NoneOfUrBusiness
@NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
- Comment on Brits Serving in Israeli Military Could Get Prison Time 3 hours ago:
This just in: UK declares war on Palestine. More seriously, where was this law when Israel was invading Lebanon?
- Comment on [deleted] 9 hours ago:
Definitely not, but Marxist-Leninist states like China tend to have collective leadership such that one-party authoritarianism doesn't collapse into one-man authoritarianism. Neither is especially egalitarian, but there is a difference.
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
I actually hear occasional similarities between Japanese and Cantonese. For example: "world" is "世界", "Sai Gai" in Cantonese, and its "Sekai" in Japanese.
Wow, that's a lot closer than the Mandarin Shi Jie. Anyway that's one of those Sino-Japanese words; they're kind of like the English equivalent of French loanwords so there's a whole lot of them. Also I guess I have to take back my "it won't help you with listening" bit if Sino-Japanese words are that close to their Cantonese counterparts.
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
Minor nitpick: While Chinese fluency will put you in a marginally better position when learning Japanese compared to a monolingual English speaker, it's really nothing significant. Doesn't really go into the same category as Korean, which is indeed very similar to Japanese. Additionally the only famous language that substantially helps with Japanese learning is Korean, with an honorable mention going to Turkish.
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms.
I think you mean Wago and Kango counting, in which case Kango isn't irregular at all. There are sound changes, but they almost all follow a handful of basic rules. Wago is plenty irregular, but it also stops at ten and is only used for a handful of things.
And don't get me started on the calendar.
The calendar? Their months are literally just firstmonth, secondmonth, thirdmonth, etc.
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
My weeb ass: My time has come.
I did it, and for the record my native language has absolutely nothing in common with Japanese. I started with Duolingo and kept at it until I could power through easy manga, at which point and I started doing that. The good news is that if you can power through the early bits, your entertainment (assuming it's in Japanese) will supplement and eventually replace Here are the things I think I did right:
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Be willing to invest serious time into studying and/or consuming comprehensible material (also known as immersion). At what point it becomes "not worth it" is up to you, but I'd aim for at least an hour a day.
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Watch anime often and attempt to understand what you're hearing (this is separate from studying). You'll fail most of the time at first, but this keeps your ear open so you improve your listening without doing much if any extra work. It also helps you keep track of your progress, since the better you get the more you'll understand. I took a half-year break and when I came back I found my Japanese had improved at least in part because I was watching anime in the interim.
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Don't fall for the studying trap. At some point, and probably earlier than you expect, you'll have to drop actual studying material and focus your efforts on immersion. I started by reading a manga called Yotsubato after getting to conditoinals on Duolingo, but really any manga with furigana works. If you find something other than manga you like better then go for that, but you need something and it needs to at least keep you on your toes language-wise and still be ultimately comprehensible. Humans learn language by recognizing patterns within copious volumes of content, not by rationally analyzing those patterns; that latter stuff is for linguists.
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Keep challenging yourself. It's easy to think you're not ready to advance to the next level, but you should accept that the transition will be painful anyway and often try your hand at more advanced material (meaning immersion material here, as I said don't bother with advanced studying material). In my case, I thought my Japanese was plateauing after sticking with one thing for too long, but after I read my first light novel I improved ridiculously fast. We're talking serious improvement in a matter of weeks here. You're likely to underestimate the level of material you can digest, so you should take that into account when making decisions.
Note regarding your native language: I speak basic Chinese and Chinese and Japanese are different enough that you'll be almost no better than an English native speaker when it comes to fundamentally understanding the language. However, the writing system and the prevalence of Sino-Japanese words mean that you'll have a leg up in guessing the meaning of words you don't know when reading, especially after you learn to reverse engineer character simplifications. For example, you'll see something like 解説 and be like "oh that's just 解说." At least coming from the other direction this is super convenient, but it's obviously no substitute for actually learning the language and it won't help you at all when it comes to listening. You also get the joy of seeing exactly how the Japanese butchered Chinese words, so... uh... good luck. You'll have fun with 样/様. So to directly answer your questions:
YMMV, but I don't think it's hard at all. With the benefit of hindsight, it's no more or less difficult than English.
If you can commit then no, but obviously yes if you give up in three weeks.
This isn't as important a decision as you'd expect, but Duolingo will do fine.
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- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
The Great Vowel Shift. English writing was sensible in the early 14th century around the time of Chaucer, but then shit got out of whack speaking-wise and the writing system was never adjusted to reconcile the difference. So you can blame the Black Death I guess.
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
Hey, us Eastern weebs do it too!
- Comment on How realistic is it for me to learn Japanese so that I can experience Anime better? How long would it take to learn? Has anyone attempted this? 3 days ago:
Everything about the language is needlessly complicated.
I mean, there is no language that isn't needlessly complicated. At least Japanese doesn't have gendered nouns.
- Comment on Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran 4 days ago:
America is terrible, but the brand of terribleness is different from that of Russia and Israel. The latter two are both fascist settler colonialist states, so there's plenty of similarity, while the US is a neoliberal neocolonial empire—an imperialist entity, yes, but of a completely different kind.
- Comment on Do you think The Boys is an accurate representation if real people had superpowers? 4 days ago:
They become evil monsters.
Most, sure, but far from all. The list of historical benevolent dictators isn't very long, but it's not short either.
- Comment on I'm looking for a particular community in Lemmy. It's kind of like ask Lemmy, But with really bad responses. It's more of a joke community. I've seen it in the past but can't find it 4 days ago:
When asking a question like this, it's good form to edit the answer into the OP.
- Comment on Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran 4 days ago:
They're fundamentally the same kind of regime, so the math checks out.
- Comment on Crunchyroll Faces Cancelation: Why Anime Fans Are Choosing Piracy After Latest Update 4 days ago:
There are plain old anime piracy sites, for both downloading and streaming, if you don't want the headache.
- Comment on Ireland poised to blunt sanctions on Israel under corporate pressure, say sources 5 days ago:
I think the Irish are more partial to car bombs.
- Comment on Hamas says still needs time to study Trump's Gaza plan 6 days ago:
Nothing can be worse than the IDF in terms of sheer humanitarian damage, but the US army would be harder to get rid of.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 6 days ago:
Then you're legally obligated to give me half your earnings.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 6 days ago:
If people on the top rail are equally spaced at a distance d from each other, then you'd need to go a distance nd to kill the nth person. For any number n, nd is just a number, so it'll never be infinity. Meanwhile the number of real numbers between 0 and 1 is infinite (for example you have 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, etc), so running a distance d will kill an infinite number of people. Think of it like this: The people on the top are blocks, so walking a finite distance you only step on a finite number of blocks. Meanwhile the people on the bottom are infinitely thin sheets. To even have a thickness you need an infinite number of them.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 6 days ago:
Hey, maybe they're infinitely thin people, in which case you can have one for every real number.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 6 days ago:
Practical application in math tends to be like three degrees of separation and half a century removed from the math at play. In this case, all of modern mathematics is based on set theory, so it's more that this stuff allows us to do other, more practically useful math while knowing what we're talking about.
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 6 days ago:
It's 0. I mean someone has to be the first, but betting on any particular person to be the first will necessarily be a losing bet.
- Comment on Is anyone NOT steaming their Music? 1 week ago:
Yes, I prefer to stir fry mine.
- Comment on Superhero stories have become less about saving people and more about fighting villains. 1 week ago:
The correct transliteration of the Japanese word would be shounen, but as an English loanword both are in use.
- Comment on Superhero stories have become less about saving people and more about fighting villains. 1 week ago:
*Shonen. That is all.
- Comment on Civil defence says 50 killed in Gaza as Netanyahu vows to 'finish job' against Hamas 1 week ago:
Zionism is a fascist ideology, so that tracks.
- Comment on Civil defence says 50 killed in Gaza as Netanyahu vows to 'finish job' against Hamas 1 week ago:
They're not, but him being a fascist explains why he's such wretched human garbage.
- Comment on Civil defence says 50 killed in Gaza as Netanyahu vows to 'finish job' against Hamas 1 week ago:
He’s human garbage
"Fascist" is the word you're looking for.
- Comment on OK what is your Roman name? 1 week ago:
Fulius.
- Comment on So...how the fuck do I trust *anything*? 1 week ago:
It's not the bare minimum; it's less, much less, than the bare minimum. It's like saying to someone with cancer "you should take paracetamol."
- Comment on So...how the fuck do I trust *anything*? 1 week ago:
Well congrats, fascism doesn't care about your vote anymore. Consider doing something about it.