[HN Gopher] Why is Chile so long?
___________________________________________________________________
Why is Chile so long?
Author : trevin
Score : 916 points
Date : 2024-07-02 12:36 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
| ferrantim wrote:
| This is super interesting. Sharing with my kids who are starting
| geography in school this year.
| throwup238 wrote:
| My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go
| see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest... where the
| tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn't a single road for a
| hundred miles.
|
| That's a neat collection of graphics. I'm curious how bespoke the
| creation process is for each graphic or if this is something
| everyone just does in ArcGis or similar.
|
| That last graphic about the Western US being the only other
| candidate is interesting because the two sides of the Rockies
| weren't connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon
| was completed in 1992. Before its completion, the western and
| eastern halves of Colorado were practically different states and
| it took the interstate highway project half a century to get
| there because the terrain was so challenging.
| jprete wrote:
| I think the graphics have numerous sources and mostly/entirely
| aren't made by the post author. There are five different styles
| in the first six map images!
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| The problem with your takeaway is that you a) won't be able to
| realistically get deep into the amazon rainforest and b) the
| tree canopy would cover all of the sky ;)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Also, there's likely to be cloud cover and mist, etc.
| Rainforest!
| namenotrequired wrote:
| Yep. It's way easier to take a boat to the middle of the
| ocean - fewer roads than even in the amazon :) and the best
| starry sky of my life
| probably_wrong wrote:
| This is a dream of mine, to soend the night far away from
| land that there's nothing around but water.
|
| Did you already have sea experience, or did you just rent a
| boat and gave it a try?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> just rent a boat and gave it a try?
|
| As someone who once worked tangentially in search and
| rescue, please do not even consider this. The ocean is a
| serious thing, doubly so at night. Unless you are renting
| a boat large enough to come with its own staff, please do
| not just head over the horizon simply to see the stars.
| And fyi, the stars at sea move as the boat you stand on
| moves. They are brighter, but also more blurry.
| langcss wrote:
| Would a simple cruise ship ticket do it? Or be too lit up
| at night?
| grecy wrote:
| I've been to many places around the world from the Amazon
| rainforest to the Atacama Desert in Chile to right around
| Africa.
|
| Without a shadow of a doubt, the interior of Australia is
| STAGGERINGLY the best for stargazing. It's not even close.
|
| This was a single 8 second exposure. [1] and I'm not a great
| photographer. The milky way was so bright it kept me awake in
| my tent.
|
| [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz/
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| Australian here, spent my youth in the deep West.
|
| I found your description inspiring.
|
| I remember feeling, once, that night time was when everything
| in the universe could be seen, and daytime was when we slept
| in the shade of the sun, away from it all.
| grecy wrote:
| I grew up in rural Australia.
|
| We had Japanese exchange students in High School, and the
| teachers stayed in our house (Mum & Dad were teachers).
| Even though I was only ~15, I have a very strong memory of
| the 50, 60 and 70 year old Japanese people staying outside
| until all hours stargazing.
|
| They had never seen stars before.
| oldmariner wrote:
| Can't see the pictures due to login required :-(
|
| I've been on a dark ship in the middle of the ocean and that
| was pretty good for stargazing, though I guess Australia
| might be a tiny bit better due to less reflective surface
| (compared to the ocean)?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > the two sides of the Rockies weren't connected by a highway
| until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992.
|
| US 40, 6, and 50 would like a word.
|
| They weren't connected by an _interstate_ before that. But you
| said "highway". US 6 was a highway, and it ran through the
| exact same Glenwood Canyon.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Fair point about the exact terminology but those are tiny two
| lane roads with impassable grades for the majority of
| commercial traffic. The term highway has drifted in
| colloquial use (hence your use of the word "was").
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yes, they were two lane roads. But no, they did not have
| impassable grades. Neither Loveland nor Berthoud Pass were
| _easy_ , especially in winter, but they did in fact carry
| lots of commercial traffic (though I would think twice
| about sending an oversized load over them). In fact, to
| this day the old two-lane road of US 6 over Loveland Pass
| is used to keep hazardous material out of the I-70 tunnels.
|
| I mean, I remember around 1968-69, before they finished
| building Interstate 80 up Echo Canyon, and that tiny two-
| lane road had to take all the commercial traffic that there
| was on "the main street of North America".
| fullstop wrote:
| > My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to
| go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest... where
| the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn't a single road for
| a hundred miles.
|
| Check out Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Springs_State_Park
| jaggederest wrote:
| Pine Mountain Observatory, if you're on the West coast, has
| some of the darkest skies, best weather and stable atmosphere
| for good seeing. 24 inch telescope, too.
|
| https://pmo.uoregon.edu/
| xeromal wrote:
| It's a fantastic drive if you've never done it
| tambourine_man wrote:
| It rains almost everyday, mostly in the late evening and night.
| My guess is clouds would be your main concern, not light
| pollution.
| tylermw wrote:
| Several of the maps were made by Twitter users @researchremora
| and @cstats1, using R and the rayshader package.
| w4der wrote:
| Not really, that would probably be the north of Chile on the
| Atacama desert, there's a reason why the Extremely Large
| Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope and Vera C. Rubin are being
| built there.
| msmitha wrote:
| Can confirm, was there in 2001. The clarity of the air owing
| to lack of moisture and no light pollution means you get
| amazing views of the milky way.
| perfectstorm wrote:
| i'm going to assume that commoners like us don't have access
| to that telescope.
| guidoism wrote:
| The most amazing sky I've ever seen was when I arrived in
| Urubicha in Guarayos region of Bolivia in 1998 before the
| electricity arrived in the area. I traveled by bus to visit my
| friend's childhood home. The bus only went to the big city an
| hour away so I road in the back of a jeep the rest of the way,
| at night. I remember vividly not understanding what this super-
| bright light was in the sky. I know now it was either Venus or
| Jupiter, but it looked artificial because it was so much
| brighter than I was used to seeing.
| nine_k wrote:
| Rather, go to Atacama, in Chile. It's a desert with pretty
| transparent air and little to no clouds, far from anywhere, and
| easier to traverse than a forest. It's also rather closer to
| the South pole, so not as hot as Amazon.
| MVissers wrote:
| Agree with this. It's the most beautiful night sky I've ever
| seen.
|
| The stars seemed to shine 10x brighter than other places,
| even those without light pollution.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Apparently the desert in Kashmir (I think Ladakh
| specifically) is also excellent for astronomy for similar
| reasons - a dry desert, cool due to its altitude, and also
| benefits from thinner air causing lesser distortion.
| dbacar wrote:
| You should have very dry air for the best place, which I guess
| with all that Amazon rainforest thing, would not be your best
| option. Chile has the one of the driest deserts in the world.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I've lived on both the eastern and western slopes of Colorado.
| They are still practically two different states culturally and
| economically.
| mapmeld wrote:
| My nomination for night sky viewing: Olgii in western Mongolia
| (was there for the golden eagle festival). Clear desert sky,
| accessible by airplane, not a tiny town either.
| mFixman wrote:
| Is there a name for this simple style of writing?
|
| It reminds me of the style of pop science books written in the
| late 19th and early 20th century. There's a nice charm in it,
| like it's trying not to be pretentiously complex.
| _visgean wrote:
| honestly it feels like a powerpoint presentation in an article.
| the_arun wrote:
| I also had fun reading the article & repeated question - why
| is Chile so long? and sharing another bit of twist. Nicely
| done.
| callalex wrote:
| Apparently it started as a series of xhits or whatever
| they're called this week.
| keyle wrote:
| Highly entertaining, keeps you surprised as you never know
| what's happening next, and full of images without being memes.
| Loved it.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This author wrote a number of pretty influential essays during
| the early pandemic advocating for mask use, social distancing,
| and other mitigations. He's a trained educator, so the
| effectiveness of communication is definitely no accident:
|
| https://fortune.com/2020/08/10/the-overnight-coronavirus-exp...
| talldatethrow wrote:
| My gf is a trained educator too with two masters somehow
| related to education. She teaches 8th grade English but has
| also taught highschool.
|
| She can't write or communicate at any level beyond typical
| hairdresser. Considering it's very hard to fail out of most
| upper level education unless you simply don't do the work at
| all, we really should stop giving people so much credit for
| just getting degrees.
|
| It's what you do with it that matters and how you devote
| yourself on your own time that makes people great. And that's
| what the previous commenter was doing. Trying to give credit
| to some education system someone went through is taking away
| from the person that actually made something of themselves,
| almost always by themselves.
|
| Side note, I graduated with a MechE degree from UC Berkeley.
| Decent grades. I can honestly say I learned almost nothing. I
| just did a ton of work they wanted. If I made something of
| myself in the engineering field, I promise it wasn't because
| of UC Berkeley.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Okay, fair. Some people are naturally gifted at these
| things, and others acquire the skills through extensive
| work in a non-academic context. I've been told I'm a pretty
| effective communicator/storyteller, and I certainly never
| studied it formally.
| dotinvoke wrote:
| I read it before on Twitter, it's probably adapted to fit into
| the 280-character limit.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Bingo. For all its flaws, Twitter threads can be a nice way
| of delivering a point. I think the character limit implicitly
| encourages a kind of brevity which you wouldn't get anywhere
| else.
|
| https://x.com/tomaspueyo/status/1807380049605091537
| hammock wrote:
| The author Tomas Pueyo grew up in a family of filmmakers. For
| his Stanford MBA he specialized in behavioral psychology,
| design, storytelling, and scriptwriting. I have to imagine that
| has some influence on his writing
| edouard-harris wrote:
| It's roughly in the style of a children's picture book. That's
| the same style the best startup pitch decks are written in.
| open_ wrote:
| Apart from a few other factors, the biggest one that stands out
| is not stringing you along in a click-baity way, instead just
| asking a question and giving a direct answer right after the
| question and in simple direct words.
|
| No dark patterns to make you spend a longer time on the webpage
| for ad metrics.
| nsbk wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed reading the post. A breath of fresh air
| among all the click-bitey and false buildup so common in
| content these days. PLEASE DO TRAIN THE GPTs ON THIS GUY
| err4nt wrote:
| I thought it would be dense, but it was lighthearted and didn't
| take itself too seriously, and both shared information and fun
| questions to ask. I enjoyed the speculation which had not even
| a shred of political or social agenda anywhere in sight. Just
| pure fun.
| risenshinetech wrote:
| > Is there a name for this simple style of writing?
|
| 4th grade English
| tumidpandora wrote:
| This is such a clear and engaging read! I wish all articles made
| learning this fun and accessible
| ableal wrote:
| """
|
| Peru & Bolivia went to war with Chile for that region, but they
| lost in the War of the Pacific.
|
| Why fight? Natural resources: guano and saltpeter.
|
| Back then, guano was the world's main fertilizer (and this area
| had most of the world's guano, thanks to the climate).
|
| """
|
| That fertilizer produced iconic advertising in mid XX Century
| Portugal and Spain: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AR22G9/nitrato-de-
| chile-advertisin...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This site owner is living the small-web fantasy we HN'rs keep
| talking about.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There are lots of substack sites like this. Probably the new
| blogspot. The newsletter modal is because that's a choose piece
| of substack.
| fluoridation wrote:
| How is the table of dialects constructed? It's obvious if two
| dialects are at 1, but what does it mean if they're at 0? They
| can't be mutually unintelligible, since that would make them
| different languages. I ask because the dialects spoken in
| Argentina and in Uruguay are practically identical, save for a
| few regional words. If the scale being used puts them at 0.35,
| then it makes me wonder about the usefulness of the scale.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Yeah, I was wondering about these two countries myself. Also it
| was very strange to see the Peru and Cuba correlation, those
| two dialects are nothing alike.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I have no idea. Also there is no standard spanish even in
| Spain. Like Andalucian spanish and Domenican spanish have a lot
| in common but vary greatly with other forms of spanish.
| digging wrote:
| There literally is a standard Spanish, no? I understand it to
| be based on Castilian. However I understand your point that
| even within the country of Spain there are many dialects
| which diverge from "standard".
| umanwizard wrote:
| > There literally is a standard Spanish, no?
|
| Not really. Just like English, the standard variety in each
| country is considered equally "standard".
|
| > I understand it to be based on Castilian.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. As far as I know
| Castilian is just a synonym for the Spanish language (as
| opposed to other languages of Spain e.g. Catalan). So the
| variety spoken in Guatemala and the one in Tenerife are
| equally "Castilian".
| digging wrote:
| No, it's not like English. There is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Spanish. It is
| maintained by the:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy. In
| practice, I'm not sure what the impact is. I'm not a
| native Spanish speaker. But Spanish is not like English
| in regard to prescriptive norms.
| servilio wrote:
| Spanish native here, confirming that RSA is the
| institution that sets the language standard.
|
| But, people always deviate from it, though in my
| experience in word meanings and pronunciation, never in
| grammar to a degree that it become intelligible to
| another Spanish speaker.
|
| The toughest film to listen to for me was "The rose
| seller"[1] (1998), took me like 10m to get my ear
| accustomed to their pronunciation.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASrxQCuVT-U
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| The _paisa_ accent is very hard, even for us non-paisa
| colombians - not only for its colloquialisms but for its
| cadence.
| anthk wrote:
| So is the Andalusian accent from a Northern Spaniard like
| me, it's close to the prosody and speech of the US
| Southern accent. The first 20 minutes understanding
| Risitas were pure hell. But you get used to it in a few
| days. It's like some American trying to understand the
| Scott/Welsh (can't remember now) sheperd not exposed to
| it. I'm pretty sure they could be used to it in less time
| than a week.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| There's "neutral" spanish, but it's less of a formal
| standard and more of a rough subset that people recongnize
| it's generally understandable to most people
|
| It being so artificial means that it doesn't fit anywhere,
| even it if's becoming more common (Kids are growing up
| listening to Media dubbed to it, so it's not weird seing a
| Child "speak like a cartoon" for a while until their local
| dialect kicks in)
| prmoustache wrote:
| It is what I usually call the "TV" or "media" standard.
| Same in french, the french language you listen on TV is
| very uncommon if you actually talk to french people from
| different areas of France and it is not even common in
| Paris.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The royal Academy of Spanish has the mission of promoting
| language unity, the American vocabulary is huge so a lot of
| words are really puzzling for people in other countries,
| but there is a common root that can be used.
| albrewer wrote:
| When I was getting my degree, two of my classmates spoke
| Spanish as a first language. One was a transfer student from
| Madrid, and the other was an immigrant from northern Mexico.
| I was in the room the first time they met and tried speaking
| Spanish to one another. They couldn't understand each other
| and communicated solely in English after about 10 minutes.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| The funny thing is that both Spaniards and Mexicans claim
| to use the most neutral spanish, but you'd find their
| idiosyncrasies rather quickly - spaniards' 'f' sound of the
| letter S, and the infinite modisms and particular mexican
| accent on the other hand.
|
| As the Spanish empire extended its spread so widely the
| language grew pretty complex (as english did!) so not even
| the most "neutral" spanish speaking countries do it as the
| RAE intends.
|
| On the other hand, Chileans really do speak their very own
| language.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > Chileans really do speak their very own language
|
| Only informally. Formal Chilean Spanish is probably one
| of the most understandable ones, accent-wise. (There's
| still some vocabulary differences)
| flobosg wrote:
| This idea is somewhat prevalent among native Chilean
| speakers, but I respectfully disagree. Even under formal
| settings, many of the features of colloquial Chilean
| variants are present, and often an additional effort to
| neutralize the accent needs to be made to sound "formal
| enough" to other Spanish speakers.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| One thing is that pretty much the only place you'll see
| formal chilean is in like, the news, or official
| government communication. We're not very formal people,
| so even in workplaces or school we wouldn't use 100%
| formal register.
| flobosg wrote:
| Sure, that is largely true. But, to state that the formal
| register of Chilean Spanish is "probably one of the most
| understandable ones, accent-wise" of all available
| Spanish registers is, in my humble opinion, quite a
| stretch.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| I don't know, here's a random news segment:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfvrmrYG_-c
|
| But I think chileans are ok with people saying we don't
| speak well, so it doesn't matter too much.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Goddamn, is that what professional news outlets sound
| like? It sounds like a YouTuber trying as hard as
| possible to sound cool or edgy. Dude, leave the coke for
| _after_ the broadcast.
| flobosg wrote:
| > here's a random news segment
|
| Where the announcer is actually overpronouncing while
| still keeping (expectedly) some elision. In your example,
| Boric's formal register is closer to what one would
| usually listen.
|
| > chileans are ok with people saying we don't speak well
|
| I never claimed that, I am merely addressing your "one of
| the most understandable" statement.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| That's a _very_ anecdotal experience.
|
| I met my ex-wife in Madrid where I lived for 4 years and
| where she was from. That's where I learned Spanish as a
| second language. After we moved back to California, we
| obviously met and spoke to many Mexicans over the years.
| Zero problems communicating for her, ever. Spanish is still
| Spanish.
| anthk wrote:
| If not utterly false and defaming. ANY educated Spanish
| speaker could talk to any other one from the whole Latin
| America in the spot. We are not talking about hicks with
| a deep and harsh accent such as some Andalusian farmer
| and some Northern Mexican paisano from Nowhereland.
| (Kinda like mixing an Appalachian and a Scottish).
| anthk wrote:
| Spaniard here. I daily talk with Argentines. Maybe the
| grammar and slang get obtuse sometimes, but overall once we
| talk formal Spanish the issues on jargon dissappear.
|
| Also, the Spanish Royal Academy for the language logs
| _every_ word from Iberia to Mexico and the Patagonia at
| their online dictionary, so everyone can guess the meaning
| of a local word in the spot.
| posix86 wrote:
| > but what does it mean if they're at 0? They can't be mutually
| unintelligible, since that would make them different languages.
|
| I think it might actually mean unintelligible. If you read on
| the term "dialect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect it
| says in part:
|
| > There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing
| two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of
| the same language.
|
| The difference between language is more culturally and
| politically defined than linguistically; there are different
| langauges spoken in the world that have a fiar overlap and
| elligibility, and there are different dialects of the same
| "language" that are basically untelligable. It might be
| sensible to just consider all spoken systems to be "dialects"
| of each other, and comparing their similarity.
|
| Not a linguist though.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Dialects can mean very different things hence the old joke "a
| language is a dialect with its own army and navy", recognizing
| that the issue is really political rather than linguistic. Many
| Chinese dialects (like Mandarin and Cantonese) are considered
| dialects of the same "Chinese language" for political reasons
| but are mutually unintelligible, whereas Danish and Norwegian
| (the majority bokmal dialect anyway) are considered different
| languages even though they are pretty mutually intelligible
| because Norway and Denmark are different countries.
|
| As for how the table of Spanish dialects was constructed, the
| figure gives the link to the paper it was from [1]. Basically
| they measured differences in dialects by giving pictures of an
| item (the example shown is a pinwheel) and asking what Spanish
| speakers from different places called that thing. Given
| hundreds of different concepts you can see how close Spanish
| dialects are to each other.
|
| [1]
| https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2018-003...
| fluoridation wrote:
| Okay, so the article is wrong for using that bit of data for
| the argument. It doesn't tell you much about how well two
| people from two different places will understand each other.
| If two people are in the same place and one says to the other
| "?me das la veleta?", but the other would have called the
| object "molinete", chances are they could probably understand
| what the other person is saying. What makes different
| dialects of Spanish difficult to understand each other is
| slang and accent, not different words for common objects.
| Like, if a Spaniard tells me "Mariana esta en el ordenador",
| I'm not going to get confused about what he means even if I
| would have called it "computadora".
| jhbadger wrote:
| True, but that's like saying a British person wouldn't be
| confused by the phrase "the trunk of my car" said by an
| American even if they would would say "the boot of my car"
| themselves. The fact still remains than "trunk" is US
| dialect and "boot" is British, and that the dialects are
| different.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I'm not saying the dialects are not different, I'm saying
| the fact that they're different is separate from how
| mutually unintelligible they are. Correlated? Yeah, sure.
| Equivalent? Not even close.
| duckmysick wrote:
| Shouldn't that comparison be weighted by how frequent the
| words are? For example words in the top 100 usage would
| count for more than the top 1000 and the top 10000.
|
| It would be a much different story if British English and
| American English had different words for "a car". Which,
| by the way, happens in Spanish dialects ("el coche" vs
| "el carro").
| kragen wrote:
| here (argentina, non-native) we usually say 'el auto' but
| have significant use of 'coche'. 'carro' means something
| different; using it for an automobile sounds mexican
|
| but if you showed an argentine a picture of a car, they
| might very well say 'auto' while perhaps someone from
| elsewhere would say 'coche', leading to a basically
| incorrect point of difference being measured in this
| study between the two dialects
| duckmysick wrote:
| Why would it be incorrect? Sometimes two or three
| different words describe the same thing and that's ok. If
| you poll enough people you can get a rough idea if one
| version is more dominant that the other, if there's an
| even split, or if different regions in the same country
| prefer different versions. Similar to soda/pop/coke in
| the US.
|
| You can design a study with a high level of data
| granularity. You could even track differences in
| pronunciation and grammar if you wish so.
| kragen wrote:
| because 'we usually say _coche_ but sometimes say _auto_
| ' is almost the same as 'we usually say _auto_ but
| sometimes say _coche_ ', but they differ from 'we always
| say _carro_ '. if a study is saying spanish is radically
| different in montevideo and in buenos aires, it's just
| wrong. this may not be the particular design error that
| resulted in these incorrect results, but it seems like a
| promising candidate
| flobosg wrote:
| In Chile:
|
| * _auto_ : car
|
| * _coche_ : stroller or carriage (depending on context)
|
| * _carro_ : cart or carriage (see above)
| anthk wrote:
| Spain:
|
| Automovil: Formal word for car.
|
| Coche: Car. If used with 'de caballos' (of horses), well,
| carriage.
|
| Carro: Carriage, or trolley.
| boznz wrote:
| I guess thank God for Hollywood, it means we can all at
| least speak one version of English
| kragen wrote:
| probably a better cross-atlantic example would be
| something like 'perambulator' where the other dialect
| doesn't have a conflicting meaning for the word
| jowea wrote:
| And I suspect this is only true because of frequent
| cultural contact. If there wasn't any the British
| wouldn't know the American English word for it.
| servilio wrote:
| I agree with you, differences in pronunciation, cadence,
| etc. should be taken in account as well. Though measuring
| those could take longer, if possible.
| wongarsu wrote:
| You don't even have to go all the way to China. The English
| countryside has multiple so called "accents" that are
| basically unintelligible to a speaker of London English, with
| plenty of famous examples in popular media (e.g. [1][2]).
|
| Similarly, Germany has plenty of mutually unintelligible
| dialects. They are all related to each other and any two
| geographically adjacent dialects are mutually intelligible,
| but as distance grows it becomes harder to bridge the gap
| (which is why everyone learns Standard German nowadays).
| Luxembourgish meanwhile is in every sense a dialect of German
| with French influences, but due to having an army is
| considered its own language.
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/Hs-rgvkRfwc
|
| 2: https://youtu.be/Z660sool2L4?t=49
| cryptonector wrote:
| I agree. Argentine and Uruguayan Spanish are very close. I'd
| expect to have seen .85 or so. Argentine and Chilean Spanish
| are not that far apart either -- or at least they weren't 30
| years ago.
| kragen wrote:
| yeah, literally the only difference i can think of is 'contigo'
| (which is 'con vos' in argentina)
| eatonphil wrote:
| The article mentions it, but I only learned recently that Bolivia
| did not used to be landlocked. Chile took Bolivia's coastline
| somewhat recently (late 1800s/early 1900s).
|
| > The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta
| port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a
| dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the
| map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of
| Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the
| southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when
| it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of
| the "fullest and freest" commercial access to port.
|
| https://time.com/5413887/bolivia-chile-pacific/
| sidmitra wrote:
| Disclaimer: I live in Chile, but not a Chilean national(nor of
| similar ethnicity), and certainly not a historian.
|
| The dispute is seen differently in Chile and is not as
| simplistic as Chile invading a port. In general i've gotten the
| sense that the general populace believes that Bolivia(with its
| secret alliance with Peru) had other intentions.
|
| >In February 1878, Bolivia increased taxes on the Chilean
| mining company Compania de Salitres y Ferrocarril de
| Antofagasta [es] (CSFA), in violation of the Boundary Treaty of
| 1874 which established the border between both countries and
| prohibited tax increases for mining. Chile protested the
| violation of the treaty and requested international
| arbitration, but the Bolivian government, presided by Hilarion
| Daza, considered this an internal issue subject to the
| jurisdiction of the Bolivian courts. Chile insisted that the
| breach of the treaty would mean that the territorial borders
| denoted in it were no longer settled.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific
|
| >Ill-defined borders and oppressive measures allegedly taken
| against the Chilean migrant population in these territories
| furnished Chile with a pretext for invasion.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/place/Chile/The-War-of-the-Pacifi...
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Chilenos weones
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yup, this is what happens. All the time.
| aeyes wrote:
| Chile could have been even longer, during the war the Chilean
| army took Lima.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Yeah, you are missing the backstory for that, which another
| commenter mentioned. Bolivia violated a treaty they had with
| Chile, and also had a secret alliance with Peru. They violated
| the treaty so they would go to war with Chile, and then team
| with Peru and try to conquer Chile. However, Chile had a very
| recently professionalized army and navy trained by the Germans,
| whereas Bolivia and Peru had peasants conscripted. (To this day
| the Chilean armed forces are amongst the most trained in the
| world.)
|
| The result? Bolivia lost all of its coastline, and Peru also
| lost its southern territories.
|
| You can summarize the war as in Bolivia and Peru fcked around,
| and then found out.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| One of the most interesting drives in my life was Chile from the
| island of Chiloe to the Tatio Geysers in the Atacama. Just so
| many different climate zones, and all in _relatively_ close
| proximity.
|
| Chiloe and Puerto Montt were damp, cold, and fog-shrouded in
| Summer (Jan-Feb), very similar to parts of the coastal pacific
| northwest.
|
| The area to its north, centered around the German-influenced town
| of Valdivia, was California-like. Very temperate in Summer, and
| very green. Lots of pastures and rivers.
|
| The region becomes progressively more "Mediterranean" as you move
| further north; one gradually sees fewer pastures and woodlands,
| more vineyards, olive trees, and fruit orchards. Santiago is on
| the far northern end of this Mediterranean zone. The great wine
| regions are generally to the south and west of that capital city.
|
| A few hours north of Santiago and all is desert -- but it's a
| fairly live desert, with all sorts of succulent plants and many
| types of flower. Most of the road traffic in these parts comes
| from copper miners and their work trucks.
|
| Continue north and you're in a dry, mostly empty, moonscape.
| Antofagasta and Calama are nice enough towns, though, and the
| interesting drive from the former to the latter takes just two
| hours but sees you rise from sea level to +2000m. It's such a
| gentle and relentless slope that you barely notice it. Nothing at
| all like driving in the Alps.
|
| I broke something in my rental car when I continued to the
| geysers at +4000m, but it was worth it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Atacama Desert is exceptional, the absolutely best solar
| energy resource on the planet.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Best place to build lithium batteries _and_ charge them!
| pc86 wrote:
| Torres del Paine in the south is pretty brutal to get to if
| you're not used to long flight but it is breathtaking.
| Definitely a bucket list trip if you enjoy nature and wildlife,
| hiking, etc.
| Etheryte wrote:
| It's nice, but unfortunately listed on nearly every tour
| guide of Chile, so these days it's flooded with tourists most
| of the time. You'll have a much better time seeing other
| places slightly off the beaten track.
| drroots23 wrote:
| During the summer months yeah, but I've been there last
| year during the end season and, although there are still
| lots of tourists, it's not overwhelming and some of the
| hikes were pretty chill.
|
| Going straight to the Torres themselves will usually be
| crowded (depending on the time of the day). But some of the
| other hikes less so. I've done the W Circuit (a multi-day
| trek) and during some days I barely saw another hiker.
| dheera wrote:
| I hate visiting touristy cities but I mind don't mind it
| as much in nature areas. Mainly because the nature isn't
| changing itself for the tourists.
|
| I visited Torres de Paine and it was refreshingly
| different from national parks in the US. On the upside,
| you can get water and basic snacks at the refugios which
| reduce the load you have to carry, and makes for an
| overall safer experience than unsupported wilderness
| backpacking but still with minimal impact on nature. On
| the other hand I did not like that they close a lot of
| viewpoints long before sunset.
| lukan wrote:
| "Mainly because the nature isn't changing itself for the
| tourists."
|
| Yes, but some tourists change the nature by leaving their
| garbage etc.
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah I hate that, but at first glance it didn't seem to
| be a huge problem in TdP compared to most other national
| parks around the world I have been to. Most people I
| encountered seemed quite responsible. Chile is overall a
| very well-educated country though, and TdP takes
| significant effort to get to compared to so it is perhaps
| a natural filter.
| flobosg wrote:
| Or by burning it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_de
| l_Paine_National_Park...
| lukan wrote:
| That sounds bad, but in the end:
|
| "Nevertheless, recent paleoenvironmental studies
| performed within the Park indicate that fires have been
| frequent phenomena at least during the last 12,800
| years."
|
| So fires are a normal thing there, or they have tourists
| since 12,800 years ..
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Or blasting their music from a phone or Bluetooth
| speaker.
| tuzemec wrote:
| Really enjoyed that. The views are surreal. Got lucky with
| the weather too.
| hammock wrote:
| >so many different climate zones, and all in relatively close
| proximity
|
| Yes. Just mountain climbing in northern Patagonia (between
| Bariloche & Villarica, really only 100mi of north-south
| distance) became my favorite part of the world for your reason.
| In a single day (or two), we could walk in the dry, dusty
| bottom of a canyon dug out by glacier melt, cross through a
| humid jungle, rest on the shores of an alpine lake, pick your
| way across a massive rocky field of a'a lava, up a glacier and
| look down inside the caldera of an active volcano.
|
| The only other place I have been that come close to having that
| amount of diversity of terrain in a limited area might be the
| Tetons/Yellowstone.
| js2 wrote:
| It's only partly in Chile, but regardless all of the scenery in
| _A Long Way Up_ is breathtaking:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up
| dheera wrote:
| I travelled to Chile earlier this year and visited Atacama and
| Torres de Paine.
|
| The thing that boggled my mind was that you can't drive between
| the two without a very long detour through Argentina. Chile has
| literally no road linking the northern part with the
| southernmost part without going outside the country.
|
| It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there. A
| long, slim country is ideal for high speed rail.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular there
|
| That would require the upper class to mix with the poor. Not
| acceptable in Chile.
| OJFord wrote:
| Barely, different classes of carriage?
|
| I don't know anything about the history of trains or
| carriages, but in the heyday of railway development in
| Britain (iron rails, steam locomotive, etc.) it would have
| been far less acceptable than today too. And still all
| trains I'm aware of/have been on have two classes of
| carriage. Indian trains have several, and similar cultural
| need for that I imagine (I don't really know anything about
| Chile).
| flobosg wrote:
| > It is also mind boggling that rail is not more popular
| there. A long, slim country is ideal for high speed rail.
|
| See one of my other comments in this post regarding the rail
| in Chile.
| prpl wrote:
| The bus system is very cheap though, it's very hard to
| compete with that
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| I tried to cross the border into Argentina north of Puerto
| Montt. I wanted to check out the Argentinian side for a day
| or two. But they wouldn't let me across the border with my
| rental car, and I got turned back. I suppose the rules are a
| little bit different in the far south?
| returningfory2 wrote:
| If you want to bring a Chilean rental car into Argentina
| you need to obtain and pay for a specific permit at least a
| few days before you pick up the rental car. Maybe that was
| missing? When I crossed the border they were very thorough
| with checking this permit.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > If you want to bring a Chilean rental car into
| Argentina you need to obtain and pay for a specific
| permit at least a few days before you pick up the rental
| car.
|
| Classic Argentinian bureaucracy, making the country lose
| money since time immemorial
| speed_spread wrote:
| Looking at the map of southern Chile, it's pretty obvious why
| this is so. It's just immense mountains and fjords. Building
| a road across that terrain would be a major challenge,
| requiring many bridges capable of surviving harsh conditions.
| All to deserve a minuscule population? Chile isn't Norway...
| userulluipeste wrote:
| Latitude-wise, Torres de Paine is comparable to northern
| Belgium than it is to Norway. Even Ushoaia, the
| southernmost major city in Americas, looks more like
| Belfast in the UK, or Gdansk in Poland, which are both into
| way more nicer climates than Norway. I just think that
| having some infrastructure in place, linking the southern
| parts of Chile with the rest, may be exactly what is needed
| for addressing the stounted growth there.
| mcmoor wrote:
| Europe in unusually warmer than anywhere on its latitude,
| mostly because of gulf stream. So Norway (and Canada)
| comparison should be appropriate.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Just so many different climate zones, and all in relatively
| close proximity.
|
| Another place like this, perhaps lesser in scale, is the Big
| Island of Hawaii. Its latitude means the trade winds are
| blowing from the same direction year-round, bringing moisture
| to the windward side (e.g. Hilo, HI with 120" average annual
| rainfall) and leaving the leeward side dry (e.g. Kailua-Kona,
| HI with under 20" average annual rainfall), on the other side
| of massive volcanoes. And you can go from the ocean to almost
| 14k feet in elevation in an hour's drive; this may be one of
| the only places in the world where you can do that.
|
| All of this means that as you move around Big Island, based on
| the precipitation, humidity, and elevation, you're going to see
| wildly different environments mere minutes' drive from each
| other. It truly has to be seen to be believed.
| Gud wrote:
| Hawaii was never on my list of places to visit until now, but
| now I have to go there. Thanks for sharing
| devilbunny wrote:
| It's expensive, and it's a long way away from anything
| else.
|
| I've been twice and both times the Big Island was my
| favorite. Maui and Kauai are spectacular in their own ways,
| as are the few rural areas of Oahu, but there's nothing
| like the Big Island. The drive from Kailua-Kona to Hilo
| over the Saddle Road (which, in itself, goes to around 6600
| ft) is spectacular, and if you have enough time to make a
| day of it, coming back around via the southern ring road is
| well worth it. If you get up early, Waimea and the
| surrounding area (esp the NW protuberance of land) are
| worth seeing as well. Huge variation in biomes in very
| short distances.
| Gud wrote:
| Probably I'd go there for a few weeks. I'll make it my
| first stop to the US(if they let me in).
| tim333 wrote:
| Tenerife is a bit like that. 12k feet at the top.
| pferde wrote:
| Yes, Tenerife is awesome, a different biome almost every
| few kilometers. I've been there hiking several times, and I
| always see something new!
| bostik wrote:
| And to a lesser extent, Gomera.
|
| Just by the sea, beaches and small banana plantations. Go
| slightly inland and up the hills, you're in an arid region.
| Continue slightly further up, and you get into a lush,
| verdant forest. All within maybe 20 minutes' drive.
|
| Best part? There's no airport on the island - you have to
| fly to Tenerife and take a ferry.
|
| To this day, the best tomatoes I've ever had.
| jghn wrote:
| I was recently in the big island and this was both unexpected
| and wild to me. The difference of a couple miles could have
| an enormous impact on the weather over time. We stayed a
| couple of days in Volcano Village and like clockwork it'd be
| rainy there but sunny or at least partly sunny just a few
| miles down the street. Then there are rain forests, cloud
| forests, deserts, and every thing in between.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| And yet another place like this is in Southern California if
| you drive in an easterly direction starting on San Diego and
| ending in the Salton Sea, going through Ramona and Julien.
| You go from an area with a Mediterranean climate to temperate
| deciduous forests to coniferous forests to cold, high-
| elevation desert to hot, low-elevation desert (Anza Borrego
| Desert). This is all within about 50 miles (80km). It's a
| fascinating drive!
| prpl wrote:
| It's roughly the equivalent of British Columbia to Mazatlan,
| except the water is a tiny bit cooler. Santiago is the same
| latitude as LA, for example.
|
| I love Chiloe and Los Lagos region. I would buy a "southern
| summer" house there if I didn't have kids in school.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Vancouver when the cherry blossoms are in bloom is
| interesting, the different elevations and the different
| progress of the trees is fun to pay attention to.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm told that prior to industrialization there were areas along
| the Andes (in Peru for sure, presumably Chile as well) where
| you rarely if ever met the tribes living uphill or downhill
| from you. It was way easier to travel north and south.
| robarr wrote:
| Quite the contrary, the management of the different
| ecological floors was the specialty of the inhabitants of the
| Andes, even now. The same community owns and uses land at
| different altitudes, which can range from 1000 to 4000 meters
| above sea level. This generated an economy based on the
| exchange of goods along vertical lines.
|
| https://haubooks.org/reciprocity-and-redistribution/
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/obituaries/24murra.html
| cassepipe wrote:
| No excuse for not building one giant high speed multi-tracks
| train line from North to South then :)
| fluoridation wrote:
| Except that the people are not spread that far out that it
| makes economical sense.
| flobosg wrote:
| In the 2000s the Chilean state railway company was involved in
| a huge corruption scandal as well as bad administrative
| practices. It's been slowly recovering, but rail services in
| Chile still leave a lot to be desired.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That sounds like the kind of investment in the commons that a
| socialist would make. In 1973 the US encouraged a coup to
| ensure that no such investments were made (https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...). Instead, we
| applied guns to the affected area and ensured that they would
| part with their resources as "fair free-market prices"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys). They've started
| the process of removing those policies, but only in the last
| few years.
|
| If I had to come up with an excuse for not having trains, I'd
| chose that.
| golergka wrote:
| That's why Chile is the most successful economy on the
| continent.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I won't try to speak for the Chileans, but while I was
| there I did not get the feeling that they are happy about
| the intervention. The more I learned about my country's
| role in their history, the more surprised I was that they
| were being so nice to me. (I was there, along with my
| naivete, to see a solar eclipse, so the cultural stuff I
| picked up along the way was a bit of a surprise).
| flobosg wrote:
| The country is still polarized to some extent so YMMV,
| depending on who you spoke with.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Whatever for? As TFA notes the vast majority of Chileans live
| in the middle, in or near Santiago.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Another interesting fact about Chile is: no compass is needed.
| The mountains show where the East is. If the East is to your
| right you are facing North, otherwise you are facing South.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I had a similar feel driving through Croatia, although not as
| extreme: If you don't hit the sea or a border crossing, you are
| going in the right direction! (With a tau/2 ambiguity you can
| resolve using the sun)
| arachnid92 wrote:
| In fact, it's so easy to know where North is that it's very
| common to use cardinal directions when describing locations or
| meeting points in Santiago, as opposed to using landmarks. For
| example, when meeting a friend you may say "I'll meet you on
| the north-eastern corner of the crossing of Pedro de Valdivia
| and Irarrazaval Avenues", and everyone involved will know what
| that means.
| desas wrote:
| Relatedly, one of the claims made about the Piraha people is
| that they have no words for left and right in their language,
| instead they orient themselves relative to the river bank.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Same thing I use the Empire State Building for when in lower
| Manhattan. Granted that works over a much smaller area...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| This is also true of long linear coastlines, such as the South
| Coast of England, where (ignoring small bays and harbours), if
| the sea is to your left (right) then you are facing west
| (east).
|
| I was briefly disoriented when I stayed on the North coast of
| Cyprus where the situation is the opposite.
| aeyes wrote:
| The coastal mountain range reaches heights of 3000m, it's not
| as easy if you are in the valley in between these mountains and
| the Andes because you'll be surrounded by mountains.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Coast_Range
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| But those don't have snow in them. It is easy to tell them
| apart.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| When I went to Chile I was about to undertake a cross-country
| move across the US. Everybody I spoke to in Santiago couldn't
| imagine a country where you can drive a massive distance like
| that and move from one major metropolis to another. At the time,
| I thought they were just reflecting on the fact that Chile is a
| country where 40% of all people live in one metro area, so there
| isn't another huge metro area to move to.
|
| Looking at those maps, I understand their incredulity. Because of
| the shape of Chile, you can drive a similar distance and
| basically cover the entire country, rural, urban, and suburban.
| It's both a large country and a small one at the same time.
| aeyes wrote:
| The Concepcion metro area is 1 million people, Valparaiso/Vina
| as well. Chileans love to point out that there isn't much
| outside of Santiago but it's not really true.
| flobosg wrote:
| While that might be true, Chile is a very centralized
| country, unfortunately.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I was talking to Santiaguinos, so I took it with a grain of
| salt.
| jkaptur wrote:
| "View of the World from Ruta 70"
| nox101 wrote:
| is 1 million people a lot? I lived most of my life in metro
| areas of 15-30 million. when I finally ventured out and saw
| so many famous places at 1.5 million or less and how I could
| drive in and then back out of their downtowns in just a few
| blocks I was kind of shocked on how small most places are
| graeme wrote:
| There are only 26 areas in the world which are 15-30
| million. They have about 550 million people, or about 7% of
| the world's population.
|
| 1 million is fairly large, especially in the context of
| Chile.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| In my book, 1M people is when a city starts to become a
| "proper" city. It'll host major events, invest in public
| transit (beyond bus), have extensive infrastructure, have
| extremely thorough airport service, likely have many
| walkable neighborhoods, and generally feel like a city.
|
| Under 1M and the city center tends to be very small with
| most people driving from the suburbs.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| That's chile, Argentina is more similar to the US, however most
| people move from X => Buenos Aires.
| maxlin wrote:
| Originally posted on X:
| https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1807380049605091537
| Yawrehto wrote:
| The Atacama Desert is so dry NASA uses it to stimulate Mars.
| Wikipedia also lists five (!) observatories (one under
| construction, to be home to the Extremely Large Telescope),
| including the Very Large Telescope (built), ALMA (built), and
| others.[1] It's basically as close as you can get to space while
| being on the ground on Earth. [1]
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert#Astronomical_observatories
| prmoustache wrote:
| Is there a single chilean dialect? Surely in such a long country
| there must be a huge difference between northern, center and
| southern chilean.
| digging wrote:
| Dialect and language are sort of a "coastline problem". You can
| find variation between two neighboring villages if you like,
| but at some point you have to draw a boundary around a group of
| speakers and call it a dialect. I'd assume the common dialect
| of Santiago, where most people live in Chile, is considered
| "the Chilean dialect," but it almost certainly sounds different
| in rural areas.
| flobosg wrote:
| There are regional variations, but the difference is less than
| what you would probably expect, applying mostly to
| intonation/cadence (more marked and melodic in the south, less
| so in the north) and some vocabulary. Most of the variation in
| Chilean Spanish is based on socioeconomic status, since Chile's
| income inequality is rather high.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > [...] intonation (more marked and melodic in the south,
| less so in the north)
|
| Oddly enough, albeit anecdotal, this is true everywhere; in
| every country and every continent, people are looser in the
| south. That said, if it's also true for Chile then it means
| it's not related to the climate.
| flobosg wrote:
| > people are looser in the south
|
| What does "loose" mean in this context? My first impression
| would be that the accent in northern Chile is "looser" than
| the south.
| gottorf wrote:
| > in every country and every continent, people are looser
| in the south
|
| Fun to think about, but I'm sure there are as many
| counterexamples as there are examples. In the Germanic
| languages, for example, no one could deny that Swedish or
| Norwegian are much more sing-songy than stodgy German.
| lazyant wrote:
| surprisingly (to me), Chilean accent is pretty much the same
| anywhere in the country
| anothername12 wrote:
| I'm gonna round trip motorcycle that later starting with Colombia
| gottorf wrote:
| Sounds beautiful. Good luck with your trip.
| pandalicious wrote:
| Am I misreading this or is that "How close is Spanish from
| Different Countries" graphic kind of jank? There's intersecting
| lines that are missing, like Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.
| delecti wrote:
| The intersection between Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic is
| the 0.42 right above the "1" in the PR column (5th from the
| left).
|
| If you imagine the full graph of all countries horizontally and
| vertically, there would be a lot of overlap (the PR column and
| DR row, and the DR column and PR row). So to save that
| redundancy, for all countries except Spain (very top) and
| Argentina (far right) you have to look around a bit to see
| where it crosses any other given country.
| k1ns wrote:
| This article is awesome. I've always wondered why Chile is that
| shape and I didn't know about the Chilean dialect of Spanish
| being so far off from the others. Super cool.
| seu wrote:
| It completely ignores the influence of the indigenous languages
| in the "dialect" or variation of Spanish, which is actually a
| much better explainer than "distance from spain".
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I don't think that's a good hypothesis, because in that case,
| other countries with a huge colonized population such as Mexico
| or Peru would have less intelligible dialects as well.
| arachnid92 wrote:
| Not all Latin-American countries experienced the same level
| of mestizaje and colonization. The southern part of Chile, in
| particular, was never successfully colonized by the
| Spaniards, and mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people
| who live there has had (and continues to have) a tremendous
| influence on Chilean Spanish.
| novok wrote:
| Huge mountain ranges separating people that are close in
| distance is a pretty classic mechanism of creating linguistic
| diversity / dialects in places that are physically close to
| each other. You see this with villages in various parts of Asia
| historically.
|
| Indigenous language effecting Spanish is something that would
| effect everyone in South America, so even if you remove Spain
| from the table, Colombia, Chile, the Caribbean and Costa Rica
| will all stand out about how "different" they are from the rest
| of South America, probably from their physical barriers
| separating them from the rest of the continent.
| ShaggyStyle wrote:
| All of this is just because Chile is the best country of Chile...
| if you know what I mean ;-)
| arachnid92 wrote:
| Somo el mejor pais de Chile hmno.
|
| As a Chilean living in the US, seeing this on HN made my day -
| it's not often the rest of the world (outside of South America)
| remembers we exist.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Believe me, not being remembered by the rest of the world is
| sometimes a blessing.
| novok wrote:
| Chile feels like the Canada of South America in some ways.
| Even has a special work visa category with the USA!
| alganet wrote:
| Cool article. TIL I learned that Atacama has flower blooms.
|
| I miss the Inca though. Talking about Chile without mentioning
| the Inca Empire is like talking about Italy without mentioning
| the Roman Empire.
| flobosg wrote:
| Enter the Mapuche (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapuche), whom
| the Inca tried (and failed) to conquer.
| rob74 wrote:
| On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects":
|
| > _It's the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated
| to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the
| most from the homeland._
|
| Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fet
| ch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red,
| but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than
| that of other South American countries. So it looks like _those_
| have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't
| as much?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Chilean Spanish is heavily influenced by Spanish, German,
| Italian, and Croat immigrants from a pronunciation and
| colloquialism standpoint because those were the 4 main
| immigrant communities to Chile.
|
| Also, Spain Spanish is not necessarily "Standard" (Castilian)
| Spanish.
| rob74 wrote:
| That's why I put it in quotes :)
| alephnerd wrote:
| Spain Spanish isn't "Standard" Spanish though. The closest
| thing to "Standard" Spanish is what the RAE prescribes, but
| no one listens to them. Insurgencies and protests were
| fought over this fact in Spain during the Francoist and
| Post-Francoist era (eg. Andalusian, Murcian, Canarian,
| Leonese)
| melenaboija wrote:
| My opinion as Spaniard and having a chilean close, is that
| Chilean Spanish is the closest to mine in terms of
| pronunciation. And to me what makes the biggest difference is
| not European migration but native words.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| More than any of that, it's influenced by Mapuzungun in a way
| other countries just aren't exposed - Argentina's Conquest of
| the Dessert was more brutal, and is the only other modern
| country where Mapuche land was.
| wageslave99 wrote:
| Please note that there is no "standard" Spanish. In the Spain
| there are multitude of dialects and different variants. Even in
| the same region (e.g. Andalusia) you can find a ton of
| different variants. All of them are valid, as the RAE and the
| AAL make it clear.
| alephnerd wrote:
| RAE is supposed to be the prescriptive source for Spanish,
| but no one cares about it outside of a subset of Academics in
| Spain.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Thanks god we don't care. Spain wanting to dictate what's
| real "spanish" is like the King of England telling a
| jamaican that their english is wrong.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Yes, we leave that kind of thing to the French
| alephnerd wrote:
| Agreed! Prescriptive language bodies are dumb and prevent
| languages from organically evolving.
| pvaldes wrote:
| There are royal academies in each Spanish speaking
| country. Is a very old institution that creates
| diplomatic links and a help net between countries on
| everything related with the Spanish dictionary. They
| solve doubts for free, or publish American Vocabulary
| dictionaries (so American people can understand other
| American people).
|
| If you want to understand Spanish this is the best
| resource available
|
| https://www.rae.es/
|
| Not all people in this academy descend from the Borbons.
| Not all people there are from Spain. All are voted by
| their peers based in their perceived merits. Is a
| meritocracy, not a monarchy.
|
| Some people appreciate the fact that there are experts on
| Spanish language trying to help everybody. Other will
| keep saying the equivalent to "Experts thing that are
| better than me" or "Death to conquerors. Mine is better,
| Murica!!". Everybody has their own choice, but the reward
| is ending with a language that nobody will understand. A
| very silly prize.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| They have a long history of being proscriptive for
| anything that isn't "their real spanish" (that being of
| Spain). In latin america, we use a lot of neologisms
| ("commitear", "pushear", "mergear") and those are
| strictly "prohibited" by them, to the point that some
| spanish universities, following RAEs recommendations,
| fail students using them.
|
| Any centralized institution that is in charge of
| overseeing a large and diverse number of countries that
| have evolved spanish over the past ~400 years is, in my
| eyes, set to fail.
|
| Now, I do use RAE all the time to check definitions, but
| I see it as a "descriptive" body, in charge of creating
| some definitions. But even some of those definitions have
| to be "scrutinized" and can't be literally and blindly
| trusted. For example, check the definition of "gitano",
| which has a clear pejorative connotation. That is not
| wrong, is just the reality of how the "spanish speaking
| world" expresses itself. But should you take that
| definition by heart? I don't think so.
|
| This is a clear example of "The Cathedral vs the Bazaar",
| as in Open Source vs privative software. I'm a hacker, I
| prefer a bazaar to a single institution dictating how we
| should talk..
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| If you want to be more widely understood, it's better to
| sound more like the King of England than whatever your
| local variety is.
|
| I tone down my (English language) accent when speaking to
| foreigners all the time. The point is to be understood.
|
| I'm toning it down right now in this message. I want to
| be clear to a wider audience, not folksy.
|
| So is Spain really telling other people the way they
| speak is "wrong", or is there simply a prestige accent,
| best utilised for international communication so the
| maximum amount of people can understand?
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| No, it has nothing to do with accent (phonetic). It's
| entirely language. They have a long history of
| "forbidding" words that are "real or not real spanish".
|
| And by the way, counterintuitively, languages have NOT
| evolved to be better understood, but on the contrary, to
| "separate" or create cohesion in smaller groups.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Eg. "La red" vs "Internet" back in the late 90s/early
| 2000s.
|
| Guess which word took precedence?
| mechanicalpulse wrote:
| > So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard"
| Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?
|
| I think the chart is saying less about differences relative to
| Spanish Spanish and more about each regional dialect relative
| to the others.
|
| In the table, the countries appear to be ordered (horizontally
| as well as vertically) by distance relative to Spain. Assuming
| there's nothing (like an ocean) to prevent the diffusion and
| evolution of language, given any cross-location in the grid,
| the cells nearest should theoretically have little to no
| gradient.
|
| That's clearly not the case with Chile and isolation due to the
| Andes seems like a reasonable cause.
|
| Colombia and Costa Rica also exhibit this effect, though, and
| I'm not sure why. FARC? They are separated by Panama and the
| PCZ; has the canal had an effect of preserving Panama's
| cultural ties relative to other countries at the expense of
| those of CO/CR?
|
| Edit: s/Columbia/Colombia/; s/expensive/expense/
| woodson wrote:
| These differences go back much further in the past, so FARC
| has nothing to do with it in Colombia (it's spelled with an
| "o"). There's a large linguistic diversity within these
| countries, which that table doesn't reflect or account for.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > There's a large linguistic diversity within these
| countries, which that table doesn't reflect or account for.
|
| I'm pretty sure that's the case for every country in the
| world.
| woodson wrote:
| Of course, all I said was that the table doesn't account
| for it.
|
| Aside from that, judge for yourself:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_Spanish
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| "Standard" Spanish is modern, and, like Chilean, has itself
| drifted from dialects which were spoken in the era of Spanish
| colonization.
| prpl wrote:
| New Mexican Spanish is similarly isolated, but the number of
| speakers is tiny.
| gaudystead wrote:
| Orale! Was not expecting to see us New Mexicans get called
| out here on Hacker News, but you're not wrong. It's
| surprising how much variation there is despite NM being so
| close to Mexico.
| aeyes wrote:
| Something that wasn't mentioned here before is that Chile is
| quite close in terms of grammar. Other South American countries
| supposedly have deviated more.
|
| It's hard to understand some Chilean speakers but that's
| because they don't modulate their voice and cut or join words.
| But grammatically they are "correct".
|
| There is a lot of Chilean slang and it's almost universally
| understood from north to south. But people are aware of it,
| it's usually not used at work. And then there are a lot of
| words which are just different, just about every fruit has a
| different name.
| flobosg wrote:
| Trivia question: how many time zones does Chile have?
| gottorf wrote:
| Given that Chile only covers about nine degrees of longitude,
| the reasonable expectation is that it only has one time zone
| (excluding any far-flung territories and whatnot). I'm sure
| you're going to surprise me with the true answer :-)
| Suppafly wrote:
| I had to google, I'm surprised that it's 3, I would have
| assumed that it was just one since it's so narrow.
| flobosg wrote:
| Everybody forgets Easter Island! (And the other one in the
| _Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica_ region was added not long
| ago, 2017 IIRC.)
| Suppafly wrote:
| I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with
| Argentina or something? If you look at the time zone map,
| they just as easily could have had the whole mainland
| country on one timezone. Bolivia, Paraguay, and parts of
| Brazil share the same timezone as the northern part of
| Chili and are just as far east as the southern parts of
| Chili.
|
| Easter Island makes sense, you don't necessarily expect
| islands that are far away to share the mainlands timezone.
| Antarctica is one that probably catches a lot of people
| since most time zone maps don't even bother to include it
| and there is no real population there.
| flobosg wrote:
| > I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely
| with Argentina or something?
|
| It has to do with differences in latitude. In winter, the
| southernmost region of Chile[1] was completely dark at
| around 4 PM with the old time zone. Staying on summer
| time for the whole year gives its inhabitants an
| additional hour of sunlight.
|
| [1]: Which includes, but is not equivalent to,
| Antarctica:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magallanes_Region
| Suppafly wrote:
| ah, interesting. I hadn't even thought about the
| latitude.
| alimw wrote:
| > Staying on summer time for the whole year gives its
| inhabitants an additional hour of sunlight.
|
| Now that's not really true is it :) It's robbing Peter to
| pay Paul.
| notachatbot1234 wrote:
| 90% of the content is stolen from other people without
| appropriate or any attribution.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| many nation shapes don't make any sense. add in the wildly
| disconnected/schizophrenic sovereign territory of some countries
| (US and Russia among exemplars) and I've learned one must simply
| turn one's brain off when analyzing them. Its a circus.
| mcmoor wrote:
| It starts to make sense once I see nations as collections of
| big cities holding arbitrary (terrain may matter here) amount
| of "wastelands" between them. In general, no country would
| generate from those wastelands so it make sense that it's
| arbitrarily exchange between big cities surrounding them.
| pulketo wrote:
| This Chile is too long too...
| TheBlight wrote:
| Isn't this the covid "Hammer and Dance" article author? Not
| getting another click from me for the rest of my life.
| rieg3c wrote:
| Chile is a great country, greetings from Saint Bernard
| flobosg wrote:
| Should've put it in that other meme collection thread!
| phaser wrote:
| I'm also from St.Bernard, greetings my fellow Bernardian!
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Off topic, but that correlation matrix of "Spanish similarity"
| seems a bit odd. I'm from Argentina, and the spanish in Uruguay
| sounds practically the same. At least A LOT MORE similar than
| Cuban or Paraguay as it shows there.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| I'm sure that has a lot to do with the close physical proximity
| of the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay.
| afh1 wrote:
| If all articles were written like this, straight to the point and
| only the important bits, I would read a lot more and skim a lot
| less...
| danhau wrote:
| I love how effective the article is at communicating. A
| digestible idea followed by visual example. Rinse and repeat. I
| think we could learn something from this for our documentations,
| or even Jira comments.
| racl101 wrote:
| The Chilean Spanish portion of the article made me laugh. I'm a
| Spanish speaker and the Spanish I speak is closer to Mexican
| Spanish. I could not for the life of me understand Chileans I met
| in Canada. Brings back funny memories of 2001 for me.
| lucideer wrote:
| Reading the title, my initial expectation was that this was going
| to be a Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina situation. Refreshing to read
| that most of the reasons here are geological/meteorological in
| nature.
| bwanab wrote:
| That is a really nice bit of information communication. Hat's
| off! I feel like I learned a lot and that always makes me happy.
|
| One quibble. At the end it mentions why Mexico's west was of
| interest to the Spanish, but neglects possibly the most important
| part - it was where the Spanish galleons from the Philippines
| first landed after the grueling trip across the Pacific as
| detailed beautifully in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle".
| idontwantthis wrote:
| And the real history in 1493 by Charles C. Mann.
|
| Samurai were documented as guards on galleons brought to
| Mexico. It needs to be a movie.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| If I recall there were also some Aztecs or Mayans brought to
| fight in Phillipines and SEA
| kragen wrote:
| i'm pretty sure there are aztecs and mayas who go to the
| philippines and southeast asia to fight today (to fight
| drug lords and the dictatorship of myanmar, respectively)
| asveikau wrote:
| I was recently watching some YouTube videos about early
| contact between Europeans and Japanese. A lot of that was
| contact with Portugal, and from there they had contact with
| Spain and Italy, so they did go to Iberian colonies in the
| new world.
| fuzztester wrote:
| The novel called Taipan, by James Clavell, is quite
| interesting, IMO. He also wrote the novel Shogun, which I
| didn't enjoy as much.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_(novel)
|
| Shogun is about Japan in the Samurai period and Taipan is
| about Hong Kong a few centuries ago.
|
| Both novels are about those periods and about Westerners
| interacting with those countries at that time.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clavell
|
| [
|
| Clavell wanted to write a second novel because "that
| separates the men from the boys".[21] The money from King Rat
| enabled him to spend two years researching and then writing
| what became Tai-Pan (1966). It was a huge best-seller, and
| Clavell sold the film rights for a sizeable amount (although
| the film would not be made until 1986).[22]
|
| ]
| anthk wrote:
| Look up Coria del Rio in Spain, too. A lot of people have the
| "Japon" surname. "Japon" it's Spanish for Japan.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > Far south: too cold for another country
|
| Chile has an Antarctic claim going all the way to the pole. If
| you consider that, it's impossible to go further south
|
| If you don't, then we still just run out of land in the
| Continent. Note that the neighbour competition also applies to
| Tierra del Fuego, as we've had tensions with Argentina through
| history over the control of Magallanes Channel.
| wruza wrote:
| Because Andes?
|
| See also "chilean empire map" (it's not serious).
| cryptonector wrote:
| That map of Spanish dialect difficulty... I can confirm.
| goda90 wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker. I learned Spanish pretty fluently
| in Chile, interacting with native Spanish speakers from several
| countries, and my personal experience doesn't entirely match
| the map. Chilean and Argentine are definitely harder. I don't
| think I've met a Venezuelan or Panamanian to compare. Colombian
| was the clearest, most comprehensible accent of any I
| encountered. Easier than Mexican and Peruvian that are both
| marked as easy on that map.
| silisili wrote:
| I'd assume there to be regional variations like most
| countries, right? Hard to blanket one way or another.
|
| For example, my wife learned English later in life and can
| understand neutral/midwestern American fine, but has tons of
| trouble with southern and northeastern regional accents.
| carabiner wrote:
| They should make it longer.
| golergka wrote:
| Bolivians and Peruvians might disagree, violently.
| Perroboc wrote:
| Wow, it's wonderful to see my country mentioned here! And the
| article has a lot of content I didn't know about, too.
| matreyes wrote:
| Wena weon!!!
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| As a Valdiviano, I find the Santiago climate too hot and dry. I
| prefer the south.
| mqefjh wrote:
| https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aBneQZZ_460s.jpg
| nojvek wrote:
| If we were superb at building ships and living on the seas,
| Chilean Empire would have been a thing.
| br1 wrote:
| Because Chile renounced Patagonia to keep Argentina out of the
| war with Bolivia and Peru. Argentina is the bully around here.
| nikolay wrote:
| I've always concluded entirely based on maps, not historic facts,
| that it was conquered with a strong fleet and not enough
| infantry.
| flobosg wrote:
| What made you reach that conclusion? I'm just curious.
| phaser wrote:
| Chilean dialect of spanish is wild. Only a chilean can understand
| this:
|
| "el weon weon, weon."
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Care to translate it for us? gpt says "The dude, dude dude"
| flobosg wrote:
| _That guy is an asshole, man._
| phaser wrote:
| I'll do my best: "That guy is pretty dumb, man."
| lynguist wrote:
| Gpt4o says "the dude is an idiot, dude"
| pvaldes wrote:
| "weon" is a corruption of the word "huevon", that means
| literally "somebody with big balls".
|
| Is a polysemic word, but by extension "somebody that spends
| the day sitting on their own testicles, unable to carry
| them", so: "a lazy lad", "a douchebad" or simply "a dude"
| (colloquially and vulgar, but also playful if applied to a
| close friend).
|
| The word is a minefield, some people will feel amused, other
| insulted, and is a faux pas with women. Better avoid it
| unless you know what you are doing.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| In general, other south american countries consider chilean not
| spanish
| stickfigure wrote:
| Hmmm. From my travels through Latin America, I would rate
| Colombian accents as by far the easiest to understand. Without
| exception, everyone spoke with clear diction and enunciation. I
| would definitely not rate it "very hard" - that would be reserved
| for the Honduran accent, which I found incomprehensible even
| spoken s-l-o-w-l-y.
|
| Looks like they're rating "difficulty" as "difference from
| Spanish in Spain". Considering that Spaniards only represent
| about 10% of the total Spanish-speaking population, I'm not sure
| that's fair.
| tuckerconnelly wrote:
| Yeah based on my in-laws, Chilean seems understandable, though
| they tend to speak fast.
|
| Argentine Spanish is the strange one, due to the heavy Italian
| influence.
| asveikau wrote:
| I saw an interesting video showing Argentines in the 90s vs
| Argentines today, both in BA with more or less the same age
| and status, and the former group had way more of that
| "Italian" sounding accent. I think it's going away or
| softening over time. A shame, because I like it.
| asveikau wrote:
| A lot of Spanish speaking memes and videos I see have this
| running joke that Chileans are hard to understand. I don't
| think it's a literal truth or meant to be taken seriously. They
| just hand pick a few examples of people who talk very fast,
| which exist in most Spanish speaking countries (in Spain,
| Andalusia would be it). There are similar videos in the same
| circles talking about how hard English is based on a drunk
| American redneck fisherman or Adele's working class London
| speech. It's just a meme.
|
| These memes are popular in Latin America, it's definitely not
| just a Spain thing.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't think the cross-comparison chart is based on Spanish
| from Spain:
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
| timonoko wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGFR86yIyyA
| wigster wrote:
| oddly, why was this also at the top of my twitter feed?
| kortilla wrote:
| Because the author tweeted it? It's a new article
| wigster wrote:
| yes - but i don't follow him. yet there is was. i guess some
| sort of promotion.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's important to note that, in some interpretations, it could be
| much, much longer:
|
| https://craigcalcaterra.com/blog/long-chile-ohio2-and-the-sn...
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Isn't the answer obvious? They were trying to make it look like a
| Chile pepper.
| p3rls wrote:
| I don't know but a Peruvian once told me that when God created
| South America he gave the Peruvians the titties from lake
| Titicaca and Bolivia got the shit left over.
|
| I never quite figured out what it meant.
| diegof79 wrote:
| "caca" means shit in Spanish, so is a word play with titi-caca
| and probably a xenophobic remark about Bolivia
| polterguy1000 wrote:
| When I went to Chile I was about to undertake a cross-country
| move across the US. Everybody I spoke to in Santiago couldn't
| imagine a country where you can drive a massive distance like
| that and move from one major metropolis to another. At the time,
| I thought they were just reflecting on the fact that Chile is a
| country where 40% of all people live in one metro area, so there
| isn't another huge metro area to move to. Looking at those maps,
| I understand their incredulity. Because of the shape of Chile,
| you can drive a similar distance and basically cover the entire
| country, rural, urban, and suburban. It's both a large country
| and a small one at the same time.
| gosukiwi wrote:
| That spanish similarity thing can't be right. Argentina and
| Uruguay speak basically the same spanish (unless you count
| dialects like Cordoba)
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