Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 March 28

= March 28 =

Omnia cognoscentia cognoscunt implicite Deum in quolibet cognito
What does the Latin phrase "Omnia cognoscentia cognoscunt implicite Deum in quolibet cognito" mean? FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to be saying that all intellegent beings know God implicitly just by being intelligent. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:23, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * St. Thomas Aquinas, De Ver. q. 22, a. 2, ad 1. "All knowers implicitly know God in whatever they know." Wymspen (talk) 13:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Please put such questions on the Language Reference Desk. Edison (talk) 15:04, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If the question is about the translation of the Latin phrase, then Language is the right place - but if it is about the meaning of an expression from medieval theology, this seems more appropriate. Wymspen (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * More generally, it means that "judgement always points beyond itself, always contains an implicit reference to Absolute Truth, Absolute Being" (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 7).  Arbitrarily0   ( talk ) 17:57, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Similar concepts to anatta in Western philosophy
Are there any similar concepts to anatta in Western philosophy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.36.82.188 (talk) 07:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is certainly not identical, but the Western philosophical concept of the tabula rasa shares certain commonalities with anatta. -- Jayron 32 12:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Philosophical quotes
Who first said "Learning to swim won't give you control of the ocean, but it will give you control over where you are going."82.132.212.176 (talk) 09:20, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This entry at Yahoo Answers is the only instance of the quote that exists on the internet. If it is a notable quote, all of humanity has so far ignored it.  -- Jayron 32 12:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The Internet is much much larger than the web. Search engines have only indexed a small portion of the web. Therefore, claiming that a result from a search engine defines existence for the entire Internet is not valid. You could say it is the only result from Google or Bing instead. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 14:44, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So what are some examples of content on websites that I can see but Google cannot find? Are you talking about content that is somehow kept private or nonindexed? Are you talking about criminality on the dark web? Edison (talk) 15:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * See deep web. A quote in our article says that there was 400-550 times as much unindexed content on the web as indexed content in 2001, and the difference has been growing exponentially since then. CodeTalker (talk) 17:10, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Do foreign nationals ever send their kids to Chinese local schools than international schools?
I know foreign workers in China send their kids to international schools. Do they ever send their kids to local Chinese schools full-time and one-day weekend heritage language schools to learn the heritage language in a similar way how Chinese immigrants send their kids to American local schools and weekend heritage language schools? Do graduates of the international schools in China become native speakers of Mandarin? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 18:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Having taught in China (granted, at a university with "China" in the name, not at an international school) and having dodged other jobs there, I'm really under the impression that the differences between international schools and local schools (in China, at least) are aesthetics, funding, and how many foreign English teachers they have. That's not to say that they're not there or even that the ones I saw are illegitimate or anything, I'd just suspect that graduating from one of those would be about as useful as graduating from a local school.
 * Chinese schools are weird about accommodations, I seriously doubt that a foreigner could graduate from a Chinese school without being at least conversational in Mandarin. (Re weird about accommodations, I had two students who put forth more effort to fail than was necessary to get a minimally passing grade under my Bob Ross-esque grading... and the university forced me to give them passing grades because of what province they were from).
 * I never saw anything like a heritage language school. Granted, I was functionally illiterate (regularly got 西 and 面 mixed up, and I lived near 西湖 so that was a problem), but I still saw plenty of businesses that sold themselves as "English schools" that were really just places to get tutoring for standardized tests from local teachers and (depending on how much money you spent) the chance to hang out with a foreigner.
 * Also, Americans would be less likely to open heritage schools of any sort overseas because the idea that there's a monolithic American culture with no diversity has had plenty of naysayers with good reasons and solid evidence. Chinese culture has its own diversities, but it's difficult to fit them into an artificially lengthened history (and whenever someone in China told me "it's difficult," they usually meant "let's not work on it").  Ian.thomson (talk) 20:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I remember reading a news story about a Chinese national mother talking about her experience with raising a half-Chinese child, that the child will be sent to an international school and only speak English and eschew anything Chinese. The mother tries to speak Chinese to her daughter, but the Eurasian daughter replies in English. I've also heard stories of people who went to Chinese international schools but everything was actually taught in English, and they speak Chinese with a foreign accent. That made me conclude that foreign parents only sent their kids to international schools rather than local schools. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 20:53, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Re the mother with the half-Chinese child: That's not out of the question, but I wouldn't say it's representative. Had I married over there, one of the stipulations would have been "we're only speaking English at home."  A couple of Laowai friends I have who are still over there, their 5 year old daughter communicates mostly in Chinglish.  However, there's also stories of millennials rejecting westernized and modern lifestyles.  I've known Chinese people who are very internationally minded, love learning English, want to travel the world, and maybe even live elsewhere; and I've seen students whose only interest in learning English was purely strategic.  There's very big divides in China, but no one wants to acknowledge them (because some of those divides are simply not safe to acknowledge).
 * As for Chinese students who speak Chinese with foreign accents, I have to wonder if things got lost in translation, or it's only 1%ers or something. I do know that in the middle class there is a huge issue of kids learning only Mandarin in school and having trouble communicating with parents who only speak some other dialect.  Ian.thomson (talk) 21:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand me. I recently chatted with a person on Reddit who went to international schools all his/her life - Japan, France, and China. Because he/she only went to an American international school in China for high school, Chinese is not really his/her native language, and thus he/she carries a foreign accent and stumbles on words. Even in news stories, I read of foreign workers who send their kids to international schools of different flavors, where the local language is apparently learned as a foreign/second language, not as a native language. I really have no idea what international schools are like and how they are different from local schools. While local parents can enroll their kids in international schools, international schools (talking about this article) seem to be interested in catering to the children of foreign workers, not local residents, so the children of foreign workers must be priority. I find that this behavior is reminiscent of ethnic heritage language schools in the United States.


 * Your comment about the kids not being able to communicate with parents in the regional topolect is interesting. I wonder how that works. My parents both were born and raised in China, and they were educated in the local schools. As a kid, my father would speak one regional topolect with the other kids, Putonghua Mandarin (Modern Standard Mandarin) in school, and when he went to the countryside to visit extended relatives every year, it would take some time to adjust to that regional topolect. I don’t know if that would be considered trilingualism, because the three versions are all Mandarin-based, just different regional varieties of Mandarin. There is a degree of mutual intelligibility among the Mandarin topolects, it seems. Though, even as a Mandarin speaker, I notice some Cantonese words are remarkably similar to Mandarin. Looking at Cantonese Traditional-character subtitles makes Cantonese much more understandable. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I did misunderstand you. I also should have been clearer that I only dealt with my experience and what I've read.  The impression I had was that it was probably kids from Western provinces who learned Mandarin and had trouble communicating with their parents.  It's been over a year since I've seen that article, though, so I'm afraid there's no way I could find it now.  I know a friend of mine whose mother was German could understand enough German to know that he was in trouble, but had to communicate with her in English.
 * Oh, by the way, I saw that your IP address is registered to Ohio State University. One of my former students is studying there now. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

From my experience teaching at an international school in China (using a US-based curriculum and mostly attended by foreign kids), it does occur but I doubt that it is very common. While I was there, there was one family (the parents teaching at the school), that decided to send their child to a local Chinese school. Their motivation was mainly for him to learn fluent Mandarin because they thought that this would be a great asset for him. He lasted there less than a year, because he was neither progressing very much in Mandarin (let alone any of the other subjects taught in Chinese), and was also completely overworked from being expected to still keep up with English. So in the end, the parents decided that learning Chinese wasn't worth it if it meant falling behind in English and every content subject...

And about if students of international schools in China become native speakers of Mandarin: I doubt that most foreign children in China even pick up conversational basics. At my school there were maybe 2-3 kids who spoke fluent Chinese, and their families had been there for ages and were well-connected with the locals and the culture. The average foreign kid lived in a gated compound surrounded by other foreign families, and many of them had never even seen the inside of a local Chinese restaurant. Most of them took daily Chinese as a foreign language classes as part of the school curriculum, but the effect was minimal. This is of course assuming you are talking about the children of well-paid "expat" families. --Terfili (talk) 20:51, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That would be why I never encountered international schools or their students. I usually spent less than 30 RMB a day and made it a point to regularly go to the parts of town where there was no risk of effective verbal communication. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Children of immigrants in the United States may be placed in ESL classes. That said, I wonder how immersive of an environment are Chinese Mandarin immersion schools in the USA. If a foreign child cannot do well in an immersive environment in China, it implies that Mandarin immersion schools in the US actually do include English in the curriculum or start the schooling at an early age so that second-language learners can understand it intuitively, or the said child is atypical.


 * I mean, I know that there are two little rich American girls in Singapore in Singaporean local schools, Happy Rogers and Little Bee Rogers. They are equipped with a Mandarin-speaking nanny and perhaps a Chinese curriculum. But from my conversations with Chinese Singaporeans, it seems that the Singaporean government just promotes Mandarin for people who typically have a Chinese heritage (other ethnicities are allowed) like any other foreign language program, not really a Mandarin immersion school. And even Singaporean Chinese people learn everything in English by secondary school. So, it’s unlikely that the American girls will reach a level beyond that of a Chinese Singaporean, unless they get transferred to a Mainland Chinese middle school and high school and university. It will take extra work, if they also want to relearn material in English, because by then, Mandarin would have set into their brains as a native language. At least they will find learning English easier than the average Chinese citizen, who has to learn English as a complete foreign language, as they will be learning English as heritage speakers. And their mother seems to be an English-dominant bilingual, so they can always ask mom for help on English.


 * I know some people go to China for work or study and end up marrying a local. I don’t know if they are part of the same socioeconomic class as the “well-paid expats” or if they send their kids to local schools or if they try to teach their kids the language of the foreign parent, setting up heritage language schools so they can gain exposure to one or both of their parents’ native tongues. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 15:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Good Friday Fish but not meat
Why is meat not supposed to be eaten on Good Friday but fish is OK? They are both animals. (Mobile mundo (talk) 19:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC))
 * The abstinence from eating meat on certain days as a form of fasting is an old tradition in Christianity; AFAIK, the prohibition has always been against land-based animals only, fish have always been allowed. This article and This article give a brief synopsis of the origins and rationales behind the tradition.  It should also be noted that the tradition is older than modern Taxonomy (biology), and that you, today, understand the biological relationships between various living things has no bearing on a millenia-old tradition that was not established with any regard for that.  -- Jayron 32 19:33, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Similarly, in Jewish law fish is pareve (neither meat nor dairy). It has more to do with religious tradition than with biology. -- Elphion (talk) 20:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Friday (not just Good Friday, but every Friday), as the day of Christ's death, was a day of fasting from very early in Christian history. What had to be avoided was not "animals" but blood (because of the link to the shedding of Christ's blood) - which was understood to mean any warm-blooded animals, but not fish. It led to some strange anomalies when biological knowledge was rather poor: the belief that barnacle geese, which appeared every winter, somehow grew from marine barnacles (which they vaguely resemble) led to goose being classed as fish and being permitted on Fridays. Wymspen (talk) 21:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Apparently frog legs were also considered to be fish in some countries. Alansplodge (talk) 07:51, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * While people believed a lot of weird things, I would be cautious about any modern explanation as to why stuff which may seem inconsistent to us, came about. The capybara is of course another well known oddity, the beaver another. I've read some weird reasonings given for this in the past like people misleading the pope. But the most compelling is something akin to that described in our beaver article, or also to some extent Fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church. While these oddities may have arisen before Carl Linnaeus, they were a time when there was a greater understanding so it seems likely that there was recognition the capybara and beaver where in a number of ways more akin to rabbits etc, but it was felt that the it was okay to eat them anyway. The part of the Summa Theologica referenced is interesting. It does deal for example with the possibility that eating fish may be more pleasurable than eating flesh meat. While obviously quite a while after the tradition evolved, it doesn't mention anything about blood but instead stuff like vital spirit and humor. I'm not sure how well it fits into the above refs by Jayron32 lacking the knowledge to interpret it sufficiently, but one of Jayron32's refs claim that it's generally understood that it only applies to warm-blooded animals so reptiles etc are fine. This would mean frogs legs and alligators (mentioned in our article) are not really an anomaly. Nor would turtles, snake etc which aren't uncommon in certain cultures. Nil Einne (talk) 08:40, 29 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Not all fish are kosher, though. Nor are shellfish. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)