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fairyoftbz · 3 years

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Retrouvailles | l. hyunjae

💐 pairing: florist!hyunjae x fem!reader 💐 genre: cliché fluff 💐 word count: 2.6k 💐 tw: i think i swore once or twice? 💐 synopsis: you are back in your hometown after living in paris for years with your family and a special encounter won’t make you regret your decision. 💐 requested: yes from kyu! i hope you’ll like it!! 💌 💐 a/n: i am so sorry but i absolutely love writing for florist!au, i promise it’s the last one ! (of this series) constructive feedback is always appreciated!!

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Looking around you as you got off the bus, you scoffed in utter shock as this neighbourhood hadn’t changed at all, even if you left eight years ago. All the shops and cafes remained the same, just two new ones got added to the ones that you always found welcoming and cute.

You got a weird sensations when you came back from school a few years ago, your parents stopping you in the entrance and asking you to follow them in the living room. Your siblings were already there, and they all looked down, your little sister on the verge of crying. You were fourteen at this time, and you had imagined the worst.

“Mom, Dad, what’s happening?” you worriedly asked, trying to catch your older brother’s gaze, but his head remained low, a visible disappointed look on his face. “It’s a bit complicated, sweetie, but Dad found a job in Europe. We are going to receive more money and live more comfortably, but we have to follow him,” your mother tried her best to explain you the situation without hurting you, but it was to no avail. You couldn’t control the tears submerging your eyes and cried uncontrollably, your mother rushing to take you in her arms.

“When are we coming back, Mom? Are we going to keep the house? I don’t want other people to live here,” your mother soothingly rubbed your back, trying to ease your pain, and she nodded. “I don’t know baby, but your grandparents are going to live here, it’s better than the house they currently have,” you pouted as you kept on crying, your mother resting a reassuring hand on the back of your head as she drew you closer, but immediately abandoned her arms as soon as your little sister started crying, rushing to hug her instead.

The move was hard, packing all your stuff had you feeling extremely sad to leave all your memories behind, unsure about the future years. The next day, you bid farewell to all your friends, hugging them tightly as you spent your last day at school trying to find solace in your friends and classmates’ presence before leaving. You cried in your best friend’s arms right in front of your mother’s car, and waved at her until she disappeared from the rear-view mirror.

Paris was a wonderful city, not quite like in the movies, but it was still charming. French was a tough language and you kind of struggled go get yourself understood because the other students didn’t really speak your native language, but with many months that turned into years of trying, you managed to now have a decent level in the language of love.

Despite your passion and admiration for this city, creating landmarks in the surrounding neighbourhoods as well as making friends were not easy tasks. However, with the help of your siblings and your parents, you had managed to make a bunch of friends, and that did you good when you didn’t have to think too much when you were talking since you were conversing in your native language.

Your time is France was amazing, you created great memories with awesome friendships, but you couldn’t help feeling nostalgic sometimes. You missed your neighbourhood, your grandparents, and your other relatives, only being able to see and talk to them via Skype or FaceTime. Years passed, and finally, at 22 years old, you decided to let your family in France, where your siblings had already constructed things with people, and come back where you grew up, where you felt like your heart truly belonged.

The shock on your face had to be very visible since some bystanders threw you a weird look as you stood stoic in the middle of the pavement. Spontaneously walking inside the kiosk that was as old as you remembered it, you warmly greeted the owner, an elderly woman that hadn’t changed a bit. Still the same hunched shoulders, long, white hair secured in a tight bun by a flower pin, her wrinkled smile was still as warm and as wise as you knew it when you were buying sweets from her.

You exchanged a few words with her, giving you a pack of the sweets you used to buy and the prepaid card you asked for. You still had your French number, so it’d cost you a kidney if you ever decided to call your relatives with it. The old woman looked extremely happy and somewhat pleased to see you, because she admitted that she got worried when you suddenly stopped passing by and buy sweets.

“And you decided to come back, how wonderful,” she said with her shaky, warm voice while handing you what you just bought. You smiled at her and nodded, eyes slightly widening when she grabbed your wrist. “If you need anything, my husband and I will be happy to help. I’m glad to see you back by us,” she said, and you felt your heart flutter. It was truly where you belonged. “Thank you, I really appreciate it,” you answered as she winked, wishing you a great day.

The fresh air welcomed you once you got out, feeling it clear your lungs from the slight more polluted air from Paris. You opened the bag of sweets and munched on a few, feeling the memories rushing back in your mind as you started wandering around the neighbourhood. You quickly texted your cousin that you were near their house, but he was probably too busy playing video games or napping, so you decided to go grab something more consistent to eat and wandered around, walking further into different areas.

The beautiful, light colours of a shop window caught your attention, not remembering its existence when you were younger. You got near the window and observed inside, discovering a jungle of beautiful flowers arranged by species. A manly back was working behind the checkout, assembling a bouquet of what seemed to be roses. You were tempted to go inside the shop to know more about this new place, but you quickly hid from the window when the man turned around. His face looked familiar, a tingling sensation appearing in your stomach as you tried to remember him. You knew him from somewhere, you were sure of it, but you just couldn’t put your finger on it.

The young man inside the shop slightly frowned as he saw someone suddenly disappearing from the window, the hems of their long brown coat lingering in his gaze. He slightly shrugged with a smile and petted the cat at his feet, who was demanding cuddles and attention. His hands were occupied with the order he had just finished preparing and he wrapped the flowers in some brown paper craft before placing it in the back office, where all the other orders were ready to get delivered by his co-worker Juyeon. He finished his cup of now cold coffee that was forgotten on the main counter, hearing the bell above the door chime.

Much to his great disappointment, it wasn’t the young lady that vanished before his eyes, it was Juyeon’s mother, who was here to pick up flowers for his sick grandmother. Hyunjae hid his dismay behind a warm smile, quickly pacing back and forth to give her the bouquet and bank her total.

A middle-aged woman walking out of the shop looked at you from the side as you still hid, tugging on your lower lip, rummaging your mind in order to find who this man was. You were getting frustrated as you stomped the floor with your foot, getting tired of your brain playing tricks on you as you were sure that you knew this man.

“Fuck it, I’m going in,” you said as you pushed the door open, the intense smell of flowers and pollen attacking your nostrils. It smelt really nice and welcoming, but your allergies said otherwise.

You sneezed once, twice, and one last time before you could properly greet the man in front of you. He looked as curious as you were, he must have seen you since you weren’t the best at hiding.

“Welcome to the Butterfly flower shop, how can I help you?” the voice of the man sending a nice wave of chill down your spine, feeling yourself smile at who seemed to be the owner of the shop. “Hello, I’m just going to look around for a while,” you said while gesturing to all the flowers around you, sniffling to try and hold a sneeze in, but it didn’t help at all. It actually did the exact opposite that you had wished.

Hyunjae empathically smiled as you kept on sneezing, trying his best not to vocal how cute you were when the pollen seized your entire nostrils. You apologised profusely, mentally cursing yourself for being so curious. Maybe, just maybe, you should have stayed outside and admire him from afar, you wouldn’t be embarrassing yourself just like you were doing right now. But it was so tempting, you had to take a look. He was nice enough to hand you a pack of tissues, which you gladly took with a nod.

“I’ll be in the back office for a minute, don’t hesitate to ask me if you need any help,” he said with a warm smile and you nodded, holding a tissue to your face. “I appreciate it, thank you,” you answered as you started looking around the shop. All the flowers were beautiful, it was really tempting to just buy one of each without even caring about the prices. Since this was impossible, your eyes landed on some daisies, whose petals looked really nice and healthy. You felt bad to have made your choice just a few seconds after the man left for the back office, so you decided to wait for a bit.

Yet, another bad idea. Your nose felt ticklish, no matter how hard you rubbed your finger under it, it only became worse.

“Hum excuse me?” you politely said, and the man reappeared almost instantly, close to scaring you. His whole face lit up just with a smile, and you felt your heart skip a beat at the sight. Staring at him for a few seconds, mouth slightly agape as you detailed his face, his smile and manners hitting you like a truck.

This man was none other than Hyunjae, the young boy you had a crush on during the late years of middle school, right before you left for France. He grew up so much, yet his facial features had barely changed, they only matured. His smile was the thing that made you fall for him, his personality and physical features not helping the hopeless romantic that you were. You barely talked to him when you were younger, only when you were assigned in groups with him since he always hung out with the athletes and dancers, a group that you were dying to join but never did. Hyunjae was an incredible dancer, always performing for the school team and even outside.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?” you heard his voice bringing you back to reality, feeling embarrassment invading your body as you’ve probably been staring at him for long, way too long to not be weird. “I’m-I’m sorry. Can I have a bouquet of those daisies over there, please?” you asked, and he nodded. “Sure thing,” walking around the counter, you followed him to the said daisies, the man gathering a good portion of his stock. Your eyes widened a bit but didn’t dare to say anything, only to follow him back to the counter.

“Are you from here? My usual customers are my acquaintances or the people living in the neighbourhood,” his voice trailed as he arranged the flowers, briefly looking at you with a smile before busying his hands in the plants again. “I was actually born and raised here, but I had to follow my father abroad for his job,” you said while delicately touching the petals of a peony right next to your head. Hyunjae’s hands stopped, and he looked up, eyes going wide. “You are from here? Where in the neighbourhood?” “I grew up in the house right at the corner of the street, the beige one with the burgundy wooden shutters and the garden.” “Hold on. Y/N?” his voice sounded so light-hearted as his eyebrows raised in shock. It was his turn to look at you with a surprised look on his face, his mouth stretching in a wide smile.

You offered him a smile and you fell in a comfortable silence. Thousands of questions were trotting in your head, dying to ask the other, but you were both trying to find a topic that didn’t sound too curious and invading. And it was hard because you both became suddenly very shy, your attention focusing on the flowers. It was normal for you, but Hyunjae wasn’t the type of guy to get intimidated this easily.

“So-” you both said at the same time and chuckled together, the florist gesturing you to go first. “No, no, go ahead.” “So you decided to finally come back? I understand if you missed this town, I would too,” he said and you smiled, approving his words. “I was too tired from France, plus I missed my family that stayed here. I just wanted to pay them a visit and maybe stay over until I find another place to stay on my own,” you explained while observing your former crush wrapping the flowers you had chosen.

He secured them in the same crafted paper he did for the previous bouquet, placing it on the counter closer to you. Handing him your credit card, you stayed with your hand hanging in the void, Hyunjae typing something on the cash register. He religiously ignored your card and handed you the bouquet, giving you the brightest smile he could.

“Take this as a gift to welcome you back in town,” he said and your eyes widened, hand slowly moving away. “I can’t accept this,” you said, suddenly feeling nervous. Hyunjae encouraged you to take the flowers by placing them right under your nose with a smirk, tickling your nose. “Please do. Welcome back in town, Y/N,” he said as he noticed some fallen petals stuck on his dark green apron, wiping them away before offering you a smile.

You took the flowers away from your face and sheepishly smiled, thanking him for his generosity.

“Thank you, really,” you said with a shy voice, struggling to look at him in the eyes. He shook his head, indicating you that it was nothing, and he cleared the counter. “Have a lovely day, Hyunjae. It was good to meet you again,” you said as you walked to the door, hand on the knob. “Wait Y/N- would you like to get some coffee sometimes? I’d love to hear about your time in France and… get to know you a bit better and make up for lost time?” His offer wasn’t something you had expected, but who were you to refuse getting closer to your former crush.

This random encounter with him had your heart fluttering like it did when you watched him perform in front of the entire school a few years ago, when you were still a young teenager hopelessly in love. It was hammering in your chest, warmth travelling in your entire body as a radiant smile appeared on your face.

“I’d love to.” You said with a smile as you walked back to the counter, only to take the business card he was handing you. Your eyes landed on the black ink scratching the phone numbers, only to find another one messily written at the top of the small card. You thanked him and walked through the front door, waving at him with a smile as you walked away, clutching the piece of paper tightly in your palm, excited of what this reunion was going to offer you.

╰☆☆ Les retrouvailles nous font rappeler de vieilles histoires, mais elles consentent également à en créer de nouvelles. ☆☆╮

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pellucidity-is-me · 3 years

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Peter Pettigrew and Latin

Summary: Final installment in my Marauders and Latin series. Part 4, but works as a one-shot. I’m working through each Marauders’ relationship with Latin, and this is Peter Pettigrew. I’m also writing a very long story about the Marauders’ years at Hogwarts—you can find the link on my blog description!

Wordcount: 2111

Peter Pettigrew doesn't really ever find out what Latin is.

And he doesn't really care, to be honest.

The first time he has an actual conversation about the language is in the dormitory with Remus Lupin, who is Peter's best friend. They both adore James and Sirius, of course, but they can recognize that they're the underdogs. They aren't as loud and brash and bold as their dark-haired counterparts. It's always been James-and-Sirius, and then Remus-and-Peter. Remus and Peter are the afterthoughts, but that's okay.

Well, that's what Remus says, anyhow, but Peter knows the truth.

It's actually closer to James-and-Sirius and Remus, and also Peter. Remus and James are close because James loves having someone ill to take care of (and Remus is always poorly, for reasons unknown). Remus and Sirius are close because Sirius loves to vent about his parents, and Remus is a very good listener. Peter and Remus are close because they're similar (again: Remus says so, but Peter thinks he's just being kind). Remus has special and separate bonds with each of the other Marauders, but Peter is only close to Remus.

And it's so annoying. Peter spends more time around Sirius and James than Remus ever will. Remus is either ill or visiting his ill mother all the time. Remus doesn't join in on some of their more boisterous pranks. Remus sometimes prefers to spend time in the library rather than with his friends. It's Peter who gets into trouble for the sake of James and Sirius. It's Peter who claps for James when he does a fancy trick on his broom—Remus either reads a book or teases him. It's Peter who spends as much time as he can with James and Sirius, and Remus who is only their friend when he feels like it. So why is Peter still treated as an add-on? It's not fair.

Peter doesn't resent Remus, though. How could he? Remus is kind to Peter when nobody else is. Remus talks to Peter when nobody else will. Peter is always Remus' first choice, and that means the world.

James and Sirius are in a detention today, and Peter is doing schoolwork with Remus. They're talking about spells, and Remus says something about Latin roots. "What are Latin roots?" says Peter. "Are they like tree roots?"

Remus doesn't laugh, even though James and Sirius might've. He leans forward slightly and his eyes light up, just as they always do when Remus gets excited about something (they didn't used to, but now they do. Peter wonders what's changed). "It's a language," says Remus, "a very, very old language." He presses his lips together, and Peter knows that he's about to make a joke. "Older than Professor Dumbledore, even."

Peter laughs, but Remus isn't done yet. "Older than Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall combined. And older than Sirius, even though he thinks he's so old and wise just because his birthday is before ours." Remus smiles at Peter's laughter before continuing. "It's nothing like English. In English, we change the endings of verbs when the subject changes. In Latin, you change the ending of nouns, too—and adjectives have to agree with gender, and there's a whole separate tense just for when you aren't sure about something..." Remus rambles for a bit about the wonders of Latin, but Peter zones out for a bit. He doesn't really understand. "...But even though it's so different from English, a lot of the words we get—and a lot of the magic spells, especially—come from Latin," continues Remus. "Especially the big words. So when you know some Latin vocabulary, then you can guess what a word means based on the parts of Latin in it. That's a Latin root—it's part of the word that stems from Latin."

Root. Stem. What's up with all the plant terms? "Sounds complicated," says Peter.

"Oh, it is. Terribly complicated. I learned a bit of it before I went to Hogwarts, but I was never particularly good at it. I worked hard, though."

"Why'd you learn it, then?" asks Peter. He can't fathom the way that Remus' mind works sometimes. Who would learn for fun?

"Well..." Remus seems to be thinking very hard. "Sometimes languages are difficult to learn because they're always changing. Like French and English and Spanish and things. The vocabulary and slang changes all the time. But Latin isn't changing at all—it's been the same for years, and it'll never change again." He pauses. "And then there's the rules themselves. Latin has a lot of rules, but that means that it's predictable. It has relatively few exceptions to the words. And... I always found it fun to memorize things." Remus shrugs. "My life before Hogwarts was always very predictable, so Latin was comforting, in a way. Things that are constantly changing are a bit like moving targets, aren't they? My life's not predictable anymore, of course," Remus finishes with a laugh.

"It's not?"

"Are James and Sirius ever predictable?"

"Well... no." Peter smiles, but he's a bit concerned. "Does that mean you don't like us?" He dares to use the pronoun us, even though he knew that Remus was chiefly talking about James and Sirius. Peter likes being lumped together with his friends.

"That's not it at all," says Remus, waving his hands. "I think you're great. It's not what I'm used to, but maybe... it's better than what I'm used to. Moving targets are a little more fun, I think."

Peter disagrees, but he'll never say so. He thinks that his own relationship with the Marauders is a bit like a moving target—and, unlike Remus, Peter isn't quick enough to hit it. In fact, he's not even quick enough to see it until it's far too late. The expectations are always changing. The Marauders are too quick for Peter, too fast for him, too bright. Every time Peter feels like he's caught up, his friends have already moved on.

But Remus can keep up. Whenever Sirius makes a snide comment towards Remus, Remus can fire back with one equally snide. Whenever James starts babbling about things that Peter doesn't understand, Remus can keep up and ask questions without seeming stupid. Remus is a lot like Peter, but there's just something there—and Peter doesn't think it's intelligence, but it's something akin to it—that makes him a good, exciting friend.

And whatever it is, Peter doesn't have it.

At first, Peter tries to be just like James. He copies James' excitement and nonchalant attitude. He runs his hand through his thin, blond hair (it doesn't have the same effect, but he does it anyway). He thinks that perhaps he'll play Quidditch someday. He could be on the same team as James. Wouldn't that be grand?

Then Peter realizes that he's started too high. James is perfect, so Peter needs to aim a bit lower. So he makes jokes that he isn't entirely sure are kind, just like Sirius. In second year (after they'd already found out about Remus), Peter makes a rather unsavory joke about werewolves to Remus' face. Remus jokes about werewolves all the time, but there's something about Peter's joke that makes him go pale and shaky. He laughs it off, but Peter feels awful. He stops trying to be like Sirius. Sirius sometimes makes Peter feel bad about himself, and he doesn't want to do that to anyone else.

Peter decides to aim even lower. He's going to be like Remus, who seems to fit in without even trying. Peter tries for Remus' brand of deadpan humor. He sits with his hands folded, just like Remus. He lets his mouth twist upwards when he's happy instead of breaking into a huge grin. He tries to be kind to everyone, even when it isn't true. He starts lying a little bit more, just like Remus—about tiny things, just like Remus. Peter even begins to do schoolwork more, like Remus.

James and Sirius seem playfully exasperated about Remus' desire to do well in school. "That's our Moony," they say, shaking their heads and going outside to play Quidditch. But when Peter stays in to study, they look at him and scoff. "It's not that hard, Peter. You don't really need to revise for the Potions exam. It's the first one of the year. It's gonna be easy. How thick can you get?"

So Peter stops trying to be like Remus. He isn't sure what secret ingredient Remus has that makes James and Sirius love him unconditionally, but Peter has no good relationship with his friends. Even Remus seems to prefer James' company to Peter's on occasion, even though Remus and Peter are supposed to be best mates.

After a while, Peter starts to notice flaws in his friends. They are no longer the paragons of light that he once thought they were. Peter, ironically, notices flaws in Remus first.

Remus is self-pitying and self-centered. Everything always has to be about him. Whenever Peter tells him something even remotely sensitive, he can tell that Remus is pitying himself in his head, even though he doesn't say it aloud. Remus' life is worse; Remus' life is always worse. Peter doesn't mind at first, because Remus is right. But... after a while, it gets tiring.

And Remus pretends that he thinks something of Peter, but Peter knows that too much of it is a farce. Remus is better than Peter. He has suffered more, and he has still come out better. He is a harder worker, a better listener, and better with people. Peter's too slow, too hesitant, and not funny enough for Remus' tastes. And Remus knows it—he's just too polite to say so.

That hurts more than Sirius and James' disparaging comments, actually. With James and Sirius, it's obvious that the three of them are not on equal footing. But Remus seems to offer Peter crumbs of friendship that taste sweet in Peter's mouth and turn to plastic as they go down. Does Remus even like Peter? Peter isn't sure.

Oh, perhaps he's overthinking things. Perhaps Remus is a much better person than Peter thinks he is. Perhaps they all are. After all, Sirius makes exactly the same belittling comments towards Remus as he does Peter—the difference is, Remus can laugh them off, and Sirius respects him for that. And James may be conceited, but there's something much brighter underneath. James is so empathetic that it almost hurts.

Peter almost wishes that he were a werewolf.

Forget almost. Peter wishes that he were a werewolf. Maybe that's the certain something that Remus has and Peter doesn't.

James and Sirius may be the mascots of the Marauders in public, but Remus is the mascot in private. He's the glue that holds their little group together. James and Sirius would never get rid of him: no, it's too much fun to be friends with a werewolf. They love it.

James bends over backwards to take care of Remus when he's poorly. Sirius relishes the danger of having a werewolf friend. Everything is always about Remus, and Peter wants everything to be about Peter. He doesn't even need all that much; he only wants people that genuinely like him. Peter is only a Marauder because of a mixture of chance and Remus. Chance gave him position: it was the reason that he was placed into the same dormitory as the rest of them in the first place. Remus gave him means: he was the one that convinced the other Marauders to treat Peter nicely, even though Peter is now trapped in a group that isn't anything like him.

Well, he's not trapped. But he wants to be.

Peter wants to be equal with his friends more than anything. He wants it so much that his heart aches. He's happy to have friends, of course, but sometimes he feels as if he is merely witnessing a friendship instead of participating.

Peter doesn't know much about the Latin language, but he does know that a moving target is much harder to hit than a stationary one. "I think I'd like Latin," says Peter.

Remus smiles—closed-mouth, as he always does—and folds his hands on his lap. "So did I," he says, "but there are better things, aren't there? And much more useful things. Like this charm, for instance—I think you're waving your wand a bit too much. Try a smaller movement. There, that's it..."

Peter resolves to enjoy his friendship, as strange as it might be. He will not be self-pitying like Remus. It doesn't matter in the long run, does it?

#peter pettigrew #young peter pettigrew #marauders fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #marauders #latin #extremely nerdy #im sorry #i don't actually know latin #i have learned what i know through the Power of the Internet

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infj-zen · 3 years

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#GetSorted challenge

#GetSorted from mbti-sorted

Okay, for interest’s sake I’m going to answer a few of these questions in writing. It’s almost midnight, we’ve been in COVID-19 lockdown for a while now and I don’t look camera ready.

Actually, that’s an excuse.

I would not go on camera even if there were no pandemic.

To everyone who does the video challenge, congratulations on your bravery.

So, here goes...

Tell us about a teacher or a coach who left a big impression on you. I had a longstanding EFSJ music teacher who would probably be considered charismatic, dominant, driven, hot-tempered, sometimes extremely funny. She emphasized repetition so that all her students had as close to perfect technique as possible. You were not allowed to have any input into her methods and students with a lot of opinions usually left or were asked to leave. She was very good at teaching the way she taught and for some students her methods worked particularly well. I learned that I did not like learning by repetition and did not retain as much that way. However, by subjugating my own preferences I was forced to address my weaknesses. Maybe it resulted in personal growth in terms of seeing the value of repetition in developing physical technique, muscle memory, and the memorization of music. I think it would have helped to also have combined the emphasis on repetition with explanations of the history and theory of the music in order to more fully understand and retain what I had learned. I also learned how to be self-effacing when I needed to be and not to insert ego or opinions where they were not wanted when I later had bosses with similar personality traits. I learned to be more selective and to actively try and put myself in long-term situations where I would be learning/working in the ways most conducive to me. Besides this learning experience, I had some really amazing science and English teachers in later years of high school and university. These were mostly ENTPs along with a few ENFPs and ENTJs. I found the ENTJs often had the most clear explanations for complex subjects. The best ENTP teachers were often very personally considerate and good at explaining things in ways that were easily understandable to me; I was good at synthesizing their ideas. The ENFPs were probably more smooth speakers and yet somewhat less easy to follow for me (they probably also addressed weakness in how I learned, for example, by not always explaining what they wanted super clearly beforehand; learning was a lot of trial and error; we did a lot of acting and oral presentations in class; Ne and Te make for a different way of thinking theoretically, of connecting ideas and facts).

What was your favourite subject in school and did you pursue it as a career? English and Chemistry. I pursued English in University and probably would have gone into Chemistry otherwise. However, I then realized I liked researching as an activity more than actually doing all that academic English involved and ended up studying and working in social sciences - somewhere I never considered when I was younger. A background in literature and writing is generally useful in the various jobs I’ve had though.

Do you have any athletic injuries and how did you get them? Yes, tendonitis from dancing (repetitive jumping and landing on the ball of the foot). This was as a child and it was not permanent.

Do you believe in any supernatural phenomena? No, but I can imagine a lot.

Tell us about a recurring conflict with a family member. Probably the most recent common recurring conflict revolves around being in a conversation with ‘a family member’ who is not listening and responding appropriately. For example, I am talking and ‘a family member’ to whom I am speaking responds by addressing something that takes on a totally different issue from that which I just referenced. Is the listening fine and the responding not? Is the listening poor and the responding good? Are both the listening and the responding off? Is my articulation poor? Is it mind manipulation?

What character do you identify with the most and why? The closest thing I’ve seen on screen is probably Caroline Turing in Person of Interest. Episode 23, Season 1 of POI features an INFJ actress playing something very close to an INFJ psychologist. Her mannerisms, speech patterns and interactions with her ISTP co-star (playing an ISTP former-military-guy-acting-as-a-patient-to-save-her-from-hitmen) are pretty realistic. Unfortunately, her real character, Samantha Groves aka Root, a serial killer for hire is only pretending to be Caroline Turing in order to gain access to the ISTP’s INTJ computer genius boss (played by an INTJ) and his AI surveillance system. So, the portrayal of this character only lasts for one episode.

How many languages do you speak? Is English your first language? If it isn’t, answer a question in your native language (please summarize it after in English!). Two. English (native speaker) and French.

What advice would you give to your younger self and what would they think of where you are now? Would you warn them about anything? Maybe just that what fields you enjoy studying in and working in may end up being different areas. In terms of having better job prospects, I might advise my younger self to study a subject like software engineering (which I didn’t have a lot of knowledge of or exposure to through our high school education system). That might be very useful in finding a fulfilling job now or in complementing the degree or field I went into. Also, I was extremely driven when I was younger and I would probably advise myself to take school more slowly, less courses at a time, more time to focus on course work, and generally to manage things in a way that resulted in less burnout.

Do you people-gather? (If you’re unsure, ask others in your group(s) if they’re there because of you.) How many groups do you belong to, and what do you think of this? Not so much for the people-gathering. I do not join a lot of groups. Usually, when I do, it is because I got dragged into it by someone charismatic and friendly. I often stay with the group for a relatively lengthy period. I end up feeling highly committed out of a sense of loyalty to the recruiter/group. At some point I end up leaving the group (often involves physically moving away to justify) and having a sense of extreme burnout when the mention of joining anything similar comes up.

Are you passionate about your career? Tell us about it. Sort of. I went into my career with the idea that I would have less chance of burnout if I went into something I was dispassionate about. For example, less interaction with people (using Fe) and more paperwork (using Ni and Ti). Some of my jobs have involved a lot of customer service and the use of Fe all day was overstimulating and emotionally draining. The best jobs so far involved working at a desk 9-5 and basically using a lot of Ni and Ti while organizing information in systems. This felt like meditating; I would achieve a zen-like state and feel energized afterwards. I would not say I was passionate about the nature of the work but the zen-like feeling was nice. In terms of being passionate, I think I might prefer a job that involved more of a research component. I think I would like to feel more challenged, to learn a lot of new things every day. However, I would not like to be in a career that feels too passionate for really long periods of time, or in a high-stress environment that would result in burnout. I would like more of a balance. You can always find hobbies you are passionate about on the side.

Which holiday brings you the least joy? Labour Day. The thought of going back to school or work ruins it.

Are you a heartbreaker or a heartbreak-ee? 50-50.

What is your dream car? Or if you aren’t into cars, what piece of technology do you dream of owning? I really like my laptop.

Would you rather make a lot of money at a job you hate or do a job you love that keeps you below the poverty line? I would rather have a job I love that keeps me below the poverty line because I don’t spend a lot. However, I would not like to have a job that keeps me way below the poverty line, because then I would feel used and would start to hate the job that kept me so much below the poverty line.

Do you collect anything? Other than information gathering, not really. The idea of accumulating large quantities of physical items and taking care of all of them sounds like a lot to think about or unnecessary stress.

Have you ever had any alternative career paths/life gameplans? Do you wish you had taken another path in retrospect? Sure. Chemistry or Software Engingeering looked interesting and probably would have helped in the job market, even in combination with the field I’m in. That way, my skills might have been more of a focus than personality, career-wise.

Do you have a good sense of direction? How do you navigate (when you can’t rely on GPS)? Do you navigate new places/buildings the same way you navigate your home town/familiar buildings? Is your sense of time better or worse than your sense of direction? No, I do not have a good sense of direction. Mbti-sorted is the only person I know whose sense of direction is worse than mine. And that only applies when walking somewhere. When driving somewhere, she has a better sense of direction. I am decent but not excellent with maps, professionally made and drawn by me. With a place I know well, I just walk around without thinking much. Usually it’s okay. Sometimes, I’m surprised to be lost in a place I thought familiar. With new places, I usually plan ahead. I study maps, bring them with me, compare the map with the physical reality around me for similarities and differences, get upset by perceived inaccuracies, visualize the layout of the land if the land and the map were flipped in different directions, try and detect logical patterns in street layouts and names, I try and remember locations of importance and what they look like, directions between key starting points and destinations, and I take down numbers for taxis in case of failure. Sometimes I walk new streets rather than drive in order to actively experience routes more slowly and have time to memorize them better. My sense of time is okay but not great. I feel the need to meet deadlines. I remember I used to rush to classes at the last minute for school, but I guess I did feel the need to get there on time. I have learned to avoid rushing, to be more responsible and set alarms and to carry a cell phone with a clock around with me to arrive on time and often early for important events. Probably my sense of time is better than my sense of direction.

Credit to Temple Grandin for this question: if I tell you to think of a church steeple, what’s happening inside your head? (You could also talk about a clock tower, or a water tower, or a minaret - something you are familiar with, but have less personal connection to works best.) I immediately thought of a white, aluminum sided cube topped by a black pyramid with light blue sky in the background. My mind was adverse to or somehow felt it unnecessary to think beyond that.

Would you be unable or unwilling to answer any of these questions? Which? No, in that I answered all the questions. I guess I did so in writing and was unwilling to answer them on video. I think you can almost always figure out how to phrase things in a way that is acceptable to you in writing. Yes, in as much as message is affected by medium.

C. ANSWER THESE THREE QUESTIONS (30 seconds):

How much preparation did you do before making this video? If you have an interviewer, did you pick the questions or did they? Who decided to do it that way? A bit / no interviewer / me

What type do you think you are? INFJ

In 1-3 adjectives, describe how you think others see you. Calm and conscientious (from collegues and acquaintances), scrappy (from family).

#mbti #infj #getsorted

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teardrop-eclipse · 4 years

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My Twisted Wonderland Ocs Bio

Note: My Two TW OC’s are based on the sun drop flower and moonstone from tangled. ~

✨🌙————☀️✨

Quote: “The moon speaks yet the sun is silence...only hears my voice with no reply.”

———

Full name: Opal Lucine Stone ( オパールルシネ石)

Kanji: 音羽瑠琉志安寿都音

[O] 音- sound, pitch, tone

[Pa] 羽- plumage, feathers

[L] 瑠 - lapis lazuli

[Lu] 琉- lapis lazuli

[Ci] 志- intention

[Ne] 安- peaceful

[S] 寿- longevity

[To] 都-metropolis

[Ne] 音- sound, pitch, tone

———

Meaning of Opal: Gem or jewel

Meaning of Lucine: Moon or light

Nickname: Ms. Stone (address to all her students), Ms. Opal (address to college staff), Opi (address to Cyra)

Age: 27 (physical age)

Birthday: October 18

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Status: Alive

Race: Human

Gender: Female

Height: 5’5

Weight: unknown

Hair color: Opal

Eye color: Grey

Blood Type: O

Occupation: Literature Teacher at night raven college (Masters degree on English Literature)

Personality: Serious, Cold, responsible, respected, strict, smart, heartwarming, elegant, friendly, neat, and sometimes mysterious

Languages: Norwegian & Japanese

Studying languages: French & Spanish

Relatives: Sun (mother), Moon (father), Cyra (younger sister), Nova (???)

Crush: Divus Crewel

Hobbies: Writing poems, spells, and studying other languages

Favorite Food: unknown

Strengths: leadership, challenged, determine, creative, success

Flaws: Sometimes a hermit, worry, sometimes not organized, not sleeping early, cyra’s permission on begging, stubborn, self-distance sometimes, overprotected, frights, tricks, and afraid of mistakes.

Any scars, birthmarks, etc: None

Trivia:

-Most of the nights, opal has a conversation with his father talking about her days at school and Cyra’s usual adventures.

-Every night opal goes to check on Cyra to see everything is alright. She’s overprotected over Cyra.

-She sometimes goes overboard when she caught her students not paying attention to class or not doing their work. She summon these rock spikes when she’s in a very bad mood. You do not wanna piss her off while she’s teaching. Strict mode level survival.

-She’s right handed.

-She will always be interested to learn more about anything and talks about it too. Pretty much a nerd I guess ^.^”

-In magic, she usually control elemental powers like water, earth, and ice. And a slinch of dark magic. Not too much or her inner dark powers takes over. Tried to learn fire but failed.

-After the split as nova, she can no longer hear or communicate her mother. The sun. Only she could hear her father, the moon.

-Can summon rock spikes with or without her chants. No wand required.

-Sense her sisters presents with her moonstone earrings. Glows if Cyra use her dark magic.

-Both Opal and Cyra don’t discuss their past to no one, their hidden powers, Nor as nova.

Quote: “I always ended up learning something new today. I want this exploration to surprise me with a bang! ~”

———–

Full name: Cyra Lily Stone (シラゆり石)

Kanji: 詩蘭利利

[Cy] 詩- Poem

[Ra] 蘭- Orchid

[Li] 利-cleaver, adventurous

[Iy] 利- cleaver, adventurous

[S] 寿- longevity

[To] 都-metropolis

[Ne] 音- sound, pitch, tone

———

Meaning to Cyra: Sun, lord, or throne.

Meaning to lily: Flower

Nickname: Cy (addressed to opal), Ms. Cyra (addressed to teachers and staff), Sunshine (Vil)

Age: 17 (physical age)

Birthday: October 18

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Status: Alive

Race: Human

Gender: Female

Height: 5’4

Weight: unknown

Hair color: Medallion Yellow faded to light blonde

Eye color: Brown

Blood Type: O

Occupation: 2nd Year at Night Raven College

Dorm: Pomefiore

Personality: Curious, creative, adventurous, smart, bright, happy, friendly, cheerful, open minded and shy sometimes

Languages: Norwegian & Japanese

Studying languages: French & Spanish

Relatives: Sun (mother), Moon (father), Opal (Older sister), Nova (???)

Crush: Vil Schoenheit

Hobbies: singing and spells

Favorite Food: unknown

Strengths: Mannered, responsible, kind, freewill, fun, supporter, and challenged

Flaws: Daydream, stubborn, sometimes gets herself in trouble, not asking for help, distraction, doubts, awkward, lies, habits and childish sometimes

Any scars, birthmarks, etc: none

Trivia:

-During daytime when she’s alone, she speaks to her mother the sun. Telling her adventurous days and her friends. Along with opal.

-After the split as nova, she can no longer hear or communicate her father. The moon. Only she could hear her mother, the sun.

-Right handed

-Sometimes Cyra tap in her dark powers, she calls them the reverse chant which it connect to opals powers. However it goes dark, forbidden and dangerous. Simular to nova’s power before the split. She can’t control it thus opal helps her control it. Using her black rock chant. Only use her reverse chant on dangerous situation.

-Extrovert

-Sense her sisters presents with her sun stone necklace.

-In magic, she usually control elemental powers like fire, earth, and a bit of dark. Not too much or her inner dark powers takes over. Tried to learn water and ice but failed.

-Loves anything that has to do with fluffy stuff

-Animal lover

-Hidden power, healing. No wand required.

-Both Cyra and Opal don’t discuss their past to no one, their hidden powers, Nor as nova.

———

Opal and Cyra’s Background: The tear of the sun and moon, falls into earth and creates one human being. They call her “nova”. Nova was curious about everything she sees, touches, everything. She communicates the sun and the moon about what she learned, about things she sees, her feelings, everything!! Every village she goes to, people welcome her with open arms, along with that she learns about the world, people, cultural, magic, everything. However this price were the sun and the moon emerge their powers into one is quite, dangerous. While growing up, her powers gets stronger and not easy to control. One day while helping a few villagers on farming, all of the sudden her powers starts to go haywire and burn the stock. A few homes, injuring people. Nova was devastated and was crying apologetically for all the damage she’s done. Every villager was in rage and kicked her out, she grab her stuff and ran off in fright. Words spread fast and every villager home, are in fear or angered. Calling her witch. “No need a witch in our home, you are cursed.” The bright women lost trust in people, weep for this pain to go away.

Meanwhile the sun and moon felt guilt that her daughter are going some difficult times. Blaming at theirselves for creating a life that they wanna share in a world we’re other life forms could enjoy. “I learned so much about the humans while observing them from the distance. I wanted to be part of their world but I can’t. I am a planet. A moon. And the sun. We gave a piece of us to that world and everyone is afraid of it...” moon said. “The world is not ready for that but I don’t want our daughter to suffer. What if we split the powers into two?” The moon looks at the sun in surprise: “Two? Would that problem be worse for our daughter?” “No, It’s overwhelmed that she has to hold our powers but if she split into two. One will hold the sun and the other the moon.” The moons is flabbergasted by the sun response but has a problem. “If we proceed of doing that, would her memories fade? And one or the other won’t hear us?” While thinking out loud, they didn’t notice their daughter was hearing the conversation, “I’ll do it. I don’t want people to hate me or cause any danger to anyone. If this is the only way I’ll do it. Please mother. Please father. I want this nightmare to end.” In conclusion, the sun and moon agreed and asked nova to chant for the split to start: “

“Listen to my voice. We are the sun and moon. We want the world in peace,

till the end of time..We will balance the chains. With our powers of light and dark. Our fate rely on me,till the end of time.

Till the end of time.”

The chant worked, before splitting she calls her sun half Cyra Lily Stone. And her Moon half Opal Lucine Stone. “Remember our memories, don’t let it fade. Be peace and no harm. Wise but no evil. It will be a struggle but please be together as one....” she splits and two emerges. The moon speaks to her daughters: “Opal, your sister won’t hear me. And so as Cyra speaking to your mother. We don’t want you to suffer no more. Second chance of life we gave. Be wise but no evil.” Opal looks up to her father: “We won’t screw this up, we’ll have a better life and make you and mother proud!!” Cyra looks up and speaks: “What opal said, we’ll control it!!” After the talk opal and Cyra got up and walked away. Put their horrible memories passed them and moved on. Ended up finding a home to stay and re try to fit in. Opal was interested in English literature so she pursuit her career. While Cyra was in home school, Opal was teaching her everything what she’s has to know and importantly controlling each other’s powers. 7 years passed and opal received a masters degree on literature and started to looking for a job soon as possible. While Cyra was wondering around the village looking at stuff her eye catches. Opal met this man named Ashton Vargas outside her hometown while searching for a job, he recommended night raven college since according to him, his headmaster are hiring some staff who are either have a bachelors or a masters degree on any teaching majors he’s looking for. Opal accepted the offer and went to college to talk to the headmaster. She got accepted and had to move in. She told Cyra the news but Cyra wanted to come. Opal Lied to her saying it’s private college and won’t allow outsiders to visit. She left with her belongings but Cyra followed her. Cyra got distracted and when she looked back, her sister is gone. While trying to remain calm, something knocked her off . Leaving her unconscious, once waking up...her life is about to get more interesting and adventurous. As for opal: students to teach and headaches.

Loading Coffin....

Opal & Cyra Outfits~

#twisted wonderland oc #stone sisters #opal lucine stone #cyra lily stone #Will add Chibis Overbolts and Outfits later on #twst #twst oc #Twisted Wonderland OC

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rigelmejo · 4 years

Text

random notes about drawbacks/positives of mia:

My biggest incompatibility with the massive immersion approach (and in general a lot of good modern study methods) is I hate flashcards. It’s not that I dislike them as a concept - I am just super bad at concentrating on them. I am NOT good at doing the following: focusing on small bits of information, studying for short periods but Regularly, Reviewing Regularly, and sometimes I just genuinely can’t retain small concentrated reading sentences to the point it takes me 10 MINUTES a flashcard in order to understand/study it. As you can imagine, that last part is NOT efficient, and ends up making flashcards even slower for me as a study method then they’re ever meant to be. I can’t control when I’m unable to figure out/concentrate on small bits of information, so some months flashcards work as intended for me (I can review 10-20 in 10 minutes), but other months suddenly 10 flashcards takes me an hour. So I am not good at sticking to flashcards consistently - once the hard months hit, I don’t keep up with reviews, because they suddenly take way more time then they ‘should.’ However, when I can focus I try to make up the difference - and do 20-100 cards a day while I have the ability to do flashcards at a regular pace. On the upside, I’m proof you can do the SRS flashcard reviews, in a very chaotic way, and still get benefits. How I’ve done flashcards: cram 300-1000 in a couple weeks to a month, including whatever reviews I need. 2nd month - review if I can still focus, and do a few new cards (like 5-15 a day at most). By the time I can’t focus, most words are relatively-known and I only would need to review them once a week or every few weeks - if I COULD focus on reviews. However, I only actually review once a month or less at this point - and I’ll only review 20ish cards usually in that rare instance, unless I have a good day. I will not usually review the majority of those cards until my next burst of can-focus-on-flashcards usually in 2-3 more months. I have done all my flashcards THIS INCONSISTENTLY, and I’ve still retained a lot of what I studied. What I think helps: immersing in other content when you can’t do flashcards, so that you’re often still being exposed to words you studied (so they’re easier to not forget even though you stopped doing flashcards). So yeah... inconsistent flashcards, and some immersion exposure, and I was able to keep some of the gains SRS flashcards generally provide people. I can’t do flashcards consistently, and I usually have to do them in big-chunks then abandon them, but they do help me boost up how much I know when I DO use them.

More regarding my incompatibility with mia. The big thing is: I’m just not a flashcard person, not a consistent person. I have to vary what I’m doing regularly, or I burn out/struggle to focus. When I was in school, I would do the following to study: take notes/focus intently when being taught, then read the textbook/materials if I needed more help. Before tests, or to ‘review’ I would reread my notes from beginning to end of what I needed to remember. This would refresh my memory. If I still forgot/did not understand anything, I’d pinpoint that info in the book/ask my teacher/go online etc and try to just focus most of my ‘harder’ studying on those parts I was struggling with. Usually just taking notes/focusing, then reviewing everything in bulk right before I needed it (so maybe once every few weeks), was enough. When I couldn’t take notes, I would instead skim through book chapter summaries, and rewatch lecture videos if there was a digital copy - focusing most on the videos when info I forgot/sounded like key information was mentioned. Basically - notes, summaries, short cheat sheets, were all my friends. For tests like math and physics, I would read my notes AND make mini-sheets of all key formulas and how to do them/what I needed for them (usually I already had a sheet I just kept adding to over time/rereading). I could not use flashcards back then - I couldn’t focus, not consistently, not the way they’re meant to be used. It took me too long to even make them to warrant them being useful to me (I take SO long to make flashcards, its also a focus issues - also why when I do SRS flashcards I usually just grab some premade deck cause it keeps me MOVING and actually STUDYING instead of getting frozen in a task).

This has always been my go-to study method. When I started chinese, this is how I learned 400 characters/basic words. I bought a reference book with mnemonics, and would make myself read through it (as if it were notes I took). Occasionally I’d flip through old pages again, just to see if I still recognized old stuff, but mostly I just kept moving forward. So like - flip back every couple weeks to skim old pages, but read forward every day. I got through half the book before I burned out (because... reference books with their short entries of information? a lot like flashcards in structure, except thankfully I don’t regularly review afterwards like I would with flashcards). It still took me 10-20 minutes for 10 entries in the book, but unlike flashcards it was a one-time task. When I got done, I had learned them pretty well - and I didn’t do anything to review them. They were just reviewed with immersion naturally, and eventually when I started studying common words these characters came up again (so if I forgot any, I relearned them easier then). This approach is roughly how I learned all words not in my premade-flashcard decks. I’ll read a chinese book - just start reading through it, looking up words I want to learn. I don’t review them, I don’t look them up again. Sometimes, maybe once a month, I’ll reread an old chapter to see what progress I’ve made - and then lookup unknown words then, as review since I didn’t remember them the first time. It sucks in a way... that SRS flashcard style study methods just.... do not work consistently for me. They are still beneficial, because in short month bursts I can quickly learn 500-1000 things with SRS (which is faster than some classes introduce words). But overall I have to rely on other study methods. Which for me feel inconsistent in progress since I can’t measure it as easy lol! Even with no SRS, doing ‘bursts’ of this read-intensively note-like materials, then very occasionally skim old material again, does seem to work out okay for me. Back when I learned to read french, I did no flashcards. I looked up a common words list (and used my class vocabulary lists). I read through them once. Before tests (if for class), or every few weeks, I re-read/skimmed the word lists. By 3-4 months I learned the first 500 words. Then, since french has a lot of ‘similar’ sort of words, I just sort of dived into reading and then picked up words mostly that way - just checking a word list every month or so to review known words and make sure I didn’t have some big gap of missing vocabulary.

So I guess: for me the biggest positive in mia is the suggestion to immerse often, frequently, and with a variety of materials. So that you practice different skills, learn a variety of things - and so you can move to something you like, if you get bored/unable to focus on one specific type of material. With mia you can read novels for a month, then get sick of reading and just watch shows/listen to podcasts when you walk, then if you’re burnt out from that you can just browse social media and check out fanfics/manhua/friends posts in the language for a few days or weeks before picking up longer materials again. The point is just to find ways to immerse, and do it. Simple advice. SUPER simple advice. But incredibly useful - every single time I add more immersion, I notice a boost in my comprehension. I notice actual improvement over time. I can’t pinpoint ‘why’ it happens, so unfortunately I’m not sure which complementary study methods or ways of immersing are helping me precisely with improvement in which skills. But I can tell that I am improving. I would 100% agree that immersing more is worth trying, at any language learning stage, as much as you want to. I immersed in the first months in both french and chinese, and I did much better than with japanese (where I did not immerse for 2 years and so my level stayed A1 beginner for like 2 years...). My French last time it was tested was around B1, which is fine since I just wanted to read and guess where my skills are closer to A2 and dragging it down? (Yes. Yes of course its speaking ability, of course). My chinese as far as I can pinpoint it is around HSK 4, as far as material I can easily read/listen to, as far as the practice tests I can take online. (Which, again, I’d self evaluate and say my comprehension is at HSK 4 or higher - I definitely can rely on good ability to guess meanings with hanzi and my comfort following grammar easily to boost comprehension a bit higher, but my speaking/writing is lower and I definitely only feel totally comfortable discussing topics that are manageable at HSK 3 - and my production grammar-wise is understandable but SO full of ‘this is the wrong way, use this instead’ which I’m working on...). So like... I got much farther in a year with each language I immersed in - even with the limited immersion I do actually do! So more immersion - better. While I’m on the topic of immersion: if you like reading, read often and early. I am better off for telling myself “its not hard to read” and just diving in the deep end. Was it hard? ahahaha yes. ;w; But, I realize if I’d put off reading until say HSK 4 or HSK 5 knowledge in chinese, reading would be EVEN HARDER because I’d be so much worse at quickly reading through grammar/gathering context clues. Reading is a mix of actual reading skill, and vocab. I built up a lot of the actual reading skill by starting to try to read super early. So now my main struggle is generally just lack of vocabulary - and since I understand all surrounding grammar very well, its easier for me to roughly-guess at unknown words function and still follow the gist of what’s going on. Reading early also means, for words and hanzi I DO already know, I learned to recognize the many contexts/phrases they show up in and the various words they combine into earlier. So again, when I’m looking at a new text the hardest words are new vocab made of ALL unknown hanzi - if I know one hanzi in the word, it’s something I can often approximately guess the meaning of especially when I understand the entire rest of the sentence. If a new word is spelled with all known hanzi, I can look it up once or twice and generally remember it very fast - since its connected to what I already know. If I had waited to read until I’d learned more vocab, I would have less of a reading skill foundation to rely on right now. And based on what I’ve read of at least some people’s experiences on chinese-forums.com, many readers will go through a STEEP uncomfortable period when starting to read chinese. Something vocab does not totally mitigate. I think it just takes many hours, of the reading skills getting less and less hard, and then eventually things get more comfortable. There is also the issue of ‘comprehensible’ reading material - depending on your tolerance for ambiguity, chinese can be painfully incomprehensible for a long time. Generally people feel comfortable once they comprehend 98% of a material. But in chinese, even once you learn thousands of vocab, depending on your reading skills and abilities to ‘guess from context clues’, you will not be at 98% yet. Even if you can guess from context clues, that isn’t solid comprehension its still ambiguously understood material. So to get used to reading chinese as a learner, you have to start getting used to how it feels to read stuff only 80% comprehensible. Only 90% comprehensible. And if you get good and learn a lot of vocab and grammar and understand it better when you see it - 95%. Which is still not the range of ‘comfort’ yet. The quicker you learn to not be stressed by the ambiguity, the less painful reading becomes. And the more tolerable it is, the more you can read, and the quicker you can learn more, and the quicker you’ll REACH 95% to 98% comprehensibility. But if its so painful you refuse to keep reading, to keep using reading to push comprehensibility up... it is going to be a long way until you hit 98%... Graded readers are great, and give you stepping stones to transition this experience. Graded readers are MADE to be 98% comprehensible at different learning levels, so they will FEEL comfortable. And if they do feel uncomfortable (because you don’t have high enough comprehension), then they will at least drag your comprehension up - and still be more tolerable than the alternative of even LESS comprehensible native speaker chinese language materials. Basically though... find a way to force yourself through the harder ‘intolerable’ early parts. It happens whether you know 500 words or 2000. So you’ll have to do it eventually. I get demotivated if I’ve ‘studied a lot and still understand nothing’ so my foolish self dived off the deep end at 500 words, then at 1000, then at 1500, then at 2000. Cause I kept trying to read, being frustrated at its difficulty and stopping after a few weeks, then trying again once I’d learned more! But wow did that early trying pay off. Now that I DO know more words, if nothing else the comparison of how NICE it feels to read now in comparison to in the past, motivates me a ton. If I just started reading recently, and all I knew was it felt ‘this hard’ then I might want to give up. But like... when I started, and knew 500 words, my graded readers were PAINFUL. Genuinely intimidating. Once I pushed through one? They felt easy as pie, and graded readers at that vocab-level felt so easy they got boring. Now I find graded HSK 4 material and usually read through it super fast or don’t even bother. So I can 1. read more comfortably. And 2. because I’ve BUILT up a higher tolerance to ‘ambiguity discomfort’ I can allow myself to read harder materials if I do want to - because I can still TELL it feels easier than it used to.

Finally, about MIA the study method as a concept. So... either because the site is long and people don’t like to finish reading, or maybe the writer is not good at summaries - but people often get confused about how to do it. Particular detail questions about how to do ‘this specific suggested activity’ make sense. But there’s a lot of people who ask “do I just turn on the language shows, and?? How do I learn?” Which, fair enough. So, as I understand it, here’s a summary: You want to learn a language. Find yourself a grammar guide - a free website, a book, whatever. Read the summary/guide, or skim it, whatever gives you a ‘preview’ of the language’s structure and what you’ll be getting used to over time. You will use this guide to reference later in the future, whenever grammar in stuff you see confuses you. You can use multiple guides later to reference. Right now, just zoom through a guide and get a general sense of the language you’re abut to learn. You can also wait to do this step until later, whenever you want. The sooner you do it, the sooner grammar will be less mysterious to you. Find yourself a pronunciation guide. Go through it, you don’t have to be a perfectionist about ANYTHING you do before or after this. Just go through, listen to it all, try to notice how its different from your own language. Notice if there’s any major differences like tones, sounds or patterns your own language doesn’t have. You don’t need to memorize, you’re just becoming aware that these aspects exists and are different. Again, this is to get you used to the language you’re about to dive into. This should probably be done early on. Look up some info about the writing system, if it is different from your own language’s. You will probably find some explanation introductory articles for beginners. If there’s any explanations about how it works, or why it’s like it is, read through it. This will help you understand the system better. You don’t need to memorize - although you may want to save a couple hundred common words, or a copy of all the letters, or a copy of a couple hundred common characters, or a copy of the radicals that combine to make characters. Read over this copied info a few times every once in a while, as you’ll see these things a TON once you start immersing. You find yourself a premade deck of SRS flashcards (use Memrise app, Anki program/website, some alternative) of common words in that language - ideally in sentences, but single-words work if that’s all you can find. Ideally with audio - but again, whatever you can find. You may also find an SRS deck of characters (like Heisig Remember the Kanji)/writing system specific info, if you want, to go through that deck early on to help you more with recognizing the writing system as you encounter it. Whatever decks you get, you will study those for 10-30 minutes a day. You can start doing this from day 1. (Or be like me and be inconsistent about it - just try to keep progressing forward and learning new material, even if you don’t always study. For me it was better always to move onto new stuff, instead of review, if I only had time to do one out of the two things.) Find yourself stuff to immerse with - shows, stories, audios, comics, social media, whatever. You will try to immerse every day, and try to immerse as much as you enjoy. Do this from day 1. When immersing: use either the language you are studying’s subtitles or else none at all. When watching/listening - look up words as desired, mainly though focus on context and trying to understand as much of the gist of what’s going on as you can. Over time you will pick things up. For reading - look up words as desired, and in the beginning you may look up a TON of words because you need to look up at least enough to follow the Bare Minimum Gist of What The Main Plot is. You NEED to understand at least basic context, with whatever your immersion material is, in order to learn new words from context. So: you might start with reading simple graded readers. You might use shows/books/audio of things you’ve already experienced in english, so the context is clearer to you. You might read summaries in english ahead of time. If you need more context in order to use immersion to learn any new things - then go ahead and give yourself more context. Immersion will feel difficult at first, the joy is watching you start to just ‘naturally’ pick up more. Audio immersion - for some of this, you do not need to attempt to ‘understand the gist of the plot’, you can just use it to attempt to pick out all the specific words in the language, the language’s rhythm, and get used to the language. If you’re only using an audio to learn the sounds of a language, you can probably use it as ‘background sound’ while doing other daily things, since it won’t require as constant focus as it would if you were trying to catch every single word you knew as you listened. There you go. You’re all set. Do this for a year and see where your progress is at. Quit doing this if you aren’t seeing some improvements, since if that’s the case a different study method may be better for you. Don’t do this method if you don’t like it - whatever gets you to study, is the right methods for you. No point doing something that doesn’t work for you. Eventually, as you make progress, you will decide on goals and notice mistakes/shortcomings in your skills. When that happens, add additional study materials/tasks as needed to focus specifically on those things as desired. For example - if you notice your pronunciation sucks, you may start using audio-focused flashcards, or go through a pronunciation guide again more carefully-thoroughly this time. Or - you realize your writing is bad, so you go through a grammar guide again and do the exercises, and get language partners and write to them regularly so that you get corrections. Eventually, you finish a common word flashcard deck - find a new deck, or make one, with new words you want to learn or need to based on your goals. The massive immersion approach is a basic plan of immerse-while-paying-attention+study new words/review words regularly, it doesn’t include every single thing you might do or want to do.

Anyway, mm. tldr: massive immersion approach suggests doing immersion of all kinds, from day 1. I couldn’t agree more, every time I add more immersion when studying a language it helps so significantly and over time. however, mia also has half of it’s study method based on SRS flashcards - if you are not a flashcard person like me, my alternative study ‘method’ above works. It’s not perfect, its probably not as effective. But it works if you can’t focus on SRS flashcards reliably. Finally, I summarize mia a little.

#rant #study method #mia #mass immersion approach

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kimminstudying · 5 years

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☁ Note: I know it’s kind of late to post what my summer goals were since some of them on the list are pretty much completed already, but I think it’s the perfect time to discuss any goal I have for this upcoming school year! I didn’t want to make two separate posts because they are relatively similar and this way I don’t have to link the posts as a reference.

Here are my goals from last year and how they turned out.

☁ Money Goal #1: Save $1,000 Total

This is my first goal because I am so close to it already! To be more specific, I wish to have achieved this by the end of July, since I started my new job in May and I am getting many more hours here than at my old one. Also, I have received some scholarships already, so this is a goal I am sure to achieve.

Goal #2: Save $2,500 for New Car

This isn’t a highly prioritized goal of mine since I can try to make my car I have now last me another two years. In two years I plan to attend a new college in New York, so I would not need a car there due to public transport and walking. When I come back home or do need a car, it would be better for me to either borrow one from friends or family or to simply rent one.

Goal #3: Change Banks

Since I am 18 now, I can open up my own account and finally change banks. I’m obviously not gonna go into much detail about this but let’s just say that when I lived with my mom I used the bank that was the most convenient for me and her but now that I live with my dad I’m going to switch to the bank most convenient for me and him now.

☁ Life Style Goal #1: 1 Book / Week or 3 Books / Month This school year was really time-consuming so I have not read at all since last summer! Obviously, I am not counting my assigned reading, if I were then I would have read a lot. English this year was no joke! I did really well with reading one book a week when I wasn’t in school but if I find that to be too much of a commitment, I’d be happy with three books in a month. I’m getting tired of seeing so many unread books on my shelves, time to cut that list down! Goal #2: Get Back to Healthy Eating Habits! Where I work, we get an employee discount for food in general, but we get more of a discount on healthy food options to encourage better eating habits. This will help me eat right while I am not home, but the challenge is when I’m off of work or going out to eat with my friends.

Last summer I bought most of my groceries online since they have a lot of gluten-free options there and simply because I don’t feel like leaving my house to go grocery shopping. For those who don’t know or are wondering, I eat gluten-free because I have Celiac Disease, so I kind of have to or else I’ll get really really sick. When school started again, I wasn’t working enough hours to be able to buy my special food so I had to stop and eat what my family bought from the store, which wasn’t many fruits and vegetables and more like microwave dinners and eggs.

☁ Blogs Goal #1: Post one grammar lesson per week to @kimminstudying

I’m going to start out small for now with vocab lists or some grammar posts but I hope when the school year rolls around I’ll have more structure to my day and be able to be more productive.

Goal #2: Post to @chanzicoup and @clemsbaseballcap once a week

I haven’t been ignoring my main blogs, but I have focused more on studying and less on my love for writing over the last few months. I want writing to be a part of my life now and in the future, so I want to try and incorporate it more into my daily routine.

Not to mention, I lowkey wanted to promote my other blogs here, so please check them out and feel free to request anything ;) Or send me some advice! I love learning new things that’ll help me with running other blogs.

☁ Languages

Goal #1: DuoLingo and LingoDeer once a day

I’ve never had more than a 7-day streak on any of these language apps so I really want to change that for when the school year comes around. It takes at the most ten minutes to complete one session and I know I can make time for that, I just don’t.

What I should do is instead of scrolling through social media first thing in the morning, I should open up one of these apps and complete a session to help me wake up and to review my skills.

☁ Money

Goal #1: Continue Saving for Car

All in all, if I don’t save up the money for my car in the summer I hope to continue trying to do so during the school year. Even though I don’t plan on buying a new car, I would like to be prepared for if I get into an accident or if it breaks down to the point where it would be cheaper for me to just get a new car.

☁ Life Style

Goal #1: Work out at least three days a week

My college, like many others, have a gym that the students can use free of charge. With how I scheduled my classes, I have about an hour and a half break in between them, which gives me plenty of time to study, eat, or to hang out before my day is even over. My last class ends at about 3pm so I can work out for an hour before I go home, with at least most of my coursework for that evening completed.

Goal #2: Have one day to yourself.

I go to school Monday - Thursday so that leaves me to have Friday - Sunday to myself or to work. When the school year starts my manager told me I would be switching to overnight shifts, so what I hope to do is work overnights Thursday - Saturday and have Sunday to myself. This way I can take extra shifts on days I have classes if anyone calls out or if my boss needs an extra hand or to have a day to relax, reset, or get last-minute work done.

My boss is also really considerate of her employees who are in college. During finals season, she gives us gift cards that she buys herself and tells us to buy energy drinks or snacks! She even finds other workers from other stores to cover out shifts if we really need to study.

☁ Blogs

Goal #1: Keep up with posting schedules

I might slip up on this from time to time but with my breaks in between classes, I hope to get at least 15 minutes dedicated to writing, even if that’s all I get to do in one day I think that’s way better than not writing at all.

☁ Languages

Goal #1: Change Minor to French Language

Currently, my college does offer French classes but there are no teachers for said classes. My advisor and I hope that while my college is merging with another school new teachers will be hired and I can take French classes in my second semester of freshman year.

Goal #2: Listen to Talk to me in Korean and other podcasts when possible

Whether its’s walking to class or on the treadmill, I would like to listen to something other than music. I’m looking at some podcasts right now about case studies or interviews with forensic psychologists that seem interesting.

☁ School

Goal #1: Find clubs to join in

I did quite a few clubs in high school and stuck with some of them all four years. I want to join any organizations that focus on community service and volunteer work but since that’s also what I focused on in high school, I would love to find clubs more centered around my interests.

If my school has a writing club, I would definitely join it along with an ASL club or any form of LGBTQA+ organization.

I didn’t do sports in high school since on my second day of basketball practice I messed up my ankle and was out for the rest of the season due to surgeries I had to get. I would like to find something that I love to do that would also kind of force me to work out. I like to play sports but I hate the competition and big time commitment that goes along with joining a team, I feel like a club would be perfect since clubs are less mandatory attendance-wise in some cases.

Also, I could keep going through clubs until I find one I like. It’s not that easy with sports teams.

Goal #2: Become a tutor and get a tutor.

I am strong in some fields, but not others. I want to find my strong suit early on so I can tutor, which I also did in high school and met so many awesome people doing. I also know that I am weak in other fields (math cough cough) so I want to get a tutor for them if my grades begin to slip.

Goal #3: Make the Dean’s List

I don’t really have much of an explanation for this. I’d just really like to make the list since it’s based on performance, extracurricular activities, and attendance.

#studyblr #studygram #new studyblr #college #college goals #school goals #school #langblr #new langblr #french langblr #italian langblr #korean langblr

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howtobusines · 4 years

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How to Innovate A Business Name That Convert

Business Name Selection Guide

You are about to start a commercial project, so you must have thought a lot about choosing a suitable name for it, as choosing a business name is an important step in the business planning process, and it comes right after determining the type of business and its legal form. Some people may think that the process of choosing a business name is easy and only needs a few letters, or a word or two to represent your business name, but the process is difficult and very important, and it may take from your time several hours or several weeks, because the name of your business is an important part of the business identity That you intend to work with, it's an effective advertising tool, and also can help your clients understand what you are doing, as well as the markets you target.

How to come up with a business name that match what you do or what your brand offer?

Many of the new companies do not pay enough attention to the names they choose, and they depend heavily on emotions, and therefore are later changed to more meaningful names, which wastes time, effort and money incurred in publishing those changed names, so if you cannot choose the brand name Correctly, and according to the correct rules, this name may be one of the reasons for your business failure, slow marketing, or delayed arrival of your product to the target segment as required by this product.

To choose a successful name easily there is three methods to use, which are: Compound Words, Ripps and Mash-up Names.

1. Compound Words

There are many entrepreneurs who choose the Compound Words method, to name their business, by combining two words related to the nature of their work or service they provide to the consumer, to make a new word, in other words A + B = AB, for example, the name Facebook website came from combining both Face and Book in one word.

2. Ripps

When choosing the name of your start-up project, consider the five letters RIPPS summarizing the most important conditions to be observed in this matter, which are as follows:

Remember: The name should be easy to remember.

Image: The name image must be attached to the mind.

Pronunciation: The name should be easy to pronounce, without any confusion.

Protection: The name should be protected, that is, difficult to imitate, distinct and not repeated or has been used before.

Short: The name should be short, concise, and clear, Short names are easy to remember.

3. Mash-Up Names

We find that many projects and companies follow the way of mixing names with Mash-up names to reach an attractive commercial name, for example, the Instagram app came by mixing the phrase Instant Camera and Telegram as it is known, the telegram is one of the oldest means of sending information, Combining the two parts converges with the meaning of the full name: a platform to quickly capture and send pictures. Not only limited to choose the name that reflects your brand identity, keeping in your mind the name's distinctiveness from other projects, and that the name corresponds to the nature of the activity and legal form, but you also need to ensure that it is properly registered and protected in the long run. You should also give thought to whether or not it will be available on the Internet as a domain name. So check your chosen business name domain availablity in Goddady or Namecheap and resigter it. You can use alternative languages, not just English that can do this. You have all other languages at your disposal too. Many companies are translating their brand suggestions into Latin, Greek, French and Spanish to get this with a strange and distinct flavor. However, you cannot start using any vague and complex name. You also need the name to be appropriate and relatively easy to understand, and you should avoid using abbreviations, such as ABC, unless you have enough marketing budget to make this name a name that everyone can remember. One of the books we recommend that every person who wants to start a new business in the name selection stage : Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick by Alexandra Watkins, as it provides a simple guide to creating an effective and memorable brand name. Which you can purchase through Amazon via this link. At this point in planning to start a business, remember that there are a large number of sites that can help you brainstorm project names, including Shopify, VisualThesaurus, Namestation and SquadHelp. As the owner of a new startup business, do you think that if you don't choose a brand you love and feel comfortable the more you repeated it to your startup and its brand, will you be able to advance in your business? You will coexist with the brand name of your budding project for a long time so make sure you are happy with the name, and that it will resonate quickly with customers, and that sometimes when choosing the name of the project, we find it may look beautiful on paper, but it is very terrible when it is said out loud; So be sure to read and pronounce the name you picked out loud, to make sure it's a ringing name that looks good and cute and pronounced. And try to imagine the brand name on the billboards or in the publications for your next business, and the consumer’s reaction to it, sometimes you may be tempted to a name or a color, but for the audience it may not mean what it means to you, so be sure to choose a reassuring attractive name for customers, and that It is chosen according to the culture and characteristics of your target customers Finally, when you setlle down on the name you can then consider it your first step towards establishing an effective identity for your new business, which enables you to move to thinking about the next step, which is the initiative to protect your business name by registering it, this step is not mandatory, but doing it remains a wise act, It will ensure that you do not allow anyone to use your business name. Please share this topic with your friends if you had enjoy it.

source https://www.howtobusines.com/2019/11/business-name-selection.html

#business #businessplan #businessidea

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mixedfeelingsproject · 7 years

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Anonymous

Where are you from? Washington, DC

How would you describe your race/ethnicity? THOUROUGHLY MIXED. I have 4 grandparents who consider themselves African American with mixed ancestry. DNA test majority European, with SS African. Gedmatch says, moroccan, ethiopian jew, lumbee (native american) as top matches. Dad tested as Arab, Polish and Colombian (no African Ancestry). So also I consider myself CURIOUS and CONFUSED at how we got this way.

Do you identify with one particular aspect of your ethnicity more than another? Have you ever felt pressure to choose between parts of your identity? All my life I was told I was black. Anytime I mention other ancestries I am told, "you're just black, or look at you, you really white (because of my skin and hair). I like to identify with all of my ancestries.

Did your parents encounter any difficulties from being in an interracial relationship? N/A They were both light skinned and consider themselves AF American

How has your mixed background impacted your sense of identity and belonging? Being not 100% white in white schools was noticeable. Being light skinned in black environments I encountered hostility. Many people refuse to accept me as my daughter's mother because I am light, she is brown. They teased her that her mother is white.

Have you been asked questions like "What are you?" or "Where are you from?" by strangers? If so, how do you typically respond? Yes, once in NY I had what looked like a European man ask me repeatedly for 20 mins where I got my tan, lol.

Have you experienced people making comments about you based on your appearance? Most of the attacks come from darker skinned black women who when angry will call me high yella (yellow) and other racial or colorism terms that go on between light and brown skinned people.

Have you ever been mistaken for another ethnicity? Yes, white, hispanic, polynesian.

Have you ever felt the need to change your behavior due to how you believe others will perceive you? In what way? I would normally say No not at aged 43. But as a kid I went to black schools, white private schools and even an international school in France. I changed my language or dialect to suit the kids I was around I spoke like the black kids when there, the white kids with them and I learned to speak french while in France to fit in with them. However, as an adult I used standard English in the workplace but do not change my speech with friends or at home, unless it is foreign languages (I eventually became an interpreter).

What positive benefits have you experienced by being mixed? I love having a mix. It makes me feel international. I connect with so many people on some kind of level. But, I am more happy about finally finding out what is inside me; what I have always felt and needed to confirm. I now can discover my ancestries and understand so many aspects of myself through my ancestors.

Have you changed the way you identify yourself over the years? Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, I am no longer limited to one race, or even two. I can look up my ancestry, research my relatives and family tree. These things weren't possible when I was a kid (not so easy without DNA and internet sites like ancestry). If I say I am mixed people think I have one black and one white parent. So now I say I am THOROUGHLY MIXED to let people know that I am mixed way down the line.

Are you proud to be mixed? Yes

Do you have any other stories you would like to share from your own experiences? I want to share what I learned in my studies, that we are now discovering that so many people are more mixed than we thought and we have to be careful about measuring our ancestry. We have to make sure that the databases are accurate and include a full representation of non-European populations, especially indigenous ones. One of the top testing companies has less than 100 people to represent Koreans and most are "self-reported" and from the US. Bear in mind diaspora populations are not going to have the accurate results you need like the indigenous ones will. So choose your test and path wisely in your DNA and ancestry research.

#mixed #identity

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englishchinesetranslations · 5 years

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(简体字：为什么中文这么TM难？)

(繁體字：為什麼中文這麼TM難？)

The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, "Hard for whom?" A reasonable question. After all, Chinese people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the "terrible twos", it's Chinese they use to drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the same kids are actually using those impossibly complicated Chinese characters to scribble love notes and shopping lists. So what do I mean by "hard"? Since I know at the outset that the whole tone of this document is going to involve a lot of whining and complaining, I may as well come right out and say exactly what I mean. I mean hard for me, a native English speaker trying to learn Chinese as an adult, going through the whole process with the textbooks, the tapes, the conversation partners, etc., the whole torturous rigmarole. I mean hard for me -- and, of course, for the many other Westerners who have spent years of their lives bashing their heads against the Great Wall of Chinese.

From

Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday

(Sino-Platonic Papers)

No. 27, August 1991), edited by Victor H. Mair

If this were as far as I went, my statement would be a pretty empty one. Of course Chinese is hard for me. After all, any foreign language is hard for a non-native, right? Well, sort of. Not all foreign languages are equally difficult for any learner. It depends on which language you're coming from. A French person can usually learn Italian faster than an American, and an average American could probably master German a lot faster than an average Japanese, and so on. So part of what I'm contending is that Chinese is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard forthem, for Chinese people.1

If you don't believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe the hardest on earth. (Many are even proud of this, in the same way some New Yorkers are actually proud of living in the most unlivable city in America.) Maybe all Chinese people deserve a medal just for being born Chinese. At any rate, they generally become aware at some point of the Everest-like status of their native language, as they, from their privileged vantage point on the summit, observe foolhardy foreigners huffing and puffing up the steep slopes.

Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois", "It's Chinese", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天书一样 meaning "It's like heavenly script."

There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chinese does deserve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves "Why in the world am I doing this?" Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say "I've come this far -- I can't stop now" will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.

Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chinese so damn hard?

1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.

Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more you learn about Chinese characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.

The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the Chinese people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that these ideograms were sort of like bound feet -- some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they weren't too practical for daily use.

For one thing, it is simply unreasonably hard to learn enough characters to become functionally literate. Again, someone may ask "Hard in comparison to what?" And the answer is easy: Hard in comparison to Spanish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other sane, "normal" language that requires at most a few dozen symbols to write anything in the language. John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, reports that his Chinese colleagues estimate it takes seven to eight years for a Mandarin speaker to learn to read and write three thousand characters, whereas his French and Spanish colleagues estimate that students in their respective countries achieve comparable levels in half that time.2 Naturally, this estimate is rather crude and impressionistic (it's unclear what "comparable levels" means here), but the overall implications are obvious: the Chinese writing system is harder to learn, in absolute terms, than an alphabetic writing system.3 Even Chinese kids, whose minds are at their peak absorptive power, have more trouble with Chinese characters than their little counterparts in other countries have with their respective scripts. Just imagine the difficulties experienced by relatively sluggish post-pubescent foreign learners such as myself.

Everyone has heard that Chinese is hard because of the huge number of characters one has to learn, and this is absolutely true. There are a lot of popular books and articles that downplay this difficulty, saying things like "Despite the fact that Chinese has [10,000, 25,000, 50,000, take your pick] separate characters you really only need 2,000 or so to read a newspaper". Poppycock. I couldn't comfortably read a newspaper when I had 2,000 characters under my belt. I often had to look up several characters per line, and even after that I had trouble pulling the meaning out of the article. (I take it as a given that what is meant by "read" in this context is "read and basically comprehend the text without having to look up dozens of characters"; otherwise the claim is rather empty.)

This fairy tale is promulgated because of the fact that, when you look at the character frequencies, over 95% of the characters in any newspaper are easily among the first 2,000 most common ones.4 But what such accounts don't tell you is that there will still be plenty of unfamiliar words made up of those familiar characters. (To illustrate this problem, note that in English, knowing the words "up" and "tight" doesn't mean you know the word "uptight".) Plus, as anyone who has studied any language knows, you can often be familiar with every single word in a text and still not be able to grasp the meaning. Reading comprehension is not simply a matter of knowing a lot of words; one has to get a feeling for how those words combine with other words in a multitude of different contexts.5 In addition, there is the obvious fact that even though you may know 95% of the characters in a given text, the remaining 5% are often the very characters that are crucial for understanding the main point of the text. A non-native speaker of English reading an article with the headline "JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS" is not going to get very far if they don't know the words "jacuzzi" or "phlebitis".

The problem of reading is often a touchy one for those in the China field. How many of us would dare stand up in front of a group of colleagues and read a randomly-selected passage out loud? Yet inferiority complexes or fear of losing face causes many teachers and students to become unwitting cooperators in a kind of conspiracy of silence wherein everyone pretends that after four years of Chinese the diligent student should be whizzing through anything from Confucius to Lu Xun, pausing only occasionally to look up some pesky low-frequency character (in their Chinese-Chinese dictionary, of course). Others, of course, are more honest about the difficulties. The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming).

A teacher of mine once told me of a game he and a colleague would sometimes play: The contest involved pulling a book at random from the shelves of the Chinese section of the Asia Library and then seeing who could be the first to figure out what the book was about. Anyone who has spent time working in an East Asia collection can verify that this can indeed be a difficult enough task -- never mind reading the book in question. This state of affairs is very disheartening for the student who is impatient to begin feasting on the vast riches of Chinese literature, but must subsist on a bland diet of canned handouts, textbook examples, and carefully edited appetizers for the first few years.

The comparison with learning the usual western languages is striking. After about a year of studying French, I was able to read a lot. I went through the usual kinds of novels -- La nausée by Sartre, Voltaire'sCandide, L'étranger by Camus -- plus countless newspapers, magazines, comic books, etc. It was a lot of work but fairly painless; all I really needed was a good dictionary and a battered French grammar book I got at a garage sale.

This kind of "sink or swim" approach just doesn't work in Chinese. At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline. Someone at that time suggested I read The Dream of the Red Chamber and gave me a nice three-volume edition. I just have to laugh. It still sits on my shelf like a fat, smug Buddha, only the first twenty or so pages filled with scribbled definitions and question marks, the rest crisp and virgin. After six years of studying Chinese, I'm still not at a level where I can actually read it without an English translation to consult. (By "read it", I mean, of course, "read it for pleasure". I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and a dictionary in my hand, I could get through it.) Simply diving into the vast pool of Chinese in the beginning is not only foolhardy, it can even be counterproductive. As George Kennedy writes, "The difficulty of memorizing a Chinese ideograph as compared with the difficulty of learning a new word in a European language, is such that a rigid economy of mental effort is imperative."6 This is, if anything, an understatement. With the risk of drowning so great, the student is better advised to spend more time in the shallow end treading water before heading toward the deep end.

As if all this weren't bad enough, another ridiculous aspect of the Chinese writing system is that there are two (mercifully overlapping) sets of characters: the traditional characters still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the simplified characters adopted by the People's Republic of China in the late 1950's and early 60's. Any foreign student of Chinese is more or less forced to become familiar with both sets, since they are routinely exposed to textbooks and materials from both Chinas. This linguistic camel's-back-breaking straw puts an absurd burden on the already absurdly burdened student of Chinese, who at this point would gladly trade places with Sisyphus. But since Chinese people themselves are never equally proficient in both simplified and complex characters, there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in eventually concentrating on one set to the partial exclusion the other. In fact, there is absolutely no shame in giving up Chinese altogether, when you come right down to it.

2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet.

To further explain why the Chinese writing system is so hard in this respect, it might be a good idea to spell out (no pun intended) why that of English is so easy. Imagine the kind of task faced by the average Chinese adult who decides to study English. What skills are needed to master the writing system? That's easy: 26 letters. (In upper and lower case, of course, plus script and a few variant forms. And throw in some quote marks, apostrophes, dashes, parentheses, etc. -- all things the Chinese use in their own writing system.) And how are these letters written? From left to right, horizontally, across the page, with spaces to indicate word boundaries. Forgetting for a moment the problem of spelling and actually making words out of these letters, how long does it take this Chinese learner of English to master the various components of the English writing system? Maybe a day or two.

Now consider the American undergraduate who decides to study Chinese. What does it take for this person to master the Chinese writing system? There is nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. How many such components are there? Don't ask. As with all such questions about Chinese, the answer is very messy and unsatisfying. It depends on how you define "component" (strokes? radicals?), plus a lot of other tedious details. Suffice it to say, the number is quite large, vastly more than the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. And how are these components combined to form characters? Well, you name it -- components to the left of other components, to the right of other components, on top of other components, surrounding other components, inside of other components -- almost anything is possible. And in the process of making these spatial accommodations, these components get flattened, stretched, squashed, shortened, and distorted in order to fit in the uniform square space that all characters are supposed to fit into. In other words, the components of Chinese characters are arrayed in two dimensions, rather than in the neat one-dimensional rows of alphabetic writing.

Okay, so ignoring for the moment the question of elegance, how long does it take a Westerner to learn the Chinese writing system so that when confronted with any new character they at least know how to move the pen around in order to produce a reasonable facsimile of that character? Again, hard to say, but I would estimate that it takes the average learner several months of hard work to get the basics down. Maybe a year or more if they're a klutz who was never very good in art class. Meanwhile, their Chinese counterpart learning English has zoomed ahead to learn cursive script, with time left over to read Moby Dick, or at least Strunk & White.

This is not exactly big news, I know; the alphabet really is a breeze to learn. Chinese people I know who have studied English for a few years can usually write with a handwriting style that is almost indistinguishable from that of the average American. Very few Americans, on the other hand, ever learn to produce a natural calligraphic hand in Chinese that resembles anything but that of an awkward Chinese third-grader. If there were nothing else hard about Chinese, the task of learning to write characters alone would put it in the rogues' gallery of hard-to-learn languages.

3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic.

So much for the physical process of writing the characters themselves. What about the sheer task of memorizing so many characters? Again, a comparison of English and Chinese is instructive. Suppose a Chinese person has just the previous day learned the English word "president", and now wants to write it from memory. How to start? Anyone with a year or two of English experience is going to have a host of clues and spelling rules-of-thumb, albeit imperfect ones, to help them along. The word really couldn't start with anything but "pr", and after that a little guesswork aided by visual memory ("Could a 'z' be in there? That's an unusual letter, I would have noticed it, I think. Must be an 's'...") should produce something close to the target. Not every foreigner (or native speaker for that matter) has noted or internalized the various flawed spelling heuristics of English, of course, but they are at least there to be utilized.

Now imagine that you, a learner of Chinese, have just the previous day encountered the Chinese word for "president" (总统 zǒngtǒng ) and want to write it. What processes do you go through in retrieving the word? Well, very often you just totally forget, with a forgetting that is both absolute and perfect in a way few things in this life are. You can repeat the word as often as you like; the sound won't give you a clue as to how the character is to be written. After you learn a few more characters and get hip to a few more phonetic components, you can do a bit better. ("Zǒng 总 is a phonetic component in some other character, right?...Song? Zeng? Oh yeah, cong 总 as in cōngmíng 聪明.") Of course, the phonetic aspect of some characters is more obvious than that of others, but many characters, including some of the most high-frequency ones, give no clue at all as to their pronunciation.

All of this is to say that Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. (English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish, but Chinese isn't even in the same ballpark.) It is not true, as some people outside the field tend to think, that Chinese is not phonetic at all, though a perfectly intelligent beginning student could go several months without noticing this fact. Just how phonetic the language is a very complex issue. Educated opinions range from 25% (Zhao Yuanren)7 to around 66% (DeFrancis),8 though the latter estimate assumes more knowledge of phonetic components than most learners are likely to have. One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it. Furthermore, this phonetic aspect of the language doesn't really become very useful until you've learned a few hundred characters, and even when you've learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.

Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you're just sunk. And you're sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.

This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like "knee" or "tin can"? Or even a rarely-seen word like "scabbard" or "ragamuffin"? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China. English is simply orders of magnitude easier to write and remember. No matter how low-frequency the word is, or how unorthodox the spelling, the English speaker can always come up with something, simply because there has to be some correspondence between sound and spelling. One might forget whether "abracadabra" is hyphenated or not, or get the last few letters wrong on "rhinoceros", but even the poorest of spellers can make a reasonable stab at almost anything. By contrast, often even the most well-educated Chinese have no recourse but to throw up their hands and ask someone else in the room how to write some particularly elusive character.

As one mundane example of the advantages of a phonetic writing system, here is one kind of linguistic situation I encountered constantly while I was in France. (Again I use French as my canonical example of an "easy" foreign language.) I wake up one morning in Paris and turn on the radio. An ad comes on, and I hear the word "amortisseur" several times. "What's an amortisseur?" I think to myself, but as I am in a hurry to make an appointment, I forget to look the word up in my haste to leave the apartment. A few hours later I'm walking down the street, and I read, on a sign, the word "AMORTISSEUR" -- the word I heard earlier this morning. Beneath the word on the sign is a picture of a shock absorber. Aha! So "amortisseur" means "shock absorber". And voila! I've learned a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the word is the same as the sound in my head from the radio this morning -- one reinforces the other. Throughout the next week I see the word again several times, and each time I can reconstruct the sound by simply reading the word phonetically -- "a-mor-tis-seur". Before long I can retrieve the word easily, use it in conversation, or write it in a letter to a friend. And the process of learning a foreign language begins to seem less daunting.

When I first went to Taiwan for a few months, the situation was quite different. I was awash in a sea of characters that were all visually interesting but phonetically mute. I carried around a little dictionary to look up unfamiliar characters in, but it's almost impossible to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary while walking along a crowded street (more on dictionary look-up later), and so I didn't get nearly as much phonetic reinforcement as I got in France. In Taiwan I could pass a shop with a sign advertising shock absorbers and never know how to pronounce any of the characters unless I first look them up. And even then, the next time I pass the shop I might have to look the characters up again. And again, and again. The reinforcement does not come naturally and easily.

4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates.

I remember when I had been studying Chinese very hard for about three years, I had an interesting experience. One day I happened to find a Spanish-language newspaper sitting on a seat next to me. I picked it up out of curiosity. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "I've never studied Spanish in my life. I wonder how much of this I can understand." At random I picked a short article about an airplane crash and started to read. I found I could basically glean, with some guesswork, most of the information from the article. The crash took place near Los Angeles. 186 people were killed. There were no survivors. The plane crashed just one minute after take-off. There was nothing on the flight recorder to indicate a critical situation, and the tower was unaware of any emergency. The plane had just been serviced three days before and no mechanical problems had been found. And so on. After finishing the article I had a sudden discouraging realization: Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

What was going on here? Why was this "foreign" language so transparent? The reason was obvious: cognates -- those helpful words that are just English words with a little foreign make-up.9 I could read the article because most of the operative words were basically English: aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia, etc. Recognizing these words as just English words in disguise is about as difficult as noticing that Superman is really Clark Kent without his glasses. That these quasi-English words are easier to learn than Chinese characters (which might as well be quasi-Martian) goes without saying.

Imagine you are a diabetic, and you find yourself in Spain about to go into insulin shock. You can rush into a doctor's office, and, with a minimum of Spanish and a couple of pieces of guesswork ("diabetes" is just "diabetes" and "insulin" is "insulina", it turns out), you're saved. In China you'd be a goner for sure, unless you happen to have a dictionary with you, and even then you would probably pass out while frantically looking for the first character in the word for insulin. Which brings me to the next reason why Chinese is so hard.

5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.

One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. When I was in Taiwan, I heard that they sometimes held dictionary look-up contests in the junior high schools. Imagine a language where simply looking a word up in the dictionary is considered a skill like debate or volleyball! Chinese is not exactly what you would call a user-friendly language, but a Chinese dictionary is positively user-hostile.

Figuring out all the radicals and their variants, plus dealing with the ambiguous characters with no obvious radical at all is a stupid, time-consuming chore that slows the learning process down by a factor of ten as compared to other languages with a sensible alphabet or the equivalent. I'd say it took me a good year before I could reliably find in the dictionary any character I might encounter. And to this day, I will very occasionally stumble onto a character that I simply can't find at all, even after ten minutes of searching. At such times I raise my hands to the sky, Job-like, and consider going into telemarketing.

Chinese must also be one of the most dictionary-intensive languages on earth. I currently have more than twenty Chinese dictionaries of various kinds on my desk, and they all have a specific and distinct use. There are dictionaries with simplified characters used on the mainland, dictionaries with the traditional characters used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and dictionaries with both. There are dictionaries that use the Wade-Giles romanization, dictionaries that use pinyin, and dictionaries that use other more surrealistic romanization methods. There are dictionaries of classical Chinese particles, dictionaries of Beijing dialect, dictionaries of chéngyǔ (four-character idioms), dictionaries of xiēhòuyǔ(special allegorical two-part sayings), dictionaries of yànyǔ (proverbs), dictionaries of Chinese communist terms, dictionaries of Buddhist terms, reverse dictionaries... on and on. An exhaustive hunt for some elusive or problematic lexical item can leave one's desk "strewn with dictionaries as numerous as dead soldiers on a battlefield."10

For looking up unfamiliar characters there is another method called the four-corner system. This method is very fast -- rumored to be, in principle, about as fast as alphabetic look-up (though I haven't met anyone yet who can hit the winning number each time on the first try). Unfortunately, learning this method takes about as much time and practice as learning the Dewey decimal system. Plus you are then at the mercy of the few dictionaries that are arranged according to the numbering scheme of the four-corner system. Those who have mastered this system usually swear by it. The rest of us just swear.

Another problem with looking up words in the dictionary has to do with the nature of written Chinese. In most languages it's pretty obvious where the word boundaries lie -- there are spaces between the words. If you don't know the word in question, it's usually fairly clear what you should look up. (What actually constitutes a word is a very subtle issue, of course, but for my purposes here, what I'm saying is basically correct.) In Chinese there are spaces between characters, but it takes quite a lot of knowledge of the language and often some genuine sleuth work to tell where word boundaries lie; thus it's often trial and error to look up a word. It would be as if English were written thus:

FEAR LESS LY OUT SPOKE N BUT SOME WHAT HUMOR LESS NEW ENG LAND BORN LEAD ACT OR GEORGE MICHAEL SON EX PRESS ED OUT RAGE TO DAY AT THE STALE MATE BE TWEEN MAN AGE MENT AND THE ACT OR 'S UNION BE CAUSE THE STAND OFF HAD SET BACK THE TIME TABLE FOR PRO DUC TION OF HIS PLAY, A ONE MAN SHOW CASE THAT WAS HIS FIRST RUN A WAY BROAD WAY BOX OFFICE SMASH HIT. "THE FIRST A MEND MENT IS AT IS SUE" HE PRO CLAIM ED. "FOR A CENS OR OR AN EDIT OR TO EDIT OR OTHER WISE BLUE PENCIL QUESTION ABLE DIA LOG JUST TO KOW TOW TO RIGHT WING BORN AGAIN BIBLE THUMP ING FRUIT CAKE S IS A DOWN RIGHT DIS GRACE."

Imagine how this difference would compound the dictionary look-up difficulties of a non-native speaker of English. The passage is pretty trivial for us to understand, but then we already know English. For them it would often be hard to tell where the word boundaries were supposed to be. So it is, too, with someone trying to learn Chinese.

6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen).

Forget it. Way too difficult. If you think that after three or four years of study you'll be breezing through Confucius and Mencius in the way third-year French students at a comparable level are reading Diderot and Voltaire, you're sadly mistaken. There are some westerners who can comfortably read classical Chinese, but most of them have a lot of gray hair or at least tenure.

Unfortunately, classical Chinese pops up everywhere, especially in Chinese paintings and character scrolls, and most people will assume anyone literate in Chinese can read it. It's truly embarrassing to be out at a Chinese restaurant, and someone asks you to translate some characters on a wall hanging.

"Hey, you speak Chinese. What does this scroll say?" You look up and see that the characters are written in wenyan, and in incomprehensible "grass-style" calligraphy to boot. It might as well be an EKG readout of a dying heart patient.

"Uh, I can make out one or two of the characters, but I couldn't tell you what it says," you stammer. "I think it's about a phoenix or something."

"Oh, I thought you knew Chinese," says your friend, returning to their menu. Never mind that an honest-to-goodness Chinese person would also just scratch their head and shrug; the face that is lost is yours.

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway. An uninitiated westerner can no more be expected to understand such writing than Confucius himself, if transported to the present, could understand the entries in the "personal" section of the classified ads that say things like: "Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please."

In fairness, it should be said that classical Chinese gets easier the more you attempt it. But then so does hitting a hole in one, or swimming the English channel in a straitjacket.

7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck.

Well, perhaps that's too harsh. But it is true that there are too many of them, and most of them were designed either by committee or by linguists, or -- even worse -- by a committee of linguists. It is, of course, a very tricky task to devise a romanization method; some are better than others, but all involve plenty of counterintuitive spellings.11 And if you're serious about a career in Chinese, you'll have to grapple with at least four or five of them, not including the bopomofu phonetic symbols used in Taiwan. There are probably a dozen or more romanization schemes out there somewhere, most of them mercifully obscure and rightfully ignored. There is a standing joke among sinologists that one of the first signs of senility in a China scholar is the compulsion to come up with a new romanization method.

8. Because tonal languages are weird.

Okay, that's very Anglo-centric, I know it. But I have to mention this problem because it's one of the most common complaints about learning Chinese, and it's one of the aspects of the language that westerners are notoriously bad at. Every person who tackles Chinese at first has a little trouble believing this aspect of the language. How is it possible thatshùxué means "mathematics" while shūxuě means "blood transfusion", or that guòjiǎng means "you flatter me" while guǒjiàng means "fruit paste"?

By itself, this property of Chinese would be hard enough; it means that, for us non-native speakers, there is this extra, seemingly irrelevant aspect of the sound of a word that you must memorize along with the vowels and consonants. But where the real difficulty comes in is when you start to really use Chinese to express yourself. You suddenly find yourself straitjacketed -- when you say the sentence with the intonation that feels natural, the tones come out all wrong. For example, if you wish say something like "Hey, that's my water glass you're drinking out of!", and you follow your intonational instincts -- that is, to put a distinct falling tone on the first character of the word for "my" -- you will have said a kind of gibberish that may or may not be understood.

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature. With non-tonal languages you can basically import, mutatis mutandis, your habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning. The results may be somewhat non-native but usually understandable. Not so with Chinese, where your intonational contours must always obey the tonal constraints of the specific words you've chosen. Chinese speakers, of course, can express all of the intonational subtleties available in non-tonal languages -- it's just that they do it in a way that is somewhat alien to us speakers of non-tonal languages. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find that it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back -- you are suddenly robbed of some vital expressive tools you hadn't even been aware of having.

9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met.

Language and culture cannot be separated, of course, and one of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for Americans is that our two cultures have been isolated for so long. The reason reading French sentences like "Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne," is about as hard as deciphering pig Latin is not just because of the deep Indo-European family resemblance, but also because the core concepts and cultural assumptions in such utterances stem from the same source. We share the same art history, the same music history, the same history history -- which means that in the head of a French person there is basically the same set of archetypes and the same cultural cast of characters that's in an American's head. We are as familiar with Rimbaud as they are with Rambo. In fact, compared to the difference between China and the U.S., American culture and and French culture seem about as different as Peter Pan and Skippy peanut butter.

Speaking with a Chinese person is usually a different matter. You just can't drop Dickens, Tarzan, Jack the Ripper, Goethe, or the Beatles into a conversation and always expect to be understood. I once had a Chinese friend who had read the first translations of Kafka into Chinese, yet didn't know who Santa Claus was. China has had extensive contact with the West in the last few decades, but there is still a vast sea of knowledge and ideas that is not shared by both cultures.

Similarly, how many Americans other than sinophiles have even a rough idea of the chronology of China's dynasties? Has the average history major here ever heard of Qin Shi Huangdi and his contribution to Chinese culture? How many American music majors have ever heard a note of Peking Opera, or would recognize a pipa if they tripped over one? How many otherwise literate Americans have heard of Lu Xun, Ba Jin, or even Mozi?

What this means is that when Americans and Chinese get together, there is often not just a language barrier, but an immense cultural barrier as well. Of course, this is one of the reasons the study of Chinese is so interesting. It is also one of the reasons it is so damn hard.

Conclusion

I could go on and on, but I figure if the reader has bothered to read this far, I'm preaching to the converted, anyway. Those who have tackled other difficult languages have their own litany of horror stories, I'm sure. But I still feel reasonably confident in asserting that, for an average American, Chinese is significantly harder to learn than any of the other thirty or so major world languages that are usually studied formally at the university level (though Japanese in many ways comes close). Not too interesting for linguists, maybe, but something to consider if you've decided to better yourself by learning a foreign language, and you're thinking "Gee, Chinese looks kinda neat."

It's pretty hard to quantify a process as complex and multi-faceted as language-learning, but one simple metric is to simply estimate the time it takes to master the requisite language-learning skills. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical "easy language". This is a very rough and intuitive estimate, but I would say that it takes about three times as long to reach a level of comfortable fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Chinese as it takes to reach a comparable level in French. An average American could probably become reasonably fluent in two Romance languages in the time it would take them to reach the same level in Chinese.

One could perhaps view learning languages as being similar to learning musical instruments. Despite the esoteric glories of the harmonica literature, it's probably safe to say that the piano is a lot harder and more time-consuming to learn. To extend the analogy, there is also the fact that we are all virtuosos on at least one "instrument" (namely, our native language), and learning instruments from the same family is easier than embarking on a completely different instrument. A Spanish person learning Portuguese is comparable to a violinist taking up the viola, whereas an American learning Chinese is more like a rock guitarist trying to learn to play an elaborate 30-stop three-manual pipe organ.

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

There is still the awe-inspiring fact that Chinese people manage to learn their own language very well. Perhaps they are like the gradeschool kids that Baroque performance groups recruit to sing Bach cantatas. The story goes that someone in the audience, amazed at hearing such youthful cherubs flawlessly singing Bach's uncompromisingly difficult vocal music, asks the choir director, "But how are they able to perform such difficult music?"

"Shh -- not so loud!" says the director, "If you don't tell them it's difficult, they never know."

Bibliography

(A longer version of this paper is available through CRCC, Indiana University, 510 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN, 47408.)

Chen, Heqin, (1928)"Yutiwen yingyong zihui" [Characters used in vernacular literature], Shanghai.

DeFrancis, John (1966) "Why Johnny Can't Read Chinese", Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 1966, pp. 1-20.

DeFrancis, John (1984) The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

DeFrancis, John (1989) Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Kennedy, George (1964) "A Minimum Vocabulary in Modern Chinese", in Selected Works of George Kennedy, Tien-yi Li (ed.), New Haven: Far Eastern Publications.

Mair, Victor (1986) "The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects", Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 1, February, 1986 (Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania).

Zhao, Yuanren, (1972) Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Notes

I am speaking of the writing system here, but the difficulty of the writing system has such a pervasive effect on literacy and general language mastery that I think the statement as a whole is still valid. back

John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984, p.153. Most of the issues in this paper are dealt with at length and with great clarity in both this book and in his Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. back

Incidentally, I'm aware that much of what I've said above applies to Japanese as well, but it seems clear that the burden placed on a learner of Japanese is much lighter because (a) the number of Chinese characters used in Japanese is "only" about 2,000 -- fewer by a factor of two or three compared to the number needed by the average literate Chinese reader; and (b) the Japanese have phonetic syllabaries (the hiragana and katakana characters), which are nearly 100% phonetically reliable and are in many ways easier to master than chaotic English orthography is. back

See, for ex., Chen Heqin, "Yutiwen yingyong zihui" [Characters used in vernacular literature], Shanghai, 1928. back

John DeFrancis deals with this issue, among other places, in "Why Johnny Can't Read Chinese", Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 1966, pp. 1-20. back

George Kennedy, "A Minimum Vocabulary in Modern Chinese", inSelected Works of George Kennedy, Tien-yi Li (ed.), New Haven, 1964, p. 8. back

Zhao Yuanren, Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 92. back

John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, p. 109.back

Charles Hockett reminds me that many of my examples are really instances of loan words, not cognates, but rather than take up space dealing with the issue, I will blur the distinction a bit here. There are phonetic loan words from English into Chinese, of course, but they are scarce curiosities rather than plentiful semantic moorings. back

A phrase taken from an article by Victor Mair with the deceptively boring title " The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects" (Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 1, February, 1986, Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania). Mair includes a rather hilarious but realistic account of the tortuous steeplechase of looking up a low-frequency lexical item in his arsenal of Chinese dictionaries. back

I have noticed from time to time that the romanization method first used tends to influence one's accent in Chinese. It seems to me a Chinese person with a very keen ear could distinguish Americans speaking, say, Wade-Giles-accented Chinese from pinyin-accented Chinese. back

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ntrending · 5 years

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The best gear and gadgets for summer camping

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/the-best-gear-and-gadgets-for-summer-camping/

The best gear and gadgets for summer camping

This story originally published on FieldandStream.com

Summer is the perfect time to go camping with the family. School is out, public campgrounds across the country are open now, and, with the snow (finally) disappearing in the high country, the weather is starting to hit that sweet spot. And if you need more convincing—did you know that June is National Camping Month? And while part of the fun of camping is roughing it outside, it never hurts to bring some supplies that will make the experience more comfortable—especially if you’re camping with kids or some friends who might not be the “outdoor type.” So whether you’re car camping, taking an extended backcountry camping trip, or simply taking a quick trip for the weekend, here’s a list of gear items that will help you and your family and friends get the most out of your adventures in the outdoors.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Owl-Outfitters-Hammock-Hammocks/dp/B016CHAMX4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=0d8711251b1199789cd90552a119138c&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Wise Owl Outfitters Hammock with Tree Straps</a> (Wise Owl Outfitters/)

Years ago, at the advice of a good friend, I began carrying a pack hammock and tether straps in my pack whenever I hunted elk or mule deer in Idaho’s high country. During the mid-day lull, I fix it between two trees, take off my boots, lay in the cradle of the hammock, and sneak in a quick nap. Pack hammock sets, like the ones from Wise Owl are inexpensive, easy to set up and take down, and a real asset in any camp. I keep one set under the seat in my truck, just in case, but you can stash these things just about anywhere; they’re lightweight and pack down into a stuff sack that’s about the size of a big grapefruit. Made from 210T parachute nylon, the hammocks are strong and weather resilient, and there are two carabineer clips to attach it to the tethers, which are both 9-feet long.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/LEATHERMAN-Multitool-Magnetic-Locking-Accessible/dp/B07P5H9T41/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=b52d130eef63f82af1e70ca9a403a5e6&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Leatherman FREE P4</a> (Leatherman/)

The Free P4 is the latest and greatest addition to the Leatherman family. There are 21 tools on the outside of this model that pop open with the push of a button, and a magnetic lock reduces friction during deployment. Weighing just over eight ounces, the 4 ¼-inch-long tool feels great in hand and it features a pocket clip for safe keeping when not in use.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Tough-Tesla-Rechargeable-Paratinder/dp/B07KFQVPTW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=582e418405aab8ccb9333996c013719e&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Waterproof Tough Tesla Lighter</a> (Survival Frog/)

I’ve been on trips where nothing seems to go the way I planned, and the lighter or matches I brought to start a campfire just weren’t working, especially in windy and wet, conditions. Survival Frog’s Tesla lighter is a great solution in tough situations. Rather than rely on gas or wood to hold a flame, the Tesla creates a double arc of electricity that can ignite anything flammable. What’s more, it’s rechargeable via a USB port, and works up to 300 times between charges. It also has a 10-second time-out to prevent accidents, and it comes on a lanyard that’s also attached to an emergency whistle.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/SAMMART-Gallon-Collapsible-Plastic-Bucket/dp/B07DDHP784/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=24e9443146f33344c95b880a2e124948&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>SAMMART Collapsible Bucket</a> (SAMMART/)

One of the most important things to remember at the conclusion of any camping trip is to drown out any remaining flames or hot coals from your campfire. In years past, I’ve filled up 2-liter bottles, or any other sort of container I could dig out of the trash, to transport water from the campground water pump to the fire ring. I’ve since upgraded to a collapsible bucket like the one from Sammart. Compressed, it’s just 13-inches round and 2 ½ inches tall; extended it’s almost 10 inches tall and can hold 2 ½ gallons of water. The plastic is BPA free in case you need to transport potable water, and the handle is thick and solid, which makes carrying a full pail just a little easier.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Insulated-Stainless-32-Ounce/dp/B01GW2H09S/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=880dfbdb21f44b38e8f6f3a96436c7c4&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Hydro Flask with Straw Lid</a> (Hydro Flask/)

An important consideration on any camping trip is hydration. Instead of paying for water bottled in unhealthy plastic carafes, consider a safer and environmentally-friendly canteen like those from Hydro Flask. Each bottle has a grippy, powder-coated finish, double-walled insulation, and a non-toxic stainless steel reservoir. Add a wide-mouth straw lid, and you have the perfect companion for hiking, boating, fishing, or any other excursion you embark on from camp.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/GSI-Outdoors-Commuter-JavaPress-Backcountry/dp/B00T3WH2QQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=f35ca38e4339fc119dc89e0fc6d8a61d&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>GSI Outdoors Commuter Javapress</a> (GSI Outdoors/)

One of my favorite little pleasures in life is rolling out of my sleeping bag on a cool, crisp morning, and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee. And while I’ve tried preparing it with all sorts of different devices and accessories, a simple French press consistently produces the best cup of Joe. The Commuter JavaPress from GSI takes the French-press concept a step farther by replacing the sliding rod with a sliding inner carafe. Simply add the coffee into the bottom of the outer mug, add hot water, and slide the carafe inside. Small ports in the bottom let water through while keeping the grounds out. The lid is spill-resistant, a rubber foot prevents the mug from sliding, and a cloth sleeve insulates your drink until you’re finished.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/WolfWise-Dressing-Portable-Changing-Backpack/dp/B01FXNRA42/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=d6643e2a705317b0d1cc1ae095b6e55f&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>WolfWise Pop-up Shower Tent</a> (WolfWise/)

I am not fond of showers, and anyone that’s spent any time with me in elk camp, knows I’m not lying. But there is something to be said for occasionally washing off the stink now and then. If you’re not blessed with a camp trailer or some other rigged apparatus to spray warm water, a pop-up shower tent, like the one from WolfWise, might be for you. Deployed, this single-person stall creates privacy and is roomy enough to hang a portable shower bag and shower head. When you’re not bathing, you can use the tent as an outhouse for your portable toilet.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Drysure-Extreme-Boot-Dryer-Snowboarding/dp/B075QM3R5K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=c4add08d29fcd9655fc9c93c1c6b0b4f&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Drysure Extreme Boot Dryer</a> (Drysure/)

Cold and soggy boots can make life miserable, but when you’re far from an electrical connection, drying footwear is tough—if not impossible. The Extreme Boot Dryers from Drysure are a good alternative when you don’t have a powered dryer. Slip one into each boot at the end of the day, and when you wake up the next morning, they’ll be dry. Drysure says the devices make boot-drying 12x more effective than just air alone, and help keep odors, fungus, or bacteria from building up inside. The inserts are typically good for up to 10 drying sessions before you’ll want to reactivate them in direct sunlight, on a warm radiator, or inside a fan-assisted oven (100 degrees) for one to two hours. They’re safe for all shoes and boots and won’t damage leather or custom-made footwear like some heated dryers can.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019NMTVH8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=f3507e452ae15139051cf26be03ca0ce&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>ORCA Chasertini Martini Cup</a> (ORCA/)

After camp is set up, the campfire is glowing, and the kids are getting ready to make s’mores, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying an adult beverage. If you like to enjoy sipping a martini or margarita in the great outdoors, the Chasertini is just what the doctor ordered. It has a large bowl (8-ounces) and a sealed lid to prevent the accidental spill. The upper is double-walled, vacuum-sealed stainless steel, and the inside of the cup is copper clad, which will keep your drink cold for hours—not that you will need that long to finish your cocktail.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Survive-Outdoors-Longer-Origin-Survival/dp/B007RN33V6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=4d3931d794ec67688daedc64fdd23b7c&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Adventure Medical Kits SOL Origin Survival Tool</a> (Adventure Medical Kits/)

Nobody wants to find themselves in a survival situation, but even the slightest bit prepared-for-the-worst planning boosts your odds of making it back to civilization alive. The Survive Outdoors Loner (SOL) kit is small, light, and designed to fit inside a small pouch in your pack. It contains a knife, sewing needle and pins, fish hooks and line, aluminum foil, a fire starter, signal mirror, compass, LED light and whistle, and a handful of other useful tools. Weighing just six ounces, everything fits into a small, indestructible plastic box.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018YJQTJY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=842ae6d7646ff1d9d55e7fde45b7f490&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>CampSpark 34-inch Telescoping Roasting Sticks</a> (Kelv/)

If you’ve ever spent any time in a popular campground, you might notice the lack of firewood—and suitable marshmallow roasting sticks—available on the forest floor. To keep the kids from getting disappointed, bring along some CampSpark Telescoping Roasting Sticks. A set of four comes in a heat-resistant canvas bag for easy storing. Extended, the sticks are 34-inches long to keep kids a safe distance from the fire, and each one has two prongs on the end to hold two marshmallows, or hot dogs, or whatever other roasting combination you can come up with. Made from stainless steel, these skewers are easy to clean, reusable, and come with a bonus e-book containing 10 marshmallow recipes.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Collapsible-Brightest-Lighting-Flashlight-Rechargeable/dp/B013UCC65G/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=757d7b585e79ff9717caa0e0f63cb7c0&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>SUAOKI Collapsible LED Camp Light</a> (SUAOKI/)

The advent of LED lights has made camping life in the dark bright and inexpensive (LED bulbs don’t use as much battery power compare to halogen bulbs. LED lights and power sources are so light, some tent makers are incorporating small bulb strings on the inside of the frame. If you’re not ready for a tent upgrade but still need a light, consider the collapsible clover-style light from SUAOKI. Under each arm are six small LED bulbs (18 total) with low, high, and blinking settings. You can prop the unit on all three legs for a tabletop lantern, or use the attached hook to hang it on a tent ceiling. It charges via a USB cord and packs down to the size of a smartphone. But probably the best feature of this little light are the three solar panels located on the reverse side of the LEDs. In an emergency situation or for those places where you don’t have electricity to recharge the battery, you can use the sun to reenergize the device.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000F38YHI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=d421616bf342b40e4b6787a4b105d0d9&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>TETON Sports Mammoth Queen-size Sleeping Bag</a> (TETON Sports/)

It doesn’t matter if you’re overnighting out of the back of your vehicle on some designated space, or trekking for miles into the backcountry with four days worth of supplies on your back, a sleeping bag is just one of those items that goes hand-in-hand with camping. Depending on the adventure, I’ve done both, and can honestly say I have multiple sleeping bags suited for different occasions. Typically, when I have the family in tow, I like a thick, heavy, soft bag that feels as good as my flannel sheets at home. Teton’s Mammoth bag is exactly that. Rated for either 20 or 0 degrees and measuring 94×62 inches, it’s slightly larger than the average queen-sized mattress. It weighs just over 16 pounds (which doesn’t really matter if you’re car-camping) and packs down in an included stuff sack to roughly the size of a sack of potatoes. It’s a great option if you like to spread out while you sleep, or you’re snoozing with your significant other on an inflatable pad.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Country-Archer-Grass-Fed-Sriracha-Jalapeno/dp/B078PZ3V6H/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=7452fc462a09efee11476d7d983c3b9e&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Country Archer Jerky Variety Pack</a> (Country Archer/)

When I’m bivy camping or just hiking and hunting in general, there are two things that are always in my pack—trail mix and jerky. Nothing beats homemade jerky, but if I’m running low at home and have to purchase a few bags, I like Country Archer jerky. What I like about Country Archer is they’ve broken free from the standard teriyaki, peppered, and other common flavors that all of the brands stick to, and created their own unique flavors like crushed red pepper, sweet jalapeño, and Sriracha.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Klymit-Static-Lightweight-Sleeping-Green/dp/B007RFG0NM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=65e7fe5e9b511ce0a8806edca7b9cd2f&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Klymit Static V Sleeping Pad</a> (Klymit/)

My favorite way to rest in camp is atop a cot, but a thick sleeping pad is a close second. A good pad creates an insulated buffer between a sleeping bag and the ground (which can rob body heat) and is gentle on the back, hips, and muscles that might be stiff and sore at the end of the day. You can easily spend over $100 on a pad, but you don’t need to. Klymit makes a thick, lightweight pad for half the price. Deflated and in its 3×8-inch pack sack, a Static V pad weighs just over 1 pound and inflates to a whopping 72×23-inch sleeping area that’s 2 ½ inches thick. Made from thick polyester, it has an anti-microbial laminate that prevents the spread of fungus and bacteria, and it inflates with just a few breaths of air.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Jetboil-Genesis-Burner-Stove-Size/dp/B019GPCYDK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=7d7a5723771af1de228a60c00ea7fbe2&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Jetboil Genesis Basecamp Camping Stove</a> (Jetboil/)

I’ve been a fan of the Jetboil single burner water-boiling setup for a long time because it’s lightweight and brings water to a boil faster than anything I’ve used before. More recently, I’ve found another Jetboil product, the Genesis Basecamp stove, that is equally useful when it comes to camp cooking. Closed, the unit fits in small spaces and weighs just over 6 pounds. But open the clamshell design and there are two small stoves capable of putting out 10,000 BTUs—enough heat to boil water in less than three minutes. There’s a windscreen to improve the burner’s performance, and you can power it with a 16-ounce propane tank.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/SOTO-Soto-Pocket-Torch-2019/dp/B005G3PQJQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=1836d5caacc309d029fbf19475914205&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Soto Pocket Torch</a> (Soto/)

Starting a fire in wet or windy conditions can be a frustrating experience. Even if your fuel is dry and resting on a nice bed of kindling, matches or disposable lighters still might not produce a sustainable flame. But you can turn just about any disposable lighter into a blue-flaming torch with a Pocket Torch adapter from Soto. Simply slip a lighter into the sleeve, attach the cap, press on the top button, and it will turn the lighter’s weak flare into a blazing, wind-resistant igniter capable of reaching temperatures over 2,000 degrees.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Talkabout-T800-Two-Way-Radios/dp/B07HRSP2ZV/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=d0cd0192539e231df91409ef76c16b2a&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Motorola T800 Two-way Radios</a> (Motorola/)

When Motorola first debuted their Talkabout two-way radios decades ago, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a set. I used them to stay in touch with my hunting buddies, coordinate float trips down rivers, and stay in touch with home. Every year since, Motorola’s technology took a step forward, and now, with the T800 models, users have the option of Bluetooth connectivity and off-grid messaging or broadcasting. The company says these latest models have a 35-mile voice range, and 20-mile data range and with 22 channels and 121 privacy codes, there are 662 available ways to have a conversation. Each radio also provides real-time weather updates, time, and LED flashlight, and can recharge via USB.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Tailgating-Collapsible-Insulated-Barbecue-Tailgate/dp/B01DCIKFNI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=18623a9e3df31ba7f3dfb1d05f740d13&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Camerons Products Tailgating Table</a> (Camerons Products/)

One of my father’s favorite lines in camp is, “Hold my beer and watch this,” which is typically followed by some act of idiocy. But with Camerons’ Tailgaiting Table, I can stash his beverage and mine so my hands are free to react to whatever foolishness is sure to come my way. The table expands in four directions and provides four cupholders, and mesh basket for food or anything else you want handy, and a zippered “bucket” that sits low to the ground and is perfect for keeping cans on ice. It’s light, easy to carry, and has tension straps to make the most stable surface possible and sturdy feet that don’t sink into the ground.

<a href=”https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Insect-Repellent-Ounce-Spray/dp/B00GJWJI88/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=popularscience-20&linkId=39b5421107c6f7346929c9cd3cf8abc5&language=en_US” rel=”nofollow” title=””>Deep Woods OFF!</a> (OFF!/)

When it comes to biting bugs, my blood must taste sweeter than the average person because I’m a magnet for mosquitoes. Deep Woods OFF! has saved my neck, arms, and legs from becoming a bug buffet many times. A 6-ounce aerosol can contains just 25 percent DEET, which is less (and less toxic) than many other sprays that can contain up to 100 percent, and because it offers up to 8-hours of protection, you don’t need to constantly reapply it. However, one word of caution: Remember that DEET can cause chemical reactions to many types of plastics, so when you spray, be sure to keep it from contacting things like nylon clothing, fishing lines, and sunglasses.

Written By By Ben Romans/Field and Stream

#DIY

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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If you happen to learn like me (I guess try it out, see if it helps), then I cannot emphasize this enough: read.

Read early. Read immediately. Read when you know 10-50 words in the language, even that early.

It will motivate you to learn more words - then read as you learn more words. And get you used to a few things immediately: you’ll see grammar immediately, often, and if you read a grammar guide then all those grammar points will be constantly reinforced as you read and see them again. And 2: you’ll be training the skill OF reading from the very beginning.

There’s multiple parts to reading. One part, is having the actual knowledge necessary to read something - do you even know the words in the text (or have the ability to look them up), do you even recognize the grammar enough to identify what it’s function is meant to be (or at least enough to look it up)? This is one part.

The other part is how you parse through that information. How used you are to seeing the grammar - so that you can recognize what you’ve previously studied, so that you’re used to how it works and can read through it without pausing to think about it. So that you can recognize when words are being used as nouns or adjectives or verbs, recognize proper nouns, recognize what are key points versus details. Whether you need a dictionary for some words/a grammar reference, or you already ‘know’ enough to read without reference - the ability to process what you read will still be weak if you have not practiced it. But if you’ve been practicing it, then like everything else, it gradually gets better.

When you do both parts at the same time - then when your knowledge of grammar/words is weak, you can rely on your ability to ‘process’ to help make the text easier to figure out. If your ability to process something is low (maybe its difficult), you can rely on your knowledge of grammar/words to help you figure out the text. If you work on both, then you can have them both supporting each other as you improve reading.

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In theory, maybe you could ‘only’ practice the processing, and rely on word/grammar lookups constantly until it got easier - a difficult road though, probably. Likewise, many people wait until they know X amount of words before trying to read - and as a result they have zero practice ‘processing’ this language reading material, and sentences they know every word for still don’t make sense and feel difficult. Doing both is difficult at first - just like doing one alone would be. But if they’re done together, then they also improve together, and so the middle stages of reading skill feel much easier than they might otherwise.

If you know 2000 words but have no idea how to process text, even graded readers are going to feel painful at first. If you’ve been making yourself practice processing text, even back when you only knew 500 words? Then by the time you get to 2000, processing is also at a relative intermediate stage. And the biggest difficulty is generally just lack of vocabulary - which is easy to lookup with a dictionary. Whereas, you can’t ‘look up’ anything to improve processing skill. You can lookup knowledge you lack. But the only way to improve processing skill, is TO read, and to keep practicing reading.

I remember how difficult reading used to be. It’s still not ‘easy’ like french is easy yet, but its happily following the same trajectory reading french (or I imagine even english when I was young) did. I rememeber the first few months, grammar absolutely anihilated me. Even though I’d ‘studied’ it recently. I sort of knew all these grammar points in theory, I just had no idea how to process them in practice. I could look up words all I wanted, to fill in my gaps in knowledge. But I couldn’t improve my processing except by reading. And just over time... grammar got so much easier. It just clicked, a few points making sense at a time. Then those points getting easier for me to recognize faster, then those points getting intuitively understood. Etc, as it happened with more.

Likewise - I could learn words, but it was hard to process all the ways they were used, until I practiced processing them more. Even if I looked words up, even in sentences with grammar I could process, some words just did not make sense to me in their context. Then just over time, more and more made sense. I used to be very confused by ‘weile’ and ‘zhexie/zhege/zheshi’ as some basic examples. Or later words like ‘kanqilai’ and ‘qilai’ and ‘yihou’ ‘yiqian’ ‘dao’ etc. Eventually they made more sense, and then more did in more context, etc. All just from reading practice. I couldn’t read a definition to get these words to make more sense, I just had to read more.

I’m still noticing these areas of processing getting better over time. But I do remember, back when I tried reading 3 paragraphs of the MoDaoZuShi intro in like month 5? I looked up all the words, recognized the grammar, and understood nothing. Then in like month 8? I read the prologue with no dictionary and guessed at the unknown words, and knew enough to understand the gist and most of the details. Mostly, because those things I knew before just ‘processed’ better in month 8.

over time, subtitles got easier to ‘process’ so now I don’t have to pause them as often to figure out what they mean (parse through the sentence for meaning).

Now most novels don’t hit me with any sentence that I can’t at least figure out with a dictionary. I’m still stumbling over some things, but now since I can process overall a lot of things better - I have more surrounding understanding to help me figure out the more confusing parts. Like right now, I’m really struggling with PRECISELY how ‘yu’ and ‘you’ get used. As in ‘yu’ by/with/at/for, ‘you’ - by/done by etc. I roughly understand these words - I know their definitions, and I can roughly guess their meaning in sentences and follow the plot. But because they do mean slightly different things in various contexts, I clearly just need to see them more and more in examples before they’ll ‘click’ and be easier to process too. I have to say though... its way easier to focus on these words/grammar points, since I have so much surrounding understanding. If I had just waited for X words learned before starting reading? Then I’d be learning ALL the processing skills from point 0. That would be... discouraging.

In a way, I already waited to long to start reading as much as I sort of WISH I had. I read about once every 2 weeks, until month 8. It was only in month 8, that I started reading roughly a few times a week - and reading full chapters per sitting, instead of just several paragraphs. As a result, it WAS brutal at first. Because my processing skills were clearly lower than my vocab. I tried graded readers, and even though I knew all the words, they were a struggle to read. So, as my typical silly self, I picked a webnovel instead - with even MORE unknown words, even Harder. I read 15 chapters of it. Which was hard... but clearly helped. Then I went back to the graded readers, and they were a breeze - so I’d clearly built up some processing skills.

After that, I again brutally myself, decided to try reading a harder print novel I owned. That was... again, brutal. Then I went back to the webnovel? And the webnovel was notably easier! Again, those processing skills had built up some more, and I’d probably picked up some more vocabulary as well.

And its basically been repeating since then - a much quicker rate of progress, where it seems a significant amount easier every 2 months or so. I feel like I’m at like - the reading level I had in 4th grade in english? I was in one of those accelerated reading programs, so we’d read some middle-school level books by looking up like 20 words before each chapter and then having to read X amount a week. A bit challenging, definitely compared to whatever the 4th grade reading level was supposed to be (I remember liking Catwings and Bunnicula a lot which I think was my 4th grade level, and I feel like chinese graded readers I’ve been picking up feel like Bunnicula in difficulty). But also, back when I was that young sometimes I’d pick up my dad’s big huge Mitchner novels like ALASKA or his Sherlock books, and I’d read a few pages - they’d be super difficult to understand, a little painful, so I’d only read a few pages. But I’d usually understand the gist. And I’d pick up some of my moms books on Aliens and supernatural stuff, and mostly read the captions on the pictures, maybe a paragraph or two. I feel like my chinese reading level is around this right now. I can pick up adult novels and it hurts, but I can follow whats going on without a dictionary roughly. And with a dictionary, decently. I can pick up ‘teen’ level books and follow them easier, but need a dictionary for total understanding of all details. And I can pick up graded readers and they’re basically extended reading, if they’re at a low enough level (like HSK 4 vocabulary wise, to maybe 2000 words - after 2k words, I run into more and more I need a dictionary for if I want to follow details).

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anyway yeah. I remember in french I started reading at 50 words, then 100, then 500, and just kept reading. And it just ‘magically’ got easier. And I sort of did that with chinese, and am so glad I did. I wish i’d done it even more. I’m doing it more now.

It felt so good last night, to be able to just binge a few chapters of a fanfic in chinese, without feeling drained. It felt so good to be at the reading level where I can look up words I need to fast enough to not slow me down enough that I lose interest.

don’t wait until you’ve ‘prepared’ enough. don’t wait years. i waited years in japanese to read, and it was the biggest thing holding me back. i didn’t wait in chinese, and in part reading MOTIVATED me to study what i needed FASTER. It certainly helped my processing skills. And when processing skills are higher, reading overall is just less painful. A dictionary can lessen the pain of not knowing enough vocabulary. But only reading practice can lessen the pain of processing skills being weak. And - if you start to read later, it’s fine. Its okay if it seems ridiculously difficult at first, that will pass. Its just you working on the processing skills, and as those develop reading will go up to feeling mostly only as difficult as the vocabulary.

#rant #READ #is my point #it was THE single thing that taught me french pretty much #i dropped the dictionary at like 1k words in french #everything else i picked up from reading #just brute force reading a ton #and surprisingly #brute forcing through reading in chinese?#has also been a pretty successful study method

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how2to18 · 6 years

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IF YOU NEED to ask who Konstantin Batyushkov is, this is the book for you. For fans of Russian poetry, and especially for Russophone poets, Batyushkov (1787–1855) is a vital figure who wrote exquisite verse and helped to usher in what is known as the Golden Age of Russian poetry. Admired by contemporaries, he is read and cited by later poets as well. Peter France, framer of this book, notes that Batyushkov is too often mentioned or discussed merely as a precursor of the best-known Golden Age poet, Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837); Pushkin is a relatively minor presence in this narrative, though often “name-checked” to provide context. This selection-cum-biography of Batyushkov is part of the Russian Library now emerging from Columbia University Press, underlining the commitment of that series to making Russian classics available in English. The cover describes Peter France as presenter and translator, which understates what he has done: besides introducing the volume, he is the author of a substantial artistic and intellectual biography of the poet that provides a large selection of Batyushkov’s own writings in France’s translation. The verse is set apart graphically, making it easy to flip through the book following the poetry — ideally after reading the whole thing through.

Batyushkov was a translator of note, as Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry often reminds us. The attention to Batyushkov’s poetic sources suggests interesting ways to compare his translations or adaptations with the originals in Greek or Latin, English, French, or Italian. Of course, it also means looking at a translation of a translation, something of a mise en abîme. It is refreshing that France’s book makes the role of translation explicit (while sometimes offering the original, as with a late stanza or two from Byron’s Don Juan). The approach is valuable for poetry of the early 19th century, and especially for Russian literature, which has on the whole been much readier than most European literatures to acknowledge its foreign sources and their arrival via translation.

France stresses Batyushkov’s dual role both as gifted individual author and as shaper of what quickly became a world-class literature with a more flexible system of poetic genres. This entailed assimilating and recreating poems from other languages as part of his own poetry: “through translation, Batyushkov could create his own individual voice, something different from existing Russian poetry [which was a] still young poetic culture.” As France reminds us, “the first great poet in modern Russian, Lomonosov, preceded [Batyushkov] by only two generations.”

In the first two decades of the 19th century, Russian poetry was indeed a small and largely private scene, featuring almost exclusively aristocratic authors. In this era, poetry often spread in manuscript and could build a reputation without being published, like Batyushkov’s mocking “Vision on the Banks of Lethe.” Batyushkov knew everyone who was anyone at least well enough to exchange letters or to tease in a poetic parody. The likes of Nikolay Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Pyotr Vyazemsky make frequent appearances in this volume as friends, authors, and correspondents. (It is too bad that there is no index to help retrieve these moments, especially given the solidity of many of the text’s insights and summaries, but that adds value to the searchable ebook.)

Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry interweaves translations of poetry (plus excerpts from prose essays and personal letters) with history and biography. This usefully lets France prepare his reader for a work’s significance before its translation appears. It also lets him select only high points, whereas the usual poetry anthology would be obliged to include complete poems. The welcoming narrative presentation of information, explanation, and interpretation opens the work to understanding while still putting the poetry at center stage. By the time we reach the poem “My Penates” on page 85, for instance, we know it is important, and reaching it even feels like a reward. This is a wise choice for the first significant presentation of the poet in English. (There have been PhD dissertations on Batyushkov in North America, but they appeal to a different readership.)

Historical background includes Batyushkov’s time in the army, with visits to Finland, Germany, and France, and details of the Napoleonic era as a whole. Batyushkov did much of his best work in isolation in a village, for financial reasons. Some background is left unmentioned; we hear, for instance, that Batyushkov inherited a village from his mother, and that he often stayed there, especially when he was short of money, but not that the village came with serfs, whose labor made living there so much less expensive for him. Many Russians at the time considered serfdom distinct from slavery, indeed a sensible way of caring for the land and accommodating the various roles of the different “estates” (aristocrats, clergy, merchants, and — the huge majority — peasants). Batyushkov probably shared that way of thinking; France notes his conservative tendencies and cites some distinctly unrevolutionary comments from his letters. In fairness, one volume cannot do everything, but social background is particularly important, since the Decembrist movement was brewing, even if the 1825 uprising and Tsar Nicholas I’s response came after Batyushkov had left public life. We do hear about the poet’s more radical cousin, Nikita Muravyov, who was condemned to death in 1826 but had the sentence commuted to exile in Siberia.

France clearly likes Batyushkov as a person. Without smoothing away contradictions, he draws attention to the poet’s wit, cleverness, and congeniality, stressing the elevation of friendship in his elegies and the importance of his friendly missives (as the Formalist critics of the early 20th century pointed out, these were an active part of the literary system at the time, meant to be read aloud in salons). The narrative cherry-picks the most interesting parts of Batyushkov’s letters to fellow poets like Nikolay Gnedich, the translator of the Iliad into Russian and Batyshkov’s close friend, and prepares the reader to appreciate their significance.

These letters [from 1811] to friends are real works of art, frequently prefiguring the new kind of poetry that Batyushkov was writing. They are written from the heart, with frequent complaints about illness, boredom, poverty, and other woes, as we have seen. But they are also performances, full of zest, veering from familiarity to mock pomposity — the sort of letter that needs to be read aloud.

As that excerpt demonstrates, France’s text is highly knowledgeable but refreshingly unacademic. Poets and general readers should appreciate this volume as much as teachers and scholars who can now quote elegant translations. When a work must be seen as a whole to be appreciated, the volume gives it, be it short or long; these include adaptations/translations from the anthology that Batyushkov translated from Sergey Uvarov’s French versions of classical poems and “Tasso Dying,” one of Batyushkov’s masterpieces.

Batyushkov’s connection with Italian language and literature was (and is) unusual in Russia. Tasso (1544–1595) was his favorite, and the Russian poet’s friends sometimes called him Torquato in tribute to this enthusiasm. The attraction to Italian was not just an example of his use of significant foreign models; it expresses his quest for musicality, the sonorous acoustic quality for which his poetry has been noted ever since. Batyushkov eventually managed to get himself posted to Italy in the diplomatic service, though it seems to have happened too late: his health did not improve, he didn’t get along with his first boss, and he was lonely (not many Russians in Naples). He asked to retire after two years and left even before that request was approved.

Among other helpful spoilers, the book quickly mentions and regularly repeats that Batyushkov went mad and wrote almost nothing (as far as we know) in the last three decades of his life. For a reader unaware of this, the retroactive foreknowledge may create tragic suspense, the question of when and how it will happen. Surely the eventual madness has attracted some later readers (especially poets): more than a personal tragedy, it somehow suggests the risks poets (or any sensitive artistic souls) run in Russia, even if, like Batyushkov, they are not at all political radicals or dissidents. His last “sane” poem was written between 1821 and 1824:

Reader, have you not heard

Of gray Melchisedec’s last words?

Man is born a slave,

A slave goes to the grave,

And can he hope that death will say

Why he walked through this lovely vale of tears

Suffered, complained, accepted, disappeared?

We get a compressed picture of the “mute” final decades, as the poet strolled in the provincial city of Vologda, attended theater, smiled at children. One “crazy” poem has survived, and is extremely interesting from today’s point of view, informed by Russian Futurism and other avant-garde movements. France wisely offers both a literal translation of the phonetic play at that poem’s end (“Tsaritsas, rule as tsars, and you, the empress! / Tsars, do not rule as tsars, I myself am a tsar on Pindus! / Venus my sister, and you my little sister. / But my Caesar is the holy reaper [a kesar’ moy — svyatoy kosar’],”) before giving his freer version, which creates similar phonetic play in English (citing the same final four lines):

Be stars for us, my empress, my tsaritsas! Tsars are not stars: Mount Pindus is my state, Venus my sister, you my little sister, My Caesar — scissors in the hands of Fate.

In his translations France strives for metrical and rhyming equivalence, though never at the cost of poetic quality. He uses slant rhyme frequently, and he employs a rich vocabulary. His gift for scansion results in effective and sophisticated deployment of rhythm — whole long sections read without “jingling” or growing monotonous. Given the typically shorter length of common English words, the lines in translation are often a foot shorter (e.g., pentameter rather than hexameter). The reader may find herself settling into the longer translations and wishing there were more, even of a long poem. France is very responsive to form and addresses it explicitly here and there, though in other places a curious reader would have to pick up or look up the original to check for differences (Batyushkov’s work is widely available online, like other Russian poetry of every era). It would be worth citing much more than space will allow here.

One early example, excerpted from a letter, France calls doggerel:

I’m shivering with cold, Though I’m sitting by the stove, Lying under my coat I see the fire’s glow, But I tremble like a vole, Or like a wretched mole, I love the warmth of coal But I wander through the cold, Only verse keeps me whole.

Humor flashes again in a longer complaint about village life: in one stanza, the village doctor “Treats me with wormwood potions / And soups made out of bone, / And with these clever notions / He’ll see me dead and gone.” The poetry rests firmly in its context in Batyushkov’s career and in the whole development of Russian poetry: France notes that the 1813 epistle “To [Dmitry] Dashkov” “marks a turning point in his work. It deals with a subject — war — which in the traditional poetics would have been treated in a high formal ode; Batyushkov’s treatment shows his innovative genius, breaking down the barriers between genres, mixing different styles, solemn, lyrical, and familiar, to express an individual take on life.” The text dwells for many pages on the two-volume collection of Batyushkov’s work, Essays, edited by Gnedich, which included a volume of prose (largely essays: Batyushkov was a particular admirer of Montaigne) and one of verse. France writes:

The first and much the longest section is entitled ‘Elegies’ — and Batyushkov is often seen as a crucial figure in establishing the elegy as the central poetic genre of the Russian Golden Age. The term is a capacious one in Russian literature, but essentially it is distinguished from the more formal ode by its concentration on the expression of personal feelings.

Batyushkov’s groundbreaking anthology translations of classical poems emerge elegantly in France’s translations:

When a girl in agony is fading

and her body is blue and chilled,

it is in vain love pours out flowers

and amber; she must lie still,

pale as a lily of the fields,

like a waxen form; and now

flowers cannot warm her cooling hands

and perfume has no power.

The poem begins with appropriate stiffness, but its end is genuinely moving, an example both of Poe’s “most poetical topic in the world” and of Batyushkov’s ability to warm it into something vibrant.

France’s recurrent but non-irritating reminders of things and people already mentioned ensure that everything makes sense and resonates where needed with its proper significance. (This should be especially helpful for readers unfamiliar with Russian names.) After the biography ends, the last full chapter gives an evaluation of Batyushkov’s place in Russian poetry. As France suggests by opening his volume with the great Modernist Osip Mandelstam’s poem “Batyushkov,” the 19th-century poet is important enough merely for his impact on other poets, from Pushkin to the present day.

And let me say a few words about Peter France himself, who has translated Russian poets including Evgeny Baratynsky, Mikhail Lermontov, Osip Mandelstam, and Gennady Aigi, not even mentioning his work with French. Many of these turn out to be connected to Batyushkov in ways that are productive for this project; if France needs to cite a poet, he can usually do so in his own version. Toward the end of the volume, he cites Maria Rybakova’s 2011 novel in verse Gnedich, devoted to Nikolay Gnedich, who plays such an important role in this book, as well as Elena Dimov’s excellent 2015 translation of that work from the Russian. France generously credits Rybakova with inspiring his interest in Batyushkov, and thus the volume at hand.

Like the whole Russian Library series, Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry has beautiful production values, and its cover is especially successful, bringing out the best of perpendicular text and the pleasing geometric juxtaposition of a lyre and a cannon wheel. Almost at the end of the volume, following the notes, is a “Translator’s Note” in which France briefly discusses his work on Batyushkov and calls translation “this daunting but (for me) irresistible task.” This draws attention to the book’s double value: it treats an essential Russian poet, and it shows a master translator at the height of his powers.

Sibelan Forrester has published translations of prose and poetry from Russian and Croatian, and of prose from Serbian. She is professor of Russian Language and Literature at Swarthmore College.

The post “Reader, Have You Not Heard?”: On “Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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