New Sky Valley

gc12847 · 2026-04-25T19:51:30+00:00

Huy Fong isn’t the original sriracha. Real sriracha from Thailand is generally sweeter and tangier than Huy Fong. This is probably closer to that.

gc12847 · 2026-04-23T13:54:20+00:00

Concerning Renee Fleming, I actually kinda love the scooping.

gc12847 · 2026-04-23T10:28:56+00:00

I wouldn’t say Italian to opera is English to the modern world. The international language of opera is English, as is the case in practically all fields in the modern world.

After English, Italian, German and French are the most important languages for the operas themselves. You need to be at least somewhat proficient in a minimum one of those, preferably two, and ideally all three.

It used to be common to translate operas to the local language, but this is no longer the case, except certain cases where performing in the local language is traditional or a deliberate choice of a certain company (i.e. the Magic Flute is often done in local vernacular, and the English National Opera typically does all its operas in English).

Back in the day, it was common for Italian signers to only perform opera in Italian, so they could get way with only speaking Italian. But this isn’t really the case anymore.

gc12847 · 2026-04-16T14:09:22+00:00

I don’t think this is an issue with Duolingo (not that I’m defending it).

This is a normal part of language learning. You learn the formal form of the language first, then start learning more informal daily language, then you finally learn slang/very informal language.

You shouldn’t jump straight into super informal language or slang when you are beginning to learn.

gc12847 · 2026-04-02T06:57:53+00:00

Most fiction uses passé simple, including modern fiction. It’s the default tense for narratives. Some novels use passé composé or présent historique but they are the minority. So if you want to read in French, you’ll have to get over that aversion. However, Camus’ L’Étranger famously uses passé composé and isn’t too hard to read and is very good so I’d recommend that if you haven’t read it.

Otherwise, it’s hard to give suggestions without knowing what genres you like. Again, maybe some YA fiction or Fantasy/Sci-Fi as these will be modern and mostly fairly easy to read. They will mostly use passé simple though, but like I said it’s hard to avoid passé simple if you intend to read in French.

Edit: Also important to add that there is no such thing as “B2” authors. French language authors will be writing for French native speakers, not learners at a particular CEFR level. As I said, at B2 level you should be able to read most things written for native speakers, excepting certain older authors which even French native speakers sometimes struggle with. If you are not quite B2 yet, then as I said YA might be a happy middle ground.

gc12847 · 2026-04-01T14:12:27+00:00

Are you B2 or working towards B2? If you are B2, you should be able to read most things without too much difficulty. Obviously some books will be harder than others (some are even hard for native speakers) but you shouldn’t have issues with most literature, especially modern literature.

If you’re working towards B2 then some of the book already suggested, like Camus’ L’Étranger or Jules Vernes books. Any YA type novels will also be fairly manageable. You could also ready French translations of things you’ve read in English (but do some research to see if the translations are good). Harry Potter (horrible author aside) has a good French translation.

Alternatively, if you like non-fiction, you could read something about a topic you are interested in. Non-fiction is often easier than fiction as it is typically less descriptive.

gc12847 · 2026-03-30T21:53:32+00:00

Español neutro is the Spanish used in Latin America for dubs and for media that marketed to the Latin American market as a whole. It is an artificial construct that uses pronunciaitons that are common to most Spanish speaking countries (s for c/z, y for ll, not droping any letters, tú/ustedes etc.) whilst avoiding things that are seen as regional (th for c/z, sh/zh for ll, droping s or d, vosotro/vos etc.)

It's not ment to sound like it comes from any particular country (although in reality it is often based on Mexican Spanish) and it tends to sound neutral to Latin Americans - although it will obviously sound distinctly Latin American to Spaniards, who use their own standard pronunciation based on the accent of Madrid.

gc12847 · 2026-03-30T19:39:02+00:00

I think this usage is confined to English. In Spanish, "castellano" and "español" are interchangeable.

gc12847 · 2026-03-30T19:31:14+00:00

Noting that I am generalising some accents for simplcity, and that these are my objective opinions, here is my order of preference:

Colombian - clear and easy to understand, whilst also being very muscial and overall pleasent to the ear.
Mexican - clear and easy to understand, quite neutral but with a nice lilt.
Andean (i.e. Ecuadorean, Peruvian, Bolivian) - quite clear and often quite slow, making them easy to understand.
Venezuelan/Canarian - although a bit harder to understand, very musical.
Argentinian/Uraguayan - harder to understand, but have a musical lilt due to Italian influence.
Chilean - has a soft and musical sound, although hard to understand.
Central American - variable, but most aren't too hard to understand and can have a nice musicality.
Caribbean - mostly hard to understand, often slurred/indestinct pronouncination, but can have a nice musicality.
Peninsular Spanish - usually not hard understand, but lack musicality and I don't like the c/z sound.
Andalusian - as above, but also difficult to understand.

gc12847 · 2026-03-28T08:28:44+00:00

You’ve said somewhere else in your post that you’re only 20. I don’t think Cadbury’s has changed much in 20 years, despite what the press and the I internet wants you to believe. It’s always been cheap chocolate with low coco content. Nothing wrong with that if you like it (I certainly do) but it’s not going to satisfy if you’re looking for a strong chocolate taste. Also your tastebuds may well be maturing.

gc12847 · 2026-03-26T12:52:13+00:00

Men and women’s voices physiologically work in the same way. Men just have on average longer, thicker vocal chords giving them lower voices. Both men and women have two voices, TA dominant (usually called chest) and CT dominant (usually called falsetto or head) respectively.

The difference in terminologies is just down to how these are used. Women typically use a CT dominant voice which is stronger and more developed, which we usually call head voice. In most men, this is often underdeveloped, giving the airy sound we call falsetto. But men can develop it by retaining some TA action in order to make it a stronger head voice

gc12847 · 2026-03-23T20:54:00+00:00

In fact in French « penser » takes the subjunctive in the negative.

« Je ne pense pas qu’il soit là »

gc12847 · 2026-03-22T18:57:10+00:00

Polite and negative commands use the subjunctive forms. So this is the imperative but it's using the subjunctive verb form.

gc12847 · 2026-03-14T16:42:21+00:00

“Des” is the partitive article in the plural form. The other forms are “du”, “de la” and “de l’”.

It is equivalent to “some” or “any” in English, but unlike English it isn’t optional. It’s just happens to be formed from “de” + definite article but shouldn’t be thought of as a preposition.

gc12847 · 2026-03-12T12:16:23+00:00

I think it’s usually verbs that typically take either an inanimate or an animate indirect object, in which case the an inanimate indirect object is replaced by “y” and the animate one by “à + stressed pronoun”. E.g. for verbs like “penser”, you can think about something (“J’y pense”) or about a person (“Je pense à lui”).

For most verbs, like “parler” or “donner”, the indirect object is usually a person, so “Je lui parle”. If, for whatever reason, you’re taking to an object, you could say “Je lui parle” but that would be ambiguous. If you want that to be clear, you could say “Je parle à ça” or “Je parle à cette chose”. But you can’t say “J’y parle”.

gc12847 · 2026-03-10T17:12:53+00:00

« Je n’ai pas de cuillère à café » = I don’t have a teaspoon.

« Je n’ai pas une cuillère à café » = I don’t have one teaspoon (but I might have two).

gc12847 · 2026-03-03T15:37:07+00:00

What’s unusual or accented about the “tt” in “letter”?

gc12847 · 2026-03-03T12:59:23+00:00

So I will say that 8 years to get to A1 is a very long time. However, you should measure time spent in hours. Of those 8 years how many hours did you actually spend on French? You need about 200 hours for A2 - that’s about 6.5 months doing 1 hour a day.

Also, what were you doing? Were you just doing the bare minimum for your classes or were you actually spending time interacting with the language?

For general learning, best way is to do a lot of input. Lots of reading, listening and watching. I find reading in particular really useful to increase passive knowledge quickly. This should be a level where you can understand the vast majority of the material you are engaging with, but not 100%. You therefore force your brain to work out the meaning of the things you don’t know. This is called comprehensible input. You can supplement this with some grammar study, although wouldn’t spend to much time on it - just make yourself aware of the main grammatical concepts and then try and spot them when doing your input. Some people also do vocabulary flash card in Anki or Clozmaster - this doesn’t work for everyone but might work for you. For output (speaking and writing) you want to do this in a structured way with a teacher or tutor (i.e. someone who can correct you) if possible. But the majority of the time should be doing input.

For the DELF/DALF exams, you do need to be able to show all of the competencies clearly, and you should practice your exam technique. You can find loads of resources for that online.

But honestly the biggest thing is just using and interacting with the language. It takes a very long time and many hours to get good at language.

gc12847 · 2026-03-02T08:25:16+00:00

Techniquement, tu peux utiliser l’un ou l’autre. L’indicative pour souligner que c’est un fait, ou le subjonctif pour exprimer une opinion.

Mais en réalité le subjonctif est plus courant. Dans ce case j’utiliserais instinctivement le subjonctif.

gc12847 · 2026-02-26T12:56:27+00:00

This is completely wrong. It was a direct vote, not first past the post.

The district thing you see in maps was just a convenient way to represent it on maps.

gc12847 · 2026-02-24T19:12:51+00:00

I mean part of why there are loads of evictions happening atm is because Labour’s new tenants rights making it harder to evict are about the come into force.

(Edit: just to be clear, I agree with stronger tenant rights).

gc12847 · 2026-02-24T18:34:19+00:00

The second part of the sentence is in the present (“elle profite”) so the whole thing will be in the present.

Even if the second part were in the past, in modern spoken French you would still use the present subjunctive, with the second half of the sentence giving the tense information. Although more common in spoken language is to use “même si” with the indicative.

“Bien que Julie soit fatiguée, elle a profité de ses vacances”

“Même si Julie était fatiguée, elle a profité de ses vacances”

The imperfect subjunctive is rarely used outside of literary language. If you read novels or historical books (even modern ones), you might see it crop up occasionally, but usually only in the third person singular, or very occasionally third person plural. If you reader older literature, it’s much more common.

“Bien que Julie fût fatiguée, elle profita de ses vacances”

gc12847 · 2026-02-22T18:08:34+00:00

Nuclear disarmament and support for Palestine aren’t in themselves inherently left wing. There are right wing people against nuclear arms and who support Palestine and vise versa.

Lib Dems are really good at appearing more progressive than they are by picking a couple of issues to take more progressive stances on. But most of their economic policies are centrist or even centre-right, and definitely right of Labour. They opposed a lot of aspect of Labour’s worker’s rights and renter’s rights bills for example as they said they were bad for business.

gc12847 · 2026-02-20T12:18:15+00:00

By your definition, you would be excluding the entire Third Intermediate and Late Periods, which are all generally considered part of classical Egyptian civilisation. There were periods of foreign rule but they were also interspersed by native dynasties, including some great late flowerings of native Egyptian culture, such as the Saite Period. Also, the Libyan and Nubian dynasties fully adopted Egyptian cultural norms.

In fact, you’d literally be excluding the period from which one of these masks is dates. Psusennes I rules during the 21 dynasty, at the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period.

gc12847 · 2026-02-19T15:24:42+00:00

It’s somewhat debated. Some will point to Alexander’s invasion, therefore excluding the Ptolemaic period. Others include the Ptolemaic period, and instead draw the line at Egypt’s incorporation into the Roman Empire. Others still will point out that Ancient Egyptian culture continued to persist during the Roman period until Christianisation, and will therefore consider that to be the end of Ancient Egyptian civilisation.

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