"Common language, culture, and context makes a more peaceful world" is such a ridiculous and abhorrent thing to say I can't even keep writing here.

Edit: Then again, I just saw this post you wrote: https://www.kcoleman.me/2026/01/28/when-everything-becomes-n...

Your last line there - "Instead, in 2026 I want to restore contrast." So I can't tell if you're joking now because those words and this comment are at stark odds.

Isn’t that the point they were trying to make?

Artists and scientists have famously been prosecuted for different communication.

But at the same time, communication gaps also resulted in millions of deaths.

Unifying language/culture/etc enables the "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Europe knows this (see formulation of the EU). Asia knows this (China's camps, Japan&Korea's immigration policies).

Its not this or that.

A lot of things are published only in English, French and German https://commission.europa.eu/about/service-standards-and-pri...

People shouldn't be coerced to give up their culture (in fact, doing that is quite evil) but cultural homogenisation seems like a good thing in principle. We want people to have an easy time communicating with each other.

Another great example of the perverse idea that “same == better”

Europe meanwhile, in case you are unaware, is all about unity through culture, but the EU does this by celebrating its diversity (as well as actively protecting minority languages), not by Gleichschaltung.

Hell, looking back a decade or two, the PIIGs would’ve been a bit at odds with the other countries purely over debt.

Does the EU really repressing a best case for the common citizen in terms of unity and aligned society?

China suppressing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity for homogeneity has caused immeasurable suffering and imperialistic destruction.

EU explicitly embracing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity for heterogeneity has brought more peace and prosperity than ever before to a continent in perpetual conflict for nearly all of human history.

You're the one introducing absolutist thinking here. Essentially saying the world should have Chinese style re-education camps because a Vietnamese woman rejected your offer to play a board game due to a miscommunication.

Clearly that hurt you, but your "solution" is insanity. Not to mention I'm pretty sure way more millions have died from people trying to implement your "forcibly convert others to our culture and language" plan throughout history, than from wars started from a language translation error.

What are you talking about?

Things they explicitly listed: "(China's camps, Japan&Korea's immigration policies)"

China's camps are a process, not an end state. Immigration policies are a process. Clearly they are advocating for a process.

And, no I don't think re-educations camps are a good thing for society.

It's incredible this stuff has to actually be said.

We've seen what evil people can do with cultural subsets that differ - immigrants, POC, Jews, even women in workplaces where they are a small minority.

In fact, aiming for a unified culture is literally, explicitly a definition of genocide, by the UN.

Why such an adverse reaction? Nothing about what they said seems abhorrent! It's a common/usual positive sentiment, like "Understanding things give life meaning", etc.

Moreover as other examples here given, geopolitical tensions very often appear between neighbours who have a very similar culture, so sharing cultural similarities does not seem to lead to much of peace in the world.

Cultures are not that weak, or done away with that easily.

Not sure about nepal, but in some cultures/places (can just be different place within the same broadly culture) they associate eg card playing with gambling. I do not gamble but I play games with cards occasionally, and if I say "let's play a card game in a cafe" without meaning it for gambling it may still be interpreted as suggesting to go gamble by some, even though there is no literal translation issue per se (but there is misinterpretation). I dunno but maybe something similar is what happened.

Some of the tools and dictionaries used for Viet-English are wonky, and depending on when they were educated the English teachers were either unqualified backpackers or some grifter who opened an English tutoring center (oftentimes one and the same).

And coming from a language with little overlap with Indo-European languages and roots makes it a very alien experience (and the same in reverse as well).

California

> It doesn't mean we can't get along or have a peaceful world full of diversity in language and culture. We just need to get better at nuance and understanding

Wasn't making a judgement about that. I was just pointing out a somewhat common mistake and pattern I've noticed Vietnamese ESLers make.

Your reaction seemed very intense and polarizing for what sounded like a funny anecdote of a date gone wrong.

My SO had a similar reaction when she confused "common law marriage" and "civil law marriage" years ago.

There's basically no real complete English/Viet dictionary anyways, the best ones are 90% there.

LLMs here are the best experience

This confusion has resulted in Vietnamese people unintentionally describing incest or gay relationships.

[0] - What she actually meant was "brother" in the sense that he is a family friend and neighbor.

It's a miserable experience for translation software.

Basically what OP is saying is interpersonal relations can be confused when using the Vietnamese and English definitions of both words.

Anh and Em essentially means masculine and feminine, but is also often used in romantic, non-romantic, casual, and sometimes formal usecases and this is heavily dependent on the verbs and adjectives that follow.

Viet-English NMT is very flawed at the moment.

I hope the irony is at least interesting, and you both feel better and/or worse off for it ;)

As a South Korean - well, considering that my country once went through an existential war against our mortal enemies, the other Koreans ...

Common language and culture doesn't stop hate. Sometimes it just means that your insult will land on your target perfectly as intended.

How would you know if the commenter is American or white or a man at all? Much less what "he" works with.

Or if the interaction happened "around the world" or in the commenters home country?

Or if any of the involved people spoke English at all?

Probably you don't care about any of that, because you are high on your own supply of hatred.

We live in a world of imperfect information, we vote with imperfect information, we marry with imperfect information, we invest with imperfect information, heck, now we even write computer code with probabilistic methods! And you are trying to imply that I am somehow a bad boy for noticing the obvious clues and inferring the scenario?

Are we now living in the world of the dictatorship of the literal, where we can't even make social discurse without a school marm appearing to stamp [citation needed]?

All that said, this is very typically brazilian, as I infer that you most probably are, due to the fact that nobody uses their real name on HN and thus, much probably your name is paying homage to the famous brazilian music who created Bossa Nova. This petit-burgeouise habit of tone-policing without really adressing the argument is a defining characterist of the brazilian educated elites.

Oh! I did it again! I inferred a conclusion from incomplete information. Pardon, mon ami!

Cultural differences are what makes the world and humanity so interesting.