Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Nonsense, of course they are, they're Scotland's national animal.

> The existence of the narwhal

this reminds me of when, sometime in my mid-thirties, I was with my kids at a zoo and came across a tapir and was like 'what is this? why didn't anybody tell me about this animal?'

the greatest zoo-related experience of my life was when a tapir snuffled my hand with his prehensile l'il nose, but I was 8 or 9

bombards are ur-cannons, developed by ottomans, and fired balls of...stone?! the dardanelles gun was bronze, 5m long, and could fire marbles 63cm in diameter. it was used for like 300 years.

these mortars were used to siege and defeat constantinople.

did we ever find out what greek fire was

Nachos were invented by a man named Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya.
i leared this today.

Richard Simon, co-founder of massive publishing firm Simon & Schuster, is the father of Carly Simon. I only find this surprising to learn today as my father published books, and he had a trove of Carly LPs.

Nachos were invented by a man named Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya.
i leared this today.

― ian, Friday, November 9, 2018 4:06 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nazis were a nickname based on the proliferance of the name Ignatz in Bavaria, & subsequently they never called themselves that.
I think Ignatz and Ignacio are variations on the same name from different regions.

Nacho Nazi is therefore almost a duplication, innit.

I did not know that (I'm sure we were taught in school that "Nazi" was a contraction of National Socialist and I suppose I never questioned it.

In similar-but-less-interesting shocking learns I learned yesterday that Vaclav is Czech for Wenceslas.

I was also taught in school that it was an abbreviation of Nationalsozialist.

no no its definitely about nachos

xp it's both:

The term "Nazi" was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backwards farmer or peasant, characterizing an awkward and clumsy person. In this sense, the word Nazi was a hypocorism of the German male name Ignatz (itself a variation of the name Ignatius) – Ignatz being a common name at the time in Bavaria, the area from which the NSDAP emerged.

In the 1920s, political opponents of the NSDAP in the German labour movement seized on this and – using the earlier abbreviated term "Sozi" for Sozialist (English: Socialist) as an example – shortened the first part of the NSDAP's name, (Na)tionalso(zi)alistische, to the dismissive "Nazi", in order to associate them with the derogatory use of the term mentioned above.

That Hitler was a British Agent and he was assassinated by Ian Fleming. Lol, need to stop clicking on the Off Topic threads on the HTAFC site.

crimes of britain has missed a trick there!

i just learned what raclette is (not the cheese, but the cheese... eating... activity) much to my partner and best bud's horror. they were stunned that i had no idea what they were talking about, as if i had admitted i didn't know what a burger is. does everyone know what raclette is? have i had my head completely under th sand or is this obscure-ish?

fondue?

Not quite the same. Fondue is a dip whereas raclette is melted cheese that you scrape (racler in French) on top of boiled potatoes, which you then proceed to eat with charcuterie and pickles.

In my experience very few North Americans are familiar with raclette, so I'd say it's pretty obscure.

I've never heard of it fwiw.

Reminds me of the Brit journalist who requested Beaufort for his fondue, whereupon he was denied by the Parisian cheese merchant (which is exactly as it should be, of course).

I'm famously clueless when it comes to food - famous amongst my confreres, that is.

i do now live in montreal, so i guess more people know it here, but it's reassuring to know this isn't an everyone-knows-it thing. the fact that two separate people looked at me like an alien from space had me shook.

I grew up in Montreal and only discovered raclette while living in France. I brought it up with both anglophone and franocphone friends upon returning and none of them had heard of it. Given the amount of French people who've settled there in recent years, I'm sure that's bound to change, though.

I have Swiss family so that skews what I consider general knowledge of Swiss things, but yes, I have eaten it. It's not my favorite, though.

I have a little raclette grill, it looks like this.

I think raclette has been having a bit of a moment but we're not talking food meme status

My wife only learned yesterday that Milkshake by Kelis is about boobs.

i almost got this when in switzerland but i couldn't get enough buy in from family companions. it looked good. otherwise, i've never even heard of it. Had plenty rosti though, which i also did not know prior.

lol xp.

kelis has always given one of those noncommittal "it means whatever you want it to mean" type answers as to the meaning of that particular metaphor

'"Milkshake" is just that thing that makes a woman stand out from everyone else. It's a thing that makes you sensual and warm and maternal. It could be about breasts but I don't have huge t*** so you gotta work with what you got.'

I saw a raclette food truck on Tuesday

For whatever reason, raclette has become pretty popular in the last decade or so in Quebec (it's good winter food, I guess). For me, both my parents were born in Switzerland so I've known about since I was a kid and enjoy it a lot.

you can get it in the pyrenees too, i guess it's kind of classic ski food. i like the little slo-melt grill thingies. but where would you put them??

https://vetstreet.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f12dfd4/2147483647/crop/0x0%2B0%2B0/resize/645x380/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvetstreet-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F30%2F803710a75611e0a0d50050568d634f%2Ffile%2FGreat-Pyrenees-4-645mk062411.jpg

My wife only learned yesterday that Milkshake by Kelis is about boobs.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Friday, November 9, 2018 2:24 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoa

Honestly always thought it was about ass

Were you weaned on a danish?

You're thinking of Frederick.

I was at a restaurant in Maryland some time ago where the chef was all officious and pedantic, like "rassalette is like fondue, but you drizzle cheese on top of things rather than dipping things into it," and I'm sitting there pretty sure he's mispronouncing it (should be a hard c, ra'klet" rather thatn how he said it, ras'a'let"). But I didn't say anything.

If it my quarrel with him were merely linguistic I would have let it go; as it happens the food was merely okay while the service was spotty best.

We sat with conspicuously empty wine glasses for half an hour while he effusively misinformed other tables; I eventually waved down the hostess with arm semaphore and suggested that we might benefit from some liquid refreshment while waiting for our upside-down fondue, n'est-ce pas?

Petty in the grand scheme of things but my one raclette memory is not a good one.

No one should ever be shamed for mispronouncing a foreign word… except when they're being a snooty dick about it. Then it's your duty to tell them off.

i’ve been “corrected” for pronouncing a foreign word correctly, by people (mostly in my family) who think an english hack job of the word is more appropriate.

also people (outside my family) almost always “correct” the pronunciation of my last name, which… why? why are people like this?

are you vvv sure youre saying it right

like

an awful lot of english ppl with irish last names are making a balls of it, i feel its a favour to tell em

Fwiw English people are probably better at it than most non-Irish people.

are you vvv sure youre saying it right

yeah, i've properly checked, it's definitely more accurate than the hordes of thumping bogans who think they're an expert at my name 1.5 seconds after hearing it

i mean i don't care how people say my name, they can pronounce it "underpants party" for all i care, it's more the attitude of people who think i'm saying my own name wrong and feel the need to correct me

Like when Cathal Coughlan of Microdisney changed his name to Blah Blah on their second album because he was so pissed off with English people not being able to pronounce his name.

nice

Fwiw English people are probably better at it than most non-Irish people.

Definitely not.

The IPA phonetic symbol (x) represents a voiceless velar fricative that does not occur in English, except for Scottish loch (lox), normally pronounced (lok) in Received Pronunciation or General American.

I think a raclette video went viral a couple of years ago in the US so it got a surge of popularity. I like to just grill slices of raclette in a frying pan and then pour it over eggs (because I don't have other methods).

What I meant to say is that English people are statistically likelier to know something about how Irish names are pronounced due to centuries of contact, whereas your average Eastern European, for instance, doesn't know the first thing about Ireland other than 'lol alcohol'.

Ah but getting names wrong because they can't be arsed trying and don't care anyway is a long standing tradition.