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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

USA is nearly 250 years old. Most European states are younger, even though European peoples and cultures are indeed old. Italy is young, Rome is old.

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Italy is old. It was founded in 7 bc by Augustus: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regioni_dell%27Italia_augustea...

Sure it unified again only in the 19th century, but it has had a great degree of cultural union throughout its entire history. It is actually one of the most homogeneous countries in terms of language, religion and culture. Italians like to think otherwise for some reason. Sorry for the digression!

As an Italian, I would like to learn how you measured the level of homogeneity of language and culture (on religion I agree with you).

The differences in language and in culture were definitely reduced only in very recent years AFAIK, and still remain noticeable.

About language, you have to consider how many Italians are (still today) effectively bi-lingual, Italian and local dialect, with the latter ranging from very similar to very different from Italian.

All italian dialects derive from a single language, with very low influence from the outside. Most Italian dialects are actually intelligible to an Italian speaker in written form and become difficult to understand only because of pronunciation. Try reading a few Wikipedia articles in different Italian dialects and you'll realize you understand at least 90% of text for all of them, possibly with the only exception of Sardinian.

Additionally, dialects were never the language of higher culture anywhere in Italy, all intellectuals have always used a common language and had a nationwide audience even when the country was politically fractured in many states. Said common language being Latin for many centuries after the fall of the Roman empire and Italian from around year 1500.

Dialects are rarely written, they are spoken and while (obviously) usually someone natively speaking a given dialect can talk with someone from another near region, dialects from the north (say Lombardia or Veneto) are so different from those of the south (say Campania or Sicilia) that they are effectively distinct languages.

The above is the hypothetical case of two unschooled people, as said before most if not all italians are bi-lingual with their own dialect and switch automatically to italian (possibly with some local peculiar forms or accent) that is the common language when talking to some "foreigner".

As you say, italians can usually understand (in written form) a dialect because of the common roots, but for what it matters an Italian with some good Latin knowledge can usually get the overall sense of written text in Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and possibly French.

The unification of language to Italian has been a process that went on for decades, through schooling and later radio and television, when Italy was re-united in the decade 1860-1870 it was a tower of Babel.

Imagine the conversation between a (unschooled) soldier from Friuli attempting to interact with a (as well unschooled) farmer in Sicily in the early years of the unified state.

My European house is older.

Indeed. There are many houses in Europe that survived 3-4 different states claiming the land on which they stand.

Well, I live in England, so unless we count devolution (of some powers in other UK constituents) or changes of royal household, just the one in my case ;)

England is pretty stable. Some places on the continent, not so much, esprcially to the east and south of modern Germany.

Side question - always been curious. Surely these houses were not designed for plumbing, electrical, efficient insulation, etc. Do they just bodge these things onto the outside of walls, or how does that work?

Mixed, but sometimes there's trunking on walls yes. I have a little bit of that (for something disused actually, plan to remove, I've not long moved in) but it's mostly under floorboards. (There are also would-be exposed pipes in the kitchen, hidden behind counters, I believe - but they probably would have done that anywhere, that's a relatively modern extension.)

Insulation is a more complicated topic - if you're going to do it you need to do it differently, since modern new-builds and modern insulation is designed around making everything air & water tight, which will make an old house very damp and rotten (which will lead to woodworm/boring beetle) - the structure needs to 'breath'.

I've lived in a couple of houses built in the mid 1700s with parts even older than that. They were cob cottages, one with a thatched roof, so very thick walls instead of insulation. Plumbing and electrics were just added over the years. Windows were single glazed, so not very efficient. But pretty comfortable nevertheless, provided you remember to duck when going under beams. Houses this old are not unusual where I live in Devon, but most are more recent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_(material)

Many of them are basically not insulated; the vast majority of "old Europe" is in more temperate climates for obvious reasons. And in the colder areas, you have the immense thermal mass of brick/stone buildings. Sealing air gaps provides some help.

Plumbing and electrical is "simpler" to run than it may seem, but it does result in unexpected locations for bathrooms, etc, as those were often added wherever they could fit them in.

Remember that given the population growth, the vast majority of the people living in Europe are not living in 300+ year old buildings.

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