No, the conversion is right. 15 F is about -10 C. And, on a personal note, today my wife is flying from New South Wales to Ohio. That means that during the day she will have a temperature drop of about 40 Celsius degrees.
Sorry to revive this zombie, but I wondered something similar to the OP here this morning, and I read this thread but I’m still confused. Most of the previous responses to the question were personal japes, anecdotes, nitpicks, wisecracks, and observations about the moon, but if the OP actually got a definitive factual answer, I must have missed it.
When an Australian says that something will happen next winter, does she mean “starting next December” or “starting next June”? If the latter, do Australians just make mental allowances for Northern hemisphere usage, like Shakespeare’s “This is the winter of our discontent”? Do they mentally translate that into “Oh, he means ‘summer’ by the word ‘winter,’ those loony Brits”? Do they think when Shakespeare goes on to say “made glorious summer by this son of York” that he’s not calling the colder season “glorious” but he means instead the season that we Ozzies call “winter”?
I actually spent a few months living in Australia once–December through February of 2007-8–and I probably knew at the time whether my hosts thought it was summer or winter, but I’ve forgotten. It was a pretty cold and wet summer, by northern hemisphere standards, but I don’t remember what folks actually called it, summer or winter.
You are confusing yourself with this Shakespeare stuff. December is the beginning of summer. Where were you that it was cold and wet? E.g. in Melbourne in December, average temperatures are 12.3–24.8°C with an average of 52.5 mm of rainfall.
Blue Mountains NW of Sydney, I think. Malookalaka or Banananananana, some small town. Very pretty and eventually it warmed up, but my first two weeks I had to wear a jacket to take a walk.
Just to be clear, when my Australian friend promises that something will be in my hands by next summer, she means by next December, not next June?
If that’s the case, as it seems to be, it must get awful confusing for someone who travels back and forth and is in a seasonal line of work. “I’ll have the fall line ready by the end of winter, no worries, but I’ll have to travel back home by the spring, which is your autumn, of course, and come back before winter sets in again, no, not my winter, your winter, mate…”
It was in literally the first reply to the OP:
That depends on if your friend is the kind to use her own locale as a referent, or yours. But I would guess she means this December coming (“next December” is a bit ambiguous to me).
Although any professional communication should be more specific in terms of dates, not as nebulous as seasons, even in the fashion industry.
When I, in South Africa, communicate with work colleagues in Australia or Singapore, and I tell them “I’ll get it to you tomorrow morning”, I mean their morning, not mine. It’s only polite. But when I say “I won’t be in tomorrow afternoon”, I mean my afternoon. And when I say “I’m taking my summer holidays”, I mean I’m taking them in December.
Seasons as timeline points are a pain. It seems to be a bit of a US habit to use seasons to indicate when something will be appearing. I am constantly mentally adjusting for product announcements from US seasons to Oz. At least “fall” is unambiguous.
Most of the time Australians reference time to the span of the year. So mid-year, end of year, 1st quarter etc. When one hears seasons used it is a warning that you are hearing from an American. Unless there is a specific need to reference a season.
Translating between seasons takes little to no effort. So long as you have some clue where the other country is. We have to cope with the vagaries of international timezones, so seasons are no big deal.
So if I’m sailing around the world starting from London, i can tell my Australian friends that i hope to set off by the end of summer and arrive before summer begins for then and stay over until the next spring although i may need to fly back home during the winter if my business requires it, and then sail back home the summer after that, and everyone will understand my plans perfectly?
Mostly yes. But it could be misunderstood if one wasn’t careful. There are context dependent assumptions. (For instance, that plane travel is much faster than sail.)
ETA:
you might be sailing one of these:
That’s interesting. Even i don’t understand what I’m trying to say there.
That’s funny, “next December” is about the least ambiguous phrase I can imagine. If I’m writing to you in June 2022, as I am, and I say “next December,” it seems utterly clear that I’m referring to December 2022. If I meant December 2023, I would need to say “December after next.”
It makes perfect sense, because “summer” means the same thing to an Aussie as it does to a Brit: The time when it’s warm out. The time when it’s cold out is discontentful, and the time when it’s warm out is glorious. Whether the month when that happens is called “June” or “December” is completely irrelevant to that analogy, so even an uneducated Australian who didn’t know how seasons relate to hemispheres still wouldn’t be confused by that Shakespeare passage.
If it were a passage that was referring to times of year literally, rather than figuratively (say, someone saying online right now “I’m going to the beach this weekend”), then yes, an uneducated Australian might be confused, and an educated Australian would know about the differences of seasons and so be able to make sense of it. And I suspect that, with the way Northern Hemisphere media dominates global culture, especially English-speaking culture, that most Australians are sufficiently educated to know about the difference of seasons.
“This December” or “this coming December” or just “December” is December 2022 and “next December” is December 2023, in my dialect.
Yes, well, we are clearly speaking different dialects.
I just looked up on the map the town I stayed in–it was Wentworth Falls, about halfway between Bullaburra and Katoomba. I just loved those native towns’ names.
…I’m a New Zealander, not Australian, but the answer from here would be that we just wouldn’t say that. Why would we? Summer is different everywhere else in the world. December is not. So we would just say it would be in your hands in December, or in your hands next June, whichever would be appropriate.
Nope. Most of us would not. I wouldn’t have the foggiest what you were talking about. I barely know what season it is where I am right now. I literally had to ask my brother earlier today what season we were in right now. (It’s Winter.)
I don’t agree. I don’t have a clue what season it would be in America right now. Or what it is in the UK, or what it is in South Africa. And if someone were to say to me " i hope to set off by the end of summer and arrive before summer begins for then and stay over until the next spring although i may need to fly back home during the winter" I would simply stare at them blankly and go “WHAT.” Then ask them to repeat that, with dates.
Odd. It is pretty unambiguous. The one time you needed to be clear which summer you meant, you clarified it. Other than assuming that the year didn’t wrap around it is pretty easy to follow.
See post preceding yours.
What I’m finding a bit odd is all the UNambiguity being expressed in this thread, when folks from all over the globe are disagreeing with each other, confused by each other’s locutions, arguing over what usages are clear and which are not,etc. That seems to be making my case that there is, in fact, a lot of ambiguity here.
Doesn’t change anything. It is pretty unambiguous. It does need careful reading, but no more.
I would be hesitant to say something like that myself, since it starts to sound like a comedy routine. Most people would expect times relative to the year, not the seasons. But that is being polite.
But “politeness” can’t be taken for granted. If you tell me “three summers from now,” am I to assume that you are being polite and are referring to the months I would call “summer”? Perhaps I would think that you are a rude, self-centered sonofabitch and are using the Aussie term, which I might call winter, and so I would adjust for your rudeness. Or for your politeness. Hard to say.
That would not be unambiguous.
Perhaps the trick is that your first example was pretty unambiguous. Maybe that wasn’t intentional. I just said that I had no trouble parsing and interpreting it. It would not be hard to modify it to become hard or impossible to interpret.
Not to hijack the thread too much, but no, I agree with Dibble, and if it’s a dialect, it’s certainly not regional, since I’m about as far away from SA as can be.
It works the same way with days as with months. It would be especially odd if today was Friday, for instance, and you made a reference to “next Saturday”. I would assume you meant the next Saturday after this one, a week from tomorrow. By extension, if the day or month is less proximate, it simply becomes ambiguous.
One could try to argue that saying “next month” is a common and clear expression, but I think that just reinforces my point. “Next month” means “the month after this one”. But what does “next December” mean? Is it obvious that it should mean the same as “this December” as opposed to “the December after this one”? Not to me.