Tell the monolinguals about your experience phoenix-smug

A lot more of you should be learning Arabic smdh badeline-disgust

  • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Self taught myself Japanese and not the “self taught watching anime” but with actual textbooks. Living in Japan for a while really helped solidify a lot of it for me, now I can understand most stuff I’m interested in but technical stuff will still absolutely ruin me. I’ve also given up learning to write, if I can read I can type it out anyway.

    One of the things I learned while in high school in Japan was that old Japanese is absolutely cursed and as a foreign kid with like conversational Japanese at best it was impossible to understand. And then I also was left in the dust in math when only years later did I realize I was in a calculus course for first years and I only like 3 years away from calculus in the US as a senior.

    Then there was the fun when I’d respond with hm? To clarify a question and the people around me would take it as me agreeing since un counts as a yes.

    So many things you take for granted with culture and language that you learn about when learning a new language. Honestly was probably my first step towards who I am today and leaving behind my reactionary teenage self. My world expanded, though not good, trans existence was more acknowledged in Japan to a degree even back when I was there though people would still misgender and be shitty, it helped just seeing people exist. Then one night the family I was staying with started talking about how pretty I’d be if I was a girl and yeah…

    • dumpster_dove [he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      I don't think I'll ever learn to write by hand in Japanese either, it takes so much more practice than reading or typing on a computer that I can't bring myself to spend the time that would require.