“When you first move into a house dont make any improvements for at least 6 months.”
I now see that its Terrible advice.
Haha, no.
When you first move in you see all the flaws that the previous owners got used to living with. Fix them while you’re still motivated to.
Why is it not good advice?
Very many home improvement tasks cause a bit of mess and having to move furniture around. If you don’t do them initially, it’s way harder to motivate yourself to do it when you’re fully moved in. Flooring/skirting/painting are the typical things you’ll want to do up front.
On the other hand, being able to re-create momentum when it has completely drained away is an excellent life skill to have.
It’s meant to stop you from spending $30k on a kitchen renovation because you hate the way the cabinet doors open, not to fix health and safety issues.
I sold cabinets for a while, and at the time I lived in a little studio apartment, basically paycheck to paycheck.
People would drop $10-50k to have slightly nicer cabinets. It seemed so trivial to me.
But then again, I would spend $20 on pizza or whatever sometimes so I didn’t have to cook. I’m sure to someone starving, that would seem like a ridiculous use of resources.
It’s a strange feeling interacting regularly with people more wealthy than myself.
Don’t make any improvements is a crazy proposition. But I agree with living in the place 6 months before doing anything drastic unless it is obvious. I live in a very old house. It took us a while to see the reasoning behind some of the features in our house. We were tempted to scrap anything that wasn’t typical in new constructions, but that would have been a waste of money.
I was happy saving up for a few months and observing the house to see where my money was best spent.
This is very true on codebases as well. There’s always this instinct to underestimate the value of what’s already been built.
I would argue that, rather than 6 months, you should really wait until after you’ve spent a winter in it. Lots of things that might seem odd during warmer months suddenly make sense when everything is cold, icy, and freezing.
Exactly this! We did not understand how our house operated as a system until we experienced it in both the freezing cold and humid summer. Most modern homes were designed to circulate air efficiently, but with a 250 year old home, things work differently.
For example, the wood burning stove was put in that place for a reason, and although it might complicate the couch/tv placement, the benefits of a properly placed heat source outweigh the feng shui of the room.
My parents separated when I was really young, roughly 5 yrs old. As I grew up and had visitation with my dad he always drilled into me “women just want a man who can provide for them, in the end they all just want money.” Being young and obviously not knowing how crazy my dad was yet, I believed him for a long time.
Turns out when you treat people like they just want you for your money, that’s the only kind of people who will put up with you. Kinda self fulfilling. Found a nice lady now, happily married and caring about each other, not just money.
Its always best to compromise
“In a negotiation about wearing black vs. brown shoes, compromise is wearing two different colored shoes. Nobody gets what they want and one of you ends up looking like an idiot.”
Paraphrased from memory from a book called “Never Split the Difference: Negotiate as if Your Life Depends on it”
Find what you love, and then figure out how to make money on it.
It worked for me, but not my spouse. Sometimes you just need to find something you’re happy enough doing to make the income.
I love sleeping.
I always thought that was really dumb. After hearing stories from people then “find a skill in demand that sounds like a fun challenge” is a way better approach. I went for software but mech/civil engineering, carpentry, electrician and architect would all also be great choices.
Depends what part of the process you like. Some people like to be very meticulous in their hobbies, and somewhat of a perfectionist. That rarely exists in a professional environment, where everything is based on getting projects out the door, on schedule and on budget.
I actually like banging out projects quickly, so the professional life of my hobby suits me well (woodworking). I love pounding out big mortises with a sledgehammer, planing big boards and watch chips go flying. I hate fiddling with joinery and slowly fitting them for 10 minutes (slowly learning how to do them faster). For other people, joinery is their favorite part.
Yeah, finding a career that is acceptable and pays enough to afford the lifestyle you crave is a balance. Usually that advice comes from people who love doing something that is coincidentally also highly paid.
Also, loving something and being actually good enough at it to make a career out of it are also two different things
Something along the lines of “don’t ever go to bed angry at each other.” Like, yeah, you should try to work it out, but if you fucked up real bad, don’t push it. Sleep on the couch.
Besides couch is superior to bed, those nights when I can’t get sleep in the bed the couch provides. Couch best. Even the cushions are for some reason nicer than pillows. Should definitely consider moving to the livingroom.
Start an argument. Live your dream.
Or getting a better bed
Sleeping on the couch isnt gping to bed, though…
So, they technically didn’t go to bed angry
Correct, it’s going to couch.
Alternatively, sometimes a good night’s sleep is good for everyone to clear heads and calmly tackle their issues the next day with fresh perspectives.
Also helps with work emails…
Never send an angry email the same day, and always send it to someone else for reviews. Also never put the recipients in the box until you’re ready to hit send.
Work hard and do your best at work and you’ll go places.
Yeah I got moved around several times in the office. That’s about it.
I mean, if you don’t try at all you’re far less likely to succeed.
~2004. My highschool civics teacher told the class that real estate was always a good investment because it only went up. I didn’t really trust him at the time though.
he was a terrible teacher.
the wealthy have always considered real estate to be a liability that requires constant upkeep. they are money pits.
this is why they truly own nothing but physical assets(gold, paintings,etc) and leverage any liquidity on acquiring assets.
The wealthy are buying up properties either to rent out or if they’re Chinese, to move their wealth to places their government can’t take it from. They absolutely own propriety, but not with the intent to flip.
Real estate can be a good investment, even pre 2008 crash. What can be dangerous is over leveraging. A primary residence isn’t really an investment, still worth buying though.
He was just echoing the same sentiment lead to all those house flippers. He was a wealth of conservative BS and that was just one of his thinly veiled prosperity gospel moments.
I mean, if you had money at the time and bought a house in one of the larger cities or their suburbs, you would probably be loaded by now, even though you would regret it for about 5 years after the crash
You have to be loaded to be loaded? Got it.
This “teacher” also would complain about wealth fare queens who had children just to claim more benefits, that the best thing that could happen to a country is to be invaded by the US because they’ll rebuild afterwards among other things and that every Union but teacher’s Unions were obsolete today.
If you’re a quiet dedicated employee your value will be recognized and rewarded.
Yeah, that doesn’t work well anymore. Gotta be a noisy dedicated worker, and be willing to move jobs a few times to start seeing the rewards
I put that into practice and just got promoted last Halloween! Let people know that you’re smart and interested in how your job works.
rewards mostly come from job hopping. Raises at every place I’ve worked arent callibrated to inflation, so your 4% raise that the boss thinks is so great is closer to 0-1%/
“Fully empty your battery before charging it up again, it increases the lifespan of the battery.”
This was true before lithium-ion batteries became the norm. But for lithium-ion batteries, the opposite holds.
What’s the opposite of “full empty your battery before charging it again?”
Don’t let it uncharge fully. You ideally want to stay in the 30-70% range as much as possible.
From time to time you want to let the battery go from 100% to shutting off, so the charging circuit can calibrate the reported capacity
Remembering which of my devices are old method charging and which are new method is a pain.
I have several camping lamps from like 20 years ago that I almost threw out because they weren’t holding charge anymore, before I remembered to be fully draining the batteries and recharging them once a month. They work like new now practically.
“Find a job doing what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
I used to love software. Then all the Lumberghs took over.
I’d say the tasks and role of your job should at least be enjoyable enough to not hate it but what I think is even more important (and makes me enjoy my job) is the work climate, being appreciated by colleagues / customers / management, and a sense of purpose.
Before I post this, I apologize for the content length:
Yeah this one hurts, because I’ve heard it all my life yet in MOST situations when I research a job and think “Hey that could be alright!”
There’s always some nasty hidden majority of it that seems to exist solely to make sure nobody enjoys doing it too much. Like there’s some misery quotient to be filled. Misery must be some kind of profit currency as a means of doing business…
As a hypothetical example: You like working with your hands and think assembling widgets or tools might be your thing. You romanticize taking pride in your work and imagining the end user being happy with your efforts.
But you find that once you get there, you’re a slave to some Taylorism machine that demands infinite widgets in increasingly unrealistic timespans or else. And you never see the finished product. They also ban music and glare at you like criminals the entire time.
Or perhaps you envision that hardworking but noble slice-of-life-anime vibe, where you and some cool co-workers run a coffee shop and you’re determined to earn a reputation for the perfect brew… except it’s just you, by yourself, and a long line of grouchy jerks, and some machine is there yelling at you if you’re not doing so many transactions-per-hour and your manager is displeased because you aren’t selling two-coffees-and-a-plastic-tumbler per customer or something.
Less hypothetical: People tell me I’d make a great teacher. Yeah, I don’t need to elaborate on those realities. (God bless you, teachers. Seriously.)
The education system is also just a human conveyor belt at this point.
Where are the jobs that are “just okay” or “fine”? What happened to the humble honest living? It seems like everything can fit under David Graeber’s "Bullshit Jobs" checklist anymore.
With job satisfaction it seems either 1:100,000 odds like “career actor” or “beloved artist” or something, or you’re just in the soul-grind machine that takes a perfectly human craft or interaction and forces it through a filter of spreadsheets and “KPIs” and “metrics” and “management” that makes everyone want to stop waking up.
That wasn’t too long, and it was interesting. Your posts don’t need to be efficient either. ❤️
Hey that’s very kind of you. Thanks! :)
Sometimes a topic hits me and I end up using Lemmy as a writing prompt haha. I’m glad if it resonates with people though. One day I’ll start a blog even if people don’t really bother with those much anymore. :p
Hope you’re having a fantastic one!
Sounds like somebody has a case of the “Mondays”.
Hobbies always change when they become a job because it transitions from well thought out, interesting and creative projects to mass production and monotony.
As a hobbyist you have the ability to discover and work on unique, novel projects, without stress but professionalism is about consistency and speed.
Usually by running the business you can dedicate some time and resources to the fun and novel stuff. Thats how I run mine at least, as a woodworker. I don’t crank out high grossing trendy stuff day and night but take the time to explore new ideas and get creative with it. That and using handtools instead of power tools.
Do you mean you used to like writing software by yourself, on creative projects that you were passionate about?
How’re your TPS reports coming along?
In our next union agreement “only one unified timesheet ever” is a demand we’re putting forth.
And you know for us to put that in the deal and see what it’ll cost us in return, we’re fucking fed up.
I feel like that’s the same as a TPS report.
I mean, I 100% agree with this one. If I’m going to be at work eight hours a day, five days a week, u better damn well enjoy it.
I’m a software dev, too, but have always left companies / teams soon after a Lumbergh took over. That was always a very good career move for me, and I am almost always pretty excited to go to work.
Plus, Lumberghs will be there for things you don’t enjoy as well. That would just make it harder, at least for me.
Any dumb and vaguely open-ended advice. Like “just be yourself”.
What if you’re improving yourself because the real you sucked? Do you just give that all up and return to what you were? Whoever first said that piece of advice, obviously didn’t think it through enough.
Yeah thanks * adult * for the advice, why don’t you try AuDHD and see what you think of it - or rather what others think of you when you just * be yourself *
Grow up and stop being a sensationalist.
It can be a great compliment when someone knows you well enough to see that you’re overthinking things. Too many times it’s just thrown around without thinking it through and that ruins it for everyone
It’s not “don’t ever change.” It’s just saying don’t pretend to be something that you aren’t. You most likely can’t keep that going forever and that’s one reason why many people feel like their SO changes after being together for a while.
“act normal”
“what do you mean act normal? I’m acting!?”
just because you were that person doesn’t mean you are now. the advice still holds
is myself
gets bullied for being self
attempts suicide from excessive bullying
think I did something wrong back then
“Just be yourself” always feels like non-advice when it appears as an answer to a question like, “What should I do?” That’s because it’s secretly negative advice. As in, it doesn’t tell you what you should do, it only tells you what you shouldn’t do. It’s code for, “Don’t pretend to be something you aren’t”. Don’t pretend, don’t lie, don’t put on a facade you can’t keep up.
Technically good advice, yes. But it’s the equivalent of being behind the controls of a plane you don’t know how to fly and the pilot is incapacitated, and your question of “How the hell do I fly this thing?” being met with, “Well, for starters, don’t jerk the stick and flip the plane over.” Wowee gee, thanks for the tip.
Ages like milk…
Drink a full glass of milk at every meal. Otherwise, your bones will turn to pudding and you’ll get kidnapped at the mall because you’ll be too soft to put up a fight. Or whatever scare scenarios Big Milk pushed in the US in the 80s and 90s.
Now everyone’s drinking nut and oat milk because of health reasons and also drinking the milk of another mammal is kinda weird.
Because drinking “milk” from nuts and oats isn’t weird?
People have been drinking animal milk for thousands of years so the weird ones are those pretending some heavily processed industry process isn’t weird.
Nut milk is just nuts and water, you can make it yourself super easy.
Drinking the milk of another mammal after you were weaned is freaking weird and unique to humans and unnecessary and bad for the environment and isn’t done by a significant portion of the world’s population.
The ability to digest animal milk is literally a genetic mutation that was useful enough to have spread to about 40% of the world’s population. Milk is an amazing source of nutrients and before food was as secure as it is now it was a lifeline during long winters.
You can talk as moral as you like about your personal preferences but the genetic record clearly indicates that our ancestors needed animal milk to survive. And in today’s society with pasteurization making cow milk safe even in the midst of a H5N1 epidemic in cows it continues to be an amazing source of nutrients, giving a near complete baseline of nutrients for an individual’s diet. There’s a reason schools push kids to drink milk every day and it’s not just the dairy lobby
Your said so yourself, the genetic adaptation is present in a minority of the population and these days it’s not necessary in the vast majority of the world since the nutrients can easily be found elsewhere.
Yes, the reason why it’s pushed in schools is very much the dairy lobby. When Health Canada created the most recent food guide they got rid of the industry’s influence and instead focused on science… Well, dairy is pretty much gone, they only say small quantities of low fat dairy can be part of healthy eating habits.
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Guess who was pissed? The dairy industry because it needs the publicity and getting removed showed Canadians that we were just fooled by marketers.
the genetic adaptation is present in a minority of the population
Yes a minority of the world population, but it is present in a majority of the American population (about 70%)
How does the majority of humans manage to survive without drinking it in school?
My point about the schools is that kids often have craptastic diets, be that due to poor parenting or just kids being picky eaters, and milk rounds out the diet and fills in the gaps since it’s such a great source of nutrients
Wake up, you’ve been had by a billions dollars multinational industry
Bro I just think milk and dairy tastes good (plus it’s full of good nutrients and pretty dang healthy) and you’re being weird about pushing your personal preferences on others while making vague moral judgments.
Americans aren’t exceptional, we’re on an international platform, the world doesn’t revolve around your fat ass (which, by the way, isn’t helped by dairy, especially milk).
Kids would be better served by getting fed a variety of food that wouldn’t include dairy.
The Canadian food guide doesn’t include dairy because it’s not as healthy as the industry pretends and it gets induced in the US guide because of lobbies, not because of Science.
why are you trying to destroy an ethnic minority’s cultural foods?
drinking milk has no impact on the environment
those are impacts from production. once it’s produced, drinking it has no impact at all.
but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that your link relies on poore-nemecek 2018, which ignores the fact that LCA studies cannot be combined. it’s bad science.
those are impacts from production. once it’s produced, drinking it has no impact at all.
High speed doesn’t kill anyone, it’s the sudden deceleration that does.
if we stop drinking milk, and it continues to be produced, the environmental impacts will not cease. if we stop production, it will.
That’s completely idiotic, production exist because there’s demand for it.
how can you prove that?
I think you understand milk is produced as part of the mammalian reproductive cycle. can you describe the causal steps between demanding milk and its production?
I love milk but I do agree with you. Whenever I actually stop to think about it, the concept of milk is pretty damn weird. I feel the same way about eggs
Sounding like a vegan before they’ve realised
I’m not against veganism and I’d probably be at least a vegetarian if lab grown meat was more widely available. I have celiac though so my food options are already limited so I don’t want to limit them further
There’s a significant amount of processing going on in nut milk production. Yes you can make your own which is true for a lot of foods but the stuff you buy at the store is heavily processed.
Just because we’re the only mamal that does it doesn’t mean anything because we’re the only mamal that does a ton of stuff that doesn’t make it weird. It is definitely terrible for the planet but not sure what you mean by a significant portion of the worlds population. I’m pretty sure cheese is in almost all cultures or are you just saying straight milk.
Straight milk, lactose intolerance isn’t as much of an issue with cheese so it’s eaten all over the world, but drinking the milk itself is done by a minority.
So you are against clothes? Anither thing only humans do.
Or dentistry.
Stupid take is stupid
One is necessary to stay healthy and/or alive, the other is something the majority of us don’t drink and no other mammal continues drinking even though they all drink it after birth
any predator would eat the mammaries of a pregnant or nursing pretty animal
Not the person you’re responding to, but I think that the argument “we shouldn’t do X because no other animals do it” is a bad argument in general and overall weakens your position. Because there are plenty of things that humans do that animals don’t do that are good (like developing and applying vaccines for example).
There are plenty of other valid and good reasons to promote dairy alternatives (such as health or environmental reasons).
In this case it very much is a good comparison because it’s something all other mammals do until they’re weaned and we used to act the same way until domestication. In the grand history of humanity, drinking milk is an anomaly.
The unique things about our species are some of the things that make life great
You know what also isn’t done by a significant part of the world? Eating insects. But im not gonna go and call their eating habbits weird just because it’s not something I grew up with.
It’s called being tolerant and accepting of others culture.
I mean soy milk has been around since the 14th century.
Processing and industrialization is something that’s happened to most things in our food chain, including actual milk.Biologically it’s extremely weird to drink another animals milk. No other mammal does that.
No other animal does what we’re doing here either. Weird isn’t necessarily bad
Didn’t say it was
Cats will do it? Or you mean no other animal goes to get it? Because livestock will deffo grab a boob even if it’s not mom’s.
But it’s not industrialized by other mammals would be absolutely true.
Cats will drink cow’s milk, and then shit catastrophically everywhere within nine feet of the sand box except in the sand box. Kittens drink mama cat’s milk, then when weaned no more milk ever.
Little snake eyed bean toed fluff cheeked lactose intolerating quadrupeds.
This is the most hilariously written PSA against the whole “cats and a saucer of milk” trope holy crap LOL.
I don’t know where that nonsense started but it’s definitely not beneficial to the
Little snake eyed bean toed fluff cheeked lactose intolerating quadrupeds.
My cat loves mozzarella cheese. It’s the one human food she begs for. She’ll turn up amd wait around while I’m making chicken soup because she knows she’ll get a morsel or two of boiled chicken, but she won’t cry at me. She cries for mozzarella when I’m making a pizza.
If she gets her snout around any cheese I’ll be washing the ceiling.
Mine also loves mozzarella! No matter how much I try to be quiet, any time I open a string cheese, he’s there in 2 seconds.
it’s water pressed through to add a little flavor, nut from a nut teet.
Then do not compare that to milk. First guy used the comparison.
It’s used in the same way for the same recipes. Yes, production-wise it doesn’t have much to do with animal milk, but culinarily it’s similar. Do you feel as strongly about the fact the “vegetables” as a grouping doesn’t make any biological or production sense either?
People drink it as an alternative because it has similar gustatory properties, so yes it very much is something that can be compared to animal milk.
It’s called oat milk because it’s a nut-based beverage deliberately designed to mimic many of the properties and uses of actual cow’s milk. It’s not like oat milk is literally just juice pressed from oats. There are a whole series of steps, added ingredients, and chemical processes meant to make the resulting product as interchangeable for cow’s milk as possible.
Damn, guess we all have to stop calling it peanut butter then 🙄
I unironically agree.
I mean, with advanced enough genetic engineering, we might be able to make nut teets a thing…
“Milk” from nuts and oats is just a word. Call it oat juice, oat extract, make up a new word and call it oat zligbab. The actual thing being drunk is not far from the realm of things we already drink and eat. Getting hung up on it being called “milk” is a superficial and disingenuous argument against it.
If you want to compare the extremes of industrialized processes, are you familiar with commercial dairy farming?
heavily processed
Always great to put that into arguments. It doesn’t really mean anything but it sounds dubious.
Making things requires a process‽ Can’t explain that!
Points for the interrobang! :)
Go to a four year college so you can get the best jobs.
Nah, that advice is still correct. The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
It’s just that a lot of people don’t realize just how much shittier not having a degree in 2024 is compared to not having a degree in 1974.
So while the baseline has gotten worse, and the actual benefit of college has shrunk, it’s still easily worth the 4 year commitment and the tuition/opportunity cost.
There’s also a lot of things that people ignored from this advice. No one said get literally any degree, art majors have been the source of unemployment jokes since before I was born. No one also said take 5-7 years or more to get the degree either.
Counter-point: not everyone is cut out for a four-year degree*. Some people are better suited for trade schools. My wife worked at a university and saw a number of students that were attending just because family wanted them to, but their heart wasn’t in it. Often they’d drop out with student debt and no degree to show for it.
*or at least when they’re young
a number of students that were attending just because family wanted them to, but their heart wasn’t in it
There are probably an even higher percentage of those in trade schools or entry level trades roles. You can’t compare the worst outcomes in one category with the best outcomes in another, and should instead compare medians.
The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
For average lifetime earnings.
So for some it may not provide a big help.
Right now trade schools are actually providing a better cost to income ratio than college.
It’s anecdotal but my friends in the Boston area were all making 120-150 in salary plus bonus before I was even out of school and I started in software at 65k and didn’t break into that level for another 4 years. Now I make 230 but they’ve all got houses and decked out retirement funds from having that good money when they were much younger. That extra 20-30k/yr in 401k and IRA funds with 5-6 years more growth time in the market isn’t something to shake a stick at.
Now I make 230
Yeah the break even point is like the early 30’s, even among people who are killing it in either path.10 years of $100k+ in your 20’s won’t be able to build up enough of a buffer against $200k+ after 30, when retirement ages are around 60.
It’s actually harrowing how little I have in retirement savings compared to them. I spent the first 6 years of my career paying off loans and only contributing up to my employers match. I was illiquid for multiple large economic events while they had cash laying around. They could buy cars when interest was zero. They had a house to refi when interest was zero. I feel like a millennial describing boomers but these are guys in their 30s who went to trade school.
For me to catch up I have to put money almost entirely in taxable accounts where their money and returns are shielded from taxes. They were actually able to use a Roth for many years where I was only real able to max one out for two years before my promotion put me out of eligibility.
The earlier you are in a market, the better off you are and trades put you into the market almost 10 years earlier than someone taking 4 years of college and then having 4-6 years of loan payments
Oh wow that’s a good one! There was a time where it worked out great the vast majority of the time. Not so much now, definitely aged like milk
Skip the line with a blue badge at amazon (not financial advice)
You can always find it cheaper on Ebay.
This is actually somewhat true again now that Amazon has gone full monopoly abuse, but for a while Ebay was nothing but 1:1 with Amazon sellers and a serious lack of auctions.
Although you can go much lower with Ali Express and Temu, albeit with risk invovled.
I thought eBay in this context meant second hand? Because here’s the thing: i think second hand means you save a lot of money but you get less choice and less convenience; but platforms are getting good now so both of these factors are mitigated.
Anyway, eBay being 1:1 with Amazon is good enough for me, and i agree that AliExpress in particular is now better than Amazon in terms of price and choice. I don’t even know how risky it really is, they can refun orders right?
Just as casual conversation, what items or categories of goods do you usually deal with? Just wondering, as I myself have noticed “the boat” rocking back and forth between different online buying options for years. I live a pretty minimalist life now (used to be heavy tech) so I don’t buy much anymore and am pretty out of the loop now.
My grandpa told me “always call your boss sir, and respond “yes sir”, youll be promoted real quick.”
First day at my first job my boss tells me “by the way you don’t need to call me sir, just Brian”
Its actually insane that the world that boomers lived in was that simple.
That advice could also be harmful to your career. Being subservient like that will make sure that your boss will never see you as an equal as e.g. a potential successor
Sir Brian of Work
Unless you are in the military or a sex dungeon, I wouldn’t use “sir” these days. It’s a bit odd in everyday life as culture has changed, haha.
Last time I was in a sex dungeon I called my dom Sir Loin… turned out to be a Miss Steak
This is comedy gold where the heck is the recognition over here, can we get some recognition for this comment up here please!?
They didn’t. Some Boomers are also in the “just Brian” camp.
“You need to keep phoning and sending letters to employers, they’ll give you a job eventually”.
Lump that in with the ‘apply in person’ crowd too.
Just walk in with your resume and and ask to see the manager so you can shake their hand…
Dutch has a formal and informal 2nd person word (think “you” vs “thou”).
I have an intern who will not stop using the formal version, and it feels super awkward. I keep telling her to stop it, but she said she always uses with older people…
She’s 23, I’m mid 30s. Ouch.
Do you mean je vs u? Could you tell me more about which would be appopriate in settings like a police control, a shop or a campsite? I’m learning dutch but still trying to grasp those things :)
Welcome to dutch, where there are more exceptions than rules, and the natives just ignore the rules anyway!
In general, “Je” is by far the most common form. Children use “u” with adult strangers, adults are generally only expected to use it with people in authority positions, but that’s becoming more and more rare. It’s still polite to use “u” with strangers, but nobody will be very upset if you don’t, unless you’re addressing a judge, mayor or your boss’s boss.
Some people address their grandparents formally, but most don’t. It’s still considered polite to use it with much older people, like 30+ years older, but hardly will be upset if you don’t.
Quite a few companies require customer-facing jobs always use “u”, to be respectful, but even that is getting less. My city sends me letters with “jij” nowadays.
Thank you, that’s definitely good to know!
sounds kind of like je vs vous in french, not quite the same but used in a similar way
Funny thing, we actually call the calling someone jij tutoyeren and calling someone u vousvoyeren. This comes from the French.
German here, we have the same thing (du vs. sie). Our rules may be slightly different than dutch but probably similar enough.
Police: definitely formal unless the officer is someone you know privately.
Shop: usually formal though some hobby-related shops (think GameStop or board games) might prefer informal.
Campsite: probably informal
As a general rule of thumb: informal is used with first names, formal is used with last names. Think about which name you would use in English and go with that. If in doubt, use the formal version or ask.
I speak both german and dutch, and in my experience germans tend to use ‘sie’ in way more situations than the dutch. In my experience, germans also place more importance on titles (dr. Prof. Ir., etc), and older people can get riled up if you don’t address them with their titles, although it has gotten less.
In the Netherlands, I usually start with ‘u’ if I don’t know the older (60+ y.o., I’m late 20s) person yet, but I do listen if they tell me not to. Also the situation is important. For a job interview with someone clearly older than me, or if it’s a suit-and-tie sort of place, I would go formal. I agree with the above about the police/shop/campsite, altough most shops are also informal in the Netherlands.
Is that why Dutch people often get it wrong when to use “Du” or “Sie” if they’re speaking German? Because from my perspective that happens a lot.
I would assume so
Thanks, I’m a German native speaker myself - I tend to use je vs u in Dutch similar to the German du und Sie, but as the other replies indicate that seems to be a bit too formal in Dutch :)
At least sehr doesn’t help you cross the street. Yet.
“Is your lunch soft enough? Should I cut it up for you? We have a blender back in the kitchen if you want?”
Fun fact about English, “you” was actually the more formal one. But since we don’t use “thou” anymore, and most people know it from old-timey speak and church, we think of it as more formal today.
Well, people in the past talked MUCH more formally than we do.
If I talked to my grandfather in 1400 the way I talk to my husband today, he’d probably disown me.
You do those shenanigans in french too.
Super complicated with SO family though uhg.
sir doesn’t sit well with me either for work positions, I say it to be nice sometimes, but not because you’re my boss. and if someone calls me sir, my response is " I’m not your sir, just call me …"
just call me …
Maybe?
just call me …
Al?
