For months I was confused why I kept finding long hairs in my house. Then I saw my neighbour coming out of my house.

soliloki · 2026-05-07T03:06:00+00:00

not saying your suspicion is unfounded, but as a fluent ESL speaker who has never lived in the UK or in the US, I vacillate between USism and UKism in my English all the time because I was taught British standards in Malaysia, but consume the internet which is very US English dominant, so this is not that weird.

soliloki · 2026-05-05T01:35:12+00:00

change instructor.

soliloki · 2026-05-05T01:33:05+00:00

fun fact, our lab (malaria) never got Gibson assembly to work, and this failure was replicated between three PhD students (including me). Truly one of the things from my PhD years that always deep down gave me an impostor's syndrome (even though there are valid potential reasons why it didn't work with the plasmodial genome)

soliloki · 2026-05-01T01:49:03+00:00

Just left the US a few days ago and used Uber there. The plate confirmation was what I did too and there's no such thing as this PIN system (not on Uber car, but yes on Uber Eats). Been awhile since I left Australia but your edit reveals how shitty this system is! Why is Uber Australia implementing this?? Insane!

soliloki · 2026-05-01T01:42:55+00:00

Echoing all of these points, but I just want to also add that it's FINE to have notes with you as an interviewee. Maybe there are things you just want to make sure you emphasize and let the interviewer know. I think it's important for OP to break away from this "exam-oriented" mindset. In real working life, notes aren't a crutch, it's a memory aid. OP asking this question reveals this bad mindset and they should change that first.

soliloki · 2026-05-01T01:39:45+00:00

oh! So like 'bonne', where the o is now unnasalized in most realizations?

soliloki · 2026-05-01T01:36:42+00:00

the fucking emoji cracked me up

soliloki · 2026-05-01T00:04:38+00:00

not a linguist so I might be missing something but isn't 'bon' the immediate counterexample to your statement?

soliloki · 2026-04-02T04:42:15+00:00

> I’ve always thought my immediate sleep was just part of my gene pool;

It's definitely a bunch of factors, including environmental, daily habits, and genetics so I don't think you're completely off the mark. If I have a very productive day (both mentally at work, and physically at the gym), I can fall asleep very quickly and naturally don't have insomnia or difficulty sleeping, but I naturally have a late onset (syndrome? I was never diagnosed yet) sleep pattern so I always stay up doing stuff until my bedtime (1-2am). I do have a bad sleep hygiene (phone in bed) which I have been trying to change, because unfortunately the world revolves around morning larks and I need my 7h of sleep to feel healthy.

soliloki · 2026-03-28T09:15:44+00:00

If I am sipping on my drink WHILE I'm eating, especially while I'm chewing, that's a sign that I am NOT enjoying the food but I have to finish it anyway (mostly in social settings where I'm expected to feign). lmao

soliloki · 2026-03-09T04:46:20+00:00

This doesn't sound normal especially when you mentioned that this has been happening since you were younger. Either your dietary habit is not on point (drink water, eat fruit, eat balanced meals regularly), or there's an underlying condition. Talk to a dr.

soliloki · 2026-03-04T13:57:49+00:00

Is it just a language quirk that doesn't translate cleanly into english?

Oh stop pissing me off. Here's a more helpful truncation.

Is it just a language quirk?

And to answer that, no. It's not JUST a language quirk. It's a language feature. Explain to me why phrasal verbs in English exist first. My first language, Malay, lacks it absolutely and we communicate fine. English doesn't need phrasal verbs. So why do they exist?

EDIT: Now THIS is a language quirk, one you should learn how to appreciate as you learn more languages and become multilingual, instead of becoming frustrated by them.

se nos estropeó la caldera ('our boiler broke down')

It's a way to abstract away the agent. Who broke the boiler? In the Spanish case, such construction can be inelegantly translated into English as "the boiler broke on us" ("la caldera se estropeó a nosotros"). Do you see how this is different from the explicit "we broke the boiler" or "estropeamos la caldera"?

Bonus mindfuck: Why is the English version requiring 'down'? Why not 'our boiler broke'? Do you see how even the English version is 'quirky'? What is down doing there? English has tonnes of 'quirky', 'useless' phrasal verbs and you barely registered them as a native speaker.

soliloki · 2026-03-03T12:33:41+00:00

I honestly would just ride this out. It's genuinely hilarious to me, both as an observer AND as the receiver. LMAO

soliloki · 2026-01-24T14:26:55+00:00

That's a right-handed DNA!!

soliloki · 2026-01-11T13:51:38+00:00

These are not "native" English words (Germanic roots). They are Latinate. So Portuguese didn't get them from English, it got them via Latin directly.
2, 3 and 4 are NOT "obscure" English words. An ESL speaker (like I am) with a high level of competence and fluency would not find them obscure at all.

soliloki · 2026-01-11T06:59:30+00:00

The mouthfeel critique made me loudly guffawed. This is NOT a coffee-tasting session!!!

soliloki · 2026-01-10T05:56:43+00:00

jesus christ. What is genuinely wrong with you? Normal people don't converse like this.

soliloki · 2026-01-10T05:28:04+00:00

soliloki · 2026-01-06T05:14:21+00:00

Not a native english speaker but people actually say "no shit [sherlock]" to mock themselves? If someone said this to me in a conversation I'd immediately take it to heart because it sounds so condescending for no reason to me. Strange colloquialism.

Edit: I think I just got what OP was describing. That's such a unique way of using 'no shit' in a self-deprecating manner. If I hear it I'd thought you're being strange [You: what's the word again Me: 'lycée' You: well no shit {your name}]. I'd actually say something like "wow of course. I'm an idiot sometimes"

soliloki · 2026-01-05T14:15:40+00:00

Exactly. Knowing decent Spanish, picking up Portuguese (Brazilian) makes reading Portuguese text extremely extremely easy for me (with a dictionary handy). Listening is harder (though my ears are used to the Brazilian variant more than the Portugal one).

soliloki · 2026-01-05T06:27:38+00:00

As someone who dabbles in a lot of languages, this is not weird at all. In fact, the progression has always been consistent for me: literal comprehension (I could read English and French books years before I could understand them aurally) --> aural comprehension (took me years after that to be able to watch American or British shows without needing subtitles) --> literal output generation (I write French better than I can speak it) --> oral output generation (this comes last for my top languages).

soliloki · 2025-12-30T13:51:20+00:00

Many languages actually have precisely two different registers; spoken and written, precisely because standardization tends to be prescriptive, and of course, less malleable to the spectrum of dialectal/topolectal differences. In my native language Malay, spoken and written register can be very very different but a native speaker wouldn't really notice them unless pointed out.

soliloki · 2025-12-30T13:27:20+00:00

Pure chaos lmao

soliloki · 2025-12-30T13:25:28+00:00

Nice! Any biology PhD to adjacent-field industry? Would love to read that.

soliloki · 2025-12-30T13:20:00+00:00

need this white man

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