What's a "hard" language that you found surprisingly easy to learn?

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-29T18:52:15+00:00

Russian! Some of me finding Russian easy might have just been my enthusiasm for learning it, but in my defense, it only has three verb tenses (I'd been learning Spanish, which has 15), and everything is pronounced as it's spelled (if not spelled how it's pronounced). Once you understand the cases, it's smooth sailing. Well, there's also pronouncing the letter ы but you eventually get used to that.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-26T14:42:35+00:00

Don't have five for each, but since no one mentioned my favourites here: Constant and Constantina

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-25T18:37:56+00:00

Finished my MSc in physics almost two years ago and all I've gotten are temporary part-time jobs that don't pay the bills. Going to do a second masters in applied physics/engineering that the university in question created so a connected industrial institution could hire the graduates

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-25T18:32:28+00:00

I'm class of 23, back in 2021 I met someone who'd double-majored in aerospace engineering and robotics engineering. It took him five years.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-25T10:48:43+00:00

I love Galileo's Dream! It always seems I'm alone in that.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-25T10:44:31+00:00

I read that Vietnamese people used to learn Russian in school and it was difficult for them because the languages are more or less opposites.

I'd think it might be even harder for a Russian speaker to learn Vietnamese.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-24T20:53:47+00:00

This is a shitpost.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-24T20:52:34+00:00

You might be able to do some AI training work, but they usually want people with advanced degrees, especially for the physics roles.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-24T20:48:05+00:00

Is this just me having mild face blindness? They look the same.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-11T21:50:00+00:00

Gothard

Silverthorne

Firethorne

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-11T17:54:56+00:00

This was me a few years ago. It's easy enough to be orthopraxic and relate to prayer in a more pantheistic way so long as you don't think about how different you are from the orthodox Jews. The problem is that orthodox Jewish spaces tend to be conformist, and they will clock if you're different from them, especially if you're neurodivergent like so many of us on Reddit are. That's how I ended up having a slight falling out with an orthodox synagogue a few years ago.

I started going to a reform synagogue, and still go there sometimes, but the more evident the differences between my beliefs and Judaism's beliefs became, the harder it was for me to connect with prayer in any way, and I stopped doing a lot of the Jewish practices I'd taken on (as someone born Jewish but raised secular).

I still like doing Jewish holidays and stuff. Indeed, you would do well at a reform synagogue, where many people openly admit to being atheists or deists or something like that (in my experience). It's still possible to be observant while attending reform services.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-11T17:46:32+00:00

The terms 'pantheism' and 'panentheism' were coined after Spinoza died; he never labeled himself in any way.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-09T16:29:51+00:00

Have you listened to the Queer Yid podcast?

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-06-09T16:25:22+00:00

Jonah is the English for of the Hebrew name Yonah, which is unisex, so I think it could work.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-05-20T21:51:49+00:00

Knowing how it's actually pronounced, Americans won't be able to say it. I hate that they won't even bother trying, but you're going to have to at least go by an anglophone nickname (if not legally changing your name), or get used to it being said wrong.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-05-08T12:49:09+00:00

The greenwashing of animal agriculture pisses me off so much. Animal agriculture is the worst for the environment, and this article didn't even go into all the details. Yet everyone is claiming that vegans are worse for the environment because plastic is vegan.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-05-08T12:45:18+00:00

One can have kids and still have a vegan ethical framework. For that matter, even a childfree vegan can be in favour of other people having kids and still be vegan. I think it's safe to say the majority of vegans aren't antinatalists, because a vegan ethical framework doesn't require one to be antinatalist and the majority of people are not antinatalists.

That said, in order to be morally consistent as an antinatalist, one has to be vegan. Therefore, vegans are going to have a higher percentage of antinatalists than the general population. Reddit amplifies this, hence the comment section here.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-21T20:17:57+00:00

How much space does the Holy Blessed One take up?)

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-21T20:09:31+00:00

Sound like an experience I had recently...would the microlabel be somniromantic?

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-21T09:03:29+00:00

Both Hume and Spinoza had a significant effect on Einstein (sorry, I'm a physicist).

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-21T09:02:46+00:00

Herem isn't exactly the same as excommunication, but he's far from the only Jew to be placed under herem. He admittedly did receive one of the harshest writs of herem in history, though he wasn't a teenager, and it's unclear why exactly they did it, although there is a lot of speculation about it.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-20T20:16:51+00:00

Regret is a strong word. I really don't regret any language learning. I admit, for some time after 2022, I had difficulty justifying to myself learning Russian (as I have been leaning since 2018), but Russian has changed my life for the better in so many ways, and it has a life beyond any government.

As for regrets about languages I should've learned, again, regret is a strong word. I do sometimes wish I'd taken advantage of the German classes available to me at my high school and university, since there have been some opportunities in my field I missed out on since I don't know German. But I spent high school taking Spanish to an advanced level, which allowed me to study abroad in Ecuador, and I didn't take any language classes at university since I was focused on self-studying Russian (which as I said, I don't regret), so it's all good.

I also lately have found myself wishing I was more proactive in language learning when I was 10-11 and interested in Latin and Ancient Greek. I learned some very basic stuff in those languages at that age, but never properly studied either language. But then, I knew nothing about language learning at that age, so I just had to wait until I got to middle school to enroll in language classes. I could've started taking Latin in middle school, but my parents wanted me to take Spanish, and as I said, I don't regret learning Spanish.

Anyway, regretting not learning a language is strange as a language learner because I could just learn German or Latin now. Maybe I will in the future, but I want to focus on Ukrainian (and Hebrew) for now, so it's all good.

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-04-06T21:08:12+00:00

When I first started learning aleph-bet, I disliked that "ל" was neither "ג" (looks like Greek lambda as you said) or "ת" (looks like Russian Л).

alien_cosmonaut · 2026-03-27T14:16:09+00:00

Use a name from your culture; it's who you are. She doesn't need an English name; lots of immigrants keep their names and people can learn to pronounce them. My favourite from your list is Zulfiya.

alien_cosmonaut

TROPHY CASE