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whenever you get frustrated with Japanese bc it has way too many freaking homophones, just remember, you are exactly right

source: https://selftaughtjapanese.com/2014/03/19/research-results-homophones-in-japanese/

Research Results: Homophones in Japanese – Self Taught Japanese

jlang-gen

So here's the stack of my new study materials and y'all... kanji in context is arguably the best reference book for kanji I've come across in my life. I cannot praise it highly enough.

It's designed to be gone through three times. The first time is learning the kanji and the readings for the vocabulary in red. The second time is for review and all the unmarked black words. The third time is for mastery and the unusual, difficult, or obsolete words marked by diamonds. I love it a lot.

The workbook might be the true gem though. That's where the "in context" part comes from. You get practice and a bunch of example sentences actually using the vocabulary. Two words really similar in meaning that you can't tell the usage apart? No problem here. You'll get to see how it's actually used and, by extension, continue building and reinforcing your vocabulary.

Overall, this is one of the best designed textbooks I maybe have ever seen. It's designed for intermediate/advanced learners, so it's probably not the best for people who are just starting out in their Japanese studies. That being said, there's such a gap for that level of learning it's really exciting to see such a great resource targeted at us!

orcboxer

it's meee I'm your guardian angel hiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 so. in about six months, you're gonna die of starvation. 🥺 and if I don't protect you, I will get: #fired! 🫢 and that is No Good 🙅‍♀️ hahaaa So. 🙏 I looked into causes of starvation, and it turns out: Your death is totally preventable! 😯 Uh oh! 😆 There's more than enough food to sustain you without interfering with anyone else's survival, but you're not allowed to have it! 🤨 Whaaat? 🤷‍♀️ Apparently, your death is premeditated by thousands of things called "shareholders." So. 🙏 I've been killing people,

arroscnleche

soy yooo tu ángel de la guarda holiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 bueno. en como seis meses, vas a morir de hambre. 🥺 y si no te protejo, me van a: #¡despedir! 🫢 y eso No esta Chido 🙅‍♀️jajaaa Entonces. 🙏investigue acerca del tema y resulta que: ¡puedo prevenir tu muerte al 100%! 😯 ¡Uh oh! 😆 Hay más que suficiente comida para que sobrevivas sin que interfieras con la supervivencia de los demás, ¡pero no puedes teneral! 🤨 ¿Queeeé? 🤷‍♀️ Al parecer, tu muerte fue premeditada por miles de cosas llamadas "accionistas." Y bueno. 🙏 empeze a matar personas,

tracing-rivers

c'est moooi ton ange gardien coucooou 😇 bon 🙏 alors. dans genre six mois, tu vas mourir de faim. 🥺 et si je te protège pas, je vais me faire: #virer ! 🫢 et ça c'est pas Pas Super 🙅‍♀️ hahaaa Donc. 🙏 j'ai fait mes recherches sur les causes de famine et devine quoi: Ta mort est 100% évitable ! 😯 Oh-oh ! 😆 Il y a largement assez de ressources pour te nourrir sans interférer avec la survie d'autrui, mais tu n'y as pas accès ! 🤨 Quoooi ? 🤷‍♀️ Apparemment ta mort a été préméditée par des milliers de trucs appelées des "actionnaires". Du coup.🙏 j'ai tué pas mal de monde,

clockworkspider

hiiiiii 😇 我是亲的守护小天使！okay🙏 嗯。您在差不多半年会饿死哈🥺 若我不能救您我会被#炒鱿鱼！🫢 那可不行哦🙅‍♀️ 哈哈。所以昵🙏我查了一下人类饿死的原因，然后发现：诶呀呀😯亲的死是可以避免哒！😆 这世上有足够食物给亲吃，一点儿也不需要影响别人的生存率哒！但不给亲！🤨 怎么会这样昵？ 🤷‍♀️ 原来，亲的死是被一帮叫“股东”的东西计算好滴！所以昵🙏 我杀了一些人，

orcboxer

y'all are doing some rosetta stone shit to me

mawofthemagnetar

Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.

“Oh but this language sounds scary-“ have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?

“Oh but this language sounds silly-“ have you heard someone’s grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?

“Oh but this language is really weird-“ and yours isn’t? Everyone’s language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.

Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.

Isn’t it wonderful?

epicsause-official

"comparing apples and oranges" has always been funny to me as an expression because people's go to exampe of two things so radically different that they defy any useful comparison are apples. and oranges. like you would struggle to find a more comparable pair of objects than that. theyre literally sold right next to each other in most stores.

epicsause-official

wikipedia has a whole ass section dedicated to international variants of the idiom so let me quickly run through them

see this is even worse than oranges. pears and apples are like the most comparable things ever. france takes another L

ok so this is what i mean. these are measures of temperature and texture and are in fact not very comparable. молодцы ребята продолжаем в том же духе.

colombia wins most vivid image invoked hands down. would not want that to happen to me.

and i think we can all agree romania wins this hands down. everyone give a big round of applause to romania

an-nettling

Russian exercise: where is the stress in this word?

Me: in me... the stress is in me.

duskandherembracex

translatingpostsinfrench

re: ce post, je propose qu'on fasse appelle à la démocratie + qu'on donne une seconde chance aux anciens

choisissez votre équipe

canada

cartoffel

crompîre

kmotierre

patate

pomme de terre

tartufflo

tartifle

poiratte

poire de terre

pomatte

Voting ended onNov 30, 2025

json-derulo

everyone else, including the italians who invented it, needs to adopt the spanish spelling of the word “gnocchi.” ñoqui is linguistic perfection. no more fucking around with ‘gn’, letters which even when you suspend your disbelief do not produce the necessary sound. the ideal tool for the job exists and it is the ñ

hedge-rambles

Fun fact: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese all decided on different ways to spell the l(y) and n(y) sounds which weren't in original vulgate Latin orthography.

Italian puts a G before L or N, as in tagliatelle and gnocchi.

Portuguese puts an H after L or N, as in Julho and vinho.

Spanish doubles the letter, as in llamo and cabaña (???).

The secret here is that the letter "Ñ" was originally "NN". The squiggle on the top is actually a second, teeny N, being worn as a hat, because why waste horizontal space when you can just stack the letters for convenience?

Also, I love the spelling ñoqui. Perfection.

escuerzoresucitado

what-even-is-thiss

Why does like every language do things with their R sounds that nobody else understands

unpickled-olive-deactivated2025

⟨r⟩ is out of control.

It's a chameleon, a turncoat. It's at the front of the mouth [ɾ] and the back [ʁ]. It's a flap, a trill , a fricative [ʀ], an approximate [ɹ], a retroflex [ɽ]. It's a consonant. It's a semivowel. It's a vowel. It's /ʐ/.

It's a color. It's nothing. It's the space between words.

It's tearing Sweden apart.

pettson

@svenskjavel

linguistness

The German <r> isn't even an <r> lots of the time. Sure, it can be an [ʁ] and an [r]. It can also be [ər].

Or... you know... an [ɐ] or [ɐ̯] because why not

modern-austen

GUYS I JUST SAW THIS ON TWITTER AND I AM DYING

rockboci

Add the author’s reply, cowards!

thewhiskeykitteh

I scrolled through the notes on this post and my favorite has to be one mockingly accusing Madeline Miller (a Latin and Greek teacher with a Masters in Classics) of needing to do research and she wasn’t a real writer like them.

Anyway when I read that line I immediately understood what she was trying to say.

rises-vagrant

Articles mentioned (I think, anyway…)

https://pharos.vassarspaces.net/2018/05/11/scholars-respond-to-racist-backlash-against-black-achilles-part-1-ancient-greek-attitudes-toward-africans/

https://aeon.co/essays/can-we-hope-to-understand-how-the-greeks-saw-their-world

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-17888/

Archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann insists his eye-popping reproductions of ancient Greek sculptures are right on target

The Greek colour experience was made of movement and shimmer. Can we ever glimpse what they saw when gazing out to sea?

In February of 2018, the BBC broadcast an eight-part miniseries, Troy: Fall of a City, that told the story of the Trojan War. Netflix later

augustdementhe

Honestly, the first time I saw this tweet, I laughed my tits straight into the ocean.

I know what ‘olive skinned’ (and thus variations on it) means, but the author taking the time to have a little laugh, acknowledge that it’s at least a bit funny, and drop some knowledge is appreciated.

And a double thanks to the person I reblogged from for linking the articles.

rosebleue-deactivated20251002

The thread is perfect as it is, but just in case

Left: traditional extraction using a capacho basket, right modern extraction using a cold press. One is greenish brown and the other is green.

In case you want to see what the author meant about that not beeing what she saw.

languagelvlup

I enjoy the animal names in Japanese that are just different kinds of bears (especially the ones that are not actually bears).

polar bear　 ->　白熊　"white bear"

raccoon**　->　洗熊　"washing bear"

badger**　->　穴熊　"hole bear"

panda*　->　熊猫　"bear cat"

koala*　->　子守熊　"babysitter bear"

*Panda and koala are actually just called パンダ and コアラ, but the kanji do exist and I think they're neat.

**Raccoon and badger are also usually written in katakana, アライグマ and アナグマ, respectively.

tokidokitokyo

Also, polar bear can be 北極熊 (although it's usually written in katakana ホッキョクグマ) which is literally North Pole bear/Arctic bear!

toast-tothe-moon

language resources on the internet i love you. i cannot believe i can just start learning a language like that. i can lookup any word in seconds. i can find grammar explanations. there are teachers who put out whole videos for me to learn. amazing. i am so lucky.

twinicegiantorbiters

i don’t know why but i’m really amused by the winner of some ‘new kanji’ contest:

compare with the real kanji

座 (seat/gathering), but the two 人 (person) radicals have been moved from next to each other within the 土 (earth) radical to diagonally from each other, making this “social distance(d seating/gathering)”

jadethest0ne

This is hilarious, but to further the hilarity, I’d like to point to the fact that half of the “A rank” (runners up) for this contest also are related to 2020 epidemic jokes

First up we have:

Compare with 太

The original kanji means “to gain weight”. But it adds the コ “ko” and ロ “ro” katakana symbols at the top to represent the weight you gain while staying home due to the corona virus.

Then we have:

Compare with 会

The original kanjij means “meeting”, but the lower radical is changed to look more like a “Z” to represent Zoom meetings. Thus, the new kanji means “web meetings” or “zoom calls”

And of course another social distancing one:

Compare with 話

This means “to talk” or “chat”, but it’s changed simply to show the two radicals social distancing from one another as we should also while holding conversations nowadays.

At least we can have some fun language humor despite all of this!