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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
Couldn't you just leave? Like what if you had genuinely been there intentionally but had an emergency at home? People understand
You may be referring to Catalan language. I'm not aware of any "Catalan variant" of Spanish.
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.
Darn! You're right.
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!
Isn't Occitan "French Catalan Spanish"?
Obviously Catalonia is a part of Spain, they are Spanish, while Portugal and France are different countries.
FWIW, I think some Catalans have a very different opinion.
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.)
> they're still Spanish
Isn't Catalan the official language of Andorra?
"Catalan Spanish" makes as much sense as "Basque Spanish".
> I also take issue with you claiming that all Catalans feel this way, that's largely untrue.
There are literally 10 words in my comment and you couldn't even read all of them?
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.
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.
I can't imagine being so scared just to exist. That kind of anxiety must be crippling, I'm sorry you have to feel that way.
If its a lecture hall, Leaving may make them VERY noticable and force others to move to let them through.
Imagine having a final thesis presentation only for one of the facualty leave mid presentation without a word.
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.
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.
What a classy move to quietly ride it out and avoid doing anything to distract from the ceremony.
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!
"Wrong wedding <leaves>" could have removed the tension of most weddings?
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.
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.
You just reminded me how awesome the wedding scenes were in the Diriliş: Ertuğrul TV show. [1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlaVdEv74NU&ab_channel=TRTDr...
This reads almost like a scene from the IT Crowd.
“The Work Outing”, the episode with a vaguely similar plot which made me cry with laughter the first time I saw it, is available for free on Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cj490uNht4o&pp=ygUVaXQgY3Jvd2Q...
"I'm disabled" still makes me giggle just thinking of it.
Or Harold and Maude obsessed with weddings instead of funerals.
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.
> 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.
Probably won't work as well at a wedding.
Let's hear some stories!
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.
> 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 is required (well, expected) to remember the faces of people he _fired_.
I thought it was a funny story...
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.
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.
> 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.
I think the losses you’re thinking of are more than made up by the gains coming from the employees being afraid they can be fired at any moment.
I think employees being afraid they can be fired at any moment also creates a loss of productivity.
It’s really disappointing to read someone describing that kind of toxic working environment as a “gain”.
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
Are you perhaps referring to this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229793
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyg5ohTsVY
Aside from Craigs talk which i think never was released publicly my favorite talk
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