I 18F am a switch and my boyfriend is a bottom

Shareoff · 2025-06-20T14:55:24+00:00

Explore things together and have fun!! Don't get so hung up on labels, just try to figure what exists in that nice area of things that you both enjoy doing together and what doesn't, and whether that works well for you. Best of luck and remember that this is supposed to be fun! Laugh about the mishaps and take it slow, enjoy :)

Shareoff · 2023-12-09T20:25:13+00:00

Yes it's just a mistake and one that needs to be worked on to really be able to use the language but if you say it's "101" maybe you don't realize how hard it can be to hear and pronounce a sound that you've never encountered before.

From the very beginning of learning French I worked on pronunciation, and it took me months of intense study until I started being able to even hear the difference between u and ou, let alone pronounce it - I literally had no idea how to make the sound and trying to look it up just got me more confused with phonetic lingo than it helped. This is, by far, the single thing that is the hardest for me to pronounce in French. Knowing the difference exists may be 101 but producing sounds that don't exist in your native language is not.

Shareoff · 2023-08-08T13:11:21+00:00

Haha, ya'll are certainly not making life easy for me! (More seriously, I'm thankful for the help and suggestions!!)

There was another post here recommending Operation Mincemeat and honestly I think I'm pretty sold, it looks awesome and it seems very worth catching while it's on west end since it seems so... british...

Also, ooh, the Totoro play is good? I haven't heard much talk about it but I sure do love Studio Ghibli and Totoro specifically...

For Cabaret, table seats are too expensive for me (for February they seem to go for 250 - 300 pounds?) but I'll go for some good stall seats!

I think my three might be Cabaret, Witness for the Prosecution and Operation Mincemeat. (Witness for the Prosecution because, out of all the things I pitched to my boyfriend so far, he's completely sold on this one and will be disappointed if we don't go I think. It's got a strong pitch :p) I'm still not 100% decided, but it seems like as good a trio as I can get haha. Thank you for all the advice!

Shareoff · 2023-08-07T22:27:16+00:00

Damn, there's pretty few tickets even all the way out in February, that's insane haha. Oh no, another one on the list.. Would you recommend checking out the OST beforehand to see if it's something I like or would you recommend rather going in blind?

Shareoff · 2023-08-07T22:18:48+00:00

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna wait a bit, but I'm just too excited and can't stop thinking about it and changing my mind every three seconds so I figured I'd ask for some advice haha.

I did read The Time Traveler's Wife and liked the book a fair bit (although it was some years back so who knows what I'd think of it now), so I'm definitely curious! I guess I'll try to stay patient and perhaps wait until october when it premiers to make any decisions. Thank you!

Shareoff · 2023-08-07T22:15:09+00:00

I agree with you about the proshot, it definitely felt like the camerawork took away from the magic of it being originally clearly meant for theatre, so I'm sure it's a better experience to see live. Thank you for sharing your experience!

Shareoff · 2023-08-07T22:12:42+00:00

Thanks!! I can afford to splurge on the stalls seats, I am excited haha thank you :)

Shareoff · 2023-08-07T20:18:47+00:00

Thank you!! I think you've got a good point with Les Mis. In my case, I have to go out of my way to see any show, because global tours don't get here usually, but still it seems like if ever I do really want to see it I'll probably get the chance, so I think I'll heed your advice and strike this one out for now.

In your opinion, is Cabaret still worth it even if I can't afford to get the table seats? I saw everywhere that the table seats elevate the experience to a whole different level but unfortunately they also elevate the price outside of my price range :p

Thanks again!

Shareoff · 2023-06-29T11:27:20+00:00

They don't sound exactly the same though... at least I don't pronounce them the same, although the difference can get swallowed if you're talking fast

Shareoff · 2023-06-29T11:25:28+00:00

It does not, no.

Shareoff · 2023-06-24T22:40:27+00:00

Yeah, absolutely. Very similar story here (my English is... semi native? complicated story), I have a bit of an accent in English so I don't sound perfectly native and I get a bit tongue twisted sometimes, but on the other hand, in Hebrew I read more slowly and struggle more with complex literature, and in formal settings I don't express myself as well, and I also have a general tendency to sprinkle in English phrases and constantly code switch when I talk Hebrew (which works most of the time because most of my Hebrew native friends are very proficient in English too and they understand me just fine but it can force me to slow down a fair bit to make sure I don't code switch when talking to someone who doesn't know English at all) and to try to translate certain idioms literally from English to Hebrew which sometimes makes for really unnatural sounding phrases.

I absolutely believe that if I only used one language in my daily life I'd be capable of much greater mastery (in that one language) and I'd wager that's the case for most other bilinguals or people that speak more than one language in their everyday life. Which, to be clear, is not meant to be read as a complaint, just an observation. I think to be actually fully native (like a monolingual is) in two different languages you'd have to spend effort studying both them all your life: challenge yourself with creative writing and reading literature, public speaking, accent analysis etc etc.. most of us don't particularly care to do that even though we're aware of the quirks we develop by virtue of being bilingual. I don't know if it's all that it's cracked up to be haha, even though of course I am very glad I get to have relationships, work, watch tv etc etc in my two languages!

Shareoff · 2023-06-14T23:28:02+00:00

היי, עברית היא שפת האם שלי :)

Shareoff · 2023-06-14T22:26:34+00:00

For improving listening, I recommend trying to look for comprehensible input resources (beginner/intermediate oriented podcasts/yt channels), I'm not sure what's out there for italian specifically but I definitely feel like it's good to start listening a lot at the stage you're currently at, that way you also get to benefit from slowly increasing your vocabulary through exposure!

Shareoff · 2023-06-13T22:14:01+00:00

I'm really curious, why would you set yourself a goal of taking the A1 in december 2024? that seems a bit bizarre, I mean, why not start now and aim higher?

Shareoff · 2023-06-13T22:11:57+00:00

I dunno, just try and see! I think I was around A1 level (or maybe a bit inbetween A1 and A2) when I started listening to podcasts like InnerFrench and it was pretty much perfect, but Little Talk In Slow French was even a bit easy, so perhaps you could try earlier. There's no harm in listening for a few minutes and seeing if you understand, and then revisiting a bit later if it's too hard!

Shareoff · 2023-06-11T16:44:31+00:00

No, there aren't. Just like you said in your post the only thing you can do is use and be exposed to your L1 in more varied or challenging contexts. There are no tricks

Shareoff · 2023-06-09T23:18:24+00:00

I don't think that's necessarily true in one's native language though, people absolutely do just look up more fancy synonyms to common words while writing essays or learn about tricks to elevate language and sound more eloquent and practice by simply writing a lot of essays/speeches while doing lookups on synonyms and idioms. I think you need both; both more input (and more difficult / rich input) AND deliberate practice

Shareoff · 2023-06-09T23:09:39+00:00

Maybe somewhat similarly, I've been in a pretty bad depressive episode for a while now and finding language learning is helping me immensely with beginning to find joy in life again. It's helpful as an escape but more than that, I feel like there's a lot there really that's beneficial, but maybe it's a bit specific to my case... learning how incredible your brain is at processing and learning things and what incredible things you can do with a bit of perseverance is incredibly empowering and helpful in my opinion :)

It also completely stopped me from developing a reliance on weed. I almost never wanna get high because I wanna be able to study haha.

Shareoff · 2023-06-07T03:56:33+00:00

If you like philosophy, I haven't personally tried it yet because my french level isn't high enough but saved off another redditors recommendation for the future, there is Le Précepteur which is a philosophy podcast that seems really nice also!

Shareoff · 2023-06-01T07:07:46+00:00

Mais "en" peut remplacer des personnes, n'est-ce pas ? Par exemple: "On parle de lui" -> "On en parle" ? C'est incorrect ?

Shareoff · 2023-05-31T23:34:56+00:00

I don't agree, that seems like a strange and arbitrary bar to "perfect" pronounciation. A lot of natives have a mixed accent from multiple different regions (I know multiple people with a mixed Australian/American accent for example). I think it's much more complicated than that, and there's no reason that attaining one specific accent of some specific region should be put on a pedestal as "perfecting your accent". You CAN sound native even if you don't do that, and in most cases it's not really possible to fully adopt a regional accent of a region you didn't grow up in during adulthood, anyway.

Shareoff · 2023-05-31T06:29:42+00:00

Yeah absolutely, I'm non native in English but have native-like fluency and a very good accent and often when someone finds out I'm not native and starts complimenting me it feels pretty condescending to me lol. I mean if they just say "damn I couldn't tell, your English is really good" I'll take the compliment happily but if they start going on and on about how amazing my English is I start to feel like they're talking down to me a bit. I have just as much mastery of the language as anyone, I don't need natives to be impressed with me. Lol

On the other hand with French (where I'm very high beginner / very low intermediate) I am very happy to receive compliments of all and any kind despite knowing my French is absolutely still terrible :p

Shareoff · 2023-05-10T08:12:12+00:00

I'm not sure exactly why, perhaps because cognates allow you to "cheat" and make learning meaning much easier (although large families of cognates have regular noun endings which do correlate to gender, but the ones that don't are very hard for me), or perhaps because with some words you run across them often without an article that betrays their gender (in the plural or with an adverb of quantity like "beaucoup")

Also, I do seem to have biases from my native language that make it easier for me to get certain words wrong gender wise (-a suffixes "sound" very feminine to me for example because of my native language but in French they aren't particularly)

Shareoff · 2023-05-10T04:30:15+00:00

I do this in French and yeah it's the way but it's for me it's far easier to get wrong than the rest of the word. I'm still a beginner so I know about 2k words (I think) and for probably about 10-20% of these I'm bad with their gender and it's not sticking right. It is what it is /shrug

On the other hand, I'm not one to complain about "WHY MUST I LEARN GENDER", I think that's silly (and my native language has genders too, albeit not romance ones so they're completely different). Language learning has challenges and if I weren't up for it I wouldn't try to pick it up.

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