For future reference, whenever you show a graphic of a globe, please rotate the globe such that North America is facing the viewer. This is considered good etiquette. Thanks
America is essentially the center of the universe, so to exclude it from a photo of earth is pretty much an overt hostile act. A hostile act towards the people with the F-22s.
Source: am American, have to deal with other Americans that are less aware of the world.
I know it’s not relevant here, but since we’re talking globe etiquette: if your graphic of a globe shows New Zealand, be sure to shop it out to not reveal its location. At least cover it with a spoiler tag.
You need to put your foot down demand that they speak English to you and abuse them if they refuse. Most people don’t know this, but it’s hazing ritual in a lot of countries for locals to mess with tourists by speaking made up languages to them, they actually all know English, because that’s the only actual human language that exists.
No fucking way! You’re telling me my whole interpreting major is a lie?? I’m gonna send strongly worded email to professor “Peña,” or whatever her real name is. 😡
I mean, come on! Two letters away from penis? And what's with the squiggly line over the N--we're just drawing all over the alphabet now? Those should have been a dead giveaway: she's totally messing with you.
My wife stayed in a rural town near Shichigahama for a week. Nobody spoke English except a few students. But the citizens did speak Japanese louder and slower, showing that’s a universal trait. It actually helped, as my wife knew SOME Japanese.
Foreign immigrant, but they’re not brown enough to shoot on sight? Louder and slower while you assess the foreign devil… Just because they’re white doesnt mean they can’t be a commie.
This was meant as a joke, but living in the south this has certainly happened recently somewhere nearby.
Hilariously enough, in Japan it kinda sorta works not really but ish… They have so many loan words from English that if you just say an English word in a Japanese accent it might be the right one. Like the word for print is purinto, hotel is hotelu (hoteru), and camera is kamera.
They also get taught English in school for multiple years, and English is on almost every sign in major metro areas
Travelling to Japan while only knowing a couple of phrases went perfectly fine due to most people being able to understand what I needed them to, even when my wife and I got lost and had a group of 6 or so people at a local hospital frantically trying to help us find our hotel
I lived there a couple years, if all else fails there is an even higher rate of understanding written English than spoken. In the two years I was there I never felt like I was in a situation ever I needed to know how to read or speak the language(s) even though I did make an effort.
My first experience was having to get from the airport to a hotel in Tokyo to stay the night. A gentleman outside the airport helped show me how the buses worked (those drivers are crazy) and when I got to the hotel counter the gal pulled out a pen and paper since I only knew English and we wrote back and forth to each other. After that my concern over getting lost went away, everyone was really friendly and helpful in my experience.
Yeah after years living here I’m finally trying to learn how to actually read, but I gotta say that memorizing a thousand kanji and still barely being able to read shit is pretty discouraging.
I’ve been practicing that alphabet for over a year. I still see some of them, and my mind just blanks. It’s fun, though, slowly understanding more as time goes on.
It’s surprisingly doable. If you have a free weekend you can learn all of them. Even one day may be enough if you are dedicated and a quick learner. Of course, repetition is a must if you don’t want to forget them again, but the initial investment is really not that big.
This resource suggests mnemonics which are surprisingly effective. They teach hiragana first, but it’s not a hard requirement if you want to learn katakana exclusively.
I did my first trip to Tokyo a few months ago. A week before leaving I started playing a kana learning game on my phone while I was on the train to work. I also played it during the flight over.
Two things I figured out:
Just learn katakana. Even if you do learn hiragana, it just sounds out the japanase words that you don’t know anyway. Katakana seemed to be used exclusively for English pronunciation.
It’s actually fun. The majority of signs and labels are bilingual and you will see English and Katakana side-by-side. Once I walked into a cafe (in Disneyland) that had no English menu. The whole thing was katakana. I figured out how to order a “ka-fe ra-te” (cafe latte) and a “ko-ka ko-ra” (Coca Cola). I was so pleased with myself.
Is the u pronounced? I recently learned katakana and it seems like the u variant is used to just get the consonant, i.e. if you pronounce words by leaving out the u they often match more closely to the English word than if you do pronounce the u (or to (ト), because tu doesn’t exist, it’s tsu). The two examples you gave match that thesis.
The kana alphabets were (probably) borrowed from Pali, and syllables follow the structure (consonant + vowel) or (vowel). In other words, a consonant must not, grammatically, occur alone. I don’t know if Japanese still retains this as an explicit rule, but this is why you see the -u ending. It may or may not be pronounced, depending on which way flows better.
Many other languages with Pali / Sanskrit heritage have similar behaviour. However, Sanskrit itself and some modern languages have a dedicated character called a ‘viraama’, which says ‘this consonant has no following vowel’. For example, in the word ‘Padma’ (lotus), the d is followed by a virama. Other languages, like Japanese, use ‘u’ instead of a dedicated viraama. So different languages in east, southeast and south Asia might write and say it as Padma, Paduma or Padama, but all versions would be mutually intelligible.
The u is pronounced, but it’s a shorter sound than English u. Vowels in Japanese are shorter than English ones, which makes sense for a language where vowel length matters, eg su (vinegar) is a different word than suu (to smoke).
I’m trying to think of a word that wouldn’t use u as an insert between 2 English consonants, like trip becomes torippu, but that’s probably because they wanted to avoid tsurippu, as you mentioned about tsu. One word is garasu meaning glass (the material), but they also have gurasu, meaning drinking glass.
Most words do tend to use the u between English consonants though (supo-tsu, purezento, surippa, sute-ki, etc).
My first mobile phone was a Nokia 3330, a 3310 with WAP, and a pinball game, my parents were not happy with me when I figured out to browse the web on my phone…
The coolest way I have been on IRC was back in 2011, I had just got my first paycheck from my first job, and I bought the most amazing phone I have ever had, the Nokia E7…
The fold out qwerty keyboard was amazing, and made the phone look like a tiny laptop.
It ran Symbian^3 when I got it, but over the short time I owned it (damn pickpockets) I upgraded it to Symbian Anna and later Belle.
I ran Putty touch on the phone, with the keyboard it was probably the best mobile ssh experience you could have back in the day, as you can imagine I used Putty to connect to a Linux server which ran screen irssi.
I felt like such a hacker when I sat in a hospital lobby with my E7 running Putty with screen irssi, I had even set up touch gestures, swiping up and down would scroll in the chat log, swiping left and right would change window.
It remains the coolest mobile phone I have ever had.
There were absolutely native Symbian IRC clients, the example that would have worked best on the E7 is probably BelleChat, I am confused as to why you thought Symbian couldn’t run an IRC client…
As to why I never used it, I preferred screen irssi, as that meant I would have a full log of the channels I was active in even when I was not at a computer.
I was using a third party site for AIM or some other instant messaging service (there were so many competing then) that worked on PSP to chat with my girlfriend into the wee hours of the morning without going over my texting limits. Looking back I have no clue how she was responding so late into the night.
It was a magical time in the early days of handheld internet connected devices. Wish I spent that time on someone more worthwhile, but that’s youth for you.
I still do and don’t give a damn. If i’m talking about network modifications and you think im referring to pussy that’s a you problem and i have no part in it
Kinda related I saw a sculpture of Sappho at a Museum last month and it looked like she was so miserable she was going to claw herself to death. I have read some of her poetry and from what I read she seemed like a pretty happy woman. I don’t know exactly what the artist was going for there.
Here in Australia you can become a ward of the state from the age of 5 and through a series of outdated legal loop holes, the government has to fund you bicep surgery regardless of the gender. The best translation I have is “your right to bear biceps” I think the case cited is usually roo v. wallaby and there is often conflict and debate that the aggressiveness of the bicep must be present. It’s vague as all hell, but anyway.
Is it even possible to trace this back to the person who originally got that tattoo and the person who originally wrote those words, both probably never even knew each other, you know how the internet propagates and twists things
lemmyshitpost
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.