Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]

“I am reckoned a horrid brute because I had not been cowardly enough to lie down for them under such trying circumstances, and insults to my people.” - Ned Kelly

Any pronouns but he/they, unless you buy me dinner first.

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  • 28 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • Given the political leanings of Lemmy’s lead developers, and relatedly the whole reason why Lemmy started development in the first place, it should not be surprising to anyone that many Lemmy users have since the very beginning of Lemmy’s existence had stances that could be called, in a word, “pro-Russia” or “pro-China”.

    The problem arises when people who don’t hold these views look at them only through their own myopic biases, where, rather than genuinely interrogating why people might hold these attitudes, they instead more readily believe that a social media platform that most people have never even heard of is actually crawling with paid actors trying to influence public opinion.

    No, to understand my own views on Russia, you need to understand my views on Atlanticism; to understand my views on Atlanticism, you need to understand my views on class, among other things. None of that comes across clearly in a one-liner or a four-panel meme. I’m sure I could discuss it in a more fitting space provided I’m not too drained of energy from having stayed up until five in the morning for the umpteenth time.




  • The few points I’d bring up are:

    1. If you want to reach a high level of proficiency you should basically be in love with the language. If you’re forcing yourself to do something, learning it won’t come as easily.
    2. You should use a diversity of tactics, experiment, and find what works best for you.
    3. Comprehensible input is a very good idea. There are different standards for what makes for the best comprehensible input, but I would say you should focus on finding songs, books, comics, shows and movies etc where you can still get something out of them even if you don’t understand everything, and beyond that learn not to expect to understand everything. Being around L1s can also be very helpful, but it depends on how you make use of their input.
    4. Define what you actually want to get out of your language learning by setting realistic goals. If you want to learn a new language because you hear it makes you less likely to get dementia later in life, then you might prefer a more game-y or puzzle-y approach. If you’re interested in translating into your first language, then focus on understanding input more than generating output. And so forth.




  • Hahahhahahahahahha, yeah marge as in margarine. It’s not necessarily a standard term for it in my GenAm ass dialect but it is used in e.g. Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, and most notably British English, and I liked the sound of it, so I just decided to start calling margarine marge. Both Marge as in Marjorie Bouvier Simpson and marge as in margarine ultimately trace to an Ancient Greek word meaning “pearl”, as do the names of pizza Margherita and the margarita cocktail.











  • Well, I should note that the situation for myself is that my mom’s first language is American English, and her second language is Norwegian, and my dad was the reverse, however both he and my mom mainly spoke English to me growing up. So I ended up growing up with both English and Norwegian, but because of the language dynamics in my family and in Norway in general, and because I was comparatively socially isolated for a long time, and because of various feedback loops, my Norwegian skills ended up basically “lagging behind” my English skills. This means that my idiolect in Norwegian has a number of prominent proscribed or eccentric features. So that’s something to keep in mind for when I put my Norwegian through this Swedish “filter” — that the Norwegian being filtered is itself already “Americanized” for lack of a better term.

    Russian and Japanese are two languages that I have self-studied for a number of years. Neither of them are really up to the level I’d like, but I can still take pride in the effort I’ve put in and how far I’ve gotten, because even if my progress is slow compared to some learners, most hobbyist learners burn out and quit way sooner, right? Esperanto was one language that I tried to learn but quickly gave up on, but I’ve recently restarted learning that, and I hope and frankly expect that this time around I’ll make it to a much higher level, and it’ll become the fifth language I’ll say I can speak. And there are other languages still that I’d like to try my hands at eventually, and I’ve also been conlanging as a hobby for about a decade already, and languages are fuzzy things anyways, so just like anyone else I can sometimes understand individual words or sentences in languages I’ve never studied.