Not sure we disagree here, but I find ALL locutions involving time and the word “next” to be ambiguous. If I tell you to check this thread next December, are you 100% certain that I mean December of 2023, or December of 2022? I’m not. I’d probably wait to clarify: “Wait, are you saying in six months or in 18 months?”
Likewise, it’s often the case with days and weeks. “I’ll meet you for lunch next Monday” should get a clarifying question: “Is that in three days or in ten days?” Seems to me there’s some built in ambiguity. To some folks, “next” denotes one thing, and to others it denotes another.
Unsurprising, since the Australians you are talking about are descended from northern hemisphereans. I wonder what names the Aboriginals have for the seasons - if they even do name them?
This is trivially easy. You’re in NZ, right? So the seasons are the same as yours in South Africa, and the opposite in America and the UK. I don’t understand your confusion.
was unclear. If I don’t know what season it is where I am at the moment, how would I know what season it is in South Africa?
We just don’t tend to think of seasons in terms of date or month here. I know it’s common in America because that is reflected all the time in conversation that we see on TV. But that doesn’t tend to happen here. We don’t have “summer breaks.” I often barely notice the difference between autumn and winter. Its just a different paradigm.
One common notion among Americans is that there are official dates when the seasons change (usually assumed to be the equinoxes and solstices). Of course, there aren’t, even in the US: It’s just as valid to say “it’s summer starting with Memorial Day”, or “it’s summer as soon as school is out for the year”, or “it’s summer as soon as it’s warm enough to wear shorts”, or whatever your own personal standard is.
That said, while right this moment is perhaps a bit ambiguous, being after some definitions of “the start of summer” but before others, there is a significant span of the calendar, in any given season, when it’s unambiguous. And Americans won’t, for the most part, be confused by one person calling today “late spring” and another calling it “early summer” (though we would be confused by anyone around here calling it autumn or winter).
Yes, the four season pattern does not work well for most of Australia, which is either tropical with wet and dry cycles or temperate with often little difference except in the hottest and coldest peaks.
Our summer starts officially on 1 December, and each season gets 3 full calendar months. While there are calendar events like the ‘Autumn Racing Carnival’ I can’t think of anything that is actually changed with the clickover from one season to the next [in Japan there is, or was, a date where kids changed from their winter to summer uniforms, and this was observed whether the weather was still bitterly cold]
I have been to places where the difference between December–January and the rest of the year was, that was when you get over 12 inches of rain per month.
There are hundreds of mutually unintelligible Aboriginal languages; between that and the vastly different climates in, say, Victoria, the tropical north, and the mediterranean-climate south there’s no simple answer to that question except to say yes, they do name them.
I know you meant this as a joke, but I’ll use it as an opportunity to mention that, although Christmas time falls into summer on the Southern hemisphere, a cultural association with winter and snow is still there, and shopping malls will play Jingle Bells. Must be strong cultural influence from the North.
We do have the decorated evergreen trees and fake snow … but we also go to the beach on Boxing Day and have a pavlova* right next to our Christmas pud.
* Yes, New Zealanders, we have appropriated this great dessert of Kiwi origin. Sorry, Australians, I can’t hear what you’re yelling about over the sound of me chewing these lamingtons
My BIL is from Perth, and every Christmas growing up they’d have a big roast or some other heavy meal best suited for a cold environment, when it was bloody hot out. One year they decided to switch things up and have salads, cold cuts, etc, and it turned out to be a raw, chilly day. The next year they went back to the roast.
We tend to have a roast with veg and salads and cold cuts. It’s usually hot at Christmas, but I don’t associate a roast gammon or bird with “cold weather” the way I do hot soups and stews. Possibly because I grew up having a Sunday roast every week, year-round (usually roast chicken or leg-of-lamb)
Do southern hemisphere Christians sing a lot of traditional Christmas songs around December 25th, all about delightfully frosty wintry weather, Jack Frost’s nose, riding through the snow etc, or are they all “What Northern hemisphere bullshit is that?”
