#i just like how japanese sounds and i have the most exposure to it

[hackfurs]

do any of you guys have any favorite artists whose music is primarily in japanese. preferably in the pop, punk, rock, alternative (and adjacent) genres

[sleepisoverrated]

My headcanons about Dick Grayson

Dick Grayson is smart.

Like I hate it when they make him a dumb bimbo, he's hot yes he knows it, but he also has been hacking into the Pentagon for fun since he was ten, survived Spyral and several almost apocalypses. I know it's cannon since no Bat is dumb, but some fics, SOME FICS, make him look like he never went to school.

Dick Grayson knows so many languages.

I assume due to the fact that he grew up in a traveling circus he already knew a lot of languages(even if his english was bad when his parents died), but due to being robin and Bruce Wayne's ward he learned basically all major languages on Earth( and some alien) like Romani, German, French, Russian, English, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Irish, Finish, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indian, Latin, backwards speech(Zatara), Tamoranian(i think that's how you spell it), Kryptonian, speedster(when speedsters talk super fast) and so on.

Dick Grayson has at least some immunity against Fear toxin(Ft), Joker venom(Jv).

And most of the other poisons due to constant exposure since he was 9, also when he was younger there were no antidotes for Ft and Jv so he learned how to ride them out without a sound. (You can't tell me it hasn't fucked him up somehow, like a 9 y/o being constantly exposed to these things HAS to have some consequences and while he has his immunity I also think he has extreme anxiety( like all the bats a.k.a. Bat paranoia) and constant panic attacks(next headcanon))

Dick Grayson is a master at controlling his body.

Besides the fact that he probably learned acrobatics before he could walk and was a stage performer(always smiled even if the performance got off the rails) I also think he has taught himself complete control of his body due to far too many close calls. He learned to control each muscle individually for combat under high-stress situations(where he most needs that control). This had a side effect of him being able to control his face muscle/expressions and body language. He became the best actor there will ever be, because he can keep a smile on his face even if he is in excruciating pain, he can look completely calm and relaxed even though he is having a panic attack and the opposite is true as well he can look completely terrified even though he is amused. Because of this you need to know him extremely well to tell if he's in distress(the only people so far are Alfred, Damian and Slade(he's obsessed))

Anyway if you want more of the headcanon's just say, Nightwing is one of my favourite characters I can rant about him much longer.

[covidsafehotties]

hello, i hope i don't sound naive I've only recently started to become aware again of the actual health situation, here in germany things are very much ignored as well by government, media etc

I'm currently out of secure employment and have been busking, guitar and singing at places with medium people flow I'd say and there's always six feet between where i stand and ppl put tips in my hat but I've also heared that the six feet thing was from when we thought most infections were cos of droplets so I'm unsure now

I've seen it said to visualize covid like it's smoke and in terms of that if someone smoking is walking by i think i smell it for maybe three seconds

i wanted to ask if you have an approximation of how big if a risk this is? there's been lots of rhetoric about how outside is so much safer but now I'm unsure

since realizing things are not fine I've gone back to always wearing an n95 in grocery stors and public transport (no restaurants, can't afford that anyway) and i do want to take this seriously, i also got the last updated vax even tho i wasn't in the recommended group and my doc questioned me on why i wanted it, i insisted on getting it but it was weird

i hope you can give me some type of insight and this blog is a place for this and I'm not mistaken

General covid risk is a complex calculation including some factors you are not able to detect without the aid of atmospheric sensors. In indoor situations, densely packed spaces that lack ventilation and air filtrarion allow covid to drift on the air for longer than 4 hours. Outdoor situations are somewhat more safe in the fact that they are pretty much perpetually ventilated. That means covid does not linger in one place long, and the complex, chaotic nature of outdoor air movement causes more covid to drop out of the air more quickly. The more people the more close to you, the higher the risk. If you are in a crowd of unmasked people standing shoulder to shoulder, your risk is incredibly high. If you are sitting on a park bench and someone passes by down wind 10 feet away, your risk is negligible. A Japanese study from 2023 showed that the greatest risk of outdoor transmission lies in the several seconds before passing face to face.

Maybe this will help you better gague outdoor risk. When in doubt, mask up. I typically wear a mask anytime I'm outside my house because you never know when someone will decide to bother you, and face to face conversation is when you face the highest risk of infection not just from aresols but large and small droplets.

[icycream24]

Silver and Espio for the ask meme? :>

hehehe my favs hehee🤤🤤🤤

SILVER:

I think most ppl don't know, but I used to really dislike Silver when I was first introduced to this character online. Not a game, no no, but YouTube AMV vids of this dude with cutesy shippy art of Silvaze. His portrayal was so degraded to me (I was 11 at that time?) that I believed he was a self-insert character for some popular artists to ship themselves with Blaze, in the girl-boss dynamic. Ofc, I looked for more info online and realised Silver was an actual character.

At that time I was playing Sonic Riders Zero Gravity and only unlocked Shadow/Rouge/Cream. After knowing what characters were avaliable, I tried my best to unlock the rest, including Silver. I also did not like his voice in English at that time, so much that I decided to switch the voice-overs to Japanese. And I also did not like it 😂 Not because it was grading! But more like, I was shocked by the drastic difference between the two. Kid me had to decide which portrayal I prefer more (ofc not aware of narrative difference of the scripts, I just chose based on my preference) and ended up with Japanese bc I vibe with the calm seriousness in the voice more. Eventually I did get used to both voices after more exposure of this character, watching playthrough videos online.

Talking about watching 06, I was not expecting him to be so different from my first impression of this "whiny/incapable/loser" kid. Silver actually was serious about fighting for his future, like a dedicated soldier. Blaze was *not* the girl-boss, she was on equal grounds with Silver. (Really... I was like 11/12, now that I think about it, how come ppl's comprehension skills so drastically apart that we can get totally different character interpretations?) I started to find charming traits on Silver, and that was when I started looking up for this character's info more & more.

And then I discovered the Rivals series. I watched the whole thing, 1&2, and this Espio character... Wait they're kinda nice tgt. (it was year 2012?? AAAAA I can't believe I'm still insane about Espilver/Silvespio, they're my sons now at this point 😭✨) I remember using Skype and talked about the ✨chemistry✨ between Silver & Espio, and my friend said I was tripping 😭

Anyway here's Espio:

At that time I didn't have that much knowledge on Espio, I just thought their Eng voice in Heroes sounded like he's dying in a few years with how gruff & grandpa it sounded LOL. Mostly I only draw him with Silver bc I realised no one shipped these two back then. (there was ppl but there was no tags for them) So I felt like, no, impossible. I need to COOK for them! So I started shipping them like FedEx with my limited skills 🥴

My Espio appriciation was mainly started by shipping him with Silver. As I reflect on why I enjoy this ship so much, I dug up traits that I like about Espio. He was helpful, supportive, and overall has a rather peaceful way of communicating with others (aka SILVER hhh). Compared to other characters, especially in Rivals, he was really chill and kept his head clear, and unconditionally aided Silver simply bc he knew he was helping someone with a good cause. Such admirable traits that I'd say are pretty rare even irl.

Still, Espio did not have that much screen time. His portrayal in my mind I do admit was half canon, half fanon. Silly ninja with goofy teammates that values teamwork & is capable of aiding others, plus saint-like patience & wisdom. (Haha...really, a lot of his traits are get from Rivals 2, his ways of interacting with individuals was way more informative than games & anime shows combined 🤧)

But yeah, with time I like these 2 characters even more, started to make all kinds of headcanons that I won't be able to elaborate here. The texts are already getting too long here 😂 I've imagined them, either tgt or separately, in fluff/angst/spice/AU/wholesome/dead dove/anything really bc I just enjoy these two so much 💕

It's kinda selfish to say, but with how little Espilver there was during that time, it was almost like they got a clean slate & I was not swayed by any other ppl's interpretation of these two for a few years. And ofc by time these two surely became my favorite characters. LOL I realised in my busy years of not drawing often, Silver & Espio were the only characters I drew 😂

UGGGHHHAA I love these two sm 😭✨ thanks for asking hahah I wanna talk about them all day 🤧✨

[ridiasfangirlings]

Hey so I was the one who gave this ask but erm I actually meant Non-binary Yata & Asexual Yata, like yata not having a gender and not liking sex when I said 'Sarumi AU' I didn't mean Non-binary Fushimi, I just said Sarumi au because I know you also get Misaru asks and I'm not a huge fan of that dynamic so I put Sarumi AU, but never meant it as Non-binary Fushimi & Asexual Yata. (I'm hoping this didn't sound rude or anything)

Aaaaahhh sorry anon, that one was my fault ;; I have no idea how but my brain thought that ask read ‘non-binary Fushimi and asexual Yata’ and I don’t know why, I had to go double check after I got this one and was like ‘how did I even miss that?’. So! Since this one was my fault I’m gonna answer this one out of order so you still get your place in the queue properly. Non-binary Yata is interesting, I feel like Yata is a fun character to explore with different identities because canon indicates he’s not really good with computers or online a lot and I think especially as a kid he would have less exposure to different identities so I see him struggling a lot with a thing he knows but can’t vocalize (also again, just using ‘he’ for convenience sake. I could see Yata going for more of a ‘he/them’ pronouns, though on that end it’s much easier to use non-gendered language in Japanese so he might not even really need to ‘pick’ a pronoun, everyone just uses neutral language for him).  In this case I could see that actually being part of why he has all these masculinity issues, because he’s increasingly aware that he doesn’t really feel like a guy and he’s desperately trying to hide it, overcompensating by trying his hardest to be aggressively manly so no one thinks he’s weird. I could see his only exposure to trans people being like unfortunate comedic stereotypes on TV so any idea that he could be a girl also doesn’t work for him (and then at the same time even without those stereotypes he doesn’t feel like a girl either, he just thinks that if he’s not a guy then girl is the only option and he rebels aggressively against the idea).

It’s in meeting Fushimi that Yata really starts to realize who he is, imagine Fushimi not only being supportive of Yata but also the one who kinda realizes what’s going on. Fushimi can be perceptive when he wants to be (and especially in situations where he himself isn’t directly involved) so I could see some time shortly after they’ve become friends when Yata’s putting on a show of masculinity and Fushimi clicks his tongue and calls Yata annoying. Yata’s a little hurt by that and Fushimi says it’s annoying, when Yata keeps putting on this fake show that Yata himself doesn’t even believe, how bothersome. Yata realizes that Fushimi’s seen through the whole thing and imagine him kindly nervously admitting it, that he doesn’t feel like a man. He quickly adds that he’s not a girl though and Fushimi scoffs: ‘why do you have to choose one or the other? Idiot.’ Up until this moment Yata’s never even thought about that, that he doesn’t have to make a binary choice, and this is really one of the big moments where I could see him just falling for Fushimi all over again because Saruhiko is that amazing, finding the answer to the question Yata’s been struggling with for most of his life.

So then post-ROK Yata has a whole new crisis with realizing that it’s not just that he’s a virgin, or nervous about sex, it’s that he’s simply…not interested in it. I could see this bringing back his old worries from before he realized that he was non-binary, like maybe this is another thing that’s weird or wrong about him and he doesn’t like this because he thought he was finally comfortable with himself. Imagine he tries to force himself to ignore these feelings though, because he does love Saruhiko and he doesn’t want Fushimi to think Yata isn’t attracted to him or anything. But then when things start getting hot and heavy Fushimi suddenly pulls away from Yata with a tongue click. Yata asks what’s wrong and Fushimi coldly says if Yata was going to fake it he should just say so. Yata tries to argue but Fushimi’s already getting dressed and leaving.

Afterward Yata’s really upset, feeling like this is his fault for being weird (and also aware that Fushimi absolutely thinks that Yata’s issues were because there’s something about him, not that Yata doesn’t care for sex in general). This would probably turn into one of those ‘Kusanagi/Homra alphabet teach Yata what asexuality is’ moments, and Yata is again amazed because there are all these things about himself that other people have felt too and it’s kinda cool, realizing that there’s a word for what you feel. I also think it would help him a lot to learn that asexual people can still have and even enjoy sex, it’s just that it’s not something he actively desires. I like the idea that someone tips Fushimi off about this conversation too so when Yata gets back to his apartment later Fushimi is there being all awkward and trying to avoid apologizing but looking like he wants to. Yata feels this rush of relief that Saruhiko still came back after all and they get to sit and have this talk, imagine Fushimi being like didn’t I already have this with you when we were in middle school. Yata’s like yeah but that one was different, smiling as he says even if he isn’t interested in sex himself that doesn’t mean he hates it or anything, maybe just take it slow, and that Fushimi’s gonna need to learn to be honest if that’s what he wants from Yata because Yata doesn’t want Fushimi to think that Yata doesn’t care just because Yata’s way of expressing love is different.

[rigelmejo]

random observation/tips I use for myself when studying, so maybe they're useful to someone

To improve listening comprehension skills, listen and re-listen to audio a lot! I'm not kidding, put on an audio and listen to it 5-10 times or more some day. While you're working, or driving, or playing video games, or cleaning, or cooking, or walking. You don't have to pay attention the whole time, it's okay to just catch phrases or sentences here or there. The main thing is you get repeated audio exposure to words you need to know, so the words you 'in theory' studied before you get better at recognizing through listening FASTER, and so you start listening for new unknown words and somewhere in your mind you've got the vague idea of how they sound for when you learn them more during study or reading or repetition in shows/conversations. The more listening you can do, the more you'll get a sense of how the grammar should flow, how words usually show up in particular phrases, how some phrases sound slurred/shortened certain ways, how words sound in different voices and accents. And again, most importantly, you get better at recognizing the words you 'know' from study INSTANTLY when hearing them. That takes practice! At first, it might take you 20 minutes and 4 re-listens to recognize a basic word you learned today (like say 'mochiron' of course in Japanese) because you aren't used to immediately recognizing it when listening yet. Maybe it depends on your learning style, but for me I found increasing listening study time drastically improved my: vocabulary recognition, reading speed, active vocabulary, listening comprehension (of course), ease of watching shows/playing games/following conversations (because listening and reading comprehension Speed were improved). Also, at a certain point you know enough words to learn brand New words from listening, and at that point listening/re-listening can be valuable for learning new words by immersing with audio. Since audio like audiobooks, audiodramas, are going to expose you to more words per minute than shows or movies or games, and more words per minute than reading until the day you get your reading speed significantly high. (On a related note, lets plays on youtube you can sometimes turn automatic 'closed captions' on for, and they can be a useful beginner-intermediate immersion option. Some youtubers will talk constantly, giving you more words-per-minute exposure than playing the game yourself, and sometimes they'll explain what they're doing which helps give you context for words and helps you learn to play the game and understand the command names if you want to try to later, and lets players often say things like 'i think' and 'i feel' and 'i like' opinion statements which can be helpful for recognizing casual conversation kinds of topics and words. And because it is a visual medium, you can listen and also get visual context of the gameplay to figure out what's going on, and automatic closed captions to see how words are spelled and get some reading practice in).

If the goal is primarily learning to understand words through listening that you already understand when reading, then pick listening material of something where you could easily understand the written transcript. (So for example you'd understand around 95% of the written transcript).

If the goal is primarily to learn new words, pick something you can understand the main idea of if you read the written transcript but that would still have unknown words. (So for example you'd understand maybe 75-95% of the written transcript). The first 1-5 listens you may be figuring out the main idea and trying to recognize through listening the words you know the written form of, and then after that any future listens you'll start learning those new unknown words.

To improve reading comprehension: read a lot! (Well yeah, but-) Okay, more specific: read 1. things you enjoy 2. things you will ACTUALLY read (so if you love comics but hate novels, go read comics) 3. if you find yourself exhausted reading, burned out, drained, then go look for easier reading material. Read the easier stuff for a while, and then you can try that challenging reading material again and hopefully it will make you feel less exhausted. Depending on your target language, there are some sites with recommendations on what reading materials will be easier or harder. I suggest that if you are a beginner, you read at least some graded reading materials (unless you are SO bored you avoid reading them, in which case just dive into materials written for native speakers so you'll Read Something). The transition from reading Graded Readers to materials for native speakers is ALWAYS going to feel hard, you are ALWAYS going to feel drained/exhausted the first 3-6 months reading materials for native speakers. Just because the jump in difficulty, the drastic word increase, is usually a bit steep and you just need to keep trying until you learn enough of those extra words you needed to get used to materials for native speakers. It's usually 1000-4000 more words you need to get used to, once you make the jump to materials for natives. Ways to speed this transition along include: using flashcards (I can't but maybe you can get yourself to do them), word lists, picking gradually more difficult reading materials (that way you only need to learn 200-500 new words per new novel/comic etc, and that's much easier to just gradually do as you read a long story).

Beginner suggestions: pick up graded readers in order of unique word count. Start with graded readers with 100-500 unique words, then 500-1000 unique words, and then if graded readers exist with 1000-2000 words try out reading one of them. If you're extra lucky, read 2000-3000 unique word graded readers if they exist for your target language. The first graded reader you read may feel like a challenge or even exhausting, that's likely to happen each time you move up into a higher unique word count. You're likely ready to move onto a higher unique word count, if you re-read the beginning of a graded reader you're on and find it's easier to read than the first time you read it's beginning. If you're a perfectionist like me, just move forward to a more difficult (more unique words) graded reader each time and do not dwell in one difficulty level for more than 1-3 months. You don't need to be a perfectionist, I promise the words in that 500 unique word graded reader will keep popping up in NEARLY ALL the reading you ever do in your target language, and if you don't learn 'basket' or 'newspaper' now you will learn those words by 2 years in when you've seen the words countless times in shows and novels. If you tend perfectionist like me, I suggest aiming to vaguely recognize words then be okay moving on, and not stop if you haven't 'perfectly remembered' every word.

If you choose to skip or speed through graded reading material, I suggest studying the most common 1000-3000 words in a language ASAP. You can read a word list, do flashcards like anki, do a textbook/class that covers those words, whatever. You can study 1000 common words if you're okay with a STEEP difficulty spike, and study 3000 words if you'd like a less steep difficulty spike. Bascially, when you read materials for native speakers, most of those materials are at minimum going to have 2000 unique words. All of those materials are likely to have the most common words in them, which you will have just studied so you have some kind of skeleton foundation of knowledge to rely on when figuring out what you're reading's main idea is and try to narrow down which new words are most important to look up the meaning of and learn next. Many 'easier' materials for native speakers (like for middle schooler reading level) are going to have 3000-4000 unique words, half of which are not the common ~2000 words you studied.

During the initial difficulty spike, you'll start looking up these new words - either every single new word, or key words you feel are important to understanding the main idea. You may end up looking up many of the initial common words you already studied, because you forgot them or they're only vaguely recognized, that's fine. Once you've read a novel or two, ran into those common words 2-12 times or more, you'll KNOW them. Making the next novel that much easier.

It takes on average 12 word lookups to remember a new word. So just look up words (or guess them or some combination). Personally some words took me 1-2 word lookups and others took me 20. Any important/common words to understanding the main idea, I picked up fairly fast. If you utilize flashcards, it will also be likely a handful of reviews or less and you'll learn new words.

If you're reading and the goal is to improve speed of comprehension of words you know (how fast you recognize them) and improve reading speed, pick a novel/reading material that is EASIER for you. So pick a reading material where you do not need to look up words at ALL to understand the main idea, and ideally if you can find one then pick reading material where you understand most details too without any word lookup. This will probably be 95% words comprehended or more (so you know 95 out of every 100 words you see, or more). If you want extra challenge, read along while an audiobook plays, or while Text To Speech plays (like Edge's Read Aloud TTS). If you can control the audio speed, you can also increase it, to increase your reading speed. If you have some words you've learned in reading but not listening, this can be a good way to improve your listening word recognition so that it's closer to your reading word recognition. Reading material you mostly understand will also help you STRENGTHEN understanding of what you've learned: you'll get better at understanding grammar, at getting key information from a text faster, and be able to develop reading comprehension skills by practicing them on something you know you CAN read.

If you're reading and the goal is to improve vocabulary? This is the rare case where I purposely pick a reading material at least a little above my reading level. So if you know say 3000 words and just read a novel with 3500 unique words, you might look for a novel with 4000 unique words or even 4500 unique words. If comfort matters to you, pick a reading material where you can follow the main overall idea WITHOUT word lookup, but you cannot understand many details - so you'll learn a lot of new words when looking up words in the details and nuance, but when you get tired/burned out you'll be able to scrape by without looking up words and by guessing when a key unknown word comes up. If you are OKAY with feeling DRAINED for the first 1-10 chapters, you don't even need to understand the main idea without word lookup... although I suggest you pick a reading material where you can at least vaguely identify the setting, main characters, part of the main idea (like if its a murder mystery you can tell its a murder mystery at LEAST, even if you have no idea who the investigator is or who died or what they're talking about). If you don't understand even a little bit of the main idea, you are likely to be extremely drained when reading and will need to look up nearly every word... and if that happens you're likely to give up. What you're aiming for is a story you cannot follow, but COULD follow if you looked up around 5-20 words a page (or maybe 100 words a chapter). You'll look up a LOT of words in the first few chapters, and it will be draining. But then in the following chapters, the novel will KEEP using the words you looked up, meaning you will get practice identifying them and learn them quickly because recognizing them will make your life easier. Once that happens, it will be a few more chapters of looking up LESS words per page, and re-looking up words you just learned to double check you remembered them. And by about 1/3 to halfway through the novel you'll notice it's become much easier to read. Congrats, you just increased your reading level! Your vocabulary has improved by 100-500 words in a month! (or however long it took you to get through the first several chapters of the book). Picking a book just 1-2 reading levels above where you currently feel comfortable (so 500-1000 new words in the book) is a good way to boost your vocabulary level. It will be a bit of a slog initially because there's a LOT more new unknown words, but once you've gone through that slog you get practice reading the new words.

I tend to go back and forth between books I understand 95% or more of (for extensive reading where I only look up a word occasionally if it seems important and I can't guess it), and books where I understand maybe 85-95% of the words (I'll look up EVERY unknown word in the first few chapters, then every key word for understanding the main idea as the reading gets easier, then it'll become a book I do understand 95% of). As I go back and forth, the reading material I understand increases in unique word count. So for example: at the beginning of 2023 I could extensively read novels with a unique word count of around 2000 and could intensively read (look up many words) novels with a word count of around 3000. Now in the beginning of 2024, I can comfortably extensively read novels with a unique word count of 3000, and can intensively read novels with a word count of around 4000. This will depend on genre, and what genres you read and therefore words you ended up learning. But overall you'll notice the range of how many unique words in a reading material you can handle, goes up.

Usually the first thing I do when starting to study a new language, so for the first 6 months or so, is: 1. Look up a list of common words (either from a book, textbook, website, flashcards, anki, videos etc) and review it about once every week or two for ~2-3 months 2. Look up a free pronunciation guide online with audio examples (and go through it for 1 week to 1 month) 3. Look up how the language works roughly like structure, if it has conjugations, certain word order, the writing system (read a few free articles, usually takes 3-6 hours). 4. If the writing system is different, spend time learning it (a new alphabet would probably take 2-4 weeks, either reading articles with audio examples or flashcards or in japanese's case I did an app for katakana/hiragana with mnemonics and quizzes). That is the first 3 months or so. 5. If the writing system is vastly different (japanese kanji, chinese hanzi) look up a few introductory articles on how it works, like chinese hanzi being made of radicals often with a sound and meaning component, like words often being 2 hanzi together, or japanese kanji being the stem of verbs with hiragana conjugation, kanji having multiple pronunciations and meanings depending on the word they make. Then find a book (or anki deck or site) that goes through all common-use writing pieces with word examples. In Chinese's case this was a reference book covering all HSK hanzi, an introductory book with 800 common hanzi and word examples and mnemonics (my favorite reference book ever), and my common word list* (see point 1) which was Ben Whatley's 1000 and 2000 most common chinese words memrise decks. In Japanese's case, this was a 300 word common kanji reference book with mnemonics, a full JLPT kanji reference book with word examples, and then I learned a majority of kanji through my common word list*(see point 1) which was Nukemarine's LLJ memrise decks. I prefer learning hanzi and kanji in words, so my basic study of them was initial mnemonics to learn super common characters and practice learning HOW to remember them, then moving on to character study as a part of vocabulary overall study. For chinese, this initial hanzi study took around 3 months. For japanese, this process of initial 500 kanji study took 2 years because I was a mess who didn't know what I was doing. Basically, the goal is just a general understanding of HOW writing system works and recognizing basic things. For french, this might be some basic recognition of how conjugations change spelling. 5. Read a basic grammar guide summary online for free, to get an overview of how the language works roughly. This takes 1-2 weeks, maybe roughly 12-20 reading hours. I will go back and reread bits of this grammar guide summary later when I see grammar in real language, and may look up more specific grammar points in more in-depth grammar guides later on if I get confused or want to know more. 6. Around months 3-5, start reading Graded Readers. I will start reading graded readers once I have studied at least 500 words, maybe up to 1000-2000 words, which has usually happened by month 5. Reading is how I practice actually remembering the common words and writing system I've been studying, so the months of Graded Reading materials is where I really start remembering and learning what I've reviewed and been introduced to. All of the points 1-5 I do in whatever order works best, usually multiple at the same time.

7. As I increase the difficulty of Graded Readers, usually around months 6-12, I start trying to watch and read some materials for native speakers. It's usually very hard, makes me feel drained, and at first I can only handle 10 minutes and work my way up to being able to do it an hour. I watch/read some stuff without looking words up (to force myself to practice relying on what I've studied), and watch/read some stuff while looking words up that seem important to understanding the main idea. And if I feel up for it, sometimes I'll look up all unknown words. This 6-12 month period feels the most difficult, broken up by easier moments when I go back to graded readers and when I notice my grammar comprehension and comprehension of words I've studied is getting easier. By about the end of 1 year, I've learned around 2000 common words enough to transition to primarily reading stuff for native speakers to learn more vocabulary. (This 1-7 process is what I did to initially learn to read French, and Chinese, and I switched to this plan in Japanese which worked well... after dawdling for 2 years not really being goal oriented).

[codenamesazanka]

There's not as much level of hate in JP spaces because they read the original dialogues in the way as intended by the author and not the shitty localised version by a biased translator. Idk if you are on twitter but the translator has ruined the last 2-3 chapter translations. And also when Tomura escaped AFO's control and when Hawks lost the quirk. And that's why JP fans understand the themes better than the English fans.

Not gonna say Caleb Cook has never gotten anything wrong, but I generally think he gets it right more often than not. I've seen when fans try to correct the translations, and sometimes the nuance is captured, sometimes not at all. And as if fans can't be biased as well.

I distinctly remember when English-speaking fans tried to claim that Dabi in chapter 306 was saying something along the lines of 'the exposure of Endeavor's abuse was not enough for people to care'. That was completely wrong. Caleb's translation of Dabi saying 'he didn't go far enough/Endeavor needs more bullying' was the correct one. I know this because I took a look at it myself. However, my translation could be flawed too. So I look to the Japanese tweets that quoted that sentence saying things like “Dabi-kun, are you taking lessons from demons (in sadism)?" or "You've tortured your family enough... stop it," or cheered him on, wanting to know what horrible moves Dabi will think of next. What the author intended here was to show Dabi wants to completely break Endeavor's spirit and soul, but English-speaking fans point blank said 'no, that's not how I want it'.

Meanwhile, English-speaking fans are very eager about Caleb's translation of Yoichi saying Shigaraki was groomed to be full of hatred, or Shigaraki telling AFO that he knows AFO groomed him. The original japanese is actually "that was how he was raised/brought up," and "that was how you raised me/brought me up". With context, yeah, Yoichi and Shigaraki is saying that AFO raised him up in a negative way, he was raised in malicious conditions - 'groomed' is indeed one possible translation, but I personally think that word is loaded with connotations that makes it more charged than the original japanese. I would've gone with 'brought up', maybe 'trained'.

I'm not defending Caleb here, exactly. I think he did a disservice when he translated Toga's line about Saito thinking she's not human as 'Saito will think I'm a freak'. The gist is the same - Saito will be repulsed by her - but for me, 'not human' better fits the context of Toga's life's journey to be seen as normal, as a regular human being. I have no idea what he was thinking when he translated Spinner's 'Shigaraki-tachi' (Shigaraki and the others/Shigaraki's group) as only 'Shigaraki' when Spinner woke up Kurogiri.

For the most part, Caleb's just trying to capture the feel of things, then make sure it's convey in a natural sounding manner. Lots of potential for disagreement in the process. As someone once puts it, you are guarantee to fail when translating, so what you're doing is deciding how to fail. And failure also means different things to different people.

Caleb gets things right, and gets things wrong. From my observations, English-speaking fans think Caleb gets things right when the translations fits into their pre-existing conceptualizations and never question it; and English-speaking fans think Caleb is so terrible he should be fired when translations don't fit their pre-existing conceptualizations. Where does the bias come from? Trick question, it's in everyone.

So is the hate because Caleb's translation isn't accurate and people misunderstood bnha's themes? I gotta say, not really. Is the hate because people have a vision of what bnha should be like in their head, and get angry when canon goes a different path? I think this is more likely. I don't think it's the whole reason. But its contribution is there.

Whether or not this is the reason why Japanese fandom spaces seems - to me - to have less hate than English speaking fandom spaces, I don't know. Like I said, maybe the hate levels are the same because I'm just looking at the nice things that floats at the top as I wade through Japanese fandom, but haven't dive down into the deep sea hate, while I enter a submersible to be crushed by the high pressure hate every time I return to the English speaking fandom.

Thanks for the ask!

[absolutebl]

Hi, i have been bingeing on all your and i absolutely love reading about the BL world from your perspective, I have learned quite a bit from your posts.

I just want to share some of my thoughts and pick your brain on some things I would like to understand.

Started watching BLs about a year ago and I mostly stuck to the few korean BLs that were available and also some stuff from Taiwan and the Chinese bromances. I know Thailand dominates the BL industry but when I first started watching i kinda avoided because (a) their language kind of throws me off, I don't know if this is offensive but it is something i struggled with during the first few shows and even now that I am used to it I still need time to adjust every time I start a new video. Thai is very different from korean, japanese, and chinese which I am very comfortable with.

The second reason I hesitated (this part is where the actual ask is) was their acting style. Now, I am not a professional who can give any criticism on these stuff, my opinions are based on personal taste and observations.

My main ask is that do you think acting styles change based on culture, like a lot of thai BLs tend to favor the slapstick comedy. Because of that their reactions and emotions tend to be exaggerated (I don't mean this in a negative way, just the only description I could think of.) I have seen a lot of subtle and great acting and emoting from them but kind of big way of showing emotions tend to remain.

I don't know if that made any sense, my thoughts are not translating well at all. Any way i hope you get what I am trying to get at.

Have a nice day🤗🤗

Ooo, what an interesting question and lots to unpack.

I’m not going to turn this into a proper blog post just going to ramble. 

I do go into language barriers in the BL producing countries a little here. BL Breakdowns by Country 

Struggling with Thai Language 

I actually really do understand this. It will depend on your native language, but it will certainly influence your enjoyment. I recommend studying the language a little and learning about it from a kind of cultural mathematical perspective, it makes it a lot more fun and interesting (and you’ll get the humor). 

Here’s my linguistic starter post on Thai for BL watchers. 

It always helps me become sympathetic when I become intellectually curious about soemthing, anyway. 

So my brain is mostly southern British English trained (not so flat as American) plus a little Spanish. But I hear Thai as very tonal and occasionally quite high and screechy and full of ticks (repeated words) because of the polite particles. It took me about a year of continued exposure to just not hear all that anymore, partly because I was training my brain to translate and understand it. 

Here’s my brain’s emotional relationships... 

I really struggle with Mandarin, it all sounds very much the same to me, the words seem to run together. This is how I feel about French too. 

On the flip side I find Korean extremely enjoyable and sexy, I don’t understand most of it, but I like listening to it a lot. This is also how I feel about Italian. 

Both German and Russian always sound angry to me. 

Most of the Scandinavian languages seem just comfortable and fun and friendly (and sometimes a little silly). (I grew up around a couple of these, in part.) 

Japanese when spoken by men just seems preternaturally low in the chest, and when spoken by women too cute and girly. But then sometimes I just kinda like the way it rolls off the tongue, and a lot of the repeated sayings and politeness just sound adorable to me. 

Vietnamese sounds very sad to me, almsot like a dirge. 

When I turn off the part of my brain, or try to, or have been living in a place where I’ve stopped hearing English on a daily basis, I think English is (most of the time) a very ugly language: chaotic and non-formulaic, sometimes a little brutal sounding. But I love its flexibility and breath of vocabulary and nuance, especially for writing. (Obvs) 

All of this is because of the culture and language of my various upbringings, also music tonality. What makes your trained happy music or sad music influences what we hear as happy, sad, aggravating, calming. How we express questioning, excitement, enthusiasm. Spacers and filler words (like um) and breath pauses. Body language (how close we stand when talking to each other). Facial expressions. All of this is going to impact your immersion in a different society’s pup culture and performance style from a linguistic perspective. 

So I guess what I am say is, it is possible to get over, if you sort of flex your brain a bit in a new way. 

Thai Acting Style 

So (now) Korea film style is the most western influenced of the ones you talked about, with Taiwan and the Philippines following up. China is a little more reserved in many ways, and very married to 4 act structure, which can make it feel over long and narratively off-beat to a western audience. I’m not sure where your film consumption background is coming from, but if you like the Wuxia bromances (like Untamed etc) but can also take the Korean short form BLs, my guess would be you’re coming out of sf/f fandom of some kind with a tolerance for epics but also shorts. 

You don’t talk about Japanese cinema, which is an interesting case (and most geeks having passing familairty with). It is the one that bridges the gap between the pretty atmospheric stuff, dark themes, but also some serious slap stick and pantomime action, which I suspect is what is turning you off of Thai BL. You might explore some of their stuff. 

I talk about it here, the weeds of Japanese filming style in a not entirely flattering manner. 

Also here in a history of live action yaoi in Japan

And here is something all about their (and BLs) darker traditions 

You could try something like Cherry Magic, which combines softness and sweetness with slapstick, but isn’t quite as in your face a soem of the others. If that’s too much, try Restart After Come Back Home, His the movie, Life: Love on the Line, Old Fashion Cupcake, and Seven Days. All of these avoid the panto style over-acting and sound effects that are the biggest turn offs for most western audiences

So for both Japan and Thailand the love of pratfall, or physical comedy humor comes from their local historical theatrical traditions and variety shows. This can be seen by those of use who did not grow up with is as: childish, scenery chewing, or over-acting. 

The addiction to carton sound effects, triple shots (where they repeat the same action from multiple angles, especially around intimacy) mostly comes from anime/cartoons which were tailored to the adult market for much longer historically in most of Asia. (If you think about the British pantomime tradition you will realize that many European countries do have this style of acting, it’s just been confined to the children’s sphere). Although there’s also American soap operas and movie comedies (like Bridesmaids, for example) or Spanish telenovelas that are very scenery chewing. 

What you’re probubly responding negatively to is in part a slight feel of being talked down too, or catered to, or spoon fed (emotions, acting, expression, sound) as if you were a child. I still feel this sometimes. Equally, I get annoyed by the sexual restraint that then is coupled to this style, in Japan in particular, which also makes the romance feel downplayed. But that’s my upbringing rearing its head. And, like any other cultural tradition, you will either grow used to it after continued exposure, or just never learn to enjoy the taste. There are some flavors that are harder than others to adapt too if you don’t grow up with them, whether food, language, performance, or music. 

That said, there are some Thai BLs that are a lot more gritty and serious, with more subtle and nuanced acting, especially now. Here’s some I think you might particularly be able to tolerate:

Not Me 

Manner of Death 

3 Will Be Free 

He’s Coming To Me 

Tale of Thousand Stars 

I Told Sunset About You 

Love Sick (actually I’d be intersted in your take on this one) 

And *maybe* 

SOTUS 

Bad Buddy 

My Ride 

Until We Meet Again 

Love By Chance 

Also you might like Pinoy BL Like in the Movies. 

(source) 

[gale-gentlepenguin]

ML Reboot: Miraculous: Heroes of Miracles: Kagami Tsurugi

-Kagami is introduced in Season 2. Though Adrien, Felix and Chloé met her when they were kids.

-Kagami was chosen to be Masqué’s Champion. And she was trained since she was five. Mastering the Zodiac created Variation of the Guardians martial art. (I’m changing mirakungfu because it sounds dumb. The Guardian’s martial art is called “Endless Flow” Fist) This fighting style is the “Endless Impact” fist.

-Kagami goes by the name of Ryuuko when using the dragon miraculous. Just like in the original show. But her outfit is more based off Samurai, and more draconic in appearance.

-Kagami is usually very stoic, and her meeting Adrien again helps her come out of her shell.

-She and Marinette end up developing a close friendship, which is funny because Ryuuko becomes Ladybug’s rival

-Ryuuko appears in season 3, and she shows up saving Agent Volpina.

-Kagami is the most sheltered character, as she was raised basically to be the Enforcer of Masqué. And the heir of the Tsurugi.

-Kagami starts getting encouraged by Felix, Adrien, and Marinette to have more fun.

-Felix figures out she is Ryuuko, and asks her what’s up with that. After she saved him from a collapsing building

-Ryuuko thought she would need to end Felix after. But he told her he would “figure a way to free her”. He wasn’t scared, he was determined.

-Kagami eventually tells her mother she doesn’t want to be Ryuuko anymore. That she wants to be her own person and not the person she is making her be.

-Tomoe believes she is doing everything that’s best for her daughter, until Masqué captures her and decides to punish her like a traitor. That’s when she realizes her mistake

-Kagami ends up telling Alya and Felix everything she knew about Masqué. Unfortunately the Leader of Masqué showed up and kidnapped her. She gave Felix her miraculous, looking at him

-“You better keep your promise”

-It was around this time that Lila had seen Kagami in the cell. Lila was already going through her issues of what she discovered.

-Kagami talks to Lila telling her how they were both tricked and they need to escape.

-Lila ends up unlocking Kagami’s cell and leaves. Saying “it may be a lie, but it’s all I know”

-Kagami ends up leaving and fighting some of the “Masks” (servants of the organization)

-When she was getting overwhelmed, when Dragoknight shows up.

-“I kept my promise afterall.”

-Kagami and Dragoknight make their way to see Chat noir fighting Hawkmoth. They help him overcome Him and take the butterfly miraculous. Unfortunately he escapes.

-Dragoknight was going to give Kagami the miraculous, but she says it’s a good look for him. Adrien gives the butterfly to Kagami, saying he and ladybug could use the support.

-Sasakia makes her first appearance.

-Dragoknight does get bested and the miraculous is taken by the Head of Masqué. But gets saved by Sasakia. Who helps him escape.

-Sasakia also gets her mother out, who ended up blinded by the aftermath.

-Masqué crumbled and most of the people involved were arrested. Tomoe making a plea deal in exposing them.

-Kagami ends up going to school with the group from season 4 onwards. She ends up dating Felix shortly after this.

-In season 5, Kagami is focused on being an Olympian, and has focused on Fencing and Archery. She is the number one candidate in France currently.

Funfacts

-Kagami is the second oldest of the group, only being a month younger than Nino.

-Kagami Knows 4 languages. Japanese, English, French and Italian.

-Tomoe was the third highest in Masqué. And Kagami would have taken her place should they had stayed.

-Kagami trained for years before receiving Longg. And actually receiving the miraculous a little before Marinette and Adrien. Making her the one of the group that had a miraculous the longest.

-Kagami has a habit of comparing situations to manga or dramas. As that was her main exposure of the outside world. (Often reading in secret)

-Kagami is the most skilled physical fighter of the group, as she was trained from a young age.

-Kagami technically knew Lila the longest, but met Felix first.

-Kagami can easily bridal carry Felix

-Kagami is very blunt and has no understanding of sarcasm originally.

-According to Fu, Kagami is likely the most dangerous miraculous user if left unchecked.

-Kagami and Lila are the only ones of the team that know “Endless Impact” fist

[docholligay]

Forgive me, I have a hobby level interest in some aspects of linguistics* and can’t shut up.

So, phonology is the first thing you pick up as an infant. How the SOUNDS are made. Not words, SOUNDS. All languages can be broken down into a series of sounds, all of which are made by moving your mouth a certain way, to oversimplify it. We learn those mouth movements very young. FIRST. Words come next, morphology, syntax, etc. BUT, to my point, phonology is what we learn first and this is the building block of a language. So, some people ‘keep’ this longer than others, but for most of us the sweet spot is birth-10 or 12 (And frankly, some people lose it earlier). I started hearing and learning Spanish casually when I was...6? I started studying it in earnest, as much as I could, by 8, and I of course went on to minor in it at school, I was a Spanish lab teacher for a few years, until recently I volunteered in the summer to do translation for migrant workers with the clinics. But all this started because I learned the trill early enough. I sound ‘right’ in that pronunciation way. My pronunciation of Spanish is pretty good, but it has nothing to do with me being ‘smart’ or whatever stupid thing we’ve assigned it.

This is true of all languages. There are sounds in Chinese I cannot make. Xhosa is right out, for me.

If someone is an asshole to you about you not being able to roll your R, it’s roughly the same as me being an asshole to a Japanese person at not being able to pronounce the hard R at the beginning of my legal name. You never learned the phoneme! Your mouth is like, “You want me to do what now?” and some people can retrain their mouths, but it’s very very difficult, and this idea that smart people have flawless pronunciation and can all flawlessly imitate any accent and dumb people just can’t hear it or whatever shows a ridiculous misunderstanding of how language works.

I mean this makes sense when you consider that Duolingo is an American company and what reason would we have to learn peninsular Spanish, and also one of the founders grew up Latin America so of course LA Spanish is going to be the go-to, but if it makes you feel any better I find Duolingo nigh-unusuable, because I know enough Spanish that I know there is more than one right answer. If that makes sense. I have learned enough Spanish that I have my own way of speaking, too. I ended up just, before I had the baby, auditing upper-level courses at the college because it was the only way to get that exposure to speaking while also being allowed some...flexibility? I guess? With how things are said. Computers ain’t everything, basically, and they’re bad at teaching language. Also, you know, what’s ‘correct’ and what’s ‘done’ are different. A lot of thing English spoken in the rural community I’m a part of isn’t GRAMMATICAL, but it is RIGHT, you know? There are variances in language and just because ones of privilege win the grammar war--and I have an English degree, I’m not even opposed to a ‘central grammar we all agree upon for say, the news--doesn’t mean that the way things are said in other communities is wrong. Duolingo tries to tell me “Seen you come over here” is wrong and I’m like, “eat my entire ass, owl, that’s how “I saw you come over here” would be said in my circles” ahaha. But I have a hick accent no one is interested in defending but me, that is often the butt of the joke, so.

ANYWAY, all this to say that Duolingo has its uses but it has exceptional limitations. I’m not really a ‘online language learning’ gal, but I do prefer Babel, generally. It was easier for me to skip ahead to the higher-level shit I needed to be engaging with, at least, though it occasionally frustrates me as well.

*It’s just, a huge field. And there are a million ways to be ‘into it’ I would say the VAST majority of my interest is in English, particularly American English in all its variants, but I do have a lot of affection for other English-speaking countries versions of the language--Kiwi English is very fun, I have loved the tightness of the East End/Cockney accent for a very long time, which tracks with the fact that most of my favorite American Englishes are also very working class, any way the point of all this is that the linguistics of, say, Spanish is not really my knowledge base but most of this is pretty broad anyhow

[pancitmousse]

Thoughts on Holostars Tempus (New Members)

Gavis Bettel

First Impressions: honestly his design doesn’t really appeal to me. my friend said he looked like a TWST chara but honestly i can’t see it based off what I know about that game. also his name makes me think of betel nuts. that said i like the little skits he did for his pre-debut vids.

Debut: he has a very… “bro-ish” voice lol. also he’s talking really fast. idk if it’s bc of the nerves or not. pulling out the slide out of his hat was very creative ngl. betel nut man confirmed. idk what to make of his comedy, it’s good but not really to my taste. he’s really loud so i probably wont watch him much or my ears may explode. mascot is cute tho ig. purple likers based. also… this guy laughs at his own jokes? at least he loves himself so good ig? actually nvm he doesn’t RIP. fuck cockroaches tho. he plans to do drinking streams? oh god i can’t imagine how chaotic he’ll be on alcohol. also he can’t cook?! dear lord. omg that catwalk is pretty af. also his design has grown on me, bro jumped out of an otome LMAO.

Machina X Flayon

First Impressions: he looks like a tiny little apple 🍎. baby boy, baby (or is he? i didn’t follow these guys on twt so i wouldn’t know). but lmao at that edgy-ass name 🖤🥀⛓. then again one of my oshis also has a chuuni name (but its in japanese so my monolingual ass can ignore it kek) so i can’t really judge. it seems the name was chosen to fit with the design as it is more overt abt the sci-fi stuff than all the others. friend said he looked like an edgy und3rt4le oc and while i get the edgy oc part i don’t get the und3rt4le part. his skits were frankly amazing and i don’t think anyone can top them.

Debut: that intro screen is so cute oml. also the logo bounces around like a tv on standby thats really neat! music is cool too! omg he did a “behhh” i like him alr! his lore video was nice and funny too. if im not mistaken he’s the first tempus member to have a dedicated lore vid right? now that i’m hearing his natural voice it sounds really pleasant! must protecc. i may be shorter but im calling him short anyways for lols. he looks cute when he’s angry www. his layouts are pr creative i love this man. he screams loud but its okay he is babi. vegetable dislikers are based and no one can tell me otherwise. if this is him at low energy, how would he be at high energy? headpats tskr. outro is cool.

Banzoin Hakka

First Impressions: pretty boy. purple is my favorite color + most of my oshis are associated with blue so his indigo color just makes me mesmerized. and because of that it would be funny if his voice was deep as hell. my friend said he looked like a jenshin chara and while i do understand that bc jenshin is many people’s first exposure to this kind of fashion… okay yeah he kinda does look like a jenshin chara. instant roll lmao.

Debut: his intro is pretty dope, especially with the music. omg he can do metal screams?!? his voice isn’t deep as hell but its still not what i expected. weirdly enough it still fits. i really like his sense of humor the most so far. he talks at an average speed to me but ppl have said i talk fast so im probably not the best judge i retract my statement he actually does talk fast. OMG A VOCALOID FAN B A S E D. i think i can hear an accent, a pretty thick one at that. yknow what, shinri has competition when it comes to who’ll get demonetized first. my boy drawing with ms paint lmao. probably gonna become my oshi for this wave (?).

Josuji Shinri

First Impressions: the boing boings are on full display. pec nation has won. now we must prepare for the ultimate battle, the battle against demonetization. jokes aside his design is kinda generic imo but if it works it works. also he actually looks slightly older than everyone else so thats a plus. friend said he looked like a himbo and tbh i get that. but from what ik he doesn’t seem like one so far? he’s giving off more “father figure” vibes to me.

Debut: the intro bgm is chill which makes me hope he’ll be chill too. holy shit his voice is really deep, like probably the deepest out of the vtubers i’ve seen so far. i think his laugh is cute. so far the chillest of them all, which admittedly isn’t a hard bar to clear. i do appreciate the simpler debut this time, the other guys production values and ideas were good but this one will definitely age gracefully. daddy (platonic). mans has his priorities in order. the little JRPG section was neat, my friend called it when they said “jrpg vibes”. yet another league player, nobody is perfect. probably won’t watch him much if he goes ahead with the horror stuff bc its not my genre but i appreciate him carving out a little niche for himself.

OVERALL:

I like most of them, but I’m worried the group dynamic may be a bit unbalanced this time around. We got three loud guys and one chill dude, which will be an… interesting combo. These guys seem to have lots of cool ideas and potential, so I would be interested in seeing how they could improve. 8/10 stars, mostly enjoyed the relay.

[ystk-archive]

Not sure what streaming you use but have you noticed that TIC TAC has crossed over 1m streams on Spotify? It’s at number 1 on their popular songs list, just surpassed Sugarless Girl and Hikari no Disco which were their two most streamed before Hello which is at 2.2m it appears. Seems like the Spotify algorithm maybe picked it up? It gets autoplayed quite often when I’m listening to available shibuya kei-esque stuff on Spotify. Maybe all of my streams of it helped the algorithm pick it up lol. Seems like there’s a tiny bit of a shibuya kei rediscovery and revival afoot on Tiktok and such platforms and maybe Capsule will be caught up in it perhaps? Old Perfume videos tend to go viral amongst various weeb circles on there from time to time.

I'm not sure how to talk about this without sounding like a downer lmao but:

I don't put a whole lot of stock into streaming numbers because they seem influenced by so many variables and, as a consequence, ultimately don't reflect the important metrics people think they do. Apart from any algorithmic explanations, tiC taC is one of their shorter songs, so it's a lot easier to repeat and rack up crazy high listens. (Sugarless and Hello have just always been genuinely popular songs for them though. Which Sugarless I get but Hello was just a phone ad that mimics the Nintendo Wii BGM style...)

At the risk of ranting I'll just say exposure is only one part of building (or rebuilding, in this case) an audience. Perfume stands to gain significantly more from going "viral" on TikTok and elsewhere than capsule, with their present management and [gestures at everything else], ever could. It's also worth mentioning capsule has historically always had a lot of casual/passive listeners and fewer serious fans -- I'm talking about people who really like some of their songs but have no inclination or resources to keep up with their activities (well, lack thereof these days) or even to know their names ("CAPSULE is the stagename of the girl who sings the songs, she's a solo artist" is a real phenomenon lmao).

tl;dr blowing up on XYZ platform can only translate into tangible real-life rewards if the artist in question and their team are willing and able to capitalize on it accordingly. (On a personal note I also feel attention from weeb circles is one of the last things any Japanese artist needs, but I'm not about to start/that's fighting a lost battle.)

[nagasakidivision]

35 Facts Meme: Shirou Sonozaki

Let's do this for Shirou now! I uh, am trying to usually go in the leader/2gumi/3gumi order but Damien has so many spoilers (until I work my way through the drama tracks) that I need to dance around. I am still trying to figure out how to handle it. Below the cut blah blah

He's the youngest of four siblings!

There's a fairly large age gap between them, his oldest sister is ten years older than him.

The middle siblings are fraternal twins who are six years older than him.

So when I say he's the baby of the family...he's REALLY the baby of the family.

He was super spoiled because of this but he didn't turn out to be a nightmare child in spite of it.

He's in an older brother role to the other two members, which is a little new to him. This is partially due to him being the only responsible one.

He's half-Filipino on his mother's side!

He's from a trilingual household, and speaks Japanese, Tagalog, and English fluently.

Well...more or less. His reading fluency isn't as good as it could be in Japanese and he still struggles with some complex kanji just due to lack of exposure because...

He was not born in Japan but had dual citizenship.

He grew up (for the first thirteen years of his life) in western North Carolina.

He does, of course, need to have an opinion on barbecue since barbecue is serious business in North Carolina. However, he is a traitor to his geographic region who thinks Eastern style Carolina Barbecue is better. (He's right, but still a traitor given where he's from.)

He's Catholic...more or less. More on the Catholic Worker weird leftist end of things.

Him and his mom are the only members of the family who are actively religious.

He's generally closer to his mom than his dad, though his family is very tight-knit.

He's the black sheep of the family in the sense that he's the only one who didn't pursue a vocation in the arts. He just never had a talent for it...bar rap battles, of course.

(They still love him though, but it did make him try to pursue some kind of artistic expression for a while before falling into his current job.)

He's the only one of the team who has any real level of experience with Hypnosis Mics!

His sleep schedule is horrendous. He regularly only gets three hours of sleep a night.

Fortunately he is an expert of catching a few cat naps per day. Not that it helps much.

Powered by black sludge coffee and overbrewed tea, yes he is. Haruto, who is a food/drink snob, is appalled by the way he treats tea leaves/coffee beans.

Because he had to do chores and the like a lot, he's surprisingly a good cook! Top tier malewife...

He does not use profanity. Ever. Under any circumstances.

He has a remarkable skill in making phrases like "I beg your pardon" sound like "go fuck yourself" tonally, however.

While he's never outright rude, he also has a talent for being incredibly passive-aggressive.

Oh boy, he is extremely bad about holding grudges forever too.

He is quite nearsighted. 20/90 vision.

His favorite animal is vultures.

He does not have any pets because he's barely ever at home and his schedule is a nightmare since he's functionally on call 24/7.

Well, sort of: the three of them kind of co-own Lucia depending on who Damien is crashing with at the time.

During the inevitable drinking nights that happen, his usual drink order is a whiskey sour! He will watch you to make sure you use an actual lemon and not sour mix and that you add in the egg white.

Probably the most considerate roommate of the group between the three. He's reasonably organized and doesn't spend an eternity getting ready in the morning.

Hidden talent: he's surprisingly good at sleight-of-hand tricks!

Hidden talent 2: he's...uh...fluent? in flower language, both Victorian style and hanakotoba.

He's an extremely formal dresser who's rarely if ever seen in anything less than a button-up Oxford and slacks.

[the-old-book-town]

Kanji Readings, Part...Something

I recently had a discussion with @mejomonster about the delightfully evil nature of kanji readings and decided to share my findings on patterns I noticed over time, of the root meanings behind different pronunciations/readings. When I first started learning the language, the amount of readings for super common words overwhelmed me and I decided to drop the study of them and focused mainly on the spoken language. I only started noticing the patterns way later, once I started reading more.

So, I’ve decided to start this mini series with the kanji that first made readings “click” for me: 楽.

Many, but not all, kanji have native Japanese reading(s) (called ‘kun’ readings) and Chinese-derivative readings (called ‘on’ readings). I have discovered that personally, I remember a kanji mostly by the kun-readings. That means when I see any given kanji, like 楽, 山, 正, etc. the first pronunciation that comes to mind is the Japanese kun-reading (tano.shii, yama, tada.shi, etc).

So, I could read 楽しい since semester one of Japanese class, and if I saw it in a compound word I thought of its kun-reading. I would see 楽 in plenty of other places, like 楽園, 音楽, 楽器, 楽勝, 楽天, etc. The two most common of those compound words are 楽園 (rakuen, paradise) and 音楽 (ongaku, music), which each use a different on-reading: raku and gaku.

For the longest time, I didn’t really think there was a pattern as to which reading is used in compound words. I thought that I’d just have to memorize it - either rote memorization or just by exposure to the word enough times to make it stick. And I think that sort of still holds true - but there is actually a pattern, a “root” meaning if you will, and I’m starting this mini-series so hopefully it helps others make that connection that took me an embarrassingly long time (years) to figure out.

楽 - The dictionaries I have list its meanings as pleasure, comfortable, easy, and music. 楽しい (tanoshii) is often translated as “fun” but describes something that is pleasurable, pleasant, enjoyable, etc.

RAKU: This reading is used when 楽 is being used in a word related to the “pleasant, comfortable, enjoyable, easy” meanings. Words like 楽園 (rakuen, a “pleasant garden” = paradise) and 楽勝 (rakushou = easy victory). 楽天 (rakuten) means optimism, again referring to the “pleasant, easy” meaning.

GAKU: This reading is used when 楽 is being used in a word related to “music” and music alone. 音楽 (ongaku, “sound music” = music) and 楽器 (gakki, “music tool” = musical instrument). And yes, 楽器 is still using “gaku” even if it doesn’t seem like that because of the double consonant.

But, there are also other words in Japanese that have the pronunciation “raku” and “gaku” and none of those words use the kanji 楽, so how do you know which kanji to use??

To me, it’s down to exposure. It’s very hard to learn how to read Japanese without being exposed to the spoken language. 

For example, “gakuen” also has “gaku” and there goes “en” again. Which kanji does it use? Well, if you hear “gakuen” and know that spoken word means “school” then you automatically know it isn’t using 楽 for its “gaku” pronunciation - it must be another kanji. That kanji is 学 for “learning”. Therefore, “gakuen” is 学園 “learning garden”.

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

Post 2: Correcting Post 1

Or: The journey of Japanese is a journey of folly.

So, I wrote that Japanese has pitch but it's usually not important for meaning, you just sound unnatural.

... Which is something you could say ... Kinda ... sorta ...

Only the Universe has been bombarding me with the importance and prevalence of pitch ever since. So I want to qualify the statement, at least.

Check out this interesting post I found here. Now, if I read this slightly cryptic answer right (it talks about "word-accent" which I assume can mean both "pitch" - Japanese, Chinese - and "stress" - English), pitch is significant to distinguish words with same sounds (homonyms) as follows: Chinese - 71%, Japanese - 13%, English - 0.47%.

Unsurprisingly, in a language (Chinese) using (in its standard pronunciation/main dialect) 5 pitches to differentiate words, pitches are "damn important" (71%). But 13% is actually also quite significant. Your mileage may differ.

Personal bias in skimming information

Now, for me, myself, this is not so surprising. I may have come across the information that pitch exists in Japanese probably twice but my brain may have chosen to willfully ignoring it.

(Textbooks may mention it but then omit it to not overload beginners, I guess.)

Thing is, I have a horrible history with learning how to stress words in other languages. These little accent-y things and squiggles on top of words? They're my nemesis. So I guess I wanted there to be no equivalent of that in Japanese.

I had three years of Ancient Greek in school, an investment of my time that taught me a valuable lesson: Don't learn Ancient Greek. I'm kidding - or am I? - the valuable lesson was to do my choices in a less knee-jerk way. In hindsight, nothing of value would have come of learning Ancient Greek even if I did well. Your opinion may differ. Fine. I really think it's a colossal waste of time unless you make a job choice requiring it. The best it could have done for me was get better at the learning itself or the learning of languages in general. But it failed in the most important thing that language does: connecting people. If it fails at that, it barely has any right to remotely exist as a subject. Nobody likes you Ancient Greek, go away.

Besides the letters, Greek gave me major problems with the stress accents. Put it on a syllable and I would never manage to pronounce the word. I always put the stress wrong. My brain hasn't unlocked how that works. I notice the same in Spanish. I may emulate a speaker (not that I speak Spanish, but when I repeat after someone), but even then I might not even hear the difference.

I know I've aggravated my Swedish teacher for not hearing the difference between his "ooh" and "uh" sounds he was making for the letter "u." (Ironically a song based entirely on the sound "U" is now playing on shuffle.) Hopefully continued exposure and awareness of the problem might help...

There's some good news, though

While my chosen learning method of WaniKani doesn't display stress, it features two speakers, Kyoko and Kenichi that say the readings. I wondered on occasion if they were real, but they do use pitch when pronouncing words. (And they might slightly vary between each other.)

So there's a neat little feature:

You pick your speaker and chose to let pronunciation play out every time the reading is featured - in case of reviews after you transcribed it yourself first.

I have to admit I was in the habit of not playing it when I could do multi-kanji word readings well, but this exposes me to pitch and pronunciation peculiarities I might otherwise ignore.

More exposure!

[EDIT:] Probably more good news, depending where you come from

So, in researching this I came across this article. It provides two pieces of context that I want to quote .

A reply to a letter to the editor of a manga magazine printed in Romaji (without accent marked) quoted in point 5: "When two or three words sound exactly alike except for pitch accent, context is going to resolve the ambiguity virtually 100 percent of the time. In practical terms, accent is probably the least important aspect of Japanese pronunciation no matter what your level of language skill."

In other words, even bad pitch accent will be understood almost always. This is where I first will employ the most horrible, stereotypical example that's ALWAYS trotted out to justify anything: the chopsticks/bridge example.

Chopsticks and bridge both transcribe to "hashi" (and to the same Hiragana). They only vary in rising and falling pitch. Now you could argue that makes pitch important. But as the above quote states - context usually resolves that quite reliably.

I mean, having browsed reddit and Quora for a while, you will inevitably see this being trotted out, and people ask the rhetorical question: Don't you think it's important to know if the bridge is burning or a set of chopsticks?

Rhetorical questions are, of course, only questions in the most technical sense. They're usually just people being smug or actually making biased or even bad faith arguments.

As mentioned above, people are not dumb. Japanese is already incredibly context-sensitive. You constantly have to keep track of things said before - because omission is common. You can leave out the subject because you mentioned it before as "the topic." Good luck with translating that, AI...

You usually can infer what is being said. But propagators of the burning chopstick dilemma are trying hard to make you think their way. Or are they even trying? It's so tired an example. If there were lots of these, surely people would quote them, too? Who cares what's going on with the damn bridge, anyway?!?

Okay, moving on.

I found this from point 6 a very useful and probably true assessment: "People without hearing impairments can mimic the melody of language, but they can hardly interpret visual accent markers into the oral/aural domain without special training because visual and auditory stimuli are processed very differently in the human brain. In all likelihood, the author of the above-mentioned letter simply feels more comfortable visually with accent markers. But using such markers to speak Japanese creates pronunciations that are worse than a crude synthesizer."

Well, I was notoriously bad at it in one language already. I guess I will hold my horses on trying to make that my method. Thankfully, audio material is available in enormous quantities, so we can learn from the melody of native speakers. And that is good news.

[rigelmejo]

really cannot emphasize enough how... chinese hanzi and grammar just... click in my head easier...