Lizardsquid, maker of noises @lizardsquid@computerfairi.es

@sydneyfalk @noelle @squirrel I've known the difference between the Chinese/Korean/Japanese writing systems and names for almost my entire life... but that's because I grew up in area which is 56% asian immigrants

@BatElite ♥

also I'm awake, hi

also now I'm rewatching this amazing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btn0-Vce5ug

I hate hiragana because it's ALMOST sensible but it's not actually and has all these annoying inconsistencies

like, it's so close to having a very easy to learn system where all the syllables with an /a/ vowel have a certain symbol structure, and all the syllables with /k/ have a certain shape

but a bunch of letters mess it up

and then also sometimes they use the wrong symbol for certain things??? for no reason???

@squirrel what

why do they write "wa" as は... that's absurd

@squirrel learning languages from text is incredibly difficult, it's way way easier to learn by speaking and listening

@squirrel ah!

I actually know these

so in Japanese, we need to know when we've finished talking about the topic of the sentence

so the word "wa" just means "I've stopped talking about the topic, here's the rest of the sentence"

"doko" is just the word for "where"

so to ask "where is the train station?", we say

train station (topic marker) where is (question)

densya no eki wa doko desu ka

@MiseryMyra welcome!

@squirrel D::

@squirrel this is why I've always avoided duolingo - it's not at all effective at teaching language

The best way to learn (that we know about): learn how to construct your own sentences

for Japanese, I know that

X wa doko des ka?

is "Where is the X?"

so by practicing that with a few nouns, I was iable to ask where things were when I visited japan

it's distinct from stock phrases because you're focusing on constructing your own sentences (which is... the point of language)

ok time to sleep...

@catgirl yeah... definitely gonna go with quake 2 then~

I just realised that quake 3 doesn't have any enemies you can place down to make a fun singleplayer action level because it's a multiplayer only game

so I'm downloading and setting up quake 2 instead, because that gives me somewhere to start

@Jo goood morning!