Re: CHAT: Our opinions of what can be called 'winter' (was: OT: Merry Christmas!)

On 28 Dec 2004, at 11.13 pm, Carsten Becker wrote:

> It still confuses me that ATM, it's summer on the southern
> hemisphere ...
Really? It's so perfectly normal to me that it should be winter in the
northern hemisphere right now.* But I notice that Americans at least
seem to think of seasons as elements of time as well as weather;
whereas US 'fall' might be translated as either AU 'spring' or
'autumn', AU 'autumn' will usually mean only US 'fall'. (US movie
releases in Australia will often say stupid things like 'only in
theatres this winter' when they actually mean 'only in cinemas this
July', changing two words and getting them both wrong. ... or maybe
not, this could be why we always get movies so late in Oz ;) ) --- And
I don't mean to pick on America here, just that American English is the
most significant Other Dialect/Language I'm exposed to, so I notice it
more. The psychology that leads Americans to do this may well be common
to most northernhemisphereans.

* That doesn't mean it's easy for me to think of July as hot, or
September as autumn. In fact, September is so patently spring that the
idea of it being autumn breaks my mind unless it's prepared. But I'm
comfortable to know that if it's spring here, it's autumn there, and
leave time out of it.

(Of course, when thinking of northern hemispheric seasons, I simply
reverse the Australian conventional reckoning (first of
Dec/Mar/June/Sept), rather than using the conventional reckoning of any
northern hemisphere culture---according to Wikipedia, cultures of the
British Isles use the first of May/August/November/February as start
dates, and the US uses the equinoxes and solstices. But seeing as
culture more than weather or any other feature determines start dates,
and seeing as the diversity of seasons starts means that there's no
single date I can chose, it seems reasonable. (I believe Denmark uses
the same as us six months behind, so maybe we're all Danes, like
whatshername from Tasmania who married the Danish heir apparent.))

But a question I want to ask... In Australia, if you list the seasons,
you normally go Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring. Is this normal, or a
southernhemispherism (where summer is the first season of the year, so
it makes sense to start the list there).

> Anyway. I think I know what Tristan insists on by saying
> 20°C was cold. In July/August 2003, we had infernal 40°C
> for four weeks. Then, suddenly, the the temperatures
> dropped to pleasant 25°C. Normally, that's the temperature
> where in May you're glad to finally get out your t-shirts
> again. But having gotten used to temperatures around 35°C
> and above, I felt really cold and liked to wear a pullover
> -- my parents said I'd be crazy.
I suspect you wanted to wear a pullover, actually :)

But yes, that's precisely the idea. Temperatures that in October and
November are hot are in February and March most definitely not! (But we
have had cool weather for a week now, and in any case, it's not
uncommon for the first and last few weeks of the year to be cooler than
the rest of summer---evidently god wants us to celebrate Christmas in
style :)

>  That was the hottest
> summer we've ever had. Usually, temperatures are rarely over
> 30°C in summer where I live. An average temperature in
> summer for me is 26°C in the early afternoon. Last summer
> it rained all the time, so temperatures only rised up to
> 20°C, with an average of awfully rainy 15°C.
What're your winters like? I might have to move in (& learn German) if
they're at all reasonable!

(Incidentally, my Swedish boss reckons that winters in Australia are a
lot worse than winters in Sweden. In Sweden, they know it gets cold,
and so prepare for it by having such modern technologies as jackets and
central heating and glögg, whereas in Melbourne, we forget about such
things, believing Australia to be a hot place already, and freeze
instead.)

--
Tristan.

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