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"hey are you feeling okay, you look angry"

"no I'm not feeling okay"

"that pisses me off, and now I'm angry at you, what are you angry about?"

*thing that even slightly pertains to the other person* (drug use)

"now I'm pissed and IM GETTING LOUD AT YOU FOR THAT"

"why did you ask if you didn't want to hear the answer?"

"BECAUSE YOURE BOTHERING ME BY BEING ANGRY"

Repeat ad infinitum sans sarcasm, self awareness begone, somehow I still feel the need to apologize for daring to not feel the best about being around someone scratching them self open to the point of bleeding, being loud for the entire day including insomnia, being highly distractible, lacking awareness of their surroundings, foregoing basic empathy, planning out entire events very suddenly with no preparation in which the guests pretend there isn't a loud and itchy man screaming edgy suicidal, slightly racy dark humor jokes, and refusing to get any help for it because "he's gonna quit in just a few more days... No, just a few more days... I know it's been 3 months, just a few more days, I don't need rehab, stop gaslighting me"

"just move out", to WHERE? Assisted living won't take me, I don't make enough in disability to pay for rent on my own, and any roommate situation would have to have an agreement to be my caretaker.

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This beginner qigong playlist with Thich Man Tue (Brother Insight) has been getting me through it.

Sharing in case this might help others get through it too.

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Random doodles 6-3-25

I'm considering setting a challenge to draw every day for a month, but I'm mostly focusing on studying japanese

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So it seems like some of you might be interested in learning more about Dreamwidth.

Listen, here's the thing: Dreamwidth is not slick. It is not fancy. Its base code was originally put together some two decades ago or more, and it looks like it. It can't do much with images and definitely not with video—like, I think there's some way to embed video, but I have no idea how to do it, and hosting it on Dreamwidth is, uh...

The point is! Dreamwidth is a lot different from Tumblr. It's closer to Tumblr than it is to Facebook or Instagram, but it's a lot more old-school internet than Tumblr is. And that means that, for anyone who wasn't on the internet some ten, fifteen years ago, there's probably going to be a steep learning curve. It can take more effort to post things there, and more effort to find your people, its image hosting capacity can charitably be described as both "limited" and "poorly organized", and overall it may still never be the kind of website where you, personally, will want to spend a lot of time or do a lot of things. Dreamwidth does not and will never have an app, for pretty much the same reasons as AO3.

But there is one thing I can guarantee, and that is that Dreamwidth is willing to fight for us and our rights. They're already doing so.

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In Japanese language, describing a third person’s emotion is different from describing a first person’s emotion: in English, the sentences "I am happy" and "He is happy" are grammatically structured in the same way. However, in Japanese, this direct equivalence is not possible: you can say "私は嬉しいです" (Watashi wa ureshii desu), but you can't simply say "彼は嬉しいです" (Kare wa ureshii desu).

This is due to cultural and linguistic nuances that emphasize the acknowledgment of another's internal state as somewhat inaccessible. In fact, Japanese typically employs expressions that convey a level of inference or indirectness, such as:

Using observational phrases: one might say 「彼は嬉しそうです」 (Kare wa ureshisō desu), which translates to "He seems happy" or "He/she looks happy." This phrasing respects the notion that one can only observe outward signs of emotion, not definitively know another's internal state.

Adding "ようだ" or "みたい": these suffixes add a sense of speculation. For example, 「彼は嬉しいようだ」 (Kare wa ureshii yō da) or 「彼は嬉しいみたいです」 (Kare wa ureshii mitai desu), both meaning "He appears to be happy."

Using conditional clauses: Another approach is to use conditional forms, like 「彼が嬉しければ」 (Kare ga ureshikereba), meaning "If he is happy," which implicitly acknowledges the uncertainty of truly knowing his feelings.

One characteristic of Japanese syntax is its extreme sensitivity to epistemological considerations based on the ego/nonego distinction or the distinction of I/the other. Our knowledge about the mental state of another person must necessarily come from our interpretation of external evidence, and this is well reflected in the Japanese language.

Source material: http://human.kanagawa-u.ac.jp/gakkai/publ/pdf/no157/15712.pdf

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Find out more:

https://womeninstem.org/ and

https://womenrefusingtobeerased.org/

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Pronouncing ん

So far, we’ve looked at and talked about ALL of the Hiragana characters. Hooray! 👍🏾 👏🏾

Now, I’d like to bring attention to a select few of the characters we’ve looked at:

ゃ、ゅ、ょ、っ、ぁ、ぃ、ぅ、ぇ、ぉ、and ー

What do these characters have in common??

The answer is that they don’t actually make any sounds by themselves. They all depend on whatever character appears before them.

As it turns out, ん belongs in this group as well! In fact, the pronunciation of the ん character is so special that it has its own word - はつおん. (はつおん when written as 発音 just means “pronunciation” but when written as 撥音 means “the pronunciation of the ん character”) Even Japanese native speakers may not be aware of this, but the pronunciation of ん changes depending on the character that comes before it! 😱

I’ve chosen 3 different ways that native speakers pronounce ん so let’s take a look a them, one by one.

1) The “M” Sound [m]

The sound combination of “n” with any of those other sounds is actually inconvenient for your mouth to produce. Of course it is possible, but in order for an easier pronunciation and to save time, your mouth basically changes the “n” sound to get ready for the next sound. This results in the sound becoming the “m” sound. Let’s look at an example:

あんまり means “not much” or “not really”. If you pronounced each sound for a small child to repeat, you would say “a-n-ma-ri”. When you say this word in a sentence though, it’s pronounced as “am-mari”.

Here is another example with a famous train station in Tōkyō - しんばし:

See how the ん is written as an “m” in the romaji spelling?

Here are some more examples:

こんばんは = good evening (pronounced as kom-ban-wa)* じゅんび = preparation (pronounced as jum-bi) ぜんぶ = all, everything (pronounced as zem-bu) ————- えんぴつ = pencil (pronounced as em-pitsu) さんぽ = a walk, a stroll (pronounced as sam-po)

Here is a great video from a channel called ひろのはつおん with him pronouncing ん as the “m” sound.

2) The ”NG” Sound [ŋ]

Our next pronunciation of ん is as the “NG” sound, like in the English word “sing”. If you focus on how you say the words “sink” and “sing” you’ll notice that these words both have the “ng” sound.

Some Japanese examples are:

げんかん = entrance or entryway (pronounced as “geng-kan”) げんき = lively, energetic (pronounced as “geng-ki”) てんき = the weather, good weather (pronounced as “teng-ki”) でんき = electricity (pronounced as “deng-ki”) べんきょう = study (pronounced as “beng-kyō”) ゆうびんきょく = post office (pronounced as “yū-bing-kyoku”) ぎんこう = a bank (pronounced as “ging-kō”) おんがく = music (pronounced as “ong-gaku”) こんげつ = this month (pronounced as “kong-getsu“) ばんごう = (pronounced as “bang-gō“)

Here is a video with ん pronounced as the “ng” sound.

3) The Nasalized Vowel Sound [Ṽ]

This pronunciation of ん is a bit tricky. When it comes before any of those characters, it is basically pronounced as a more nasalized version of the “n” sound. Try humming the “n” sound from your nose and you will get this version of ん.

Now, take a look at the next 3 words:

げんいん げにん (be careful!) げいいん (ambiguous)

げんいん means “cause” or “original source”. It’s very important that you pronounce the ん separately from the い. If you pronounce it as “ge-nin” (げにん) you are saying “a low-rank person” or “a peasant”! If you pronounce it as “gei-in” (げいいん) the meaning becomes “over drinking”!

“Over drinking” is ONLY pronounced as げいいん. Interestingly though, because the pronunciation of げんいん and げいいん are so close, BOTH have become associated with the “cause” meaning. This leads to even native speakers getting confused sometimes!

Here are 2 more words where the first pronunciation has evolved into 2 choices for the same meaning:

ふんいき (now ふいんき is also possible) = vibe or atmosphere はんおう (now はんのう is also possible) = response, replying

The next set of words are all pronounced with the nasalized vowel sound:

あんしん = peace of mind, relief ぜんしん = whole body でんしゃ = a train こんしゅう = this week ぶんしょう = sentences せんせい = teacher, doctor, master じんせい = one’s life せんそう = war —————— きんようび = Friday —————— でんわ = telephone, or a telephone call ほん を = a book, or books (as the direct object of an action)

Here is a video where you can hear the nasalized ん in action.

Conclusion

There you have it! There are actually more pronunciations of ん** but we won’t get into them here. I believe that if you are simply aware of the 3 pronunciations we talked about in this post, you will be more than on your way to excellent spoken Japanese. Also, it’s important to train your ears to hear the subtle differences in these pronunciations. Native speakers are often not aware of what they are saying but they sure do pick up on mistakes or variations quickly! No worries though; this is part of the learning experience!

See you next time!

Rice & Peace,

– AL (アル)

👋🏾

*は is pronounced as “ha” when it is just a Hiragana character. However in this case, it is a particle - which is a Japanese part of speech. When は is a particle, it’s pronounced as “wa”

** Some sites say that there are 7 different pronunciations while others say that the number is 6. Here are ひろのはつおん’s videos on the other pronunciations of ん:

when not followed by any sound when followed by t, d or n (but not ち、じ、or に) when followed by ち、じ、or に when followed by z or r

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Realized my boots look like a weird surgery/sex toy/idk, so here's a clear picture of my boots which I love and want to share even if nobody actually thought that

I just bought this loaf of bread 20 minutes ago. I have problems. Specifically with bread.

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I just bought this loaf of bread 20 minutes ago. I have problems. Specifically with bread.

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Blog - proud moment, breaking bad habits

I've finally deleted Facebook for longer than 3 days. This time what did it was replacing the time spent on Facebook (mostly) with studying Japanese, and successfully planning ahead by spending time curating my feeds on Tumblr and Reddit to things that I want to see and removing the things I don't want to see (shocking, I know, but surprisingly tedious and annoying to do).

Why Facebook? Why not all social media?

Because, social media still has its uses, and in an era dominated by the internet in general, it's still the number one way to make friends and socialize, at least it is in my borderline agoraphobic life. It's the main way news gets spread and information is shared. But Facebook in specific has perfected, specifically, ragebait.

Under every popular post, video, short, and photo is at least 50 different top comments that are rude, assume the post is rude, or in another way act angry or attempt to make others angry. In turn, this was making me comment things that I would never say in any other context.

On top of that, Facebook is very resistant, or at least VERY tedious and time consuming in changing your feed to something you like. It seemed like any time I connected to any other internet or had anyone over and connect to my internet, my feed would instantly be overrun by content I don't like, or have no interest in. It's not that I don't care about my friends interests, but I don't share my parents interest in minion memes and "kids these days", "yee olden days" posts or my brothers friends interest in conspiracy theories about Egypt and I don't want to have to wade through all of the posts hitting "stop showing me this" or whatever every time they come over.

On top of all that, I just don't like Mark Zuckerberg, same reason I don't use twitter, I don't like Elon. So, naturally, I want to stop using it. And I have, for the first time, successfully for 4 days, longer than last time I deleted it.

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This is probably perverse of me, but every time someone says, "Let AI translate X for you!", my determination to learn the language in question is redoubled. I don't want to rely on AI to communicate. I want to prove to people of other nations that I have the wherewithal to meet them where they are and talk to them in their own tongue. (Especially since I'm from a country where, for reasons I cannot fathom, millions of people make monolingualism into a badge of honor.)

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日進月歩 (nisshin geppō) "steady progress" 🐢

Tried to do something different from my usual style here. It was challenging but I like the result.

The kanji in this idiom:

日 = day (or sun)

進 = progress

月 = month (or moon)

歩 = walking / steps

日進月歩 is a special kind of Japaneses idiom known as a 四字熟語 (よじじゅくご、yo-ji-juku-go), or 4-character idiom. As the name suggests, these are idiomatic phrases made of 4 kanji characters.

They often contain a small life lesson or moral message, similar to English sayings such as “you reap what you sow” and “the early bird gets the worm”.

This one is similar to the English saying "slow and steady wins the race". 🐢

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A tail like mine!

[Characters from Countdown to Countdown]

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Kanji of the day 1/3/25

❁ 慈

Meaning: mercy

Kunyomi: いつく　

慈しむ（いつくしむ)： to love (particularly someone weaker than oneself)

慈しみ（いつくしみ)：affection, tenderness, charity 　慈しみは身内から始めよう。（charity begins at home）

Onyomi: じ

仁慈（じんじ)：benevolence

慈善（じぜん)：benevolence, charity, philanthropy 　慈善を行う

慈悲（じひ)： mercy, clemency, pity 　犯人は裁判官に慈悲を求めた。

❁享　

Meaning: enjoy, receive

Kunyomi: う

享ける（うける)：to receive

Onyomi: きょう

享受（きょうじゅ)：enjoyment of (freedom, beauty), reception (of a right, privilege etc) この国は戦後繫栄を享受している。

❁仁

Meaning: humanity, benevolence, virtue

Onyomi: じん、にん

仁慈（じんじ)：benevolence

仁義（じんぎ)：humanity, justice, honour 泥棒仲間にも仁義がある。（There is honour among thieves）.

❁乱　

Meaning: riot, disorder, disturb

Kunyomi: みだ

乱れる（みだれる)：(intransitive) to be disordered, disarrayed, dishevelled

乱す（みだす)：（transitive） to throw into disorder, to disturb

乱れ（みだれ)：disorder, disturbance

Onyomi: らん

乱雑（らんざつ)：mess, disorder, confusion

乱暴（らんぼう)：1. violence, assault 2. rough

内乱（ないらん)：civil war

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「こそあど」- The Ko-So-A-Do Words - JLPT N5 Grammar ┃ Genki Lesson 2

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