2,087 karma · joined March 10, 2023
I talk to people every day in my 2nd language. They are generally delighted to do so.
Yes, some people are suspicious of me, depending on the context. But even then I can generally disarm it with body language etc, because I'm a skilled and empathetic human.
I literally just ignored conjugation and spoke in infinitive for a while.
Yo comer pan. Tu comer pan. Ayer/mañana el comer pan. Etc...
Likewise not worrying about gender, articles etc. If you use the wrong el/la/lo/les/whatever, it almost never matters, whatsoever.
Likewise if you put words in the wrong order.
Everyone understands it all.
So, just focus on building vocab, fluidity and confidence. The tenses come in time.
I do agree, though, that etymology - or at least noticing similarities between languages - can be very useful. Spanish and English speakers already know thousands of words in each language just with some basic rules. -al is the same (metal). -tion becomes -cion (conversation, conversación). Etc...
I suspect that your struggles was that you were being evaluated on the wrong things...
I'd be curious to hear your experience and what you think of what I've said.
But I really don't think there's any mental hurdle to learning a language at any age. In fact, I think it is EASIER to learn a language as an adult (as opposed to child) because you understand language in general, and so many other concepts.
There are two reasons that adults have trouble learning a language:
1. time. Adults have endless responsibilities, which make it difficult to dedicate the time required to learn.
2. Lack of humility. Not being able to communicate in even the most basic of terms can be humiliating, if you lack humility - as most adults do. You need to be able to completely put aside your pride, and just be eager to make mistakes endlessly.
There's a lot of language schools here - both to learn Spanish and English - and I've met so many people who are "trying" to learn a language and refuse to practice out of fear of making a mistake. At no point have I ever felt even the slightest bit self-conscious about my Spanish, and I simply just try to communicate as fluidly as I am able, even while knowing I am making mistakes. When I learn I've been making some mistake for sometimes years, I simply laugh.
Similarly, there's plenty of locals (and people around the world) who have learned English to a reasonably high degree. So it is clearly possible. Though, even amongst them it often find that there's a genuine hesitancy to talk to me, a native English speaker. Their motivation was simply for a higher paying job, and evidently they swallow their pride for $ and pain.
I can recommend https://languagetransfer.org as an excellent resource, if your target language is covered.
And also just to focus on the basics. I recommend people don't even worry about verb conjugation when starting. Just speak in infinitive exclusively.
I eat bread. Tomorrow/yesterday he eat bread.
People will understand 99% of the time. Just focus on getting vocabulary, confidence and fluidity. Add verb tenses in due course. Again, it takes humility to speak in completely broken sentences, like a little child. But that's the only way.
This is all documented in great detail in the links i shared
your argument amounts to "this person is incapable of being objective, let alone decent, because they work at xyz". Moreover, you literally didn't address a single thing presented in either link that i shared - which directly refute your nonsense. Pure ad hominem, and worse.
You are not a serious person if you think that PWA installation is "simple and idiomatic on iOS". It is buried multiple menus, taps, drags etc... deep. Most chromium browsers present a button right in the address bar or at least conspicuously in the main menu. Moreover, they allow developers to ask for the ability to prompt users to install the app.
https://adactio.com/journal/18252
https://adactio.com/journal/22757
Apple forces their employees to debase themselves in order to defend this status quo. eg:
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1245
https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/619
Take care. And keep that math not mathing!
I'll simply say that if you bothered reading anything (let alone objectively), you'd clearly see that no one is arguing for a blink monoculture. They're arguing for allowing everyone to choose whichever browser and browser engine that you want. Safari included.
The math isnt mathing on that site... And, no, safari is NOT capable of PWAs - which is the primary point of contention (not obscure APIs, though safari generally lags in all of that as well). They deliberately hobble PWAs and make them very difficult to install.
edit: also, your site is just obviously biased/poorly done, because there exist many better comparisons of web features, which show how vastly far behind Safari is, often even of Firefox. This is unsurprising given your chosen style of rhetoric
Endless more information on all of this at
One note - and this could just be nitpicking rather than making any correction.
I mostly agree, but the "details changed" part implies that there was actual connection between the societies and one borrowed/modified the other's stories.
That surely happened sometimes. But, there's plenty of evidence of very similar stories springing up in completely disconnected parts of the world. The explanation is that they come from something innate to the human experience.
Also, just because they're "stories" doesn't mean they don't have profound insight and value.
Joseph Campbell did tremendous work in presenting all of this. He had deep reverence for it all, not just despite, but likely because of, the deep similarities across the world.
But he was very clear about the fact that everyone's fighting over what to call bread. They miss the point entirely. But so do atheist-type people who write it all off based on literal, logical readings - they miss the metaphor, and therefore the value.
He would say things like "atheists would sit down at a restaurant, look at the menu, then start eating the menu" - mistaking the symbol for the reference. Or seeing a road sign "welcome to city" and thinking "ah, here we are".
Everyone - "believers", atheists and anywhere in between - has a tremendous amount to learn and gain if they can learn to read it all as great literature, poetry etc...
They don't even "let" their kids or themselves use a TV at all!
As you said, the whole thing is completely incoherent. They seem to have zero self-awareness.
You are bewildered that someone wants to try to limit technology in some way, while literally not having a television - which you call "a damn-useful tool".
Can you not see how utterly un self aware you are here?
assembly can do everything [insert high level language] can do. why not just write everything in that?
If you care to learn more, there's tons of posts on hn and the broader web, so I won't bother sharing any links. I will say, though, that you should use it with jjui, which is a tremendous TUI for jj - you don't even really need to learn any of the actual jj syntax because it just handles it all for you.