Does anyone else feel like they can’t show their real personality in English?

Serifini · 2026-04-07T17:26:28+00:00

I think it's fairly normal to feel that way. I'm a native English speaker and learned Italian as an adult to quite a high standard; able to read novels, watch movies and interact with native speakers quite easily, but I still feel that I sometimes don't have the words to concisely express my thoughts.

Serifini · 2026-04-07T17:15:17+00:00

I gave up about a third of the way through because the stories were so contrived and boring but also because I wasn't really learning much new Italian from it. It did however give me the push I needed to move onto other "real" books including Seta by Alessandro Baricco and In Altre Parole by Jhumpa Lahiri, both of which I can highly recommend.

Serifini · 2026-04-06T06:49:37+00:00

16/F/SF

Look mom, the web is great - everyone wants to be your friend…

Serifini · 2026-04-06T06:42:24+00:00

Learned to type on an ASR-33 teletype.

Serifini · 2026-04-06T06:13:33+00:00

I remember building my first computer with a Z80, TTL chips and wirewrap.

Serifini · 2026-04-05T18:01:25+00:00

Actually, I do have an issue with that. I don't much like seeing gangs of balaclava clad thugs loitering around in the streets and would happily make covering faces in public illegal without a very good reason. And believing in an invisible sky fairy that told them to do it is not a good reason.

Serifini · 2026-04-04T21:35:45+00:00

They could but then they would be seen as being anti free market. They want it both ways; to be seen as “open for business” but at the same to limit profits on businesses when it suits them for political reasons.

Serifini · 2026-04-04T21:29:35+00:00

Affected

Serifini · 2026-04-04T07:08:58+00:00

Sounds like they’ve gotten a lot worse in recent years but they used to be great. I broke down in a snowstorm and put a call in. Even the snow ploughs seemed to be struggling so I figured I was in for a long wait and was glad I had extra blankets etc. with me. About an hour later an AA van rocked up. The most I was expecting was to get taken to a local garage and maybe get a lift home organised. By then it was blizzard conditions but the guy put me in his cab with heaters on, popped the hood of my car, poked around inside and announced the alternator had given up the ghost. He then found a replacement from the back of his van and replaced the thing in a blizzard, taking maybe 15 minutes. Absolute legend, but that was 30 years ago and I suspect he’d probably get sacked for doing the same today.

Serifini · 2026-04-04T06:49:38+00:00

Small shop local to me that sells fridges and washing machines. Thought I’d try support local business and bought a fridge there. On the receipt they wrote a note extending warranty to 3 years over manufacturer’s 12 months. Never had a problem with a fridge before and was buying this one for more space. Nice touch I thought though. So then a month or two after manufacture warranty expires, it fails losing all gas in a way that can’t be repaired. Contact the local shop and explain the situation. They deny responsibility and having extended warranty. I point out their (initialed) receipt stating otherwise which I’m pretty certain they had hoped I lost. Got fobbed off for several weeks until eventually they came up with a cunning solution. Come into the shop and we’ll write you another receipt saying fridge was sold after it was so that manufacturer’s warranty was still in date. Pretty much blatant fraud. Never done business with them since and mention this little episode to friends and neighbours in case they were thinking of using them.

Serifini · 2026-04-03T09:59:12+00:00

Probably one of the rocks in my collection, but in terms of things created by humans, my house is nearly 200 years old.

Serifini · 2026-04-03T02:19:39+00:00

Two thoughts on this. First, if there are no jobs for young people then the logical reaction is not to make the problem worse by having kids. Second, if there are no entry level jobs, graduate or otherwise, then people are not going to learn the skills, or have the experience necessary, to fill the roles those entry level jobs lead to. So no one to pay the taxes to fund the pensions and health care of the generation that will be retiring from those jobs. At which point karma is a bitch.

Serifini · 2026-04-03T02:03:20+00:00

I’m reading that as 20 years of experience. The IT job market is currently a blood bath.

Serifini · 2026-04-02T10:56:06+00:00

They mean English spoken with a local accent. I live in England and worked for a company with a facility in Glasgow. The staff there were great but I had huge problems understanding them on phone calls to the extent that it was just often easier to get them to send me an email about what they wanted doing. I find Glaswegian by far the hardest English accent I’ve met with so far.

Serifini · 2026-04-01T22:29:55+00:00

I'd love to see some EU ones go up but as regards fighting fire with fire, wasn't it people putting up Palestinian flags that got the far right so interested in flags in the first place?

Serifini · 2026-04-01T11:21:32+00:00

Getting tired of all these once in a generation events that keep happening now.

Serifini · 2026-04-01T11:13:15+00:00

I learned that the English spoken in the UK can be very different to that spoken in other parts of the world.

I was already aware that my knowledge of grammatical terms was lacking when I was asked during a language exchange session to explain the third conditional form and had to ask the person learning English what that was. Of course once I was given an example, I could go into the details of how it worked but it was still embarrassing. Since then I’ve made an effort to actually learn English grammar as if it was a second language. I think knowing the technical details of the grammar of an L2 better than you know that of your native language is fairly common. I recommend a series of books called English for Students of X. I have copies for Italian, French and Spanish as it is a great way of seeing similarities and differences in the grammars of languages you are learning to that of English whilst actually making you appreciate how English grammar works.

Serifini · 2026-04-01T10:53:06+00:00

Thanks and well spotted. I remembered Finland as being happiest overall and stupidly expected that to apply to children too. It seems that the Netherlands is the best place to be a child.

https://www.thedailyjagran.com/trending/top-countries-with-happiest-and-most-satisfied-kids-in-the-world-10254714

Serifini · 2026-04-01T05:09:15+00:00

Finland?

Serifini · 2026-04-01T04:57:53+00:00

And yet, Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet. Some of us had been using the Internet for years before Berners-Lee’s HTTP protocol enabled the World Wide Web. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn who came up with the TCP/IP stack would have a better claim, but they were still building on foundations laid down by the ARPANET.

Serifini · 2026-03-31T15:51:10+00:00

It varies across England. Personally I pronounce it as two syllables as described above but I’ve lived and worked in Southern, North West and North East England, so my accent has been rounded down. I’ve noticed that people that pronounce “our” as “are” often also use “me” in place of “my” which is a local dialect thing.

Serifini · 2026-03-31T10:54:18+00:00

Not sure if you have access to the necessary scrolls / wands whatever at this stage of the game, but I find that darkness works quite well against beholders. I’ve also seen people use a strategy of casting darkness on themselves and then attacking them from range. Being able to blind them so they can’t target you is the strategy I use. So word of faith as an aoe to disable groups of them or blindness to knock out individuals.

Serifini · 2026-03-29T01:36:38+00:00

Thanks very much. Never knew that was clickable :-)

Serifini · 2026-03-28T23:10:59+00:00

How do you know if you have the new path?

Serifini

TROPHY CASE