Learning some languages

Langblr: Japanese / German / Spanish / Dutch / Finnish occasionally other languages, culture & world/country related things

[cosmonaut-observer]

If you live in the UK you need to see this

Protect Internet Freedom from now until forever. It's important existentially! Americans stand with UK citizens in our struggle against government censorship

[russettrush]

Growing up in the online world: a national consultation

We are consulting on further measures to prepare children for the future in an age of rapid technological change. This includes potential ag

Got the link via @finalducc

If you live in the UK, please be sure to take part in this!

[fading-bisexual-queen-milkshake]

@daysleftofsecondterm

[starlightshadowsworld]

You guys have my whole heart for sharing this I had no idea will be filling this out and encourage all my fellow brits to do soo too. If you’re not from the UK please keep sharing this around we have till the 26th May to submit these in.

This whole thing was set up without our say we all need to make sure we’re heard.

[s-h-o-w-a]

Life on remote Japanese islands, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, November 1967

[bovineblogger]

cattle breed highlight - akaushi !

akaushi cattle (also called the japanese brown) are a beautiful red breed of wagyu from japan! this breed didnt exist outside of japan until the 1970s, but now there are heaps around america as well!

theyre a small but hardy breed that do well in almost any climate, and some of them have cute white bellies that make me think of a little ginger cat :3

images (x) (x) (x)

[chitaka45]

京都　妙心寺派の塔頭「長慶院」　🟣藤の花🟣

Kyoto Chokei-in Temple, Myoshin-ji

🟣 wisteria flowers 🟣

[yaoiblackmold]

I hate that it's common to only teach about how WW2 affected Westerners and all the war crimes that Germany committed, but nobody ever talks about the atrocities that Japan did to countless asian countries. Nobody ever talks about the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, the comfort women, the death railway, and literally dozens upon dozens of other war crimes they've committed. Nobody teaches any of this in their world history classes and it's fucking glossed over all the time, and Japan never even apologise for ANY OF THIS, and some of them TO THIS DAY denied it ever happened. An estimated 30 million people died because of this and not a single "we're sorry" to be seen from them, they don't even teach it in schools.

[evpath]

And now the Japanese prime minister is a neo nazi who visits a shrine that memorialises ww2 war criminals.

[veerierir]

Indonesian here, I want to share some information but they're mostly revolving around Indonesia since I'm more well-versed about my country.

Most Japanese, especially the younger generation are clueless about the atrocities Japan committed during WW2. Some Japanese had admitted that they're only aware of Japan occupation in Indonesia after stepping into Indonesia or having an indonesian bringing up the topic to them. For example, Haruka Nakagawa (former member of AKB48 and JKT48) told her story on a podcast about how one day she sung a song about Indonesian independence alongside other JKT48 members, then a member (who is indonesian) told her about what Japan did to Indonesia and she was baffled upon hearing that since she had no idea. She never recalled such thing being taught in school.

There is also an interesting discussion on quora which I will roughly translate below. The question is:

Are schools in Japan taught history about Japanese occupation in Indonesia?

a person named Ilham Maulana answered, "I went to highschool in Japan, and I assure that throughout the history class, Japan never tells about the Japanese occupation in Indonesia.

The thing their history books taught is that they went to war in the past and then defeated by the Allies and the US as well as receiving atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then they never want to be involved in a war again.

The funny thing, I met with a WW2 veteran, an old man who turned out to be the grandfather of my schoolmate. I introduced myself as an Indonesian, and right after that he bowed and apologized profusely. He said, "I'm sorry, we occupied your country in the past". At that time, my friend finally learned that Japan had occupied Indonesia.

So it's true that many of today's young Japanese generation are unaware of Japan's dark past. One reason is that the Japanese history curriculum in schools doesn't cover it in detail of what Japan did during the war era."

another person named Rudy Santoso said, "Looking at the question from my Japanese friend: "During WW2, who occupied your country (Indonesia)? Was it Germany?"

I guess it wasn't taught.

Or my friend fell asleep during history class.

Note: When I answered that Indonesia was occupied by Japan, he immediately apologized repeatedly and bowed..."

I'll translate one more answer, this time by Candice Caterina. "I have a Japanese friend, Natsumi Honma, a woman from Japan.

At the time, she was participating in an exchange program at my school. My friends and I casually asked her if she knew that the Japanese had once colonized Indonesia with great cruelty.

She was confused, as if she had just learned about it. According to her, she had only been taught that in Japanese history, Japan had only ever helped Indonesia gain independence from the Dutch."

That answer is particularly interesting because during Japanese occupation, Japan claimed that they're our older sibling and Indonesia is their younger sibling. They were there to save Indonesia from the west (Dutch in particular) and help Indonesia gain independence. Their promise to give Indonesia independence was all talk. Truth was, they only wanted to take advantage of Indonesia. Natural resources were taken, men were put into forced labor called romusha, women were given false hope of getting a job or an education only to be taken away from home and forced into sexual slavery (jugun ianfu).

Not only has Japan never apologized, they're also actively hiding it from their own people and if such topic gets brought up in their history books, it's likely presented through a heroic lense that paints them in a positive light.

Now, I want to show this paragraph which was taken from the foreword by Mark Harrison in a book titled War Crimes in Japan-Occupied Indonesia: A Case of Murder by Medicine, written by J. Kevin Baird and Sangkot Marzuki.

One time, a lecturer in my class told us that it's really difficult to write about the Japanese occupation. Not just due to the languange barrier, but also the fact that a lot of evidence (including documents) were destroyed. Even the ones existing might have been fabricated in the first place.

About Japanese PM visiting a shrine that memorialises WW2 war criminals, I'll just put these paragraphs from the same book here. (this isn't a new thing in Japan)

Last thing I want to mention or rant about, as someone from a country that was once occupied by Japan I find it offensive that the Rising Sun Flag is still used by the Japanese Navy. Although it existed long before WW2, it still symbolizes the wartime attrocities commited by Japan. The flag also frequently appears during protests in Japan especially anti-immigration protests and as far as I know there are no consequences for those who display it. Just imagine if Germany still used the Nazi flag or if someone carried it at a protest. The reactions would be unthinkable. So seeing Japan normalize this symbol is truly disappointing.

[philamuseum]

Deer are considered to be the sacred messengers of Shinto deities, and are often depicted in mandalas, as seen here. A white stag rides on a cloud, symbolizing his role as a messenger between the earth and the gods. On his saddle is a branch of the sacred sakaki tree and a mirror, which, along with the sword and jewel, is one of the three sacred symbols of Shinto. “Deer Mandala,” 1600s, Japan

[herpsandbirds]

[crabussy]

KIA ORA CREW!!!! they're building a five billion dollar AI data centre of absolutely colossal size in waihōpai/invercargill.

if you don't want this to happen, it's VERY QUICK to sign this petition which will eventually be sent to parliament! you don't have to be from aotearoa to sign.

no community should have to face the consequences of an AI data centre of this size. the cost is also heinous. this money could go towards so many causes. it would mean the world if you could give this a quick boost by sharing or taking 15 seconds to sign the petition!

[planefood]

If the radio I heard about this on is correct, this Data centre would take as much energy to run annually as the entirety of Wellington City (the capital city for those unaware) all of this during a fuel crisis. None of us asked for this

[crabussy]

great! great! great! wow! great! yay!

[munida]

Not to mention that the groundwater throughout most of Southland - that the data centre will be drawing on for cooling - has extensive nitrate pollution from decades of intense dairy farming.

The same conditions as in Oregon USA, which is rather in the spotlight right now as the data centres there using nitrate-polluted groundwater for cooling have intensified that pollution so much that it's causing cancer and miscarriages.

There's a good chance that on top of being an immense waste of power and decimating the surrounding environment, it's going to kill people

[bovineblogger]

you don't have to be from here to sign! please, please help us stop this.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

[roachpatrol]

Holy fuck. I was raised Jewish— with female Rabbis, even!— and I did not hear about any of this. Gender studies are important. 

[kogiopsis]

Why Gender History is Important (Asshole)

[treewizarded]

“so you just threw gender in there for fun” ffs i hope you poured his drink down his pants

[notyourdamsel-in-distress]

I actually studied this in one of my classes last semester. It was beyond fascinating. 

There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.

Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf  when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage. 

The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have. 

Another interesting tidbit is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Kristallnacht is a term that historians came up with after the fact, and was not what the event was actually called at the time. It’s likely that the event was actually called was (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the German word for it but it translates to) night of the feathers, because that, instead of broken glass, is the image that stuck in people’s minds because the soldiers also went into people’s homes and destroyed their bedding, throwing the feathers from pillows and blankets into the air. What does it say that in our history we have taken away the focus of the event from the more domestic, traditionally feminine, realms, and placed it in the business, traditionally masculine, realms?

[historicity-reblogs]

Badass women and interesting commentary. Though I would argue that “Night of Broken Glass" includes both the personal and the private spheres. It was called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, which led to Jewish survivors referring to it as the November Pogrom until the term “Kristallnacht" was reclaimed, as such.

None of this runs directly counter to your fascinating commentary, though.

[wtfhistory]

READ THIS.

[the-waters-and-the-wild]

If anyone has books or articles related to these accounts or ones like them, please let me know. These stories need to be told. 

[historicity-was-already-taken]

@the-waters-and-the-wild hi! I’m (OP) actually writing a book on these themes. If you’re interested in learning more or helping me out with access, please check out this page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/women-in-the-warsaw-jewish-underground-project#/

Women in the Warsaw Jewish Underground Project

Help me pay for the translators, books, reproductions of archival materials, and editors I need. | Check out 'Women in the Warsaw Jewish Und

[historicity-was-already-taken]

To everyone still engaging with this post, CHECK OUT MY NYT BESTSELLING BOOK

The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto

The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto

[nemuiro]

Happy New Year✨

あけましておめでとうございます

2026年もよろしくお願いします🌸

[japanesewords]

おおみそか｜The last day of the year, New Year’s Eve

[highlandvalley]

お母さんの置き書き面白すぎ

[tokidokitokyo]

ネコ3匹には もう夕ごはん やったから

だまされないように

All 3 cats have been given dinner already

so don’t be fooled by them

[thydungeongal]

I think it's funny that in French the word for "unicorn" is "licorne" because:

The word "unicorne" was first reanalyzed as "une icorne"

The definite article was then added, making it "l'icorne"

The new definite form was reanalyzed once again, resulting in "une licorne"

[thydungeongal]

Before any anglophones get on the French people's case on this, consider for a second what y'all did when you reanalyzed the Spanish "el lagarto" ("the lizard") as "alligator."

Reanalysis is fun.

[jkcorellia]

Oh yeah, everybody does this*. Another English example is "apron", which was once "napron" until we reanalyzed the initial N as part of the indefinite article (a napron -> an apron).

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

*citation needed, but reanalysis is extremely common

[thydungeongal]

Oh, this actually explains something I'd just attributed to a quirk of sequence constraints or something; why Alexander is realized as Iskander/Iskandar in Arabic! It makes sense to analyze it as al-Iskander in Arabic!

[grungeygoddess]

Same thing happened with the word alchemy! Started out as the Arab term "al-kimiya", and when it was transported to Europe, it became "alchemy". This is actually really interesting, because as the term evolved more, it became "chemistry", effectively un-reanalyzing the word!

[thydungeongal]

Oh actually there's another layer of fun there: the Arabic "al-kimiya" is actually a loan of the Ancient Greek χῠμείᾱ (khumeíā), which was used to refer to the art of alloying metals. Arabic borrowed a lot of Greek terminology owing to Arabic translations of Greek classics (many of which were actually lost in Europe until they were retranslated from Arabic). So, yeah, the Greek khumeíā made a round trip through Arabic, then into medieval Latin as "alchemia," and from there we eventually do get chemistry!

[valtharr]

Not quite the same thing, but this reminded me of one of the funniest phenomena in the German language.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

ich röntge, du röntgst, er/sie/es röntgt, wir röntgen, ihr röntgt, sie röntgen

[thydungeongal]

In the X-rayed lab, straight röntgin it

[japaneseaesthetics]

Frog and Mouse by Getsuju Japan, late 18th-early 19th century, Japan.  90.3 x 167.8cm Ink on paper Kaikodo

[cosmonautroger]

Kaoru Yamada

[crystalis]

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[mochayoubi]

learning about 感情 (emotions) waow