Re:Boeing 787 Reaches 801 MPH as a Jet Stream Packs Record-B...
by Arnt on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @04:53AM
(#19206816)
It rather depends on where you are, but so does language. The words we use were cast locally. If you speak English some words were cast in the Ukraine, some in Germany, some in Rome, some in France, some in Britain, but the people living in those places weren't obliged to make the words globally meaningful.
If you go to Cape Town, a "north wind" presumably doesn't mean cold, because the area north of the city isn't colder than the city itself. This didn't matter to the people who first said "north wind" and I don't think it means much nowadays either. Just another little thing to watch out for in intercultural communication.
I can understand that it might be just an ancient tradition originating from a particular part of the world, that we've turned into a convention, but it loses meaning when you go elsewhere.