this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
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OK, but most native speakers of a language have feelings towards their own language, and want to continue to speak it as they learnt it. Why should the speakers of a one language have any say over how the speakers of another language speak? What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word "Stuhl" and start using the word "chair" instead? My feelings are irrelevant because it's not my language and have no rights or interests in the matter.
What happens in multilingual countries? Should the English-speaking majority of Wales be able to dictate to the Welsh-speaking minority that the country is called Wales rather than Cymru ? Should the English-speaking majority of England be able to dictate to Welsh-speaking Welsh residents of England that they should stop using the name Lloegr? Or vice-versa? Shall we call Switzerland Die Schweiz or La Suisse or Svizzera or Svizra? Do you think the German people - or perhaps the German government - should go and tell speakers of Sorbian that they have to stop calling Germany Nimska and must instead use a different word? Do you like where this is going? I mean there were never any problems in Germany before that smell similar to this.
No, this is all rubbish and nonsense. Let people speak their languages. Literally nothing bad happens if you do, and if you go the other way it opens a massive can of ethnically-oppressive worms where one ethnic group gets to tell others what to do.
So does every person get called a different name in every country they visit? What about your pet?
It is normal - in most European languages at least - for proper nouns to be treated differently. And usually the names we use for places ARE the same across languages or at least extremely similar. I think it makes sense for someone to be surprised and curious in cases where that isn't true.
And I find the reasons in this and a bunch of similar cases to be really interesting, often weird, and sometimes pretty stupid to still be in use. Including the name China (and variations of it).
If you would be a people of the nation of chair, then yes. But turns out you're not, because chair isn't a country and you're just making a useless comparison.
The only one who's talking about forcing this on anyone, is you. So instead of getting all agitated over it you could just stop?
Anyway in your opinion Turkey has no right or reason to ask others to use it's original Türkiye instead?
I'll answer your question if you answer the questions I already asked about Wales, England, Germany and Switzerland. Though my position should be obvious.
Türkiye cannot in any reasonable sense be called "original" either - it's the word naming the country in Turkish but like all words except those coined recently it has undergone etymological changes to become what it is today. Calling it "original" makes it sound like the Turks came up with a name they still use and the English got it wrong. That's not what happened.