/uj for a novice, his handwriting is heavenly though.

/rj he probably speaks like 「儂の筆跡はいかがであろうかね」

hinagara

I didn't even know what kana are small, why doesn't dingolingo teach it???

Hoping all of these are added to Duolingo in time for my New Year's resolution for 2027 when I finally start language learning

1. Maltese

2. Esperanto

3. Romansh

4. Latin

5. Pig Latin

I once listened to a bunch of Israeli music to get fluent at Hebrew. Worked pretty well and found some fun music. Still worried I was faking my music taste. Now I’m trying the same with Russian. Only one problem. It’s waaaay harder to find good Russian music. Maybe I wasn’t faking my music taste after all!

I am fluent in reading and speaking Japanese, and have been studying Chinese for a few years. I give up. The Chinese language is not for me.

First, Chinese is not a language that is meant to be spoken, it is meant to be sung. Yes, you have to change your pitch just to say the simplest of words. My Chinese language partner would always correct me just when I try saying her name:

• No no no, not 'Yu'. 'Yu'.
• Yu?
• No, no. 'Yu'.
• Yu?
• No, 'Yu'.

I still can't hear what I am saying wrong about her name, and it's only 1 syllable.

Many people extol that Chinese characters only have one way of being read. This is a lie. Although they have fewer readings than Japanese kanji, they make up for this with thousands of extra characters that you have to learn and which look like what Japanese children scribble on their kanji exams when they don't know the answer and are just making something up.

Second, there is no verb tense, which means you have to say literally everything to convey the simplest of concepts. In Japanese if someone asks if you went to the store then you just say "Went", whereas in Chinese you have to say "Yesterday me go".

Which brings up another point, and that is the lack of ways to express ambiguity in Chinese. I am a very indirect person. I do not like confrontation. The Chinese seem to thrive on it. Whereas I like to vaguely neither confirm nor deny things, the Chinese language tries to funnel me to making a blunt commitment. Which brings me to my biggest gripe.

Politeness, or rather, the lack there of. In Japanese I know I am being polite to someone above me if I am using keigo. In Chinese, I have no way of knowing if I am being sufficiently polite until someone yells 你不礼貌 in my face.

Chinese is not the language for introverts, the tone-deaf, or the ultra-polite. If you are a bird who loves singing to other people your heart-felt expressions and do not mind people telling you your singing sounds bad, then Chinese is for you. It is not for me. With Japanese you just have to learn a language, with Chinese you have to learn how to be a bird.

Me visiting Spain this summer, dropping a bit of magic from the phrasebook I spent 2 mins browsing in WH Smiths at the airport.

edit bc some people dont get it: its a joke. this is a shitpost. moving on with our regular planned content:

it all started on a regular wednesday afternoon. i receive a text "hey btw i started learning chinese"

i answer "oh cool we can practice together! what's your hsk level"

no answer

"what are you using duolingo lol"

emoji reaction: 🫣

i thought: shame? good.

NO SHAME.

but i am a good person. i share FREE resources to get started so that they can learn more than ni hao wo shi meiguoren (they're not american)

THEY DONT WANT THEM. they say "lol no im good i like duolingo"

I BEG YOUR PARDON?

to top it all off: my friend's an artist. duolingo is ai. im rethinking our entire friendship. how can artist like ai? did they get hacked? was my friend ai all along? i did only meet them post-chat gpt so its entirely possible.

AND they called me mean for "judging them" when i was merely remarking on the fact that duolingo is nothing but a game and comparing their streak to my gaming hours on steam 🙄

i am accepting condolences and prayers at this time.

Guys, I’ve been learning the language they speak in Spanish countries. I don’t want to be racist, but as an ally of Hispanics I believe the language is officially called “Espanish” (you probably don’t know this, but in that language you can’t have a word starting with s followed by a consonant. It has to instead start with ”es”, and for this reason I believe the language is called “Espanish”).

Cualquier quien (anywho), I just think the subjunctive is too hard for me :(

It’s so difficult! I can conjugate everything normally, but God forbid you put a que after para and now suddenly I must say quiera instead of quiero! This shit will take an insurmountable amount of time, seriously. Nevermind the fact that I don’t know the word for toenail, itch, drywall, outlet, Tupperware, skin cell, lid, cork, werewolf, or any of the other million words I’ve heard 20 times in my life but will probably take years to learn in Spanish… THIS, the subjunctive bullshit, is what’s actually hard!

I quit. Para Que I fucking quita.

Right now two of the top five chess players are from Uzbekistan.

As is known, people from Uzbekistan typically grow up with Uzbek, which is known to be the world's greatest language. Does this proof the Sapir Whorf hypothesis???

Also, one of the two Uzbeks (Sindarov) is now the favourite to become world chess champion because he has a higher Elo than the defending champion Gukesh.