Aww poor Fran Fran. He’s definitely feeling whoo right now

Someone posted a version of that in the comments. A bit dark!

I found a thread discussing this and the claim is that a tweet came first, but i wasn’t able to open the imgur link provided. Either way, i definitely saw the comic and not the tweet

Reminds me of this comic which was also made in 2019 or 2020 i believe.

Personally i find star wars to be fine but not great. It has interesting lore and whatnot but on the whole it mostly just feels ok. The exception (to me) is the mandalorian. Where the main star wars films are (sort of) a soap opera in space (space opera), the mandalorian is a space western, and a pretty well done one. It takes 2 episodes or so to pick up the pace, but i found it to be really enjoyable.

Yeah that seems to be how lemmy works. The default setting is basically “view all,” (Everything), and individuals can subscribe and block communities as they see the content.

A lesser known multiplayer game that’s less co-op and more competitive fun is ultimate chicken horse. It’s a super silly game where everyone compete platform style to reach the end of a stage, but each round everyone places another trap. It can get pretty funny pretty quick!

Recommend using the in game cheat to unlock all stages so there’s more variety right away

Sure that makes sense. Helps to get a little more detail, thanks.

Something not a lot of people are talking about is why the different vinegars are so different.

Vinegar has similar properties to alcohol. My understanding is that they’re made similarly. For example, white vinegar is basically like grain alcohol. It’s… Unpleasant.

Balsamic though? Similar to wine. Pretty great, and so many variations

Malt vinegar? Beer. Pretty tasty.

Same deal with apple cider and rice vinegars

But yeah, plain white vinegar is not great

Adam Scott doesn’t appear on the show until the second to last episode of season 2. There’s quite a lot of character development before his appearance, and his character doesn’t have a strong impact until season 3, i would say

We skip season 1 as well, but it’s only like 6 episodes. Season 2 was the first full season, and was substantially better.

You’re just repeating a lot of what you already said, so I’m not actually going to respond to all of it. What I’m trying to explain is that Japan is considered a level 4 language assuming you need to also learn 3 writing systems. If you remove the writing systems, it’s much easier, because it is.

Additionally, I’ve said multiple times that I’m discussing conversational japanese, not complete mastery.

Really, I’m just going to share links that discuss the difficulty without writing.

I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting the idea that japanese is so deep and complex that it’s a top difficulty language to speak. It’s exclusively the writing style that makes it so hard. Having lived there myself (and in Germany, attempting to speak German) i feel pretty confident in this.

One of many quotes you can find from sources that actually discuss the language and why it’s ranked a certain way:

“Even experts agree that spoken Japanese is not particularly difficult to learn. The sounds of the language are limited (only five vowels and thirteen consonants) and grammatically it is quite regular, without case declensions or other complex issues that are found in languages like Russian, or even German.”

https://ai.glossika.com/blog/is-japanese-really-that-hard

https://workinjapan.today/study/how-difficult-is-learning-japanese/

https://90dayjapanese.com/is-japanese-hard-to-learn/

Sorry, what i meant was comparing english to japanese directly. It was poor wording on my part. What i meant to say was for a non language learner to just start learning Japanese will seem very difficult, but if you compare learning japanese with learning, say, french, it may not seem as bad if you remove the writing systems and use only romanji.

I am an english native speaker from a Hispanic family, and i find Spanish to be quite difficult. I learned conversational japanese (and hiragana and katakana) while i was young. Not particularly advanced, mind you, but conversational and low level. I found, personally, japanese to be much easier to pick up than Spanish. I wasn’t particularly into watching anime, either. I understand this portion is anecdotal, but that was my experience.

Eventually, i learned italian (to approximately b-1) level, and both Spanish and German to a-2 so far (i may be over estimating my Spanish, to be honest). Japanese is nowhere near as difficult as learning German. German grammar is extremely tricky, and I’ve found that many Germans don’t really enjoy speaking it because of the difficulty (at least this is what they tell me). This is also my personal experience, which impacts how i feel about the languages but doesn’t outright define their difficulty.

My point with the three genders was in memorizing all the articles that don’t exist in English or Japanese. There’s no grammatical gender. I’m glad it was easy for you to pick up, but that is more difficult for English speakers than people want to admit, especially when there is no rule for how the genders are assigned. In italian and Spanish there are some rules, but in German, I need to literally memorize every German word, with article, and then memorize how to conjugate nominative, accusative, dative … This simply doesn’t exist in Japanese.

Japanese is level 4 but only with the written form included, and it’s a very simple explanation: it’s considered a level 4 when the new 3 written forms are included. If you remove those written forms, it’s only a level 2 language, which is still considerably difficult to be fair.

To address a few of your points, there are no new sounds to master in Japanese that don’t already exist in English, so I’m not sure what you mean there and i would love for you to explain it to me.

Also, for the written forms, hiragana and katakana are actually somewhat easy to learn, so I’m not sure why you bring those up and not kanji. You need to know more than 2,000 kanji to be considered literate. This is why Japanese is considered difficult, and not anything else. You can’t even get n5 certified without knowing some kanji.

Suggesting one needs to have already absorbed japanese culture to consider it a level 3 is… an inaccurate statement. I think that’s missing the mark on what the difficulty rankings are trying to assess. Any language will be easier if you absorb its content, but that doesn’t have any bearing on the difficulty of it.

Thanks for the reply. I’m unsure why the honorifics get brought up in discussion of difficulty. Many non English languages have at minimum 2 of forms as well as 2 genders (some have more). I understand japanese has a lot of honorific titles and a few forms, but it’s not that difficult, for 90-95% of your interactions you can just use two really (and some of the titles exist in english as well, Mr, Mrs., Ms., Miss, Master, Dr., Lord, add an Esq. at the end for some, etc.). For me personally, I would put this in the same category as not understanding how to properly use romance language diminutives (and in many language courses these aren’t really taught until later, as far as I’m aware).

The numbers are fine? I’ve never heard this critique. I might be misunderstanding the point on this one. Other languages have some form of number conjugation as well so my apologies for not getting this

Grammar as compared to what language? Are we comparing Japanese to English only? I said it’s a level 2 not a level 1, but romance language grammar can be somewhat confusing for English speakers as well.

I was young when I learned conversational Japanese and found it surprisingly straightforward as an English native speaker. Additionally, there are no tones (unlike for example Chinese), and all the spoken sounds exist in English, so it’s not too hard for an English speaker to correctly pronounce words with practice (so I completely agree with you here).

Now I’m studying German, which is supposed to be much easier by comparison, and there are 3 word genders and literally dozens of direct and indirect pronouns. It’s extremely difficult to comprehend and recall mid conversation (or even at all). Then, depending on a lot of factors, the grammar also changes. That, plus numbers are reversed (9 and 20 as opposed to 29, and don’t get me started on French numbers). Also, there are multiple sounds that don’t even exist in english.

Still, I will reiterate, I’m suggesting Japanese is more of a level 2 language, but I assure you the majority of difficulty comes from the written form.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension

Spoken japanese is realistically like a 2. It’s the written form (3 separate forms) that’s difficult, bringing it to a level 4. Speaking is quite easy compared to other languages.

Ohhhh this one is painful

Can’t tell if you’re making a joke or actually asking, but they are probably sweating from nervousness.

I recommend the battle beast cover! It just sounds so much better to me with noora singing the lyrics

https://youtu.be/aKVZ3O2pYQs

Probably meant to say “bolted”

Clearly you didn’t even read anything i wrote. I’ll still give you the courtesy of a thought out reply, knowing you won’t do the same, though i am wondering if I’m talking to a bot

You’re not providing any facts or information, just stating an uninformed opinion. It’s a very disingenuous take, and is not useful in any way shape or form. It’s actually somewhat dangerous, and also belittles people of other cultures. I don’t know why you think you’re trying to act like a white knight for people you consider to be foreigners, but they’re actually better off than you think they are. I’m guessing you must think you’re better than everyone else. I am curious which YouTube video you saw that made you think you know so much about global disposable income levels per capita, though at this point i think you’re just making things up as you go.

I’ve provided you with actual information and your response is no everyone else is wrong. Clearly you prefer taking bad faith arguments with strangers for fun. I hope you find out one day why this is the wrong way to behave

You also have no idea where i live, what i do, who i am, where I’ve been. I promise you that all your assumptions are wrong.

As i wrote this out i realized that i am probably talking to a bot

According to some basic research, it looks like Thailand is actually in the top 10 for least expensive country to travel to.

If the claim is that vacationing anywhere is too expensive, then the argument is a little pedantic. That sounds like the perspective of someone who just saw a YouTube video comparing income by country, and now thinks they fully understand global poverty differences.

If the claim is that it really is too expensive to travel to Thailand specifically, it is simply incorrect. Thailand is one of absolute cheapest countries to travel to “globally.” Anyone in any country with enough money (and freedom of movement) for a vacation can travel to Thailand. Contrary to popular belief, this is based on comparative income, not global income. This means a lot of people can actually afford to travel to Thailand if they chose to. And, again, the person in question flew from Taiwan. Very cheap travel. (As a side note, this may be shocking, but some people take vacations when they cannot afford to.)

On average, a person in the USA who is homeless earns less than 50,000 per year. While, yes, 50k is a lot of money “globally,” someone earning that much money in the USA may not be able to afford a home in their own country. That’s why these kinds of comparisons are not helpful. You might as well call anyone who has ever lived or died “oxygen rich” because, universally speaking, dead or alive they have good oxygen levels compared to entire planets with no oxygen. It’s a useless statement.

One final thought is paid vacation days. The USA is at the bottom globally of mandatory paid vacation days. Countries that may surprise you will actually pay you your salary while you travel for vacation, and you better believe they do travel.

So, globally speaking, no you don’t.

https://en.tempo.co/read/1914697/top-10-cheapest-countries-to-visit-adventure-with-less-expense

https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/spending/cheapest-countries-to-travel-to

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-which-countries-get-the-most-paid-vacation-days/

https://www.wvlt.tv/2024/06/10/more-than-third-travelers-plan-go-into-debt-fund-summer-vacation-study-finds/