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

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 15:02:39 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>:
>
>> 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).
>
>As far as I'm concerned, it's Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, presumably
>for no more profound reason than that the new year begins in early winter.
I've heard it's the old Germanic tradition to start the new year in autumn
(september/october).


>We don't give exact start and end dates to seasons here, but winter is
>roughly late November to early March, spring onto later May, summer until
>early September, and then autumn till mid November again. Yes, this means
>that summer and winter are closer to four months each, while autumn and
>spring are not much more than two months each. That's how I think of it
>anyway.
It's the other way round in Switzerland: Short summer and short winter, but
long seasons inbetween (except in the higher regions, where the winter is
longer). We usually think of Switzerland as being a place with real winter,
that is, cold and snowy, but in the lower regions, snow falls only about
four times a winter and melts away within very few days, unless in very cold
winters when there may be up to several weeks with the thermometer below 0
degrees Celsius. People use to complain that there's less and less snow.


>> (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.)
>
>I can believe that. I've never spent a winter in Spain, but various
>relatives and friends that have agree you freeze alot more there than you
>do in Sweden; Swedish houses are built to retain heat, Spanish ones to keep
>it away, and often lack central heating.
I've experienced this as well, in Argentine. I also wondered first whether
they'd use the words summer/winter for the weather or for the time, but I
noticed very quickly they were used for the weather.

kry@_^s:
j. 'mach' wust