CDZ Happiest countries in world

[Unkotare]

... I have. I think that more than adequately qualifies me as knowing what I'm talking about....

You haven't, and it wouldn't if you had.

 

[Unkotare]

...

1. Chinese, like any other language,... can be practised and learnt....

No one ever claimed that Mandarin cannot be learned, so this point is moot.

 

[Unkotare]

....

1. Verbs don’t conjugate in Chinese.....

CO-VERBS IN MANDARIN CHINESE: VERBS OR PREPOSITIONS? on JSTOR


TRANSITIVITY AND SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE BǍ CONSTRUCTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE on JSTOR


Object preposing in Mandarin Chinese - Springer


The Copy Theory of Movement

 

[Unkotare]

...

1. There are no noun cases in Chinese.....

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.462.9170&rep=rep1&type=pdf



An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie



On the So-Called Sov Word Order in Mandarin Chinese: A Quantified Text Study and Its Implications on JSTOR



Perfective Aspect and Accomplishment Situations in Mandarin Chinese - Springer



Topic and Topic-Comment Constructions in Mandarin Chinese on JSTOR



A Synchronic Phonology of Mandarin Chinese

 

[Unkotare]

....

1. If you can learn whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter in another language, then why should remembering the tones for a word in Mandarin be any more difficult?
2. You don’t need to be able to sing to pronounce Chinese tones. (But being a good singer will help you meet people because karaoke is very popular in China, and lots of Chinese people can sing pretty well, especially considering that they are amateurs.)
3. All languages have intonation, you use it when you raise your voice to ask a question, therefore tones are not that difficult for anybody to use.
4. Even if you make mistakes with tones, people can generally still understand.
5. Like most other places on the planet, it is still perfectly possible to communicate even if your pronunciation is not completely right......

A Cross-Linguistic PET Study of Tone Perception in Mandarin Chinese and English Speakers



Pitch targets and their realization: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese



Word-Form Encoding in Mandarin Chinese as Assessed by the Implicit Priming Task



"Contextual tonal variation in Mandarin Chinese" by Yi Xu



Speaker normalization in the perception of Mandarin Chinese tones



THE EVALUATION AND INTEGRATION OF PITCH HEIGHT AND PITCH CONTOUR IN LEXICAL TONE PERCEPTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE on JSTOR

 

[Tank]

Jews are good people

So are black folk. That was my point. BTW red, brown and yellow are nice folks too.

That's not what the OP's article says

 

[Militants]

I am 50/50 happy in Sweden . .

I've smaller economy in pension . .

Over 1000 euro per month . .

 

[Elvis Obama]

It is no coincidence that these are the most socialized nations among the advanced democracies. It is also worth noting that quite a few of them have kings or queens as head of state, hereditary aristocracies, and a significant millionaire/billionaire class. They are also far better adjusted to modern environmental concers, have tiny murder and gun violence rates, no slum cities and no children with inadequate food. Their kids also get better educations. They all have universal, government regulated heal insurance as well.

With the exception of Norway and Canada, these successful nations do not have significant petroleum reserves. They are quite successful in export trade. Their government debt and taxes as a percent of GDP are in roughly the same brackets as ours. There is really only one conclusion: these countries are much better run.

I think most Americans would be shocked to learn how much better things are managed outside of God's Country. A few reality TV shows about the life of working class families in these countries would be a real eye-opener for most of us.

These countries are relatively heterogeneous. They also have cultures which are the result of very lengthy periods of internal stability. If countries are embroiled in internal conflict it's hard to top out the "happiness" meter.

You might want to check out the current statistics for Scandinavian population. About one Swede in five is a foreigner. Australia has big immigrant numbers from all over the world. Canada is teeming with Muslims.

I agree with you about the internal conflict. America has been in internal conflict sincel 1860. I don't think that America has ever been a very happy place.

They all have factors which minimize conflict, whether homogeneity or population density. Heterogeneity can be measured by ethnic, linguistic, religious, economic or any other differences. I think it's pretty much a given that differences of all kinds contribute to friction between peoples, rather than diminish it.

 

[Unkotare]

It is no coincidence that these are the most socialized nations among the advanced democracies. It is also worth noting that quite a few of them have kings or queens as head of state, hereditary aristocracies, and a significant millionaire/billionaire class. They are also far better adjusted to modern environmental concers, have tiny murder and gun violence rates, no slum cities and no children with inadequate food. Their kids also get better educations. They all have universal, government regulated heal insurance as well.

With the exception of Norway and Canada, these successful nations do not have significant petroleum reserves. They are quite successful in export trade. Their government debt and taxes as a percent of GDP are in roughly the same brackets as ours. There is really only one conclusion: these countries are much better run.

I think most Americans would be shocked to learn how much better things are managed outside of God's Country. A few reality TV shows about the life of working class families in these countries would be a real eye-opener for most of us.

These countries are relatively heterogeneous. They also have cultures which are the result of very lengthy periods of internal stability. If countries are embroiled in internal conflict it's hard to top out the "happiness" meter.

You might want to check out the current statistics for Scandinavian population. About one Swede in five is a foreigner. Australia has big immigrant numbers from all over the world. Canada is teeming with Muslims.

I agree with you about the internal conflict. America has been in internal conflict sincel 1860. I don't think that America has ever been a very happy place.

They all have factors which minimize conflict, whether homogeneity or population density. Heterogeneity can be measured by ethnic, linguistic, religious, economic or any other differences. I think it's pretty much a given that differences of all kinds contribute to friction between peoples, rather than diminish it.

By which reasoning, all people should live locked in tiny individual cells forever.

 

[Unkotare]

...

The fact that one would honestly believe I have not shown Chinese is easy to speak is a function of one's unfamiliarity with linguistics and the various components of language that make it harder or easier to learn. ...

Quite the contrary, as it turns out...

 

[Holos]

How do you measure the relations of "happinness quotient" between different countries, considering they are very expansive territories and their rates of happinness variable?

What are the standards used to make the measurements? Number of smiles? Frequency of smiles? Colors? Smells? Words? Greetings?

 

[Unkotare]

It is no coincidence that these are the most socialized nations among the advanced democracies. It is also worth noting that quite a few of them have kings or queens as head of state, hereditary aristocracies, and a significant millionaire/billionaire class. They are also far better adjusted to modern environmental concers, have tiny murder and gun violence rates, no slum cities and no children with inadequate food. Their kids also get better educations. They all have universal, government regulated heal insurance as well.

With the exception of Norway and Canada, these successful nations do not have significant petroleum reserves. They are quite successful in export trade. Their government debt and taxes as a percent of GDP are in roughly the same brackets as ours. There is really only one conclusion: these countries are much better run.

I think most Americans would be shocked to learn how much better things are managed outside of God's Country. A few reality TV shows about the life of working class families in these countries would be a real eye-opener for most of us.

These countries are relatively heterogeneous. They also have cultures which are the result of very lengthy periods of internal stability. If countries are embroiled in internal conflict it's hard to top out the "happiness" meter.

You might want to check out the current statistics for Scandinavian population. About one Swede in five is a foreigner. Australia has big immigrant numbers from all over the world. Canada is teeming with Muslims.

I agree with you about the internal conflict. America has been in internal conflict sincel 1860. I don't think that America has ever been a very happy place.

They all have factors which minimize conflict, whether homogeneity or population density. Heterogeneity can be measured by ethnic, linguistic, religious, economic or any other differences. I think it's pretty much a given that differences of all kinds contribute to friction between peoples, rather than diminish it.

By which reasoning, all people should live locked in tiny individual cells forever.

.

 

[Fishlore]

The happiest countries have the best social support systems. People want governments which help them in the pursuit of happiness and they are happier when the get it. So called "small government" is a euphemism for "screw the poor."

 

[Unkotare]

The happiest countries have the best social support systems. People want governments which help them in the pursuit of happiness and they are happier when the get it. So called "small government" is a euphemism for "screw the poor."

Liberals can't conceive of "support system" as anything other than other people's money.

 

[320 Years of History]

How [does one] measure the relations of "happinness quotient" between different countries, considering they are very expansive territories and their rates of happinness variable?

What are the standards used to make the measurements? Number of smiles? Frequency of smiles? Colors? Smells? Words? Greetings?

Red:
Bizarre question to ask given that the answer, relative to the information presented in the OP which derives from the World Happiness Report 2016 (WHR), resides in the content found at the WHR link provided in the OP. Don't take "bizarre" as a criticism; take it as an observation and recollection of an axiom often repeated by one of the women who helped raise me. She said, "The Lord helps those who help themselves."

A cursory look at the WHR's main page documents reveals that the editor-authors of the report clearly, precisely and comprehensively explain in "Inside the Life Satisfaction Blackbox" the methodology they used to arrive at the happiness measures and rankings depicted in the WHR, and they do so both operationally and theoretically. An abridged discussion of the authors' approach is found in "The Distribution of World Happiness" chapter of the basic report.

The ["Inside the Life Satisfaction Blackbox"] paper is divided into five sections (including Introduction and Conclusions), organized as follows. In the second section, we illustrate our theoretical framework and the two hypotheses to be tested. In the third section, we discuss descriptive findings and present our econometric specifications. In the fourth section, we present and discuss econometric findings and illustrate several robustness checks. The fifth section presents our conclusion.​

Furthermore, the WHR FAQ answers at a high level some of the questions careful readers of the full document would likely have. Among those questions:

• What is the original source of the data for Figure 2.2? How are the rankings calculated?
  
• What is your sample size for figure 2.2?
  
• Is this sample size really big enough to calculate rankings?
  
• Where do the sub-bars come from for each of the six explanatory factors?
  
• Why do we use these six factors to explain life evaluations?

Also, the WHR includes data appendices that show how the data the report uses were constructed.

Blue:
??? The rates of happiness in the various countries are precisely what the WHR depicts. Of course they vary; one cannot rank the happiness of each country residents were happiness not variable. The basic observation that happiness does vary is part and parcel of why the WHR' authors bothered to quantify and qualify it.


Other:
After reading the WHR, I think the most important thing to take from it isn't the rankings or any given country's place in them, but rather that high incomes and wealth alone cannot and does not ensure happiness. Yes, income matters. Economic development is important, especially the escape from extreme poverty. Health matters as well, both physical and mental. No surprises there. But what is perhaps most important is our lives as “social animals,” to use Aristotle’s famous phrase.

Life satisfaction depends on strong social support networks, on generosity and voluntarism, on “generalized trust” among strangers in the society, and on the trust in government. People living in places where government is corrupt suffer the pain of less satisfaction in their own lives. The basic point that well-being depends not only on wealth but also on the quality of our human relations is at once obvious (who could deny it?) but somehow absent from our politics and our daily discourse. We don’t have headlines declaring “trust and integrity are down in the U.S.”, but we have endless news headlines declaring “GDP growth has slowed.”

Our society increasingly values people and their behavior according to their wealth, not to their integrity. Many of our leading CEOs preside over companies that have committed massive financial crimes -- fraud, price rigging, insider trading, and more -- and have paid tens of billions of dollars in fines; yet these CEOs are still revered because they are rich, and they remain frequent guests at the White House for the same reason. Can there be any doubt why trust is down in the U.S.? Society is more unequal, and our leading businesses seem relentlessly to cut corners, if not to flagrantly break the law.


On the upside, perhaps the U.S. has, since 2013, learned something from Denmark. Back then the U.S. was 17th. For 2016, it is 13th.

 

[Picaro]

1.Denmark
2.Switzerland
3.Iceland
4.Norway
5.Finland
6.Canada
7.Netherlands
8.New Zealand
9.Australia
10.Sweden

The Ultimate top ten list.

And all of them rely on the US tax payers and military to protect them and their oil

The Kiwis have contributed more militarily to world peace then the Scandies and Swiss combined, and they're freakin tiny; with the exception of the Ozzies and maybe Canada; the rest have no worries, as everybody else takes care of that for them, including propping up their economies, so they can be fat, dumb, and happy if they chose to be. I can buy Ozzies, Kiwis, and Kanucks as relatively 'happy', but the others on the list are a stretch.

Finland???? This is one of those Onion polls, right???? lol lol lol

The Soviets and Maoists were always pronouncing their people as 'happy', too.

 

[Picaro]

Finland???? This is one of those Onion polls, right???? lol lol lol

The Soviets and Maoists were always pronouncing their people as 'happy', too.

Ah ... I was very close; it was a CNN poll, which are even funnier, as they actually are supposed to be 'serious', but are too incompetent to pull it off.