#kind of fluent

[sholmeser]

im possessed

[jtl-fics]

9. Has any of them had to be saved from the brink of death? Were there any consequences after?

Torturing your OCs Ask Game

9. So.......Smith works for Ichirou after college. He tells Jackson and Matthew because they're his partners and he feels that more than anyone they deserve to know so they can make the decision on whether or not to stay with him. It's hard for Jackson because he lost Seth to Riko's machinations and it makes him hate Neil Josten all the more but he doesn't want to lose Smith.

He, however, does not tell any of the Foxes. Mostly because they're all already so entrenched with the Moriyamas due to Neil's deal with Ichirou and also he knows that if Neil found out that Smith joined the Moriyamas specifically because Ichirou threatened Neil's life then his Captain would feel bad.

This all comes to a head when Smith is with Ichirou working on making a deal with a family that goes south and Smith takes a bullet for the crime lord (not intentionally, in true Smith fashion it is a sequence of events that make him look a lot more heroic than he actually meant to). The Moriyamas get him out of there and get him to a hospital with great care but it's still looking bad for a while.

Jackson, who already has a lot of trauma regarding the Moriyamas having people he love be killed (RIP Seth), goes absolutely apeshit to Ichirou and it is only by the grace of 'this dude's partner just took a bullet for me' that Ichirou tolerates that shit.

However it does keep Ichirou back long enough that the Foxes arrive and see him in the hallway outside Smith's room and hear him confirm that Smith is one of his men.

The Foxes find out that their second youngest (of like the main squad and Robin is the youngest) is stuck working for the Moriyamas because Ichirou threatened the safety of Neil, Kevin, and Jean. Jackson, who is already feeling a lot of things and has the medical authority over Smith to make decisions, kicks them all out (The Foxes, the hospital has mafia ties so if Ichirou wants to stay then the MF is gonna stay, it just so happens that Ichirou has other things to do that day now that his translator is in good hands).

Smith wakes up finds out that the Foxes know about the whole Ichirou thing and proceeds to have a panic attack about that. He's a little a lot worried that this'll be the nail in the coffin for his friendships with them and figures that if he just....avoids them forever then they can remain as best friends forever. It is perfect logic. Don't question it.

Cue three months where Smith, with the assistance of Jackson and Matthew (mostly Jackson since he's got beef) avoids the ever loving shit out of the Foxes until they can all converge on his house and forcibly make their point that Smith is still their friend and that he should quit working for Ichirou and let them deal with the consequences of that.

Except, by this point, Smith kind of likes his job? Like yeah there is the whole 'totally illegal' thing but Smith likes to think he's done a lot of good working for Ichirou since he kind of ended up as Ichirou's little Jiminy Cricket and he has excellent health / dental / life insurance, a 401k 50% match, ample PTO, flexible hours with crime from home options, and it pays a shitload.

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[mumblesplash]

just how it is

[nowjumpinthewater]

having an american accent in my (technical) first language is fucking devastating

[pangulggot]

Imagining a english Geumsaegi voice is so hard....like yea, there's um...brave soldier, and the guy does a great job voicing Ginio, all that...but it's not really....Geumsaegi to me, you know? Something about him being voiced by a girl is so captivating to me....ethereal gender neutral Geumsaegi...he would have to be voiced by a girl like the og... I don't really want an "english" voice for him to sound like a kid though, that'd be a little weird to me since he's a grown ass man, but like.. aughhh I DON'T KNOW....

[ratasum]

While Evva understands New Krytan well enough to understand a conversation, she doesn't speak it even remotely fluently. In the meantime, here's some things Evva has learned how to say in New Krytan:

My name is

Thank you.

Your name?

I am from

I cannot speak New Krytan

[inspectorseb]

I’m gonna say it… I like Gnarly by Katseye

[xukies]

HC thought: Higgs can read in multiple languages. Can't speak em, can't really write em. But reading them is no big deal. He spent so long in that bunker I'd imagine some books not in English might make their way into his hands and he has plenty of time to figure things out

[milkbreadtoast]

(random) ngl before i started learning korean i felt like the worst failure of a korean but now i feel like the best failure of a korean (/j) HAHA

like im struggling to speak but least im speaking..!! I feel like I've restored an essential piece of myself that was missing...

[fiona-fififi]

Please, please, please recognize that using incorrect pronouns is a common error made by English language learners—even for those who have achieved near fluency. It is not automatically intentional or malicious if someone uses an incorrectly gendered pronoun when talking about a character.

[jtl-fics]

What’s smithy’s favorite food other than pepto bismol?

Kevin's Smoothies

I KID. He tolerates those because food made specifically for him is always going to be his favorite food. He associates someone making something with him in mind as like the NICEST THING. So he'll drink / eat without a single complaint

It's hard to pick a single thing XD

#1 is his Grandma's pies.

You may say 'well that's dessert' you would be correct but also WRONG.

GS has range and she makes a mean Shepherd's pie and an even meaner Chicken Pot Pie.

[tthegoldentouch]

Dr ratio is kind of really interesting to me bc I feel like there's quite a bit going on w him too- I'd love to write about him someday but I'd rather figure out how I characterize him before that

[son-of-avraham]

A cool positive to learning Hebrew is I'm left-handed, so if I ever learn to write Hebrew, I won't ever have to deal with pen smudges on my pinky 🤩

[athetos]

Also yes I’m reading Babel by R F Kuang and I’m hooked I did not expect to get this invested as I’m not typically a fan of alt history or any period pieces but i feel like ive been to 19th century Oxford like I’m a dark academia blogger who ships lord Byron with Percy bysse Shelley. I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on this book I know it’s very divisive but regardless of how I much I enjoy it once I finish at least I can impress my friends by reciting the etymologies of random words.

[rigelmejo]

Nobody asked but, this is for the beginners just starting to study Chinese or Japanese as English speakers (or Germanic or Romance Language speakers). Especially beginners who have never studied another language, and don't know the usual process of "what improvements you see after X study."

Some languages will take more hours to hit improvement milestones than others, depending on the languages you already know. For English speakers, many Germanic and Romance languages will take the least amount of hours to see progress milestones. For English speakers (or Germanic or Romance Language speakers) some of the languages that will take the most hours to see progress milestones include Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean.

I see a bunch of beginners who study Japanese go "I've been studying 15-30 minutes a day for years, and still can't understand anything!" or even "I've studied 2 hours a day for months, and still can't understand anything!" Well... if as an English speaker, you study French, you'll get a LONG way in 2 hours a day of study for 6 months, that's a little over 364 hours in 6 months, which makes you Upper Beginner/Lower Intermediate in French, and able to start reading graded readers and listening to podcasts for learners. 2 hours of Japanese study a day for 6 months is not enough to get to the point to reading graded reader and listening to podcasts for learners... try 4 hours a day or 6 hours a day (2-3x the study time to reach the same milestones). 30 minutes a day for a few years in French is ~182 hours a year, so 2 years would be enough to start doing intermediate things in the language (graded readers, learner podcasts, easier reading material and shows if the learner is willing to look up words). For Japanese, it would take 4-6 years to reach that point if you're only studying 30 minutes a day!

You aren't "not learning anything" if you study 30 minutes a day, you just need to be realistic! If you're studying Japanese, it's going to take 2-4x more hours of study to hit progress milestones. (Less times more if you've studied languages before and streamlined your study plan, more times the hours if you fumble for a while with figuring out your study plan and what works for you). FSI estimates that the quickest language for English speakers take ~30 weeks(at 40 hours a week), and the hardest languages at ~88 weeks. So 1200 hours for a language like French, 3520 hours for a language like Japanese. So Japanese takes ~2.93 times more study hours to reach the same progress milestones (or around ~3 time more study hours).

My point here is: either study more hours per day if you want to hit progress milestones within a certain months/year time frame, or recognize it is simply going to take more days/months/years of study to hit your progress milestones if you are studying a language very unlike the ones you already know.

You probably ARE learning Japanese if you're studying daily or regularly. You're probably making fine progress, after you work on your study plan and figure out what works for you. You probably are just not hitting progress milestones in as little study hours as you would in a language similar to ones you know. So you think you're not making progress, because the person learning French is 'able to do so much more than you after studying less hours'! You are making progress! It just takes more study hours if you are studying a language unlike ones you already know.

*Note: not all people will hit their progress milestone goals in as few hours as FSI estimates. I am just including these FSI estimates as a nice estimate I can find. For many people, it will take an extra several hundred hours or an extra thousand hours to hit B2. You're not broken if it takes you 4500 hours to learn Japanese to upper intermediate, or if it takes you 2000 hours to learn French to upper intermediate. That is also quite normal, especially if you don't know what study plan works best for you for a while. The point is: languages very similar to ones you know will take less study hours, compared to languages very different to ones you know.