Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

How a candle works.

Practically everything.

that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character.

DO you have a Mac?

The best things about macs is that making any character is stupid easy.

¢™
øºÖØ°

&¶¶¶¶¶¶

!

That (most) BMWs are named according to engine size (I was a car freak as a child but never knew this until being informed by a German flatmate while I was a PhD student).

i.e. 318 = 3 series 1.8 litre engine etc.

Didn't know that black and green olives are identical, just different stage of maturity, until a few months ago.

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago. Likewise Lipps Inc.

I've got a mac and I still don't know how to do any of, um, ^ those ^

I end up going to wikipedia and copy-and-pasting when I want unusual characters

The cows-and-bulls thing, plus Adam Ant, are the only things on this thread that I do know

how to cook an artichoke properly

(a julia child recipe steered me right)

How to tie my shoes (velcro, you see..)

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago.

^^^ this. Same with Sandy Shaw.

Fay Fife of the Rezillos.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

What's the Adam Ant pun? Adam Ant = adamant? If so... pretty lame pun.

That's it.

xpost Tell that to Lai Mpun, the lead singer of Bangkok's Phleng Chat.

I am 33 and didn't know any of these things. Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

re: the Hawaii/TG group, there's quite the WaPo article out now

i'm being told that residents of the cape verde islands pronounce it 'cape vurd'

which means american soccer commentator jp dellacamera (who sucks even apart from not knowing how to pronounce the name of the team he's watching) got it wrong for 90+ minutes last night

not only that it's actually officially called "Cabo Verde". according to Brittanica "In October 2013 the Cabo Verde government requested that the Portuguese version of the country’s name, Cabo Verde, be used when the country’s name was rendered in other languages."

I knew that its official name was Cabo Verde, so mookieproof's post confused me. (Surely "verde" is not pronounced "vurd" in Portuguese?) But most of the population speaks a creole language that apparently does pronounce it more like "vurd." (Seeing a lot of contradictory info about this, though.)

vurd is closest to french pronunciation imo.
https://www.polgeonow.com/2014/01/icymi-cape-verdes-name-change.html?m=1 hmm

it says trad english name sounds like “cape verd,” and i’m like, not where i am, it’s cape VEHRday all round ime.

Apparently pronounced VAIRD in (European) Portuguese.

European Portuguese (much like English) tends to replace unstressed word-final vowels with schwas, so yeah verde sounds like "verd". Interestingly, Brazilian Portuguese doesn't do this, there it sounds like "ver-jee". Don't know about the dialect spoken in Cabo Verde.

I imagine it's close to European Portuguese.

looks like most residents' primary language is Cape Verdean Creole so that's gonna be a factor

This obviously has implications for those of us liable to order a vinho verde, but I looked in this and as far as I can tell all answers are correct. https://forvo.com/word/vinho_verde/

and said creole has nine distinct dialects so they probably don't even pronounce it the same way amongst themselves

That the thing at the back of Horace out of Hungry Horace and Horace Goes Skiing is meant to be a ponytail not an arm.

:O

I think I did learn that a few years ago and then forgot again because of course it's his arm.

so he has a ponytail and no arms? how does he put his hair in a ponytail with no arms?

You missed the prequel, Horace and His Valet.

Cape Vurd sounds like the 110% Anglicized version. (Also see: New Madrid, Missouri; El Dorado, Arkansas; Amarillo, Texas...)

Looking at a few videos online, it looks like Cape Verdeans pronounce it something like "kep verd"

I saw Cisco Pike last week and there's an amusing krishnas cameo outside the Troubadour in one of the scenes

(Also see: New Madrid, Missouri; El Dorado, Arkansas; Amarillo, Texas...)

when my mom moved to western pennsylvania she was laughed at for trying to pronounce versailles, pa the french way

Versailles, Mo. would have too.

omg they say versayles, shouldn't be surprised after hearing Notre Dame pronounced noter daym

Was just watching an episode of Justified where there was some discussion of Versayles, Kentucky.

i’ve always liked buena vista co going as BYOOna VISSta aka “byoonie.” after 35 yrs if i hear elsewise, i’m just like, ay, GIT

and nearby Salida going sal-EYE-da

On my hike, I kept unintentionally calling the vistas VEE-stas which while technically correct, made me feel like Peggy Hill.

Coalinga, California’s name is derived from it being Coaling Station A on the railroad line. I thought it was another pseudo-spanish thing for some reason

How do folks there pronounce it?

Recently deceased pioneer of microhistory carlo ginzburg is the son of Natalia! Somehow never knew that

the residents of Martinez, Georgia, call it MAR-tin-ez

lol I lived there for two years and was very embarrassed by that

Alan Vega was born in the 1930s

That is surprising. (Would've been 88 yesterday). And Martin Rev is almost 10 years younger, I never figured that.

Ah shit I missed the Cabo Verde chat.

The creole is indeed closer to European Portuguese than Brazilian Portuguese, so "vurd" it is. Cabo Verde is reasonably close to the Azores, where I grew up, lots of migration. It also likes to see itself as a bridge between Europe and Africa, it even has some standing accords with the EU.

The impulse to swallow vowels at the end of the word is even stronger in S Miguel than in the rest of Portugal, so when I first started speaking it as a kid I would just sort of let words trail off into mumbling and silence, worked ok but I had to readjust once I got to the mainland.

The Krishnas are a serious problem in Hawaii aiui? Oahu is a small island, and I heard from one woman that there's a sense that the cult preys on people there who are then separated from their families and local society. She said the mayor of Oahu had "kicked them out" but I don't see evidence of that now online from a quick search. See also the current breaking news w/r/t Tulsi Gabbard.

This unlocked a whole new subtext to one of my favourite video games, thanks for the info!

European Portuguese (much like English) tends to replace unstressed word-final vowels with schwas, so yeah verde sounds like "verd". Interestingly, Brazilian Portuguese doesn't do this, there it sounds like "ver-jee". Don't know about the dialect spoken in Cabo Verde.

― fluffy tufts university (f. hazel), Tuesday, 23 June 2026 16:35 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah thanks for finally explaining that because I've been so confused about the pronuncation. British people (including me) generally pronounce it "CAP-ay VERD-ay" but someone who seemed to know a lot about the Lusophone parts of the world pronounced it "Cap-uh Verj-uh" and that discombobulated me somewhat

Have you not being watching the World Cup? Literally everyone in the British media pronounces it Cape VERD-ay.

Reminds me of my first trip to Lisbon. I tried to explain to the taxi driver I was staying at "ROO-ah da SANT-o EHS-TEH-VOW" (R. de Santo Estêvão), innocently thinking it must be pronounced roughly as it's spelled and with similar inflections to Spanish. He looked at me blankly until I showed him the address written-down - "Ah! Rua De Santo SHTEH-VOH". It was at that moment I realised European Portuguese isn't pronounced anything like it's spelled and spent the rest of the trip fascinated by how many letters disappear into the tongue

xp no I don't watch the World Cup

but you're right - I Think I've got so used to moving the pronunciation around in my head it's become "capay verday" but, yes "cayp verday" is more common

It was at that moment I realised European Portuguese isn't pronounced anything like it's spelled and spent the rest of the trip fascinated by how many letters disappear into the tongue

Now imagine my surprise to learn the pronunciation of Leicester Square, Ladbrokes, Chiswick...

This unlocked a whole new subtext to one of my favourite video games, thanks for the info!

Lol same

I have to admit that for a long time I pronounced Mojave as Moh-Jave. I would like to thank Our Lord Jesus Christ that I never visited the Mojave when I was younger. The people would probably have shot me in the head! And then I would have been dug up by a robot and nursed back to health by a friendly doctor. Then I would have been killed by flying tarantulas.

I was aware that there was a thing called "the Mow-Have-Ay" but I assumed it was something else. Now I just remember the line from Fallout: New Vegas. "Mojave, mo' problems". I once fed Victoria to the White Glove Society. Her story has an unhappy ending no matter which options you choose, so I felt that it was at least good that she got to wear a nice dress, if only briefly.

I am smart enough to know that Texas is pronounced "Teck-Sar-Say".

wait how is Ladbrokes pronounced

For the longest time I thought Yosemite rhymed with hose bite

xp "brooks" rather than "brokes"

Which is very sad as its function is indeed to get lads broke.

see that's how they get ya

Arkansas was the one that got me for the longest time. Made sense in my head that you had Kansas and Arkansas, like the Arctic and the Antarctic.

I always want Vegemite to be pronounced va-JEM-i-tee based on the Yosemite model

xp Arkansas as in Arkansas River is pronounced two different ways, apparently depending on which US state it's running through

Ladbrokes is pronounced fuck off you pernicious leeches.