Well a few of these just hit me today in the shower. I've always found the shower to be an inspirational place, no idea why, but many of my great ideas are brewed in the shower. Well alright there aren't that many great ideas of mine, that was a bit of a stretch.
It maybe worth mentioning that these are again a pastime. Maybe I'll include the disclaimer somewhere on the blog's homepage once and for all :).
Here they go:
1. Why does the word "yesterday" have day in it while "tomorrow" doesn't. Both are days.
2. Why do we have a word for that period of the day that is only 1 second long (if your watch's resolution is seconds) or 1 minute long (if you're using the clock in your mobile). The period in question is noon.
The only use we get out of the "noon" word is the "afternoon" which is the part of the day between noon and sunset. If I were making the language I would have ditched "noon" altogether and assign the name to the "afternoon" period instead. It seems it's the part we care about anyway.
3. In a very similar vein to an old wondering brought up by Kareem Mostafa I believe about why Donald Duck throws a towel around his waist when coming out of the shower while he actually never wears any pants/shorts. This was brought up while discussing the above mentioned touchy subject with Helal. He referred to the fact that Mickey mouse actually does wear "lower body" wear. So how come? Does this mean Mickey mouse had stuff to hide while Donald duck didn't? :)
4. In Arabic how do you differentiate between snow and ice? I don't know of two different words for those things.
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12 comments:
Cute :)
I enjoyed these lovely observations !
For the 4th point, don't we have two words in Arabic; Thalj and Galeed.
But I still don't know which is ice and which is snow :-D
Keep up your nice posts, Chris.
I am pretty sure that galeed is ice and talg is snow... Anyways :) I would add a few of my wonderings as to share with you your confusion :D
1. Why is an hour 60 minutes and a minutes 60 seconds (base 60 :s)??
However, a second is 1000 milliseconds, a millisecond is 1000 microseconds, a microsecond is 1000 nanoseconds, a nanosecond is 1000 picoseconds, a picosecond is 1000 femtoseconds, a femtosecond is 1000 attoseconds... urrr that's as far as i know :S
I mean, why don't they invent a new time unit (e.g the milliminute) so that the minute is 1000 milliminutes and another time unit, the millihour, so that an hour is composed of 1000 millihours? :)
2. Why is it (statistically) wide-spread that red is complementary color of blue and yellow is the complementary color of green?
3. Why do the French call the potatoes: earth apples - pommes de terre. Personally, I do not see lots of similarities between the apples and the potatoes!!
4. How did everybody know that "el gazar bey2awwy el nazar" (i.e. carrots strengthen the vision) before they could analyze that carrots contain Vitamin A and before studying the effect of Vitamin A on the vision?!! :S
5. Why is it ok (and furthermore sweet) for a man to talk to a woman in the masculine form ("ya gameel", "enta 7abeeby",... etc.) but when a man is refered to in the feminine form it's totally NOT ok??!!
Anyways... gtr :) lots of work to do!!
Ya reit ya Chris keda dayman tomte3na be '7awaterak el 7ammameyya el 3ameeqa :P
take real good care of yourself!! Luv ya!!
GROS BISOUS
For nuni I think I have answers for 2 of your questions :)
1- Because before they invented units which are smaller than second, the number 60 is the smallest number which can be divided on many numbers (2,3,4,5,6) and gives integer form.
But when they invented the smaller unit, they haven't made it the same way, why?
Because I won't never ever as a human to answer someone's question about the time and tell him that it's 5:30:11: 502, these units are used in complex calculations only in the computer era, so they need every big unit to be divided into much smaller units, and why we don't have m.hour, that's because of the same reason, we're as humans need a number which can be imagined and at the same time accepts to be divided into a wide range of characters.
4- Because at that time, rabbits were having a very good vision as they could see their enemies from very far distance and every one was knowing that rabbits love carrots very much :D
5- I don't have a specific reason for this, but it may be a result from merging our culture with western ones which don't have in their languages male and female forms, as you know when I say you are good no one knows whether the 'you' here is male or female, the same as I love you or any thing like that, so as you see, we are talking in the same way, but as english contains she, he, we're doing so here, because have you ever heard someone saying: "Howa 3amal kaza" and he was talking about female?
No, it's just in direct talking face to face like english, french and a majority of languages out there :)
And for why not making them all in feminine form, that's because feminine form is just addition over the masculine form, like the work "مصرى" when for females, I add some letters to be:
"مصرية"
That's all as I think :)
@nuni, Je sais je t'aime pour une raison.
Always had the pomme de terre wondering myself... Vaguely related is an experiment I saw on a TV show a few days ago, the show is called brainiacs, a british show that does those sort of funny good for nothing experiments that address wonderings of this type :) They had a man taste a slice of raw potato with his nose blocked so as not to smell, he mistaked it for an apple it seems. They were saying that's proof that smell is a big part of the "tasting" experience. We knew that already! Duh! but well, so much for the similarities between apples and potatoes.
With number 5, you got me. I have no clue. You probably have to think why girls find it flattering to be called masculine adjectives and nouns. I know why we guys don't like it when we're called female adjectives. The testosterone :P
You too take good care. Really Miss you lots!
Gros bisous cherie
Just wondering why you thought of noon and not midnight...hmmm...or maybe that's because midnight is just splitting the night into two...so really the word is for night, not midnight. I don't know...you figure it out :)
about that Donald duck thing,i remember that Chandler brought it up in one of friends' episodes...season one i guess.w ba3dain gayez 7'ayef la ya7'od bard walla 7aga,matseebo batoot fe 7alo ya3ny :)
@monica. I second that :)
lol
Well, then it's Chandler who brought it up not Kareem Mostafa as I'd originally thought... It's weird for me to forget a friend's line but anyway...
And Monica is my little sister ladies and gents :)
Why do everyone in Donald ville treat dogs as animals, when they themselves are animals!!?
It was Winnie The Poo I thought wasn't a decent cartoon character for not wearing lower body wear :D we discussed that on Nag's blog.
Good point seniorita maligna. We should probably alert animal right activists to that :P
@Kareem, Yeah that must have been why I was confused... So much public scrutiny for bottomless cartoon characters these days I guess.
ok Chris... it seems u have a lot of time to spend in ur shower .. Though..
the difference between Thalg & Glaeed in Arabic is :-
Thalg is softer and easier to break than Glaeed. =) anyway .. i don't think it is important as we don't have both =)
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