Luna’s Adventures in English

The way Germany treats ww2 is silly.

I think some of it lies in the fact that if it weren't for Hitler Germany would be worse off. It's a big topic & not really relevant here but even after ww2 Germany had better terms than ww1 which would have made Germany almost a modern vassal state or third word country.

There's no excusing some of Hitler's actions but nothing is ever black & white and history is filled with successful leaders that were like him (in fact he tried to model himself after some of them.)
 
Well, facts be as they may be, but you definitely may not state stuff like that here. They will glare at you and you're the social outcast. One thing that repeatedly gets mentioned from time to time is how a lot of streets which are still in use even today were build in that era. You'll get shot back with "But the plans have even existed before them, they just couldn't be implemented, he just took them and forced it through!" or "But they were built upon stolen money or they wouldn't have been possible!"
Another thing that hardly ever gets mentioned, save for behind doors (so I hardly ever hear about it) is the forced relocation of Germans from Poland etc. after the war. Seemed to have been quite the thorny issue, but it's never really covered. Early documents with maps still had some more territory to the east attached, but they kind of never really seem to have forced the topic of reclaiming them. (?) Don't know much about that either. Never gets talked about.

I still think it's mostly a matter of whether you wind up on the winning or losing side. (And how much dignity you might retain even in a loss.) Making things black and white is easier for indoctrination after all.
 
I mean history is written by the victors and never kind to the vanquished, but I think it's the whole "production line extermination of peoples based on racial superiority" that really made the aftermath of WWII particularly bad for Germany. I mean sure, ethnic cleansing had happened before (and has happened since, former Yugoslavia for example) but not on quite such a scale and not really since the middle ages in terms of clearing out whole territiories for the resetlement of your own people. I think after WWI while there were still bad feelings between the winning and losing sides, nothing quite so horrendous happened to civilian populations. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the reasons for the horror and the soul-searching were entirely justified. I just don't think people who were in no way responsible should continue to live with that guilt.

serpantino said:
I think some of it lies in the fact that if it weren't for Hitler Germany would be worse off. It's a big topic & not really relevant here but even after ww2 Germany had better terms than ww1 which would have made Germany almost a modern vassal state or third word country.
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Very debatable. As Luna says, not only did Germany lose a massive chunk of its territory (areas which had historically been German for hundreds of years, from Poland to the Baltic States to Czechoslovakia) but entire cities were wiped off the map and millions of German civilians died in bombing, were the subject of war crimes from the invading Soviet troops and were demilitarised and militarily occupied by foreign armies, something which continues to this day. Kind of the exact opposite of what Hitler intended.

Also WWII of course enabled the US to become the dominant world power since Britain was totally drained of resources, again not something I think the Nazis would have really liked to see, since while they may have been grudgingly at war with Britain the idea of US supremacy was something they absolutely hated, as the US was viewed by the Nazis as a cultureless nation of slaves to (in their opinion, Jewish) finance capital (on the subject of which is worse, today's US economic imperialism vs. yesterday's British cultural imperialism, your mileage may vary).

The crippling war reparations Germany was expected to pay from WWI were a massive mistake, something which helped wreck the German economy and created resentment which fuelled support for the Nazis, but Germany had already negotiated to stop paying those to everyone except the Americans before the Nazis even came to power. Most nations involved realized a external debt-crippled Germany (something which was fuelling a rise in nationalism) was going to be no good for anyone* - Indeed Britain supported that view and was in ultimately in favour of cancelling the debt altogether.

My personal view is that both Britain and Germany would be considerably better off if the Nazis had not come to power and WWII had never occurred. Britain ostensibly "won" that war but both we and Germany lost our place as world powers and ended up under the thumb of the US (and half of Germany under the thumb of the USSR) - They were the only "winners" as they both came out of it more powerful.

*Funny how Germany doesn't seem to have learned this lesson when it comes to their relationship with Greece.
 
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ayase said:
*Funny how Germany doesn't seem to have learned this lesson when it comes to their relationship with Greece.
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Oh they do. They may trash as much as they want, but in the end they will still somehow help Greece out. Everybody (at least here that I know) knows this, which is why many crunch their teeth, because it is oh so unfair (I think a lot has also to do with Greece's attitude, here they kind of feels like they expect Greece to pose as humble beggars of sorts) and the less educational, poor, "poor" folks can't stop whining. And those folks can be pretty dangerous (going off camp to the right or neo nazis), so I would guess the politicians would at least do some trashing show for them. Which reminds me. With all the escapees from Syria etc, those sides definitely had surge. To some extend -if you think about it- it got quite scary what some people started blurting off, even in more educated circles and it's also one of the reasons I do think 70 years definitely are not enough time to root out certain... tendencies.

ayase said:
I mean history is written by the victors and never kind to the vanquished, but I think it's the whole "production line extermination of peoples based on racial superiority" that really made the aftermath of WWII particularly bad for Germany.
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The Japanese did as well. At least, according to whichever Chinese (and Koreans I think) you may ask. It isn't uncommon iof a view that the Japanese only started the war to gain territory for their own people and get rid of the natives, either by killing them off or using them as second class work slaves of sorts. But as losers they certainly did a better job at upholding their dignity than the Germans did.
 
Back onto the original stuff. Got another one~

game-of-jeu-de-boule-silver-metal-balls-in-sand-a-french-ball-game-CPT1X0.jpg

What are these balls calles and what is the name of the game? I think they are being played on sand or on a meadow and I think it originates from the British islands? (??)
 
Luna said:
And those folks can be pretty dangerous (going off camp to the right or neo nazis), so I would guess the politicians would at least do some trashing show for them. Which reminds me. With all the escapees from Syria etc, those sides definitely had surge. To some extend -if you think about it- it got quite scary what some people started blurting off, even in more educated circles and it's also one of the reasons I do think 70 years definitely are not enough time to root out certain... tendencies.
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I don't think we'll ever root those tendencies out, not in ten years, not in ten thousand. I don't put too much stock in Freud, but it's of the "Id", it's the animal part of us. It's always going to be there to some degree as long as we remain identifiably human. That's not to say everybody's a secret racist or a Nazi deep down, but I think anyone can be pushed until they snap and it's the people who are already under a level of pressure or stress who snap first - Hence it is mainly poor and under/unemployed Brits and Germans who take out their anger on immigrants and the like. It was economic hardship that brought Hitler to power. It was economic hardship that caused Brexit and elected Trump. If our leaders really wanted to stamp out racism and discrimination amongst the public they'd make society fairer so people didn't feel like everyone else is their enemy competing for jobs and housing.

Luna said:
The Japanese did as well. At least, according to whichever Chinese (and Koreans I think) you may ask. It isn't uncommon iof a view that the Japanese only started the war to gain territory for their own people and get rid of the natives, either by killing them off or using them as second class work slaves of sorts. But as losers they certainly did a better job at upholding their dignity than the Germans did.
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This is true, but I have to admit to being far less knowledgeable about the War in the Pacific (I guess to add to my earlier comments China also won from WWII pretty conclusively, although it was kind of a sleeper power during the Cold War and has just shot up meteorically within the last few decades).

Luna said:
What are these balls calles and what is the name of the game? I think they are being played on sand or on a meadow and I think it originates from the British islands? (??)
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Those are boules, actually traditionally French and used in a variety of games, notably Pétanque which is the game depicted in that image.
I'm sure everyone's thinking "what a random thing for ayase to know" - It just so happens my dad lives in the South of France where that's a very popular game.

England has bowls which is somewhat different, played on grass and using slightly different balls.
 
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ayase said:
England has bowls which is somewhat different, played on grass and using slightly different balls.
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Oh, they diffrent games? The original picture I have in my mind is that with the grass one. I randomly googled silver ball and this image looked kinda like it. How is the English one called?

This is true, but I have to admit to being far less knowledgeable about the War in the Pacific (I guess to add to my earlier comments China also won from WWII pretty conclusively, although it was kind of a sleeper power during the Cold War and has just shot up meteorically within the last few decades).
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China didn't really win. Japan lost. If the US didn't come into play, they most surely would have lost to Japan. Well, officially at least. There are historians debating, that if Japan's defeat did not happen and they actually conquered China there would be no Japan today. Because as it is with China in history anybody who went to conquer China got conquered themselves with time, becoming a minority of China, because the Chinese are world masters in assimilation.
It's not a big surprise that not much of China in the Cold War is known. The west had put China under sanctions and the country was pretty much closed off and isolated. That only changed after Mao died and China opened up again. (One of the clauses for that was to acknowledge war debts from the opium war first, which the communists had denied before as I was told.) That had just been in the eighties. After that with gallop they swarmed out to gather whatever knowledge they can get and shoot up in fast forward within just two decades. (It's kind of what Japan did in the Meiji era, too, just the Chinese were even more fast. And a slightly bit cleverer as to not start an open war. So far at least.)
 
I know it from a playstation move game I have (sports champions or something)

I kept trying to play it like bowls at first but you throw instead of rolling.
 
Luna said:
Oh, they diffrent games? The original picture I have in my mind is that with the grass one. I randomly googled silver ball and this image looked kinda like it. How is the English one called?
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Both the game and the balls are called "bowls". Yes, you play bowls using bowls. English is great, huh?

And Asian history is definitely something I intend to read up on more at some point, it feels like a bit of a gap in my knowledge at present.
 
ayase said:
Both the game and the balls are called "bowls". Yes, you play bowls using bowls. English is great, huh?
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Then bowling balls, are those also bowls? Like in that game where you try to kick over the pins and not make it fall into the gutter,
 
Luna said:
Then bowling balls, are those also bowls? Like in that game where you try to kick over the pins and not make it fall into the gutter,
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No, they are bowling balls. The game is Ten-pin bowling - Wikipedia the indoor version of which is played at a bowling alley and is another American version of an European game. This is called Skittles (sport) - Wikipedia, which is still played in some pubs here.

PS I've played pétanque before. I went on an exchange trip to France and we played it a couple of times.

PPS The oldest bowling green in the world is in my city, Southampton. I actually played Skittles there once!
 
.... Skittles is a sport! I only knew the candy called Skittles! (and they look nothing like it...)

Is it always called ten-pin bowling or also simply bowling? At least here it's called bowling, if you do this the indoors version, regardless if which specific ruleset you are using.
 
Got another one~

There is phrase I have heard somewhere stuck in my head, but a bit vague.
It goes something like "He was thoroughly ____ by xyz".
____ sounds a bit like a "woed", but the meaning of the reaction is more like something inbetween awed and stupefied. Woed it definitely can't be, but digging around in the thesaurus of awed and stupefied didn't give me any similiar word.
Any ideas? @_@
 
Luna said:
There is phrase I have heard somewhere stuck in my head, but a bit vague.
It goes something like "He was thoroughly ____ by xyz".
____ sounds a bit like a "woed", but the meaning of the reaction is more like something inbetween awed and stupefied. Woed it definitely can't be, but digging around in the thesaurus of awed and stupefied didn't give me any similiar word.
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I mean "awed" itself would work just fine in that sentence, I can't really think of much else that would fit with the meaning and sound similar. There's "floored" but I'm not certain being "thoroughly floored" would sound very natural in that context - That makes it sound a bit more like someone's been literally punched to the ground than shocked or awed (perhaps because being "thoroughly beaten" - as in beaten up - is a thing).
 
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