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Topic: Your Country

Posts 101 to 120 of 123

ThanosReXXX

@spizzamarozzi @Meowpheel Language is a strange thing indeed. If we stop to realize where all words come from, which language stole/uses which word from which language or what the words actually mean all the time, much less how A translates to B and still means the same OR even means C in another language, our heads would probably explode...

Meanwhile, still trying to get back on the topic of where people actually come from, something that all of us have already mentioned earlier, if I remember correctly, so let's see if there's any new people jumping in...

'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

Late

Languages and words are fun. I have days when I suddenly realize how stupid some random word is or begin to doubt if it really is a word, no matter how common it is.

I've mentioned this before in The Chit-Chat Thread but Finland is a weird word. (We also had the apple talk with Meowpheel, though not quite to the same extent.) For some reason it has the word fin and in Finnish it is Suomi which in itself isn't a normal word but suomu on the other hand translates to scale. Yet the origin of the name seems to have nothing to do with fins or scales. It just makes me wonder how much the fin part affects how people perceive Finland when they hear about it for the first time.

It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

Tyranexx

Languages ARE fun. I took some German in high school, and it's been interesting to see the similarities between words and their different meanings/representations in this thread and elsewhere. I've always found false cognates interesting in particular, such as the different meanings for "gift" in English and German, for example.

I'd like to brush up on my German again, learn a little more Spanish, and at least learn to read/understand Japanese. Unfortunately, the only languages that I get around to these days are the coding kind.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Octane

@Tyranexx 'Gift' and 'gift' are related though. In the same way that 'δόσις' [dosis] (dose) and 'δίδωμι' [didomi] (to give) are related. 'Gift' in Dutch can mean either 'poison' or 'donation/present'. I'm not entirely certain, but I can imagine it used to be an 'old fashioned pun', a double entendre. It could explain why seemingly antonyms ended up as a homonyms.

Octane

Tyranexx

@Octane: Perhaps. In any case, facts like that are part of what makes languages fun.

I find pronunciation differences between speakers of the same language based on geography to be pretty interesting, too.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Eel

I have a cousin who lives in Arizona. Due to his job he had to visit Spain once.

Apparently he had a much easier time communicating with them in English than in Spanish.

Then again my family from the US tends to use spanglish. So that probably added to the unintelligible.

Edited on by Eel

Bloop.

<My slightly less dead youtube channel>

SMM2 Maker ID: 69R-F81-NLG

My Nintendo: Abgarok | Nintendo Network ID: Abgarok

spizzamarozzi

@Meowpheel are there areas in Mexico that speak a variant of spanish so different from yours that you can't understand most of what they say? Just asking - there are so many regions in Italy where the accent is so different from mine that I wouldn't understand a word.

Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...

3DS Friend Code: 0104-0649-7464 | Nintendo Network ID: spizzamarozzi

Eel

@spizzamarozzi well there's several very different accents, and many coloquialims that unique to certain areas.... But most of the time we understand each other just fine.

We do tend to make fun of every other accent though. Heh.

There's also a few indigenous groups that retain their ancient dialects too.

Edited on by Eel

Bloop.

<My slightly less dead youtube channel>

SMM2 Maker ID: 69R-F81-NLG

My Nintendo: Abgarok | Nintendo Network ID: Abgarok

Late

@Tyranexx Well, that sounds familiar. I've studied English, German, Spanish and Swedish. I've pretty much forgotten everything I learned about Spanish and most of German and Swedish as well since I don't get to use them often.

I can also read and write hiragana and katakana but that's pretty much all I know of Japanese. Makes it harder to learn when you don't have a teacher.

And I'm finishing up my programming studies. One month left to finish my thesis. We were taught C and C++ but I used Unity during my internship so now I can write C# as well.

It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

ogo79

@TheLZdragon

TheLZdragon wrote:

@ogo79 Indeed. We've gone over this before

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the_shpydar wrote:
As @ogo79 said, the SNS-RZ-USA is a prime giveaway that it's not a legit retail cart.
And yes, he is (usually) always right, and he is (almost) the sexiest gamer out there (not counting me) ;)

Tyranexx

@Late: Same here with the German; I still use a few words and phrases in private (some are the German versions for ahem colorful words; blame some of that on an exchange student that used to be on my bus route. XD), but I've forgotten the meanings of some words and have lost most of my grammar by this point. Most of my German exposure these days is unfortunately limited to the occasional Rammstein song or internet phrase.

Ah, Unity; I messed around with it quite a bit in college, but haven't really touched it since. I may get it again at some point now that I have a fully functional laptop again, though rendering may not be fun. I never have had plain C, but I had a C++ class in college and recently have started messing around with C# again. The place I'm currently contracted out to is starting work on converting an old PowerBuilder application (the language/IDE I'm the most familiar with at the moment) into a C#/WPF application. We're only in the beginning stages of it, and it's definitely going to take quite some time.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Late

This is going to be a long post. Prepare yourself.

One thing that inspired me to create this thread was a crossword puzzle. There's always at least one crossword magazine on our kitchen table since my mom really likes them. Other members of my family also take a look at least once a week. I was solving one of the puzzles and it got me thinking: "Why have I never seen similar looking crossword puzzle in English?" Turns out our crossword puzzles are quite different from most other countries. This is what they look like:
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Basically there's usually a bigger picture that can lead to multiple words or sentences and all the hints are on the puzzle itself as text and pictures. Many crossword puzzles have a one to three panel comic as the main picture like the one shown above. The hints are often very short (when it's text) and vague so you can't be certain if the word you're thinking of is the right one. You have to rely on other hints and words.

After I realized how different our normal crossword puzzles, I took a look at another popular crossword type, Krypto. I know they are a thing in Finland and Sweden but don't know about other countries. Here's what they look like:
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In Krypto, there's usually just one hint (though in this picture, there seems to be two). The hint is supposed to be really easy so you have a place to start. Every number corresponds to single letter. So once you have the first word down, you fill all the letters you know. Then you try to figure out the rest of the letters. Simple. In the picture above, one of the words is faarao (pharaoh) which you are expected to know and you can confirm it by looking at the numbers. It has 12 three times, one for each 'a'.

Crossword puzzles are very popular in Finland. Every shop, no matter how small they are, have a magazine section and half of those magazines are crossword magazines. I found a picture of what I'd call a small selection.
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Now for the reason it took me so long to write about the stuff that inspired the creation of this thread. I went and created my own video game themed crossword puzzle. It took me ~20 hours and I'm happy I got it done but I'm afraid it is too hard and it doesn't follow all of the "rules" of Finnish crossword puzzle. I tried to fit so many different words. I think I started with Dedede or Delibird but neither of those words are in the final puzzle. Same goes for hundreds of other words. The process certainly made me respect those who make them for living. I hope you guys give it a go and see how far you can get without the help of the internet.
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It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

spizzamarozzi

@Late the first type of crosswords I have never seen here in Italy. I have seen something similar but nothing quite like that. Especially with the clues INSIDE the table. It looks very cool. Krypto is an encrypted type of crosswords which is popular anywhere - at least, here it is! I rather like regular crosswords and rebuses myself.
Puzzle books are really popular over here as well, and our average puzzle book section at the newsagent looks pretty much like yours - even the prices tend to be similar. Our oldest weekly puzzle magazine still running dates back to 1932!

one of the better known puzzles in Italy is a word puzzle called the bullseye:

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Basically you start from the word indicated by the arrow and have to move your way to the centre of the bullseye by stringing together the words in a series, each one related to the previous in some way (anagram, synonym/antonym, pertinency, removing/adding one letter, definition etc).
In the example, the starting word Saturno gets followed by Pianeta (planet), then Pineta (pine forest) by removing one letter, then Piante (plants) which is its anagram, that Ortensie (hortensias) which are plants etc etc etc

Edited on by spizzamarozzi

Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...

3DS Friend Code: 0104-0649-7464 | Nintendo Network ID: spizzamarozzi

Late

@spizzamarozzi I got an impression that Krypto isn't known as well because Wikipedia doesn't have an article for it for other countries and I couldn't find an image of it in English. Looks like I was just using the wrong term. I can find many pictures now that I'm using "codewords". At least there's still a small difference in that we have the first clue as an image.

I think I've seen and solved one of those bullseye puzzles a long time ago. At least something similar to it. Looks kind of difficult at first glance.

It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

ThanosReXXX

@Late Well, I certainly think that it's impressive what you cooked up there, so my compliments. Not much of a puzzler, though. I used to be when I was younger, but I lost interest along the way. The last thing even remotely puzzle related I did/played was probably either a Tetris like game, Bejeweled or Brain training...

Just out of curiosity, though, and no offense, but how do puzzles relate to which country we come from? I don't see the connection that would bring to mind a question asking people about their origins and so forth. Other than different countries having different puzzles...

Edited on by ThanosReXXX

'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

Late

@ThanosReXXX I was thinking of making a thread like this for a long time and it just happened to be the thing that pushed me to actually do it. What I tell people to do in the first post is to share their love for their country and tell others how it differs from other countries. The puzzles are different in Finland and I find it fascinating. It's as simple as that. The discussion doesn't have to stop as soon as you tell where you're from. I've been talking about the language, comics, cartoons and food. Now I wanted to talk about crossword puzzles.

@Meowpheel Nice job. Did you use Google? The letter with ? is 'i'. Results in Airman from Mega Man and Aim which appears in multiple FF games. I know it from Final Fantasy Tactics. Otherwise, you got everything right.

It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

Eel

@Late I had to google to confirm some of the words from games I don't know about (example: uma, oribe, soap, neera). But of course I used the nearby words as hints so it wasn't just a google fest. I had no idea what the one of the men was about haha. Glad I guessed right (I remembered aim was a final fantasy ability, and changed it from arm to aim).

Edited on by Eel

Bloop.

<My slightly less dead youtube channel>

SMM2 Maker ID: 69R-F81-NLG

My Nintendo: Abgarok | Nintendo Network ID: Abgarok

Late

@Meowpheel I feared it was a bit confusing. My sister was able to solve it so I kept it in. I could have made it like some other hints where I use ___.

It's its, not it's.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8287-7444-2602 | Nintendo Network ID: LateXD

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