NoneOfUrBusiness

I mean in the sense that it’s not a necessity (unless you’re addicted or basically addicted) but it’s not fancy foreign stuff.

That… Is all true. I guess I was basically spreading misinformation.

Must be the Hummus terrorists.

Agree that it’s irrelevant here, but conservative estimates put the number of dead in Gaza at 200k+. It’s definitely not just 45k for a few reasons.

I mean ask the 122 countries that did.

TIL. I apparently picked it up naturally but I feel for people who have to actually learn this.

(and it really is based on syllables, not mora)

It’s not though? Pitch can and does change (either rise or drop) mid-syllable no?

Is there anything that lays out the differences?

I’m not sure if they’re neatly explained somewhere, but the short of it is that sh, j and ch are “smoother” than the English versiond. They’re literally just s, z and t respectively, with an i next to them and smoothed over for ease of pronunciation because otherwise it’s a pain to say “si” (languages that do have this sound, like English, have ways of coping with this, but Japanese doesn’t). In English the equivalent of this is how drink is actually djrink and two becomes chuu, but anyway the point is that thinking of these three sounds as coping mechanisms rather than independent sounds should help. Listen carefully to a Japanese shi and you’ll hear the remnants of an s in it. You’ll probably have some luck looking these sounds up on YouTube.

W is a bit simpler; it’s just uw instead of a plain W, in the same way the English version lets out a bit of air before the W itself. Just insert a small u before watashi to make it uwatashi and you’ll get pretty close. Again YT should help. BTW to help appreciate the difference, when the Japanese try to emulate the English W sound they add a ho first, as in howaito (white).

I’ve basically given up on feeling like I’ll ever be totally comfortable in the language anyway.

My strategy is watch tons of anime (or your Japanese media of choice) with English subtitles. As long as you don’t depend completely on the subtitles and try to listen to the words being said it’s a pretty effective way of learning the language in my experience. Simple manga (or, again, your Japanese written media of choice) also does wonders.

Edit: A bunch of stuff here is wrong, see below.

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I mean the list of US presidents who supported Israel to the extent Biden did is pretty short.

'Tis a good time for onion lovers.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also criticised the arrest warrants, accusing the court of rewarding “terrorism”.

Just in case anyone thought this genocide was a Netanyahu problem, or even a far-right problem. No, this is an Israeli problem.

After that talk Biden came to Yahweh.

I meant the same in terms of the actual sound that comes out.

I mean according to Wikipedia,

Some scholars have claimed that the term “pitch accent” is not coherently defined and that pitch-accent languages are just a sub-category of tonal languages in general.

And yeah ん is messed up but aren’t three of these the same sound? I’d say it’s more five different pronunciations rather than seven, which still a lot but would match with my understanding of it as English+2.

Let the shitshow begin.

I mean how do you think Obama won? And Biden to a lesser extent.

not because they believe in the ethical considerations or the ideals of collectivization

I mean okay. What point are you trying to make here?

Neither. Japanese has two tones, high and low (for comparison Mandarin has 4 and Cantonese has I think 7), and each vowel/vowel+consonant in a word takes one of these two. For example there are a bunch of words pronounced koukai in Japanese and they’re split 50/50 on whether their tone is high low low low or low high high high, and the words oyster and persimmon (both kaki) are famous for having opposite tones, one low high and the other high low.

By the way Japanese straight up doesn’t have stressed syllables so the idea of a tonic syllable doesn’t really translate to the language.

Admittedly I don’t remember most of his specific policies, but I’d say his support for labor (setting aside the rail workers strike; that was fucked up). The inflation reduction act also sounded important but I don’t really understand what it did.