Hacker News Reader

Comment by asimpleusecase | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Mongolia for a year and got to stay a couple days in real yurts.

The round wall directs wind around the structure and local people hang a heavy weight from the center of the yurt to give it resistance to the lifting force of the wind.

They are cool in the summer with the bottom edge of canvas rolled up to allow airflow. ( but also mosquitoes)and warm in the winter when a layer of thick wool felt is layered over the whole structure and covered with canvas. In the centre is a stove that can burn wood or dried animal dung.

They are very spacious.

You can tell the time by the sun shadow on the floor via the smoke hole in the centre.

BTW if you enter a yurt and in Mongolia don’t step on the door still it is rude.

If you sleep over don’t be shocked when members of the family take off clothes to change. Modesty is the responsibility of the viewer.

View on HN

>"Modesty is the responsibility of the viewer."

This reminds me of what my father - from a very rural, poor, small community - told about my grandparents and his upbringing. Tiny house, not many bedrooms but many kids (in the end 10 children), so it was common for many of the youngest ones to sleep in the same bed as my grandparents. And yet they still conceived new babies (they're all 2 or 3 years apart from each other)! Sounds a bit crazy in these modern times.

Ya can have sex at times other than while the kids are in the bed too, presumably.

Kids sleep pretty soundly.

> BTW if you enter a yurt and in Mongolia don’t step on the door still it is rude.

I'm sorry, one is expected to step on the door still? Here in South East Asia that'd be considered rude.

What's a door still?

a door sill is the threshold of the door (like windowsill), but I'm not sure he meant it like that at all

I think he could indeed be right, I was curious about that too and came across this page[0] about Mongolian gers (aka yurt) which includes the following etiquette guidelines:

- When approaching a Mongolian ger it is customary to say, “Nokhoigo Khorioroi” which means “Hold the dog,” even if you don’t see a dog. This is because guard dogs are common and a dog may be aggressive towards visitors, but it in general alerts the occupants to your presence so they can come out and greet you.

- Never knock on a ger door. It is considered rude. You simply enter.

- When entering a Mongolian ger, step with your right foot first and never stand on the threshold. The threshold is said to be the “neck” of the ger and standing on it tantamount to “strangling” the home.

- Mongolians don't chat to each other over the threshold. Step in rather than asking things through the doorway.

- To greet your hosts say, “Sain bain uu?” (pronounced “Sey-Ben-Oo”) – meaning “how do you do?” If you are entering for the second, third, fourth time, you can just say “Sen-ooo”, meaning “Hi!”.

Today we both learned :)

[0] https://notesofnomads.com/mongolian-gers/#Ger_etiquette_The_...

Greetings in Mongolian are fun because the question and the response are so similar.

- сайн yy?

- сайн, сайн yy?

- сайн, <...>

Took me awhile to learn to hear the various elaborations on that for different types of people.

really:

  - fine, you?

  - fine.. fine.. you?

  - fine :)

heh,

The yy/uu is an interrogative that turns the preceding sentence into a question, so it disappears. Literally translated, it's just:

- good?

- good, good?

- good, <...>

But the actual meaning is:

- how's it going?

- good, how 'bout you?

- fine, <...>

There's simply a few layers of simplification going on to get from the 'correct' grammar to here. Native speakers will use small differences in emphasis between the words, but I'm not nearly fluent enough for that.

Here's the french one:

    - ça va ?
    - ça va, ça va... ça va toi ?
    - ça va :)

The `toi` is optional but there's a bit leg pulling involved.

I particularly appreciate that this is literally "Does it go? It goes. Does it go for you? It goes."

Native speakers don't generally look inside idioms the way non-native speakers do. English is full of equally odd-looking constructions. Still, this amuses me all the time in French.

One does not simply enter a Mongolian ger, evidently.

Stop writing simply <magic incantation> in the documentation ;)

> “Never knock on a ger door. It is considered rude. You simply enter.”

I suppose this is because you will be met well before you arrive at the door-the resident will come out to greet you, presumably because their dog alerted to your presence?

What do you say if you don’t want someone to enter your yurt? My dog is hungry and thinks you’re lunch?

I think that across Europe it is considered unlucky, or inappropriate to step on a door still (threshold?). I mean Europe as in European folklore.

In India, at least South India, it's considered unlucky to give or receive anything through the door threshold; either party goes to the other side and hands over (food, money, bag, etc.).

Apparently it's called threshold in english[0], which is interesting to me, since it is called the same in Slovak ("prah"). I thought prah is a homonym, since I don't see the connection to the mathematic threshold.

Anyway, many south-east Asia temples have the same rule - don't step on the door threshold.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_(architecture)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com