Also their peer group usually being people born the same year, everyone gets to drink at the exact same time (unlike in other countries where everyone reach drinking age at their birthday).
There's another difference in that age++ there happens on Chinese New Year and not your own birthday, but that's an orthogonal point to the rounding, I think.
Curiously I guess most of us celebrate the number of years completed.
That is why half open sets, half open intervals, are convenient.
If a bus leaves every 10 minutes starting at 1 PM, how many buses leave per hour ? Do we include the 2PM bus in the first hour ?
It helps to cover the space by non-overlapping equal intervals.
Shows up in 0 indexed for loops as well i < n
Well it's literally like you say: your friend will "celebrate his 30th birthday after completing 30 years of life". If the 30th birthday happens after 30 years of life, then the 30th year of life happens before the 30th birthday.
Under this system, the number of distinct powers that you were influenced by is more important than the exact number of days or years that you spent on this planet. Korean culture is still saturated with this stuff. You can DM a shaman your date of birth, and they'll use this kind of system to tell your fortunes.
I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name.
Being "on a first name basis" still has meaning for me -- or it would, if it had for anyone else, which clearly is absolutely not the case anymore.
Luckily, in the IT industry, it's common to just use first names with everybody.
The thing is that this is also becoming/has become the norm when you get correspondance from strangers when the standard etiquette is to use title + surname, as in all European countries, I suppose.
Now, I think when people address you by your surname only, either orally or in writing, it is irritating.
So, clearly, you can't please everybody.
Personally I get annoyed only if a sales person addresses me by first name. There is no other setting where I would prefer a stranger to address me using my full name, unless we’re in some context where there are dozens or hundreds of strangers so one can not expect my name is unique.
My brother attended the same school where we briefly overlapped so I was by default "Minter" and when the distinction was needed I was "Minter Minor" and he would have been "Minter Major".
Like many things it doesn't make much sense in retrospect.
Edit: People do still often call me "Mister Minter" where I'd expect them to use my first name, but I think they just like the alliteration. It's not old schoolfriends doing it.
Not a good feeling, when people do it. The only thing worse is name + patronymic. That could never be good news.
Me too. There are still German companies where coworkers address others with Herr or Frau followed by their last name.
I find it also interesting how people that learn German understand the difference between the "you" in formal ("sie") and informal ("du") version, but often don't understand in which context du use them. In most cases you can use the informal "du" nowadays, especially when you are out with somebody for a beer.
After elementary school we had this interesting shift form addressing the other children with first name to addressing them with last name. We were circa 11 years old.
Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
The same can happen with other words that are getting capitalized for similar reasons, but when going strictly by the book it's grammatically incorrect. An example would be "das Große Ganze" where it should be "große" but it is capitalized to emphasize the connection/phrase.
That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect. In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
> Since then you are allowed to write it either way
Okay, my interpretation is that it doesn't really make sense within the language rules, so they changed it but allowed to use the old style to make the transition easier. ;-)
> I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Impossible to keep up with all the Rechtschreibreformen anyways.
It must be so cool to see all of them "from the top" (i.e. someone who has been natively-and-highly educated, immersed in the language for their whole life); but it's from the outside it's like a fancy club that you just can't seem to get into :)
In Denmark nobody adresses each other formally, unless you're royalty. Parliament also does it during debates, but that's pretty much it. It's weird when it happens, and it's usually some store clerk that does it out of a misguided attempt at politeness, but to me at least it has the opposite effect. I am not a Hr. (sir), I'm just some dickhead buying cigarettes at 1 AM.
I Denmark we at least pretend everyone is equal. The CEO of the company is just John. We eat lunch in the same break room at the same time.
More seriously, I think it's possible that "sir" can be used in a way that casts everyone as equals. Like, you can be in a crackhead's den and recognize that he is in important person in that environment.
Some of it’s weird posturing (I’d put the “sir” thing in that category) and a bunch of it’s a combination of actually-effective and folk-supposed-effective ways of speaking to dazzle jurors, plus probably some other motivations and influences thrown in (some Hollywood-military turns of phrase and vocabulary, certainly)
Traditionally in Bavaria you'd have used "Du/Ihr" in shops or on the streets colloquially even decades ago, and yet from time to time you'd ran into people (always from Northern Germany) who seemed very surprised you'd not use "Sie/Ihnen".
Of course I'm overgeneralizing and I think I've had like 2 jobs in my life (since the late 90s) where some people were called Herr/Frau X instead of the just the first name, be it IT or not.
I think the tone and posture when addressing someone convey enough formality. Like if I met Barack Obama, I would be very formal and respectful in my bearing and language, but of course still use 'you'.
We also pretty much always use first name, at least everywhere I've been. Would feel weird to call people by their last name.
someone ive never met in person and uses my first name on work calls referring to me as "b" in email. its like the wears-a-bowtie-to-work guy of email.
come across a few of these people and have never noticed a tell they were that type of person outside the text of their email
It becomes even more interesting when traditionally cultures (like mine) don't use surnames, but modern IT systems stemming from the Anglo Saxon culture force people to arbitrarily assign one of their names as a surname or IT systems generally don't work.
Do you frequently tell you mom, dad, brothers, children and in laws about your sex life?
Of course not. Whatever problem the American in this hypothetical is having, name conventions are not likely to help.
It's weird to me so many people in America feel they can't talk to anyone but strangers on their internet or paid specialists about their sexual issues. Sex is generally a pretty normal part of life, especially between two married people, and yet everyone feels they can't talk about it at all. It's an unhealthy mindset IMO.
i live in the pnw which is somewhat infamous for its "mind your own business" culture. we have a transplant friend from the midwest who seem less shameful in asking for what amounts to free labor and i wonder if its a regional cultural thing within the US.
if forced by auditors to bother others with my problems, intimacy issues would be near the end of the list.
if this is american, which cultures encourage bothering others with personal problems?
Once again, not just out of the blue calling up that cousin you haven't spoken to in a decade and start unloading on them about your emotional issues of the day, but people in your life that truly know the day to day you. And I'm also not saying we should all invite our friends over for some barbecue and then just start sharing every detail of our sex lives. But if we are having problems in the intimate parts of our lives, we should have some people who we can talk to about it. People who understand your deep values, people who understand your goals in life, people who really get you and love you.
I think more people should probably have more deep connections with others. Everyone sees it as "bother others with my problems" and then we wonder why we have such a mental health crisis in this country and have a loneliness epidemic. Almost as if these things are related...nah! Seriously, is there absolutely nobody in your life who you think wouldn't find it a bother to listen to whatever is emotionally unsettling you? That the only way for anyone to help you with a problem would be to pay them? This would seem incredibly distressing to me, to feel like I have no real close community at all.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have paid professionals for mental health resources as well. They absolutely have a place, and I think a lot of Americans don't utilize these services enough for a multitude of reasons. But in the same way you don't go to the ER for a minor cut you shouldn't have to rely on paid therapists for your day to day emotional issues.
As for asking about free labor, once again it really depends on the context of the request and the relationship I have with the person. Once again, hierarchies of relationships. I've absolutely asked friends and neighbors to help work on a project around the house, and I've absolutely been one of those people asked to help and been there. I wouldn't think anything of the ask, and I wouldn't think anything of someone saying no to me asking. It would definitely depend on the context though. A random stranger knocking on my door asking me to redo their whole home's plumbing? Probably not! A neighbor I've talked to a few times asking for a spare set of hands for a minute as they hang something outside? If I have a minute, sure thing, I'll be right there. A close friend needing a hand pulling some ethernet cable throughout their home or work on refinishing their billiard table or painting a room? I'll grab some beers and be there in an hour.
My home is the first house in the neighborhood, so I tend to get a number of people who have minor car trouble break down stop in front. I go out there with a tool bag and a sealed bottle of water ready to help every time I see someone out there. But oh no, what a nut, offering all that free labor to absolute strangers.
> bothering others with personal problems
Ultimately my point is people should have other people in their lives where talking about intimate details and issues in their lives shouldn't be seen as a bother, but as something they would want to help with. And that I think it's a symptom of our society being sick that so many people think helping others, even supposedly close friends and family, with their issues is being bothered.
Yes.
Do you... literally talk to your boss the same way you talk to your best friend?
I'm actually surprised you're not familiar with the practice. Think Scully from X-Files or Stifler from American Pie.
I always assumed it was his first name, thanks for expanding my understanding just a little!
I am still "squirrel" to some college friends. And think of many of my college friends and co-workers as their username.
My dad is called by his surname by some of his high school pals and call some of them by surname when he's around them (but not in reference to them if he's talking to me). Thinking back to my high school days in the late 00's I can only remember athletes being called by their last name. Perhaps because of football or sports that you just have your last name on your jersey. It would be an interesting thing to understand more.
I could be regional too. I'm from the US in the midwest.
and Mike.
theres an occasional phenomenon in the US, often referenced in sitcoms, where an individuals entire first and last name sticks as their "nickname"
I learned later that we had a reputation for being a jock school though, because we all had to play a sport each semester.
Also, you made me feel old.
If there's five people named John in the same class in school or the same team at work, it is not uncommon for all John to go by last name.
My brother's friends do likewise, since his first name is Mike and he runs with a bunch of other Mikes and Michaels.
There's a naming collision when my brother and I hang out together, but since we live in different states, the system usually works.
My father's family is German and all of the males in the family only used their middle name for everything except legal and financial documents. For example, Carl Hans Schmidt (to pick a semi-made-up example) would introduce himself as Hans to everyone he met, and the family would refer to him as Hansi.
I always wondered if that was a German (or regional) tradition, or a fun family quirk.
(The males have all regrettably passed on but I asked my aunts once and they said they had no idea why or how that was a thing, that's just what they did.)
Francisco -> Paco from Saint Francis holding a Pater Comunitatis title in Latin.
But, as a weirder case:
José María -> Chema
Luis María -> Luisma
Juan Manuel -> Juanma
José Manuel -> Chema/Josema
Juan Ramón -> Juanra
María José (women's name) -> Marijose
Teachers were always addressed by Mr/Mrs/Ms and this extended into Scouts as well. For anyone I don't know, I tend to just say "sir/ma'am" (employee at the grocery store for example) unless. If the person has a professional title that I know of, I will use the title (Dr. Martin, Professor Lake, etc).
My parents I suppose were very similar. Sir/Ma'am for most interactions, but I don't recall hearing a Mr/Mrs/Ms when they referenced other people in our lives.
Since I've moved to Europe a few years back, I'm trying to follow the local customs more, which at first glance seem very similar (Netherlands). Formal for strangers, informal for basically everyone else. I've tried using the formal with some older neighbours and they always tell me stop immediately!
That brings up an actually interesting exception. At my church, the pastors were the only adults we'd ever call by their first name, sort of. Our pastor, for example, was always Brother Mike, not Pastor <Last Name>.
I think this is also true for Orthodox monks.
I'm not sure if there's a Christian denomination that has pastors who aren't priests, and also has monks. So this sounds to me more like a situation where all fellow members of the church are addressed as Brother/Sister.
I also grew up in Texas and to this day I still tend to use sir/ma'am for most adults I don't know. Every now and then it seems to throw people off. People don't seem to expect to hear "Yes, sir" very often it seems.
Conversely, in coastal California that kind of speech is actively (even aggressively) discouraged, such as in public schools, higher grades, especially. It's still appreciated in more traditional communities, though, such as black or immigrant Asian communities. Code switching isn't limited to certain minority groups; even affluent coastal white folks often end of code switching.
The only situation where I call people by their last name in my language is when it's their nickname. Like there were two "Johns" so we call the second one "Smith".
<First name>: Informal, casual conversation.
Don <First name>: More formal, conveys respect while still indicating some closeness.
Señor <Last name>: Most formal, normally used in writing.
Using only someone's last name is just plain weird. If you want to speak formally to someone just address them as "usted", it will get you the same goodwill without sounding off.
And even with that, people under 35 will just stay at the informal (normal you) "tu" case.
I am almost at the halfway point of my life expectancy, and I do actually prefer people using my first name over my last name.
Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things.
Accepting that it's a machine sending the mail could simplify all of this quite a bit, provided people are fine by being addressed in an impersonal and inorganic way.
If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
The "right thing to do" is to have a "what should we call you" field, which should be completely separate from any names collected for legal purposes, if any.
I was going for the principle that we're not trying to mimic human emotions when it's a mail to remind you to accept the latest TOS.
So, no "Dear", no trying to come up with something socially acceptable, just plain "miki123211@hn.xx, please review our newest Terms and Services at https://....../...."
The "what should we call you" field sounds attractive, but would be ripe for abuse IMHO. Not on technical terms, but users would definitely play with it to have you send "Mrs DeepshitFuckHorse please confirm your email at...." to random addresses for instance, or any other vector that we're not thinking about right now.
I've started to prefer messages that just start with "Hello,".
I tend to use fuck/off as name/surname for completely throwaway accounts, and "dear mr. Fuck" is something I received once.
There are several people I know primarily through wechat, where it's almost always unnecessary to address people by name because messages have only one recipient. Sometimes this has led to conversations like this:
> What should I call you? 颖？
> OK.
[I was not especially reassured by that response.]
Heh, there are still some people who call me by my nickname back from 2000s. It doesn't help what it means something between "the beast" and "the thing" and I had people of the old clout be quite offended by it. Including my mother.
You got off light. I had a good number of people call me by my username at my undergrad.
When I went to grad school, they let us select user ids. My user name matched my first name, most elegant solution to that problem yet ;)
When the world didn't change as quickly, or didn't change at all, the elders truly knew everything the young ones knew, and so much more. They had truly seen everything and had plenty of experience with the problems young people were struggling with.
This very much isn't the case any more. I'm in my twenties (technically part of gen Z), but I already feel like I don't understand the Tiktok-using, trap-loving part of my generation. The 14-18 year olds probably have very different issues now than I did at that age, and that wasn't even so long ago. People from my parents' generation are out of the loop completely, their world still revolves around linear TV, college as a path for success in life etc.
That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general.
But the default for me is paying respect for the elders. Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
But... why does living longer in and of itself command an extra degree of respect?
> And are usually more wise in life experience.
assertion ;)
> That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general.
> But the default for me is paying respect for the elders.
> Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
I offer old people my seat because they'll likely feel pain if they have to stand up for a while, they might fall down if the bus goes bump, etc. I won't be pained by standing up for 45 minutes so it doesn't really come at any cost to me.
i.e. I'm not giving up my seat because I respect old people for being old.
That's not a reason, you're just repeating the question. "Having lived long" is a value neutral statement of fact. How do you derive value from that?
> And are usually more wise in life experience.
So is that your true/only reason, a statistical probability of "knowing more"?
It is a reason in itself.
I don't know if I manage to live 10 years more, not speaking of 50 years more.
Living long is a achievent on its own, not be brought down early by life. Because there is a lot that life has to offer to bring you down.
That requires a minimum of wisdom.
All while at the same time putting everybody who didn't get the chance yet below them. It feels very arbitrary - there are a lot of better indicators than age for that.
In a way that would be a good barometer of how that society thinks it's doing and how promising the younger generation sees its future, as prepared by their elders.
It's all the more interesting in countries where the population pyramid if fully reversed, and elders have way more power than the younger working class.
Autocracy is usually driven by the opposite, unrestricted mobilization of the youth. In particular true in the West today. Bukele is not exactly a pensioner, and if the US has displayed one thing in recent times it isn't respect for the age of their leaders to put it mildly.
Insamuch as Confucian filial piety can be a check on upstart autocrats, that's useful, but not sufficient. There's nothing stopping the Maoist autocracy from embracing Confucius[1]; Mao just didn't want to for ideological reasons. Autocrats are ultimately building a coalition of scam victims that are all locked in the same room with one another. They don't care who's in the room as long as they won't unify against the leader.
In the US, we have Trump, the oldest US President in history, with, to put it mildly, "autocratic ambitions". His coalition includes old people, who vote early and often, and want to impose the social order of the 1950s upon the country. Almost[2] nothing about them suggests that they're going to meaningfully check Trump's power anytime soon; if anything, they're the only[3] faction of the Trump coalition that's gotten anything out of the deal.
[0] If the autocrat wins, they will eventually just become the new traditionalist power structure. Every pirate wants to become an admiral.
[1] Mussolini recognized the Vatican as a sovereign state purely to get the Pope to shut up about him.
[2] Insert clip of some old guy vandalizing a Cybertruck here.
[3] No, I don't count pardoning Ross Ulbricht. The Libertarian Party sold their soul for a donut.
Company standards differ and every time you meet someone new, say in a Teams-Meeting, the older person generally offers you to use "Du". You may or may not accept it
It's basically "respecting your elders"
While I (21 years of age) talk with my boss on this personal level, I can't get myself to address other older (higher ranked) employees by their first name. Saying Mr. or Mrs. is kinda required for me as the person I am, because I always try to respect them. (This doesn't apply to some other older (higher ranked) employees, those with which I don't have much to work with. While I do respect them, it's not the same type of respect I have for them)
This may sound very confusing and it even is for me, as I am not German and merely adapt to what is the cultural standard here.
My culture we address everyone by their first name. The only thing we must absolutely add are the social prefixes for older folks (typically above a 5 year range? depends on some factors.) I could never address, mention or talk about uncle / aunt XYZ as just XYZ. It's very crucial to always add that, especially for people you know. If you don't know them, just say the preferred prefix as well, it shows a basic level of respect We don't really use our surnames - it's more to identify, who exactly we are talking about. For example, when talking about "Michael", but the involved in the conversation don't know who we're talking about we usually just say "from the house of surname" (house of is the literal translation)
And if they don't like what you picked, you'll know pretty quick.
I love the informality and my brain struggles a bit when I speak Lithuanian, esp when I know I should be using formal addressing, but I'm not sure I want to.
https://horseracingsense.com/why-thoroughbred-racehorses-sam...
I thought it was interesting to see how foreign language dubs handled that line. Sometimes they translate the French into the dub language as if it had just been English like the rest of the song. Sometimes they leave it as French. I don't remember any that translate it into a language that isn't the language of the dub, but also isn't French.
(Of particular note, the French dub leaves the line as "untranslated" French.)
Something that feels similar to me is the treatment of the Italian brothers in Lady and the Tramp. In the English original, they are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak English in a very thick Italian accent.
This cultural concept translated better into some foreign languages than others. In the French dub, the brothers are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak French in a very thick Italian accent.
I wondered for years what I might have done to upset the bloke - he was a well built man and I did not want to fight him! It was only after the KAL crash and the coverage it gave the Korean focus on seniority and age that the penny dropped. He thought I was Korean - I do look very Korean (and Japanese and Chinese) - and was clearly offended by my not respecting his age.
At least that is what I would like to think. The alternative is that I was somehow very offensive anyway and I'd like not to think that.
Of course I didn't notice but a friend just clued me into it right after.
Thing is, in Berlin nobody really cares I guess, but this time I was in the country... oooooops...
With multiple areas with >50% migrants you can count yourself lucky if ppl even speak German fluently enough to hold a conversation.
And the last holdouts that are still mostly natives are usually in the countryside... And the du/Sie rule has always been an urban convention.
Personally, I think your friend just noticed the phrasing and made an issue out of nothing
If it was around that time, most Koreans were not good at English, and it's not exactly hard to tell a native English speaker from a Korean who learned "I'm a boy, you are a girl" in middle school.
Sounds like the shopowner was just a jerk and was mad for some random reason.
For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to befriend and hang out with the ones born in 1994.
(Please note that Koreans typically make friends within the same narrow age band.)
Typically, throughout middle school to university days, a South Korean individual is expected to use the honorific version of the language when speaking to someone older. This version involves a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar, used to show "respect to others" and sound "polite," effectively preventing one from being casual with others. Whereas a 빠른 is allowed to befriend people one year above their age and gets to use "반말" (the casual version of the language) with those peers.
A social complication can arise when two groups with a monotonic increase in age meet. Say, friend group A comprises a regular 95 and a 빠른 95. They became friends in high school and talk casually. Then there's group B, which consists of a regular 95 and a 빠른 96, who also became friends in high school. Now, when groups A and B start hanging out together at university, the 빠른 95 has to decide whether to use honorific or casual speech with the regular 95 and the 빠른 96.
The ones stuck in the middle, in this case the 빠른95, gets called "족보 브레이커", which roughly translates to "pedigree breaker".
and american kids are also way more like to make friends in their school peer age group. i believe this is almost a universal truth for the first world
Everyone does to some degree or another. For example, Americans do this through middle school. It's not really until high school where you start mingling with other grades.
The language barrier between two Korean strangers (irony) is much thicker than when I talk to a passerby in English or Chinese asking for directions.
One in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801
> The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to adequately brief and execute the non-precision approach and the first officer's and flight engineer's failure to effectively monitor and cross-check the captain's execution of the approach. Contributing to these failures were the captain's fatigue and Korean Air's inadequate flight crew training. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam and the agency's failure to adequately manage the system.
Ex: You're in a lecture and you tell your professor "Professor X, I think on slide 10 there is a mistake". This comes off much better than "Hey Bob, I think there is a mistake on slide 10"
So at least personally, if appropriate, I default to using honorifics b/c it makes people feel better. (Unless they for some reason want to be seen as your peer - which does happen rarely)
I find that sir/ma'am plus politeness (please, thank you, etc.) works nicely.
While there is the chance that you might misgender someone with that, that's not very common (at least for me) as long as you, you know, pay attention.
That said unless they have a note tattooed on their forehead with their preferred term of address, I can only use non-language cues to determine the appropriate term.
On the rare occasions where I use the wrong term and am corrected, I am fastidious in adhering to the requested term(s).
None of that's is rocket surgery, just simple respect for other humans IMHO.
Nathan Fielder's show "The Rehearsal" on HBO recently released season 2, the entire season is about airline cockpit dynamics between the first officer and the pilot.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-...
CRM is basically a system of cockpit communication and coordination techniques developed to prevent accidents caused by poor teamwork or hierarchical barriers between pilots - like requiring pilots to ask for input from co-pilots in difficult situations.
This is most likely an equivalent to thee/thou which was considered rude to use for one's superiors or elders as in:
"Don't tha "thee" me!" - it's ok for me to use for you but not t'other way round.
Now many believe thou/thee to be respectful because of the bible, where in fact it is used as familiarity.
It gives you an age bracket within which everyone is equal, once and for all, regardless of their exact date of birth. Your friend isn't suddenly going to speak down to you when he turns 7 and you're still 6, except perhaps as a joke. Both of you are 8 in Korean age, and will turn 9 at the exact same moment. This age bracket produces a stable peer group who can remain friends for life, regardless of when or where individuals went to school, got a job, or enlisted in the army -- all the other places where hierarchy can be imposed.
Of course, the year is also important for reasons of superstition. There are still some elderly people who ask for the (Chinese zodiac) animal associated with your year of birth, instead of the year itself.
Influenced by Confucian culture, China doesn't have such a perverted etiquette system at all.
Every way has its pros and cons. Having an age related hierarchy might have benefits like societal coherence or stability. I am not a proponent of it, I just acknowledge my inability to fully grasp the impact and ramifications as to label one as superior and the other as "perverted".
Hierarchies invite revolt and need a lot of force to keep in place.
If you think there are no hierarchies everywhere, then we have a completely different worldview.
The situation looks exactly the opposite if you look at the birth rate in the Korea.
It also made me realize that a lot of the small social details we take for granted might seem really jarring or even rude in another culture.
1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
2. Social (partnered) dance clubs go by nicknames for the same reason. Even though I dance with them on a regular basis, I don't know most of my dance friends' real names. I'm not aware of any other country where dancers do this.
That's so interesting. It reminds me very vaguely of Indians escaping the caste hierarchy by converting to Islam or Buddhism. Sometimes the easiest way out of a restrictive system in your culture is just to switch cultural contexts entirely.
The funny part of the Kakao CEO asking to be called Brian is that there was a K-drama (Search WWW) with a fictional tech company, but they also made the CEO name Brian. I suspect if this idea had gone on every CEO would be called Brian.
This is intended but didn't work as such, because wording only constitutes a small part of the whole social hierarchy.
The book Using Korean[1] gives a detailed explanation of how formal speech indicates social distance more than simple politeness:
> [존댓말] indicates a psychological distance between the speaker and the hearer... a couple in a romantic relationship who normally use an intimate casual style with each other will suddenly switch to a formal style after they fight, to demonstrate the distance they feel from each other.
From a related discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comments/vcusut/comment/icj2...
[1]: https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=2ggVsnUCbiAC&lpg=PA17&pg...
- The same situation with different people or the same people in a different situation may result in different speech levels.
- If an older person feels really close to a junior, they may even ask them to "lower their speech."
There was a documentary about a much older Korean working for a very young boss. This resulted in a conflict: age hierarchy vs role hierarchy. They both spoke to each other in the formal style.
And think about addressing a mix of people who are both above and below you in the hierarchy...
When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50).
I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan.
One day the new player flipped out on me in our clan chat. Our clan leaders told her I wasn't Japanese and to cut me some slack. She refused to believe I was a foreigner.
On the one hand I was proud. My Japanese was good enough for someone to think I wasn't a foreigner. On the other hand I was sad, I clearly did something wrong.
The clan leader spoke to me in a 1:1 fashion and tried to explain. It wasn't the language I used, but more or less how I interacted with the more senior clan members. I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...
I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan...
I found an interesting interview on youtube of someone who grew up in Japan and moved to Korea:
> What is your favorite thing about Korea?
> I find it comfortable that Koreans are honest about their thoughts.
> In the beginning I was hurt a lot and it was hard because of how honest Koreans are
> What do you think is the difference between Korea and Japan?
> First of all I think there is a difference in personality
> Since I was living in Japan, up until I was 18 years old, I had a typical Japanese personality
> Back then I couldn't speak my mind [...] and dancing was the only way I could express myself
> [...] and I also couldn't reject [someone/something]
> when my friends said we should do something, I always said yes
> after living in Korea, I felt a lot that I need to say what I want and don't want to do
Given that it's unacceptable to reject what a peer wants to do in Japan, I can see where making suggestions to a superior would cause problems.
It's weird. I knew thousands of kanji. I could conjugate like the best of them. I could read and discuss classic Japanese literature. I could read and explain classic Japanese grammar and the root of modern grammar.
What I couldn't do? A simple social situation.
I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.
And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.
Seriously, just go. They were incredibly nice to us while we were there visiting.
At companies, basically everyone should be speaking polite Japanese regardless of seniority. Harassment has been a big deal and companies have gotten a lot stricter on it these past years, so at large corporations there will be far less of senior members talking down to low members as did happen before. One reason companies can change like this is at most, HR is a much stronger org than product, i.e. the ideal career path for a manager tends to be to move from product to HR, at least at the ones we wouldn't refer to as "tech companies".
SMBs will still feel quite old though since they don't have strong HR like the big companies. I don't know much about government but do have the impression that they would also still have these issues. But I think corporate Japan has gotten a lot better than you might be thinking.
It's people who play these games and almost any weirdness you can imagine that could exist in a person in real life gets brought into these games.
Often it's magnified because of the pseudo anonymity. We've only been "big" for a few months and a handful of things we've already ran into would make you not want to visit several western hemisphere countries if held to the same standard. :)
My guild leader pulled me aside and seriously said to not bring politics into it haha. My first big culture shock of my life.
In Brazil it is quite common (at the time at least) to just blame the government for everything, no matter who is in government.
The second was that apparently wearing speedos is not socially acceptable in most a lot of the first world beaches anymore.
That makes me wonder how the preferred third person pronoun movement works in Korea...
Or you could provide a joke answer that is absurdly high or low or wrong, like saying that you weren’t born yesterday, or that you were born at night, but not last night, or in the day, but not yesterday. This might work for those who you are closer with personally, but some may find this kind of answer dismissive and will persist or get upset. If in doubt, use the principle-based approach I mentioned above instead or in addition to the joke one, as a way of showing that you’re answering in good faith and take their question seriously as asked.
Native speakers tolerate errors when it's obvious someone is non-native, but become offended when they speak it perfectly, but screw up the social heirarchy, so it's extremely hard to progress beyond a certain point.
If your Japanese is near flawless except for the honorific register that would strike people as weird, but then what did you do to end up speaking flawless Japanese without ever properly internalizing honorific Japanese?
*(If you are an Asian foreigner, you are subject to many other layers of prejudice unrelated to your language ability)
Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. However, other people are taught to use the formal language towards bosses and elders, also with a respect rationale, and some other folks in Brazil (even from big cities) actually require that their children address them with formal language. So now when in doubt I use the formal language with people that are much older than I am although that feels utterly unnatural to me, but I always make people comfortable to use the informal with me as I personally find this to be more respectful.
Just one more comment: in Brazil it is unfortunately the case that some offices have a standard treatment like "your excellency", etc, which are nominally meant to respect the office but in reality become a kind of test of compliance and obedience. I recall in particular one incident where an attorney presenting in front of the Supreme Court was severely reprimanded for not address justices with the proper term. Personally, I am not sure that required compliance with a style - by regulation or by societal expectations - is indeed "respect" if it is not matched with actions and posture that really reflect due consideration towards the other person.
As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him by name saying, "No, it's DOUTOR Adriano".
Gee, let's not even mention the medical field... veterinarians and nutritionists want to be called "doutor"...
These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.
PhDs are not take just for social climbing. Many were genuinely interested in the subject until they got disillusioned..
Most people would think working on AI models for computer vision problems is a perfectly reasonable outcome for a STEM PhD, even if it's not a direct continuation of the thesis research.
Turning a physics PhD into any sort of modeling, statistical analysis or engineering work is pretty normal in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more physics PhDs working in finance than academia and government research labs.
me: Hi Doctor... I have X problem, Doctor. Could you give me some treatment, Doctor?
Doctor: You can just call me Ana
me: Yes Doctor Ana
Even for professionals that don't have titles if they have authority over you, you need to use the title. VERY evident when talking to police officers always say "Senhor" (sir), police have the power to really screw with you without any reason so better to show respect. You never know when you run into a police officer who enjoys screwing people over.
Interestingly this is why Quakers continued to address people as thou/thee long after everyone else abandoned the practice. Thou was originally the "informal" second person singular pronoun in English, "you" was plural. People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Eventually, "you" overtook thou.
But the Quakers believed that using "you" to show respect was anti-egalitarian and resisted the trend for a long time.
Nowadays because "thou" appears a lot in the King James Bible it tends to be associated with formal, archaic language, so if anything the connotation is the reverse.
Why didn't people address God with "you"?
> Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an "informal" singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
In my family growing up, my dad’s name was “Dad” from my POV. “Father” was a strange-to-me formality that only a couple of my friends’ families use. “Hey Dad, wanna grab lunch?” is technically using a title of respect, but feels way different than “Hello, Father. Would you like to make lunch plans?”
My kids call me Dad, unless we’re greeting each other like Jerry and Newman on Seinfeld to be funny, which is something always initiated by them: “Hello, Father.” “Hello, Daughter.” kid giggles
One time I heard my kid talking to his dad and calling him “Sir”. That felt utterly foreign to me. If I called my own dad “Sir”, he’d rightfully have assumed I was being a smartass. There’s never another situation where I’d address him that way.
On his birthday my grandfather in law said 'I am x years old! [...] Oh, no, x-1 complete.'
It's funny these kinds of arbitrary systems for things we have, and never question, until you suddenly stumble into one that's slightly different.
How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs <lastname>", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say "your son did X".
Every language has explicit and implicit rules for expressing honor, respect, and closeness. Informal systems can vary more often and be more fluid but they always exist.
A fan saw him and briefly chatted, then Conan asked if he wanted a photo.
The man said "sure, Mr. O'Brien," to which Conan replied, "please, call me sir."
Everywhere I've been and observed, it's always been, "Good Morning, <firstname>" or similar regardless of who is talking to who on the org chart. (This doesn't mean you should talk like a surfer dude, of course.)
There are other languages that make this distinction. French. German. Just as other examples.
But as soon as you're past the interview, with your regular colleagues you're not gonna be on a "vous" or "Sie" basis. Maybe with your boss' boss or something, sure. Well maybe also with your boss if he's a dang stickler.
And it's been like that for well over 40 years.
A few weeks later HR contacted me: Uh, that was really painfully awkward. The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting. The prospective employee went on a rant and said he had never been so disrespected, and it made a terrible impression of how unprofessional my company was by being so cavalier by using his first name.
Needless to say that was the end of the interview process, and I never heard from the guy again. Even if he was a technical fit, the cultural fit was off the charts wrong.
Getting to hit the culture filter very early in interviews is probably a better outcome than ending up at the company and feeling awkward, not sure how intentional that is though.
Maybe outside of NATO. In EU we knew more about Black Lives Matter protests than about local news.
Is that measurably worse than the current new normal? Call him Mr. Vladsky, tell him he's a great fit and schedule an interview, then block his number and email and never contact him again.
I grew up in Texas with its culture of sir and ma’am. After leaving the military, I make it a point to address everyone on a first name basis. Doctor Dan. Father Frank. Nurse Nancy.
On the other hand, old habits are hard to shake. When someone is extra nice to me, I often address them as sir and ma’am even when I am much older than they are. I also get irritated when a young salesman addresses me by my first name and attempts to upsell me.
You can convey relative social position in English, if you want to. You don't have to, if you don't want to.
Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.
In English, you can't offend a reasonable person by saying "I heard it's getting hotter today!" or "How big was the pizza?" In Korean, you can. Because there's no socially neutral version of "How big was the pizza" you can use to everyone.
* Well, you may think it's an absurdly cumbersome grammatical system, and in some situations it really is, but generally you get used to, just like English speakers are used to having to know and specify the gender of everyone around them, including cats and dogs, and it generally doesn't cause issues - but then sometimes it does!
Smaller companies, OTOH, have proven to be a bit hit-or-miss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwmSjveL3Lc
And you might remember the Oppa that is Gangnam Style:
My cultural awareness, which is distinctly non-Asian, assumed that this "Oppa" had something to do with horses.
That Gangnam Style song is about riding and the associated up and down motion, just not related to horses. In that scene where he's watching the horses, he's singing:
"A true lady who is warm and human during the day, who is classy and knows how to enjoy a cup of coffee. But when night comes, her heart gets hot..." and then you see the horse moving its head up and down and he sings: "A lady who is kinky in that way"
And then you see him with 2 girls in his arms and he's using rather suggestive language:
"A man who one-shots ... his coffee. A man who won't let things cool down ... A man who bursts when night comes ... his heart. A man with few muscles and he is bulging ... with ideas."
Also, if you pay attention to it, you can hear that both gangnam songs are littered with audio samples of him and her moaning, e.g:
https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0?feature=shared&t=151
https://youtu.be/wcLNteez3c4?feature=shared&t=68
And then there's the famous elevator scene where his lyrics are: "A good woman appears calm, but knows how to have fun. She's reasonable and when it's the right time, she will let her hair down ..."
Some individuals will ask your age just so they can justify talking down to you. I’ve even had cases where someone was polite at first, but the moment they realized they were older, their behavior shifted entirely. That kind of attitude is a major pet peeve of mine—it honestly makes me want to pull my hair out.
While the younger generation tends to care less about age differences among peers (and thankfully avoids this behavior), there are still far too many people who believe age alone gives them the right to act superior or pretend they know better.
I strongly believe respect should be earned based on character, not age. I make a point to be polite to everyone, regardless of how old they are—and that’s why I don’t even bother asking.
gnabgib•1d ago
South Koreans become younger overnight after country scraps ‘Korean age’ (2 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36502797
The end of the tricky 'Korean age' (3 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33907571