Something like this has also happened to me when in holiday in Spain. I was looking around nice buildings open to the public, and entered one that I later found out happened to be a university. Walking around I entered one very well decorated hall, also because it started to rain and had to wait somewhere until it passed. To my horror, more people started coming in as well and I realized I was in for some sort of book or thesis presentation on the subject of Spanish language on the Balearic islands.
I barely speak Castilian Spanish (the more common one) and it was instead in Catalan Spanish, so I didn't understand a word, but stayed for the 1-2 hours it took, clapped, and skipped the handshakes/signing part of it.
While Catalan speakers would be very unlikely to say "Catalan Spanish", there is a conception that there are many "lenguas españolas" (Spanish languages, as in languages that are part of the country of Spain). In this formulation even Basque is a "Spanish language" (as a language of Spain), even though it isn't linguistically related to Castilian Spanish.
Notably, the constitution of Spain uses this phrasing in its article 3:
1. El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. Todos los españoles tienen el deber de conocerla y el derecho a usarla.
2. Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas de acuerdo con sus Estatutos.
3. La riqueza de las distintas modalidades lingüísticas de España es un patrimonio cultural que será objeto de especial respeto y protección.
In English:
1. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the state. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.
2. The other Spanish languages are also official in their respective Autonomous Communities, in accordance with their Statutes.
3. The richness of the different linguistic modalities of Spain is a cultural heritage which shall be accorded particular respect and protection.
I've heard a minority of (seemingly highly educated) people prefer to say "Castellano" instead of "Español", maybe as a deliberate reference to this concept.
While "Catalan Spanish" is certainly a nonstandard term, when contrasted against "Castilian Spanish" it does make some sense: it's the Romance variant that developed in the Catalonia part of Spain, vs the one that developed in Castile.
I see the point. But it hangs on a thin string. One more stretch and you'd get "west-side Spanish" for Portuguese, or some sort of "gaelic Spanish" for Occitan.
Regardless of how they might feel, they're still Spanish (hold a Spanish passport), so it's a true fact. I also take issue with you claiming that all Catalans feel this way, that's largely untrue.
That being said, both terms "Castilian Spanish" and "Catalan Spanish" sound weird to me. Source: I'm both a Catalan and Spanish speaker. In my languages, they're both referred as "Castellano" o "Catalan".
I'd appreciate that people referred to these languages either as Catalan or Spanish, no need for unnecessary qualifiers. (Spanish is, unlike English, a completely centralized language. No need to make geographical distinctions.)
> Spanish is, unlike English, a completely centralized language. No need to make geographical distinctions.
So you'd say there are no distinctions worth noting between the Spanish spoken in any Spanish-speaking Latin American country and the Spanish spoken in Spain?
I learned Spanish in Madrid - there's definitely no Catalan dialect of Spanish - it's either/or. And the northeastern Spanish accent is perfectly understandable (unlike, say, Galicia or Andalusia).
So it's surprising that OP thought Catalan was a version of Spanish, because it's completely unintelligible to anyone who learned Spanish as a second language (like myself) - not sure about native speakers. I can't even pronounce the street names in Barcelona when I visit.
> it's completely unintelligible to anyone who learned Spanish
This is wild. The languages share a lot of vocabulary and grammar.
> I can't even pronounce the street names in Barcelona when I visit.
This is also wild. I can see there are some words like "passeig" and "plaça" which aren't immediately familiar, but they're not far from the Spanish equivalents. And you could have a good shot at pronouncing many other streets like "Gran Via" and "Diagonal".
I attended a funeral for the family member of a friend of mine. After the funeral we all were to convene at his sister's house. Because of the crowds I parked half a block away and found myself in a group of similarly dressed people walking towards what I remembered to be her house. After maybe 5 minutes of not recognizing anyone, someone simply says "who are you", and after explaining my relation to the deceased, my error became apparent.
If someone I didn't know had left, I wouldn't have minded. Even someone I did know, in fact, although I would have asked what happened afterwards and if everything was okay.
People have all sorts of emergencies.
I would have minded if the person leaving said anything though, unless I really needed to be informed of something. Better to leave in silence without disrupting the presentation. It is stressful enough as is.
Many years ago I took a look at my high school senior yearbook for the first time since I’d graduated. I spotted a note from a girl asking me to call her after graduation.
I didn’t remember the name (first name only), and the phone number was from a different town 20-30 miles from my high school. Unfortunately I don’t believe I still have the yearbook, so it shall forever remain a mystery. I literally had, and have, no clue.
Yeah! He didn't want to appear rude by just walking out, so he stayed it's been all over the local TV News - he looks a tall guy so yes, he'd definitely be noticed making a sneaky exit!
The article clearly explains it: He rushed in, the ceremony started, and then he realized he was at the wrong wedding.
Once the ceremony starts, you stay quiet. Getting up and leaving from aisle seat while the wedding party is coming down the aisle would have been a jerk move.
In the Episcopal Church (of the U.S.), and doubtless in others, my understanding has always been that wedding ceremonies are just as open to the public as any other church service. [0]
(In contrast, the reception would be a private event.)
I'm not sure I understand this correctly but did they mean just the wedding and not the wedding reception?
In my corner of the world it's still fairly normal to have people attempt to crash a wedding reception and it's typically the role of the best man to bribe them with offerings like a shot of vodka or treats.
I have a distinct memory of my friend's father in law, a man close to 2m tall, walking forward, vodka bottle in one hand, shot glass in the other, while the uninvited guest, with just a shot glass, walking backwards towards the gate to the venue where the reception was held.
On the flip side one night over a decade ago I was out on a walk with my SO when we overheard some rowdy people. We wanted to avoid them, but they caught up to us and it turned out that this was an after-party after their wedding reception. They invited us to join them to enjoy the leftovers with everyone.
Yes, just the ceremony, not the reception. He left as soon as he could (after being held up for the group photo) to attend the wedding he was supposed to be at.
this happened to my mother-in-law, where she was the crasher.
in North London there is a large Turkish centre that hosts Turkish weddings. She was invited to a wedding there.
Traditionally, the bride and groom stand in the centre of the room and then family members lineup next to them all in a procession.
As you enter the room to reach the bride and groom, you must shake the hands in turn of all of the people in the procession.
When my mother-in-law eventually got to the bride and groom, they realised that the bride and groom were strangers. The accurate wedding was taking place upstairs at the same time.
There are multiple wedding venues in that particular Turkish Centre.
I woke up one morning in college and thought I had overslept. I threw on clothes and ran from my dorm to my class. I walked in two minutes late and grabbed an open seat on the front row, right in front of the teacher.
I didn't recognize anyone and soon realize that I hadn't overslept and was just an hour early. I was too embarrassed to get up and walk out so I sat through the class.
A student once arrived, disheveled and with 20 minutes left, to a midterm. I gave him a stern look and a copy of the exam. While I was grading the exam, I discovered with slight horror that he'd showed up to the first of two classes that I was teaching back to back in the same room -- he was enrolled in the second, and had arrived 30 minutes early. Horror turned to joy as I failed to find a single error on his exam. We had a good laugh as I returned his exam; he was justifiably proud and only slightly embarrassed.
The guy made an honest mistake - like that time I mistakenly stayed in the bar across the street from one wedding venue (that I had been invited to) and then tried to mingle with the crowd once they came out.
Something similar happened to me in college. I got to my class late, and there was only one seat left, in the middle of the row in the large auditorium, so I had to make a big commotion getting to it. I finally sit down and pull out my notes, only to realize that whatever this substitute teacher was talking about was totally Greek to me. After a while, it dawned on me - I wasn’t late for class, I was super early! Since I made such a commotion getting to the seat, and since I didn’t want to do that again, I just sat there and pretended to take notes. My class was the one after, and I left the room when everyone else did, went to the bathroom, then came back, just so no one would notice that I was going to the much more junior class right after. :D
I am something of a professional gatecrasher, which is a skill I picked up from a friend many years ago.
Interesting event happening as you’re walking past? Just walk on in, look like you belong, see where it goes. That or carry around a hi vis vest - they fold up tiny and can live in a jacket pocket unnoticeably, and they will allow you access anywhere. Occasionally I’ve had to doodle “STEWARD” or similar on the back. Back in the pocket once you’re in, or you’ll be rigging lighting or serving drinks.
Through this I have ended up with friends, work, and anecdotes galore.
I’ve also been chucked out of a few things but that’s definitely the minority - most of the time when people are like “so are you with the royal brigadiers…?” I’ll just say “no, I’m gatecrashing”, and they assume I’m joking until they realise I’m not, but by that point we’re already on our fourth round.
There was an even crazier story when someone was fired from Apple, but still kept coming to the office to work on their project for free for like half a year before someone noticed.
Or the stories about Musk firing people for the smallest nuissance, and then their immediate superior sending the "fired" person to another department the day after - next time Musk would see that person and not remember he "fired" them
I don't understand the dig here. Is that that Elon is required to memorize the face of every single person he interacts with? That he isn't allowed to fire people he manages when he sees behavior or actions that don't align with what he wants in his orgs?
Also, what exactly is the source of this information? I spent multiple minutes googling for an anecdote of him firing someone for a small nuissance, or firing someone and then not recognizing them later, or firing someone and then them getting surreptitiously moved to a different department.
I'm fine if this actually happened, Elon definitely sucks. But otherwise this just feels like weird middle school gossip.
The dig is three fold. (if the story is true, about which I have my doubts.)
One: Elon instead of cultivating an organisation where the right people are rewarded and the wrong people are selected out tries to personally weed out the wrong ones. That is fundamentally foolish even if he is firing people who should be fired.
Two: His subordinates don't respect his decision and instead of letting go the people he wanted to fire, they "hide" them in the organisation elsewhere.
Three: He is too distracted / stupid / incompetent to then notice that his decision has been undermined.
One might wonder where the US could be if the corporate culture wasn't so trigger happy on firing people and if laws against improper terminations would a) exist and b) be enforced.
The amount of knowledge cost alone that any company incurs with such bullshit is insane, but almost no one gives a fuck because the lost knowledge reacquisition cost is usually booked under "training costs" or whatnot.
> One might wonder where the US could be if the corporate culture wasn't so trigger happy on firing people and if laws against improper terminations would a) exist and b) be enforced.
Probably the labor market would look more like countries that already do that?
> The amount of knowledge cost alone that any company incurs with such bullshit is insane, but almost no one gives a fuck because the lost knowledge reacquisition cost is usually booked under "training costs" or whatnot.
No. Bean counters don't magically skip counting those beans. Hiring managers aren't magically ignorant of effects on their team's productivity.
We would probably have much higher unemployment and slower-moving industries, and might no longer be the economic powerhouse of the world.
When it's simple and easy to fire people, companies are a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee, and willing to hire a lot and grow fast knowing in both cases they can fire easily if needed.
I find it sad that so many people never think about the second and third-order consequences of what sounds like feel-good policies. They often end up being a net-negative for the people they were intended to help.
I strongly disagree. If they're is such a massive difference we would see alot less globally competetive European companies.
> a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee.
Just proof hire them for 6 months to a year.
Your argument doesn't hold for someone that has worked for 10 years. If they were a bad hire; it's on you at that point.
But the improvements are plenty;
- Easier planning life and reduce work anxiety for employees.
- It encurrage companies to invest and train their existing employees since they're hard to get rid off.
- It makes employees less scared to speak up or discuss problems.
- It makes companies more cautious about reckless hiring if they're not sure about their economics.
- Allows older workers to remain productive for longer, reducing the burden on the pension or unemployment system from people 55+ having a hard time finding new work for few years before retirement.
Finally, i must ask what the societal purpose of jobs and companies are. From a pure "numbers go up", there is a cost to worker protection. But id argue the society as a whole benefit much more from it than having a multinational IT company on the stock market. There is a balance to these things ofourse, but dismissing it outright is not fair.
Weren't there also stories of people being afraid of stepping into elevators with Steve Jobs? He'd ask them about the work they were doing and if the answer didn't please Jobs he'd fire them
I barely speak Castilian Spanish (the more common one) and it was instead in Catalan Spanish, so I didn't understand a word, but stayed for the 1-2 hours it took, clapped, and skipped the handshakes/signing part of it.
Notably, the constitution of Spain uses this phrasing in its article 3:
1. El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. Todos los españoles tienen el deber de conocerla y el derecho a usarla.
2. Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas de acuerdo con sus Estatutos.
3. La riqueza de las distintas modalidades lingüísticas de España es un patrimonio cultural que será objeto de especial respeto y protección.
In English:
1. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the state. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.
2. The other Spanish languages are also official in their respective Autonomous Communities, in accordance with their Statutes.
3. The richness of the different linguistic modalities of Spain is a cultural heritage which shall be accorded particular respect and protection.
I've heard a minority of (seemingly highly educated) people prefer to say "Castellano" instead of "Español", maybe as a deliberate reference to this concept.
I would expect castellano in Spain, and español in the Americas. Does this align with your experience?
The step after is to start talking about Provencal as if it were a dialect or French. Or Sicilian or Napolitano as a dialect of Italian.
What will the world come to!
That being said, both terms "Castilian Spanish" and "Catalan Spanish" sound weird to me. Source: I'm both a Catalan and Spanish speaker. In my languages, they're both referred as "Castellano" o "Catalan".
I'd appreciate that people referred to these languages either as Catalan or Spanish, no need for unnecessary qualifiers. (Spanish is, unlike English, a completely centralized language. No need to make geographical distinctions.)
There are literally 10 words in my comment and you couldn't even read all of them?
So you'd say there are no distinctions worth noting between the Spanish spoken in any Spanish-speaking Latin American country and the Spanish spoken in Spain?
Isn't Catalan the official language of Andorra?
"Catalan Spanish" makes as much sense as "Basque Spanish". It sounds like an English translation of "catañol".
So it's surprising that OP thought Catalan was a version of Spanish, because it's completely unintelligible to anyone who learned Spanish as a second language (like myself) - not sure about native speakers. I can't even pronounce the street names in Barcelona when I visit.
This is wild. The languages share a lot of vocabulary and grammar.
> I can't even pronounce the street names in Barcelona when I visit.
This is also wild. I can see there are some words like "passeig" and "plaça" which aren't immediately familiar, but they're not far from the Spanish equivalents. And you could have a good shot at pronouncing many other streets like "Gran Via" and "Diagonal".
Imagine having a final thesis presentation only for one of the facualty leave mid presentation without a word.
People have all sorts of emergencies.
I would have minded if the person leaving said anything though, unless I really needed to be informed of something. Better to leave in silence without disrupting the presentation. It is stressful enough as is.
I didn’t remember the name (first name only), and the phone number was from a different town 20-30 miles from my high school. Unfortunately I don’t believe I still have the yearbook, so it shall forever remain a mystery. I literally had, and have, no clue.
Once the ceremony starts, you stay quiet. Getting up and leaving from aisle seat while the wedding party is coming down the aisle would have been a jerk move.
(In contrast, the reception would be a private event.)
[0] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/celebration-and-ble...
In my corner of the world it's still fairly normal to have people attempt to crash a wedding reception and it's typically the role of the best man to bribe them with offerings like a shot of vodka or treats.
I have a distinct memory of my friend's father in law, a man close to 2m tall, walking forward, vodka bottle in one hand, shot glass in the other, while the uninvited guest, with just a shot glass, walking backwards towards the gate to the venue where the reception was held.
On the flip side one night over a decade ago I was out on a walk with my SO when we overheard some rowdy people. We wanted to avoid them, but they caught up to us and it turned out that this was an after-party after their wedding reception. They invited us to join them to enjoy the leftovers with everyone.
in North London there is a large Turkish centre that hosts Turkish weddings. She was invited to a wedding there.
Traditionally, the bride and groom stand in the centre of the room and then family members lineup next to them all in a procession.
As you enter the room to reach the bride and groom, you must shake the hands in turn of all of the people in the procession.
When my mother-in-law eventually got to the bride and groom, they realised that the bride and groom were strangers. The accurate wedding was taking place upstairs at the same time.
There are multiple wedding venues in that particular Turkish Centre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlaVdEv74NU&ab_channel=TRTDr...
I didn't recognize anyone and soon realize that I hadn't overslept and was just an hour early. I was too embarrassed to get up and walk out so I sat through the class.
Interesting event happening as you’re walking past? Just walk on in, look like you belong, see where it goes. That or carry around a hi vis vest - they fold up tiny and can live in a jacket pocket unnoticeably, and they will allow you access anywhere. Occasionally I’ve had to doodle “STEWARD” or similar on the back. Back in the pocket once you’re in, or you’ll be rigging lighting or serving drinks.
Through this I have ended up with friends, work, and anecdotes galore.
I’ve also been chucked out of a few things but that’s definitely the minority - most of the time when people are like “so are you with the royal brigadiers…?” I’ll just say “no, I’m gatecrashing”, and they assume I’m joking until they realise I’m not, but by that point we’re already on our fourth round.
Probably won't work as well at a wedding.
Also, what exactly is the source of this information? I spent multiple minutes googling for an anecdote of him firing someone for a small nuissance, or firing someone and then not recognizing them later, or firing someone and then them getting surreptitiously moved to a different department.
I'm fine if this actually happened, Elon definitely sucks. But otherwise this just feels like weird middle school gossip.
One: Elon instead of cultivating an organisation where the right people are rewarded and the wrong people are selected out tries to personally weed out the wrong ones. That is fundamentally foolish even if he is firing people who should be fired.
Two: His subordinates don't respect his decision and instead of letting go the people he wanted to fire, they "hide" them in the organisation elsewhere.
Three: He is too distracted / stupid / incompetent to then notice that his decision has been undermined.
That he is required (well, expected) to remember the faces of people he _fired_.
The amount of knowledge cost alone that any company incurs with such bullshit is insane, but almost no one gives a fuck because the lost knowledge reacquisition cost is usually booked under "training costs" or whatnot.
Probably the labor market would look more like countries that already do that?
> The amount of knowledge cost alone that any company incurs with such bullshit is insane, but almost no one gives a fuck because the lost knowledge reacquisition cost is usually booked under "training costs" or whatnot.
No. Bean counters don't magically skip counting those beans. Hiring managers aren't magically ignorant of effects on their team's productivity.
- Make employees less engaged in the success of the company.
- Encurrage employees to hide or mask issues.
- Encurrage employees to pretend to be more productive than they are.
- Make employees mentally and physically less healthy.
- Make employees shy away from taking on more responsibility or tasks.
- Make employees less happy to train up new hires in their work.
Yes. Gains. All those gains. I can only see gains here.
When it's simple and easy to fire people, companies are a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee, and willing to hire a lot and grow fast knowing in both cases they can fire easily if needed.
I find it sad that so many people never think about the second and third-order consequences of what sounds like feel-good policies. They often end up being a net-negative for the people they were intended to help.
> a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee.
Just proof hire them for 6 months to a year.
Your argument doesn't hold for someone that has worked for 10 years. If they were a bad hire; it's on you at that point.
But the improvements are plenty;
- Easier planning life and reduce work anxiety for employees.
- It encurrage companies to invest and train their existing employees since they're hard to get rid off.
- It makes employees less scared to speak up or discuss problems.
- It makes companies more cautious about reckless hiring if they're not sure about their economics.
- Allows older workers to remain productive for longer, reducing the burden on the pension or unemployment system from people 55+ having a hard time finding new work for few years before retirement.
Finally, i must ask what the societal purpose of jobs and companies are. From a pure "numbers go up", there is a cost to worker protection. But id argue the society as a whole benefit much more from it than having a multinational IT company on the stock market. There is a balance to these things ofourse, but dismissing it outright is not fair.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229793
Aside from Craigs talk which i think never was released publicly my favorite talk