Bonus points if there’s a known onomatopoeia to describe the sound.
“Myrornas krig”
“The war of the ants”
This goes so fucking hard
Which country/language? In Turkish, the idea is similar but the wording a bit different, “karıncalanma” (being ant-y) is commonly used. Same thing is also used for when a body part goes numb due to having it in weird position for some time, like sleeping with your arm under your body or sitting on the toilet too much and having your legs be numb.
There is also “parazit yapma” (making/doing parasites) used for the television thing.
Swedish (:
As for the numbness, if a foot goes numb, then we normally say that we “have sand in the foot” or that “the foot is asleep”
Ive never heard the sand in foot as a Swede.
“Sand i foten” är ett ganska vanligt begrepp i min umgängeskrets
Får jag fråga vilken del av landet? Bott upp och ner västkusten och inte hört.
Nordöstra delen av Storstockholm
Ah, nice. Sand idiom does not ring a bell, but the “asleep” is quite common probably. In Turkish, the word for numb (uyuşmak) is actually derived from the word for sleeping (uyumak), so just wanted to share that, too.
Salt and pepper fight!
In Poland it was „śnieży” (snowing).
How’s that pronounced? Sorry for coming achoo with too many cultural questions
I am not even able to write it phonetically in English. Ask Google Translate - its pronunciation is close-enough.
…and if you are interested in the sound of static rather than the image, then the Polish word is: „szumi”. This can be approximated in English as: ‘shoomy’. The ‘sz’ sound does sound like static.
The funny thing is that our ‘sz’ (in „szumi”) and ‘ś’ (in „śnieży”) usually sound exactly the same to English or French speakers, while for us they are quite distinct sounds.
What prompted this question is some Japanese TV service ended this past weekend for a relative and the word to describe the static noise was “sand storm”.
Thought it might be interesting to hear what it’s called elsewhere.
So Japan still uses analog broadcast TV? Maybe it’s different for other US TVs, but since the switch to the digital broadcast system my TVs show black when a channel is not available. Snow has gone the way of the old test pattern of years ago.
Analog went offline in Japan around 2010/2011 if my memory serves me correctly, but some still have digital receivers that works with the RF jack. Now more or less it’s out of style and the static is just proverbial.
Always called it “Ant races”
I use a related phrase in Photoshop. If you have something selected, the movement around the thing is “running ants”.
That’s neat! What’s your country/region?
Oregon, USA about 30 years ago
I’ve come to refer to it as static/snow but I specifically remember hearing it called ants/ant races as a child some 40 years ago. The husband of the elderly couple that took care of us base kids would insist he had a favorite and could tell if it was winning.
I get some strange comfort that it is called that by others and wasn’t some abstraction of my memory
Me too! It was about 30 years ago for me.
“the war of the ants” (myrornas krig)
/Sweden
Know the term ‘Ants Soccer’, quite similar (Germany)
Ameisen Fußball? Never heard of that, super cool
In Germany it’s called “Weißes Rauschen” (so akin to white noise, white rustling / murmuring?). It seems to be both about the sound (rauschen) and the visuals (weiß).
Snow rain
… and sound was just called “hiss” or “white noise”
We called it “flies” or “snow”.
“Bures” – javanese
No. But I did learn that if you put your sunglasses over one eye and look at it, it makes a trippy 3D motion effect.
Salt and pepper fight!
In Croatia, we call(ed) it ‘snow’ (snijeg).
In China we call it snow and describe the sound using the exact onomatopoeia as rain
“Snow” in Norway.
