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WHAT DOES 액땜 MEAN?

So today someone from my company got fined on his way to work, and my boss was kind enough to console him that being fined was just 액땜, and thanks to that he won’t have to go through hardships again next year.

According to the dictionary, 액땜 means “Being able to safely overcome the big difficulties that are coming up in the future by experiencing little ones in advance”. I couldn’t find the equivalant expression for this word in English, but if you do, please let me know!

And example: You can console someone who lost their wallet like this:

지갑 잃은 일을 액땜으로 쳐려~ 덕분에 나중에 힘든 일이 없을 거란 말이야~

“Just consider losing your wallet as the price you paid to avoid hardships later on.”

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Don’t forget to LIKE and SHARE this post with your friends and let’s keep on studying 😘

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So you are starting on your Japanese learning journey and you want to learn hiragana. It's intimidating, right? I've been there, too. But it's ok, you can master hiragana in no time!

I learned hiragana by memorization one summer many years ago. I wrote the characters over and over again until they were burned in my brain. But it was a struggle. So I looked for better ways to remember the hiragana syllabary, and I found.. YouTube!

If there's one thing I've learned being at home constantly for over a year, it's that working with other people (or even adjacent to other people) can be motivating and even soothing. So here are some YouTube videos you can watch whilst learning hiragana. Please feel free to add any other videos you have found useful!

The Easiest Way to Learn Hiragana - Japanese Ammo with Misa

This 43-minute video explains hiragana with visual cues and introduces vocabulary words with each character. It's very thorough, walking through each character (although not in syllabary order). You can write along with Misa and practice your own handwriting as well as stroke order.

Learn ALL Hiragana in 1 Hour - JapanesePod101

This one-hour video goes through each character in syllabary order, and is broken up into mini-lessons with quizzes at the end of each. They were originally separate videos, so there is repetition, but the systematic way they go through each will help you remember the syllabic order. This video also uses visual cues to remember the way it's written and pronounced. They also put together the hiragana you have learned to make words. They also have a 20-minute review version.

How to Read and Write Hiragana Alphabet - Japanese Calligrapher Takumi

Imitate Takumi's handwriting for calligraphy-level penmanship! He writes each character beautifully and pronounces each one. Keyword: aesthetic.

A-I-U-E-O no Uta/Hiragana Song (あいうえおのうた) - Cyber Bunny

She wears bunny ears and sings the hiragana from あ to ん! This is a good way to practice reading and pronouncing hiragana, and a fun way to take a break while still practicing your Japanese. Cyber Bunny also has other songs directed at beginners, so check her channel out!

I'd like to close with this great really terrible pun.

Me: I will learn all the hiragana in a week!

My brain: の

In my previous post about how to choose a suitable teacher/tutor on italki, I’ve said that you need to have a certain goal in your head to achieve, right? ✨ GOALS ✨ So for me it looks like this: I knew I wanted to go through a textbook with someone I knew I wanted to learn how to talk about news I knew I wanted to learn how to open my mouth more because my speaking sucks. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✨ How do my lessons look like? ✨ 📘 Textbook lessons 📘 BEFORE LESSON I have homework to do (each lesson I need to write an essay - with each essay they are getting harder lol) before the lesson I check all of the new words, I try to learn them, create new sentences with them I try to understand grammar by myself I do all exercises in the textbook DURING LESSON at the beginning of class I read my homework and we talk about my mistakes later I read at loud the text (to work on my tones and pronunciation, reading flow) after I finish reading the text, I talk with the tutor this text (do I understand, I try to summarise it in Chinese and answer some questions) we go through exercises - she tells me what kind of mistakes I made if I don’t understand grammar - I ask for help and we work on it _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 📰 News lessons 📰 BEFORE LESSON I got the news/article few days before the lesson, so I can work on it I read it, find new words and write them down if there are things I can not find in the dictionary or they are too hard to understand - I colour the text (currently news/articles are based on my interest) DURING LESSON at the beginning I talk about all my questions and doubts later - we simply talk about the news (the teacher is preparing the questions or tasks for me to do - each time different, depends on the topic) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🗣 Speaking lessons 🗣 I simply got some topics I want to talk with someone in Chinese and I ask 1-2 days before “can we talk about (traveling/photography/fashion)” and we simply talk about the topic I choose ~~~~~~~~ 🀄️ ~~~~~~~~

그럼 난 이만 - I’m gonna get going (then).

이만자야겠다 - I think I’m gonna go to sleep now.

이만가야겠다 - I think I’m gonna go now.

출구는 이/저 쪽이야 - The exit is this/that way.

이런건 식은 죽 먹기지 - This is a piece of cake (literally: this is like eating cold porridge).

식은 죽 먹기였어 - It was a piece of cake.

무슨 개 소리야? - What is this bullshit?/What are you saying?

난 이제 자유야! - I’m now free!

영어도 백범 맞는데 - I even got 100%/full marks/a perfect score in English.

거짓말이야 - It’s a lie.

사랑했나봐 - It must have been love.

사랑하나봐 - It must be love/I think it’s love.

비켜 - Move out the way/Step aside/Coming through.

버스에서 내려라 - Get off the bus.

이래 봬도... - Even though I look like this.../Even though you think I am...

방에 콕 박혀있다 (abbreviated to: 방콕) - I’m stuck in my room.

알겠지? - You know that right?/Okay?/Got it?

실패했어 - I failed.

동영상 - Video/Moving Image.

영상 - Still Image/Picture (also used to abbreviate 동영상 so it can also mean video).

진짜로? - For real? (can be cutely said as 진짜루?)

뭐 설레는거 없어?! - There’s nothing exciting?!

같이 사는 남자들은? - You’re living with men?

육조 물 받아놨어 - I put water in the bathtub/I ran a bath.

육조 - Bathtub (noun ONLY).

목욕 - Bath (noun).

목욕하다 - Bathing/Bathe (verb).

하겠냐?! - Would you do it?!

같이 사는 사람들 이름도 몰라! - I don’t even know the name of the people I live with!

멍청아! - Idiot!

A recent slang term that’s swept the internet is 킹받다. 

It was started by a Twitch streamer / webtoon artist called 침책맨. Since it’s internet slang, it’s not a BAD word, but is definitely not a formal term. 

킹받다 – Extremely frustrating / Pissed off. 

This comes from the meme of replacing the first syllable of a word with 킹 (King) and 갓 (God) aka “the highest form of something”. 

인정 (Acknowledge / Agree ) > 킹정 

합리적 의심 (Reasonable Suspicion) > 킹리적 갓심 

EXAMPLE: “티모 너무 잘 해서 킹받네” – “This Teemo is too good, I’m tilted”

A question to all the Korean learners out there:

What do you wish you knew before you started? What resources do you wish you had used? What tips do you have? What do you wish you had paid more attention to? What do you recommend? What content did you consume for beginners?

Give me all of your knowledge!!

I’m particularly interested in any comprehensive input based approaches, or textbooks/videos similar to Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese grammar or the Japanese teaching channels that speak only Japanese: i.e. stuff that teaches you the basics of sentence structure rather than focusing on greetings, numbers etc. Stuff that teaches you the building blocks of grammar from the get-go - preferably in Korean if possible. 

Star Wars a New Hope came out the same year as the last execution in France by Guillotine. 

Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe were friends in their early 20′s. 

AKA: Every Bit of Text on Copley’s Sociogram That Was Ever In-Focus Enough for Me to Decipher (With Supplemental Googling to Confirm Some Dates), Arranged in Vaguely Chronological Order

1099 CE, First Crusade - the siege of Jerusalem ends when the Crusaders breach its walls, wresting control from the Fatimid Caliphate. Nicky and Joe, obviously, met here

1228, Sixth Crusade - an oil painting depicts a battle between two mounted knights, probably Nicky and Joe

at some point, Andy and Quynh become involved in the Crusades as well. Copley’s wall includes an image of the cover of a book titled Heroines of the Crusades

1667, France - first performance of Andromaque, a tragedy by famous French playwright Racine [note that this is, in fact, a real play], inspired by the Classical Greek version by Euripides (written 426 BCE) and by Virgil’s Aeneid (written in the 1st century CE, itself inspired by the Homeric epics composed circa 800 BCE)

1799-1812, Napoleonic era - Booker is active as a forger in this time, notably of gold coins

1853, Crimean War - Joe and Nicky are photographed as soldiers

1861-1865, American Civil War - a photograph shows Andy as the commander of a unit including the three other members of the Old Guard, as well as two mortals. they participated in the Battle of Gettysburg (1863)

1904, Haiti - the Old Guard prevents a coup d’état on the centennial of the Haitian Revolution

1916, Montenegro - Andy saves 200 refugee women and children. the daughter of one family would go on to develop a technique for the early detection of diabetes

1914-1918, World War I

Joe saves a little girl, Marie-Hélène Varte, who would go on to become the youngest Nobel Laureate in Medicine

1915 - Andy rescues a member of the ANZAC forces during the Gallipoli campaign

1918 - Andy saves a young French girl who would later be awarded the Legion of Honour for her actions as a pilot in WWII

1936, Spanish Civil War - Nicky is photographed during the battle of Irún

1939-1945, World War II

a photo shows a line of soldiers marching up an escarpment, Nicky among them, possibly in North Africa?

a boy that Nicky tends to as a medic would go on to receive the Institut Pasteur Medal for work with DNA profiling

1944 - Andy is involved with the French Resistance

1945 - the Old Guard prevents the production/deployment of a third atomic bomb in August of this year

1956-1959, Cuban Revolution - Booker, Nicky, and Joe show up in a photo

1955-1968, American Civil Rights Movement - two photos exist of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. giving speeches; Nicky is in the crowd of one, Andy in the other (possibly MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech)

1968 - Joe and Nicky rescue a man from a cave(?)

1955-1975, Vietnam War

April 1975, Operation Babylift - this was an operation by the US government to evacuate orphaned children from South Vietnam. Andy is shown in a photo leaning over one such boy on an airplane. this boy would go on to invest in helping amputee children in Asia (2010)

1975-1979, Cambodia - the Old Guard and “her” grandson (either Andy’s, or that of a woman Andy had previously saved) rescue 317 people from a Khmer Rouge death camp. the Old Guard also shuts down a smuggling ring in the area

1978 - a man previously saved by Andy prevents a nuclear exchange

1989, Berlin - Andy helps people flee from East Germany

1992, Bosnian War - Booker is involved as a combat medic in the Siege of Sarajevo

1992-1993 - Nicky attends college under the alias N. Smith. his birth date is given as April 8 (or possibly August 4)

2000s, Democratic Republic of the Congo - the Old Guard (although only Joe is pictured) rescue a group of children, one of whom would go on to become an influential hip-hop activist in his teens (2018)

2003-2011, Iraq War

2001-present, War in Afghanistan - the Old Guard are linked to the US 10th Mountain Division

2013, Czech Republic - Andy is issued a passport under the alias Alexandra Black

2014, Germany - Joe is issued a passport under the alias Joseph Jones, born in Hamburg and residing in Frankfurt. his birth date is given as January 2

Other items without specific dates attached:

digital image of an aerial shot of a USAF F-22 airstrike in Syria

newspaper headline: Mystery of Death Cheat Woman

newspaper headline: Man Sacrifices His Life to Save Bus Full of Children

this one shows up twice, in both Italy and Poland

a copy of a painting depicting a black man and a white woman, evidently a romantic couple, is posted under the Australia section. the original painting is in Andy’s abandoned mine in Val d’Argent, France

newspaper headline: Case of the Death-Defying Couple Remains Unsolved

this one shows up a bunch, with lots of red string and lines, as Copley evidently traces Nicky and Joe’s exploits. the end of the sequence has a handwritten label that says, Couple’s Final Triumph

Regional labels where I couldn’t read any of the smaller text:

Wonder Pens in Toronto, a stationery institution (comes with 2 shop cats, a skylight, and plants)

5 Minute Sketching Techniques

As I write this, here some 60km/37miles South-West of Sydney, Australia, we are in week 9 of the latest lockdown (with another, hopefully, only 5 weeks to go) due to the Delta variant of Covid-19. Like many millions of people around the world, to put it simply, ‘we are over it’ and we are constantly looking at ways to keep one’s sanity (or as they call it these days, our mental health)…

I mean, heck, I am no expert but my need to see this niche ass post is a lot so here goes.

The Prince: Machiavelli- do I NEED to explain this one. Its a seminal text in politics and political philosophy and when you listen to the ideas described in it they can sound a little crazy but once you read it you realise they are still crazy but grounded in something very real. Also its short as heck and an easy read.

Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace- Hans J Morgenthau. I had to pick this one up for my coursework last semester and I thought it would be a snooze fest but no. I was drawn in and I haven’t finished it since but I do plan to get back to it at my leisure.

The End of History and the Last Man: Francis Fukuyama- YES, I fundamentally disagree with Fukuyama on so many points. YES, it is still one of my favourite books of all time. it is a very riveting discussion of political philosophy, history and international relations. If you are interested in any of those topics, pick it up. You won’t regret it.

How Democracy Ends: David Runciman- captivatingly written, great arguments, and a very unique voice. Super relevant in today’s international political atmosphere and if you are interested in studying the rise of right wing authoritarian governments across the globe, this is a great place to start.

Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan- another one that I just feel like i don’t need to explain. Again haven’t read it fully yet, but its quite chill inducing and the basis for most of the contemporary discussion on state, liberalism, authoritarianism, rights and so forth.