Re:New Tolkien book, The Fall of Númenor, to be published
by chucksmash on Thursday June 23, 2022 @12:08PM
(#31851115)
There are also things that I think people just tend to take for granted regardless of where they live, even outside of America.
"The Book of General Ignorance" talks about an example of this with frogs:
> There are 4,360 known species of frog, but only one of them goes "ribbit." Each species has its own unique call. The reason everyone thinks all frogs go "ribbit" is that "ribbit" is the distinctive call of the Pacific tree frog (Hyla regilla). This is the frog that lives in Hollywood.
> Recorded locally, it has been plastered all over the movies for decades to enhance the atmosphere of anywhere from the Everglades to Vietnamese jungles.
Frogs don't sound like that here but that's not something that ever seemed incongruous to me until it was pointed out in a book.
There is a lot of regional variation, but the difference is quite a lot smaller than in other places in the world.
It is indeed harder to imagine a different world because we are culturally isolated, but our isolated world is quite a bit larger than I would bet would be easily imagined coming from somewhere else.