# Overheard in the Natural History Museum **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 26, 2013, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444 "2013-01-26T16:37:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/21 "2013-01-27T17:49:38Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Challenge: come up with a single sentence as wrong as that. Easy. “That’s one of the creatures that didn’t survive the Great Flood.” ---
**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/22 "2013-01-27T20:19:12Z")
My 6th grade teacher: “B.C. means, 'Before Christ”, and A.D. means, 'After Died" Everyone in the class was quick to correct him. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/23 "2013-01-28T08:25:35Z")
A grandmother to a little child at a zoo watching an arctic fox walking around among the bears: “When the bears are small they are white, but they turn brown when they grow up”. ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/24 "2013-01-28T14:07:17Z")
My friends daughter was overheard ‘The Beatles were Paul McCartneys back up band before he got Wings’. ---
**Author:** ![Courk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@Courk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Courk)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/25 "2013-01-28T14:14:17Z")
“The Red Sea, A.K.A. the Reed Sea, is also known as the Dead Sea because the reeds grow too close together for anything to swim between them.” -My 8th grade history teacher ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/26 "2013-01-28T15:59:41Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Challenge: come up with a single sentence as wrong as that. I was at the Cincinnati zoo walking around the primate building, when I stopped at display full of gibbons or spider monkeys or some other small jumpy/climby type monkey. A mother and her two sons were also at the cage watching them. After a moment, the mother said ‘Boys, these are hyenas.’ There was a plaque next to the cage identifying them. They were clearly monkeys. I stood there dumbfounded for a bit, and then had to leave the area so I could laugh. I felt so bad for those kids. ---
**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/27 "2013-01-28T17:48:52Z")
A few years ago, I went to the traveling King Tut exhibit as it was down in LA. This exhibit had many things, but it didn’t have the famous death mask or sarcophagus. What it did have, however, was a miniature version of the famed sarcophagus (a lil’ canopic coffin, as it were). While looking at this item, I hear another patron have the following exchange with their child: > [@](#): > > Kid: “Why’s it so small? How can a whole person fit in there?” > Dad: “Because back then, people were much smaller than today.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/28 "2013-01-28T18:57:04Z")
A couple I know from Montreal (but originally from Romania) were traveling in a northern Chicago suburb (Niles, I believe) when they came on the full-sized (I think) model of the leaning tower of Pisa. They got out of the car awestruck and finally one of them exclaimed, “Only in America!” A passer-by overheard this and said to them, “No, there’s one just like it in Italy”! Nearly as dumb was this exchange that took place in Montreal’s Mirabel airport. My son seeing a Sabena flight, asked me what Sabena meant. Before I could hazard a guess (I think it is Societe Belgique National) a woman passing by and overhearing him turned and said, “It probably means airlines in [long pause, then finally] their language”! Then I once saw the opening sentence of a paper by the late Roman Jacobson, a world-famous linguist, that states something like, “Most people think that the linguistic situation in Norway is rather like that of Belgium.” What could he have possibly meant by this? ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/29 "2013-01-28T19:06:35Z")
This reminds me of a Simpsons episode, the one where Homer tries to be an inventor _Homer and Bart run up to Edison museum_ Bart: “Alright, the museum’s still open!” Man in line slaps his kid on the head Man: “Why can’t YOU be that excited?” ---
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/30 "2013-01-28T19:31:44Z")
A couple of years ago, at the Smithsonian’s American History museum, in the maritime section, there was a display of this image or one very similar to it: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=ms-android-sprint-us&tbo=d&site=webhp&tbm=isch&source=hp&oq=MIDDLE+PASSAGE+&gs\_l=mobile-gws-hp.12..0l5.1540.16247.0.17705.32.22.5.2.2.1.630.4127.0j1j5j2j2j2.12.0.les%3Behyp,a%3D1,b%3D1000,n%3D5,t%3D2,r%3D5..0.0...1ac.1.7B1ZEoj5vmo&q=MIDDLE%20PASSAGE&biw=533&bih=320&sei=iNAGUdr3NpG10QGnyICwAQ#i=9](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=ms-android-sprint-us&tbo=d&site=webhp&tbm=isch&source=hp&oq=MIDDLE+PASSAGE+&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.12..0l5.1540.16247.0.17705.32.22.5.2.2.1.630.4127.0j1j5j2j2j2.12.0.les%3Behyp,a%3D1,b%3D1000,n%3D5,t%3D2,r%3D5..0.0...1ac.1.7B1ZEoj5vmo&q=MIDDLE%20PASSAGE&biw=533&bih=320&sei=iNAGUdr3NpG10QGnyICwAQ#i=9), with accompanying text about the middle passage. A middle-aged woman with a Pennsylvania accent tells her high school-aged daughter “They didn’t mistreat the slaves like that, they were too valuable”. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/31 "2013-01-28T19:41:29Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Then I once saw the opening sentence of a paper by the late Roman Jacobson, a world-famous linguist, that states something like, “Most people think that the linguistic situation in Norway is rather like that of Belgium.” What could he have possibly meant by this? One guess: most people in Belgium speak either Dutch or French, and the Netherlands and France are also countries in their own right. Whereas they speak Norwegian in Norway, but it is mutually intellible with Swedish and Danish, so the sentence might mean that some people assume that they mainly speak Danish and Swedish in Norway? (just a wild guess) ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/32 "2013-01-28T19:54:36Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Then I once saw the opening sentence of a paper by the late Roman Jacobson, a world-famous linguist, that states something like, “Most people think that the linguistic situation in Norway is rather like that of Belgium.” What could he have possibly meant by this? From [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Norway): > [@](#): > > Known as Språkstriden in Norwegian, the Norwegian language struggle is a movement rooted in both Norwegian nationalism and the 400 years of Danish rule in Norway (see Denmark-Norway). The koiné (mixed language) known as Dano-Norwegian (Dansk-Norsk) which developed in Norwegian cities was the result of Danish replacing Norwegian as the language of the elite in that country (Danish was used in courts of law, by the cultured, and, after the Lutheran Reformation of 1536, replaced Latin as a liturgical language). An adoption of Norwegian orthography into the Danish language gave rise to the written standard of Riksmål, which later became Bokmål. Nynorsk, a new standard of Norwegian based upon the spoken language in rural Norway, was acknowledged by the parliament in 1885, and in 1892 it was first possible to use Nynorsk as a language of primary instruction. By 1920, Nynorsk was being used widely in western Norway and the mountain valleys, where it still has its stronghold, and Bokmål was used in the more populous areas of the country. Later, attempts were made to reconcile the two standards into Samnorsk, or “Common Norwegian”, although this never came to fruition. I assume he was alluding to the analogous tensions between Dutch and French speakers in Belgium. I would quibble with his use of the term “most people,” though. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2013, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/33 "2013-01-29T08:53:25Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > … (I think it is Societe Belgique National) … I thought it meant _Societé Aeronautique Belguique National_ (or something similar), but when I looked it up I found it’s _Societé Anonyme Belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne_. As for Norway, keep in mind that Bokmål and Nynorsk aren’t two different languages like French and Dutch in Belgium. It’s just two different standards for written Norwegian. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2013, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444/34 "2013-01-29T15:54:37Z")
No, sorry, SABENA stood (it’s defunct) for Such A Bad Experience, Never Again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-the-natural-history-museum/648444.md?page=1)