6 ms·
I know this isn't a good comment, but the title entices me to write that, as a present-day Austrian I did not drink beer 2700 years ago.
by MrYellowP 5y ago
I know this isn't a good comment, but the title entices me to write that, as a present-day Austrian I did not drink beer 2700 years ago.
- corobo 5y agoI was wondering if they'd buried the lede in that time travel had been invented
- goto11 5y agoThe title is perfectly fine. "Present-day Austria" means the geographical area which today is Austria.
- jnsie 5y agoThe title is perfectly correct. It is not perfectly clear, therefore not perfectly fine.
- danparsonson 5y agoIt should be perfectly clear to a native English speaker as it's a well-used construction ("Present day X" means "The (thing) that is today called X") - but I could understand if it's confusing to a non-native speaker.
- dahart 5y agoI’m a native speaker, and I think the wording could be improved. Furthermore, I don’t agree that this common phrase is normally used this way. The phrase “present day” is most often used to refer to now, not to refer to a time in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_day I agree with the meaning of your example, but I don’t think your example illustrates the issue with the title. The title has “People in present day Austria” which implies these people are alive now, then goes on to say the same people ate something 2700 years ago. Context does clarify the title, despite the confusing wording. Rewordings that would help: “Ancestors of modern day Austrians consumed blue cheese and beer 2700 years ago”, or “People who lived in what is now present-day Austria drank beer and ate blue cheese 2700 years ago.”
- danparsonson 5y agoValid points, but just to split this hair a little further in a couple of places: - "People in present day Austria" doesn't entirely capture the headline either because it's immediately followed by a verb in the past tense, thus specifying something that happened in the past; - I don't think anyone ever refers to a place as 'present-day X' if they're talking about something that's happening now: "Where are you going?" "I'm going to present-day New York" Using 'present-day' as an adjective to me necessarily implies a discussion of some past event. Can you imagine anyone talking about Austrians who are alive today as "people living in present-day Austria"? Maybe this is why I'm a programmer and not an author...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- davecahill 5y agoPanda: Eats, shoots, and leaves. Present-day Austrian: Eats blue cheese 2700 years ago.
- fnord77 5y agoso what did you eat and drink back then?
- michaelgrafl 5y agoYeah, can confirm. Source: am present-day Austrian.
- cmarschner 5y agoI literally read “present-day Australia” and thought: now that‘s surprising.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eliasmacpherson 5y agoI agree it is not a good comment, but I did want to see if somebody else thought as I did. It should start with the time, e.g.: '2700 years ago people in present-day Austria drank beer and ate blue cheese'. Should probably also be more specific and say 'inhabiting' rather than 'in'.
- goto11 5y agoThe phrase "present-day Foo" is used all the time by people writing about history as a way of indicating a geographical area. I don't see the problem.
- eliasmacpherson 5y ago"50 years ago people in present-day New York consumed three times as many cigarettes". Present-day is not the problem. There's an ambiguity there because in can refer to at least three things if not more: people in the location of the present-day New York fifty years ago (as intended) people in present-day New York right now, physically and fifty years ago people in present-day New York right now, but not fifty years ago on closer inspection 'inhabiting' is not much better on these counts
- goto11 5y agoYes but that was not what was written. What was written was unambiguous. You use the phrase when the name of a geographical area did not exist, or wasn't the same at the time you are referring to. So you wouldn't say "People in present-day Austria 50 years ago...", you just say "People in Austria 50 years ago." But you could very well say "People in present-day Austria 200 years ago..." since Austria then and now are different geographical areas. You can say "Mozart was born in Salzburg in present-day Austria" and nobody would think it means he was born today. Communication is about context.
- eliasmacpherson 5y agoAgree that my example was bad at least. The phrase 'present-day x' is also used to denote the setting in a script, novel, or magazine piece completely independent of this historical usage. The context does not arrive until the end of the sentence and so I feel it is more like a punchline than a well written description.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agonice try, buddy, but now we know you people are functionally immortal we're going to invade and torture to find out your secret real quick! C'mon, tell me - is it the blue cheese?
- School-Cotton 5y agoReposting a comment I left elsewhere: "Present-day X" is a common stock phrase in English to talk about a place in the past while identifying it, for convenience, with today's political borders. "Julius Caesar ruled over territory in present-day Italy, Tunisia, Spain, Turkey, (...etc)" is a perfectly normal sentence.
- christophilus 5y agoI had to read the title several times to make sense of it. It could have been clearer. For example, “2,700 years ago in present day Austria, people drank beer and ate blue cheese.” The order of the title makes it sound like present-day Austrians were around 2,700 years ago. The “present day” is applied to the wrong object.
- Spooky23 5y agoMost people intuitively understand that people do not live for 3,000 years.
- School-Cotton 5y ago> The order of the title makes it sound like present-day Austrians were around 2,700 years ago. I simply don’t agree: there was only one possible meaning, and it was obvious to me. I can’t prove it in any other way than citing my intuition as a native English speaker. To my eyes your rewritten title has the same meaning and is no more or less clear.
- vidarh 5y agoI agree it's clear in this case, but it's clear only because the specific details makes the other interpretation impossible, and that's poor writing.
- danparsonson 5y agoWell no, it's clear because it's a stock phrase in native English - no doubt unclear to non-native English speakers, but that doesn't necessarily make it poorly written.
- tim333 5y agoThere's always reincarnation though. Maybe if you meditate on your past lives it'll come back?
- christophilus 5y agoTIL Dracula was (is?) Austrian.
- bamboozled 5y ago"Austrians have been drinking beer and eating blue cheese for 2600 years" would be a lot simpler and clearer.
- goto11 5y agoBut would mean something different. Also it doesn't make sense to call those people Austrian. The point of the phrase "present day Austria" is to describe the geographical area which is now Austria, while recognizing Austria did not exist (or was something else) at the time. Just as an example, Mozart was born in present-day Austria, but he was not born in Austria, since Salzburg were not part of Austria at the time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- krsdcbl 5y agoas a fellow present-day Austrian that was exactly my first thought before even reading your comment. Must be a linguistic thing
- hungryforcodes 5y agoI had a chuckle over it.