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")

Magdalene being pronounced maudlin in Cambridge is a good one.

Harry Enfield popularising Cholmondeley pronounced CHUM-lee

grosvenor, tho maybe that’s merely old and not posh. or greenwich.

I always enjoy people finding out how Belvoir is pronounced.

Unless you're in Bristol where it's pronounced like it's spelled.

xp "bell-vwar"?

Belvoir Patrol

Unless you're in Bristol where it's pronounced like it's spelled.

― Overtoun House windows (aldo)

Oh god, that's good to know, don't want to end up walking around Bristol asking people where to find Beaver.

It was the street that ran off mine so that's how I know. (See also Montpellier)

"I first learned about the Sinjin thing seeing the James Bond film A View to a Kill in which Roger Moore as Bond goes undercover as "James St. John Smythe.""

I first learned it from Airwolf - one of the earlier episodes was a riff on The Prisoner, with Stringfellow Hawke's older brother, St John Hawke. Everybody called him Sinjin.

And then the very last series brought him back as the main character, but they never showed that in the UK because it was a cheap one-off made for Canadian television with masses of stock footage.

I've also seen one such alternative pronunciation for the name St. Leger: "SELL-injer".

(though not for the horse race I think)

this made me search Bridget St. John videos until I found one to confirm her saying her name like a normal anglophone.

St Clare often Sinclair also.

Maybe not the most shocking display of ignorance, but I feel like I should've known this: a cappella means '[in the style of] the chapel' - I had always vaguely assumed that cappella was related to cappa/caput/cap- meaning 'head'. Because you're, y'know, just using your mouth, which is in your head.

ok that's cool

Follow up thing I just learnt: cappella meaning 'chapel' is in fact a diminutive form of cappa meaning 'cape/head covering' - etymonline seems to suggest it's a metaphorical move along the lines of covering the head -> providing sanctuary. So in fact it all comes full circle and I was TECHNICALLY CORRECT.

I heard the story of St. Martin dividing his cloak (cappa) to share with a beggar.

The shrine commemorating it was called cappella and its attendants chaplains.

discovering Kevin Shields spent the first 10 years of his life growing up in Queens and Long Island!

Keith Urban is Australian.

and Joanna Lumley is Kashmiri

Jim Dale wrote the lyrics to Georgy Girl... though I feel like I might have known this before and forgotten it.

previous mention of same fact, 2004

Georgy Girl incidental music

great run on this thread as of recent

A friend told me they were going skiing in the Sierra Nevada. Assumed it was in the US, but is the one in Southern Spain.

you can ski on most sierras as long as they have some nevadas

Today I learned that Nevada is the Spanish word for snowy. Which raises the question of whether Snowy from Tin Tin is called Nevada in Spanish editions of the books. That's not a bad name for a dog. It's rugged, macho, adventurous. Nevada is the kind of dog who would pee on a lit fuse in order to save his friends. I'm going to do some research. Bear with me, Ilxor, while I do some research. I'm going to do some research now.

I have now done the research. I've learned a few things, and grown, but I can't say that I'm happier. Apparently Snowy isn't called Nevada in Spanish editions of the Tin Tin books. No. He's actually called Milú. I would never have guessed. I have also learned that Snowy isn't even called Snowy. That's not his real name. His original, French name is Milou, after one of Hergé's many girlfriends. The English translators picked Snowy because it fit the same space in the speech bubbles. And also because he's white, but you can't call a dog "White", can you? You can't call a dog "White". You can't mend people.

I find it disturbing that Belgium doesn't have a language. Belgians don't think in their native tongue. Because they don't have a native tongue. They are only capable of thinking in the language of their neighbours. Perhaps this is why they are so good at diplomacy. I don't know. I don't know what to think about this. It's like finding out that your god, your religion, your holy book was based on a discarded crisp packet. Snowy isn't real and his name was chosen purely so it wouldn't waste ink.

It's like finding out that God defined the speed of light as C - and not something much faster - purely because he got a sweet deal on the capacitors that power the fabric of the universe, not because it's morally right. And so he doomed us to eternal isolation purely to save a bit of money.

When suffering from congestion, they speak Phlegmish

I'm somewhat of a Herge apologist because I like his artwork so much... but yeah, there are books of his that should not be reprinted

Belgians do think in their native tongue. That they speak the language of their neighbours seems a rather common occurrence in the world. Think most of the Americas, Switzerland, Austria, the countries of the UK etc etc. Not sure why you'd find that disturbing!

it's Ashley, nothing they write is serious

to bring things full circle, I hear they dream in pannenkoeken

I heard once the the Dutch are weeping. In four languages at least.

That's why they need dikes - to hold back the tears.

"Belgians do think in their native tongue. That they speak the language of their neighbours seems a rather common occurrence in the world. Think most of the Americas, Switzerland, Austria, the countries of the UK etc etc. Not sure why you'd find that disturbing!"

Imagine if the French word for "dirty" was "la belgique". Or if the French word for toilet or toenail was "belqique". Through no fault of their own the people of Belgium would go through life subconsciously associating their national identity with dirtiness and toilets.

Imagine if throughout their lives Belgian people were constantly assailed by imported French dramas where the characters say e.g. "je vais aux belgique pour me laver les belgiques" ("I'm going to the toilet to clean my mudflaps") or "belgiques c'est malodorante" ("toenails are smelly"). You'd develop a national inferiority complex. You'd be unable to say the word "dirty" or "toilet" without insulting yourself. You'd perceive your French masters as angels, and you wouldn't know why.

I like to imagine that the great colonial nations of Europe experimented on the Belgians first. We broke their minds. Then we unleashed our new weapon on the rest of the world. Something something insert thing I was surprisingly old before I learned about it here.

Well "British" is already a slur to most of the English speaking world so ...

FFS don't encourage him

Belgium itself of course was a colonial nation - and one of the worst too.

Those nice people who make the waffles? Come on now, be serious

nice my ass. belgians are fucked. up.

j/k

Extremely fucked up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State

they make nice beer!

yeah there was a time in the 60's when 'Belgian' was almost always followed by 'mercenary'

Huh, Belgium is in Europe not Africa

Wait, I think I read about this in Tintin

We didn't start the fire

It was always Beringen.

The actor Martin Short and the politician Clare Short are cousins.

Excellent!

What?!