.
| tmountain wrote:
| I wonder how many children are born and grow up there? My guess
| would be, not many. A lot of the formation of new languages
| occurs via pidgin languages when children naturally incorporate a
| multitude of vocabulary and accents from disparate origins.
| dmd wrote:
| Born: 11. Grow up? Zero.
| lagniappe wrote:
| There's a Toys-R-Us joke in there somewhere.
| deusum wrote:
| At the Toys-R-Us in Antarctica, kids really don't grow up!
|
| _" I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys-R-Us kid..."_
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > In addition, the tourism industry has terms for different types
| of tourist encounters, such as Kodak poisoning (what happens when
| many tourists take photographs of the same site)
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Completely unrelated, but there supposedly was this "grunge
| speak" English being spoken the 90's:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
|
| https://www.kexp.org/read/2017/11/15/kexp-exclusive-intervie...
|
| At least some people thought it was.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Only cob nobblers thought this was real.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Only lamestains say cob nobbler you wack slack.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On the other hand, there was definitely a pop punk accent.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-made-a-linguistics-p...
| heywoods wrote:
| Can anyone help answer or point in the direction of where to
| learn more about what/why humans begin to mimic and adopt other
| characteristics or full words of other languages? The reason I
| ask is I inherited/learned from my Mom this thing where within a
| couple of hours of being around another language or accent will
| unconsciously start adopting parts of it to a noticeably
| embarrassing degree. I'm at the point now where I am aware enough
| about this trait that I can tolerate myself but I have always
| been left wondering why some people seem to change how they speak
| faster and more drastically than others. My uneducated guess the
| answer I seek is somewhere to be found in the studies of human
| evolutionary biology and childhood development.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| https://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2014/02/28/reopening-our-critical-...
|
| "Inhibition of this enzyme by Valproate allows the reopening of
| pathways in the brain, increasing neuroplasticity, thus
| reopening the critical period."
|
| I hear the side effects are pretty severe, though.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| You have a case of Zelig.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| Some people experience a form of "empathy" stronger than most,
| which means they end up almost mimicking anyone new or
| different. Often seems to come with insecurity too.
|
| No idea why, it appears to me to be a personality facet that is
| there from birth.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Very anecdotal, but I've been told that one reason is your
| brain adapts the advent of the people you're listening to, in
| order to make it easier for you to understand them.
|
| I have no claims about the scientific validity of this, but it
| sounds nice.
| golemotron wrote:
| It's called mirroring. People often do it unconsciously when
| the connect with others.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring
| whycome wrote:
| It might be your natural affinity for learning other languages
| showing up in weird ways. Do you speak other languages? Have
| you tried to learn? Children learn language by listening and
| mimicking. Maybe you're still primed to do that.
|
| Maybe it's a hereditary disposition. Are other family members
| good at learning languages? Music?
| badrabbit wrote:
| Pictairn island english is the wildest though.
|
| I wish the antarctic was accessible to common people. Why migrate
| to Mars outer space when we have antarctica.
| femto wrote:
| Donga is Australian slang, so it is used in other varieties of
| English.
| fghorow wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. Plus add this link in support
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-23/origin-of-word-
| donga-...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-29 23:00 UTC)