Spirited Away, and to some degree all Ghibli stuff leans very heavily on a shared cultural Mythos. It doesn’t do exposition in the same way that zombies or angels aren’t explained; everyone knows that stuff because we all grew up with a million references.
Sometimes I think back to the shit we saw, and I’m a little amazed so many of us came out so well.
And then elections happen, and well…
As someone with zero artistic skills, what are paper blocks?
Well, people in the past talked MUCH more formally than we do.
If I talked to my grandfather in 1400 the way I talk to my husband today, he’d probably disown me.
Welcome to dutch, where there are more exceptions than rules, and the natives just ignore the rules anyway!
In general, “Je” is by far the most common form. Children use “u” with adult strangers, adults are generally only expected to use it with people in authority positions, but that’s becoming more and more rare. It’s still polite to use “u” with strangers, but nobody will be very upset if you don’t, unless you’re addressing a judge, mayor or your boss’s boss.
Some people address their grandparents formally, but most don’t. It’s still considered polite to use it with much older people, like 30+ years older, but hardly will be upset if you don’t.
Quite a few companies require customer-facing jobs always use “u”, to be respectful, but even that is getting less. My city sends me letters with “jij” nowadays.
Dutch has a formal and informal 2nd person word (think “you” vs “thou”).
I have an intern who will not stop using the formal version, and it feels super awkward. I keep telling her to stop it, but she said she always uses with older people…
She’s 23, I’m mid 30s. Ouch.
Same with paleolithic bifaces and arrowheads.
You have to do some shopping around if you want a nice one under a hundred nowadays. But OPs requirement wasn’t for it to look good
A machine passed the Turing Test in the 60s. It’s not hard to do, since you can just specify limitations as much as you want.
Also, it helps for a currency to not only be hard to duplicate (the costly/difficult extraction and refining process helps here), but also for it to have no other purpose.
When you’ve got money that you can directly use, people will use it for that, and not as money, which is bad for the flow of money. And you run into divisibility issues: a tiny gold coin is fine, but 20cm of cloth is pretty useless.
It hit the magical crossover between being non-pushy and asking about privacy
Thanks to denial, I’m immortal
The Dutch word “poepen” (taking a shit), is a Belgian euphemism for sex. Which is always a great source of fun when making friends near the southern border.
The answer, of course is “jenever”.
The funnier answer is “witte wieven”
Ah dutch.
I’ve heard someone translate “dat is geweldig” not with the correct “that is amazing” but “that is like violence”, which shows amazing skill in Dutch grammar, but a tiny lack in knowing words.
For those not fluent:
“Geweldig” means “Amazing”, but “geweld” means “violence”. Meanwhile, most words that end in “-ig” are nouns used as adjectives, like “fun” -> “funny”.
Well, obviously the usual drops for humans, but since I’m a unique, named encounter, I also have a chance to drop:
“30% more percentages”
This seems like a munchkin’s dream. Meta-items can be super overpowering
Not the US or central Africa
Or Rogue Squadron. Or hell, basically anything from the extended lore that isn’t about the Vong or the corellia trilogy.
Names they gave Syphilis. The English, the Germans, and the Italians called it “the French disease”, while the French referred to it as the “Neapolitan disease”. The Dutch called it the “Spanish disease”. To the Turks it was known as the “Christian disease”, whilst in India, the Hindus and Muslims named the disease after each other
Makes sense. Those were groundbreaking at the time, but the ground has been broken, repaved and built into a massive skyscraper now.