These two are good too 己 vs 已
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Don’t forget the third musketeer 巳!
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I used to think of those kanji as Pokemon city houses, with the upper part as the house and the lower as the fence or ledge.
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r/picturesyoucanhear
I found this nice tiktok channel with lots of tips for perfecting English learning.
To my Italian ears, it sounds quite professional.
Could some English native speaker please comment about it?
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In my American English idiolect I would pronounce “I’ll” and “our” as one syllable and the related term(s) as two, but otherwise these are homophones for me.
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Today I got to word 雪崩 which is nadare, our famous nadare joseki. Of course, they write it in katakana for go, I wonder why is that?
Some of the words I picked up while doing Japanese anki:
- codswallop - what a funny word, it’s easy to feel what it means, but I haven’t seen it before
- authoress - haven’t seen it modified like this, I think
- impudent
- soliloquy
- alighting - the way it sounds doesn’t quite match its meaning
- ink-cake - makes me think of cake
- taciturn
- navel - who made up this word, it’s way to similar to naval
- cocksure - another funny word
- ebb - this one sounds pretty well
- heartrending - which of course comes from rend which I also don’t know
- haughty
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All homophones in my dialect, what call I MSEBE (Middle-Class South-East British English), which is the usual accent you’re likely to hear in (modern) British English media.
There are also fore and mete, but those are both somewhat uncommon words.
In England, I’d associate the pronunciation of our as one syllable with “UBE” (Upper-Class British English), where it’s /a:/. For me it’s two syllables: /aʊə/.
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Famously, it’s thought that in OP (Original Pronunciation), aka 16th–17th C. London English, the dialect of Shakespeare, there is an innuendo in this line of As You Like It:
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot
The joke is that hour, pronounced something like /ɔːɹ/, rhymed with whore. This was because both words are surmised to have dropped their h.
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More information on Original Pronunciation.
authoress
I don’t think this has been in any real level of use for at least a century. Female authors are just “authors”. In some publications, actress is also replaced with the male (or in this usage, ungendered) actor.
ink-cake
What is an ink-cake? Neither Wiktionary or Wikipedia could help me uncover its meaning.
navel - who made up this word, it’s way to similar to naval
The two converged in form. Wiktionary suggests that naval is an original Germanic word, descended from PIE and Proto-Germanic into Old English nafola. The world naval, on the other hand, has its roots in Latin navalis (navis, ship, + -alis, -of), via French.
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Yeah, same in Russian, there’s no feminine word for author. Although some feminists want to make one.
Ink-cake is apparently those wheel-shaped ink lumps. As I understand it needs to be circular to qualify for cake, shouldn’t it.
Wiki mentions it in Inkstick
Regarding Japanese, I found this person. I think he’s Chinese but his Japanese is very articulate and slow, and I really like it. Maybe a little too slow but it’s a nice change of pace from Japanese teachers trying to be slow but still ending up chirping like birds.
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author came to Russian not from Russia
when its author of the book - writer:
писатель , then there is feminine variant: писательница
Those who love Japanese calligraphy know that word. 
Youtube in its infinite wisdom recommended me this
Although it’s not a bad recommendation. It’s something new but in line with what I already watched. Too often recommendations are something very very close to your watch history or something generally popular.
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Isn’t she turning unstressed o’s too much into an “ah” sound? I thought хорошо was huh-rah-show and she made it more like hah-rah-show.
Reminds me of the word horrorshow.
You probably right. I don’t have very musical ears and, for example, I can’t really tell apart cap and cup. So it sounds the same to me anyhow. Although when try to listen in, I think I know what you’re talking about, the changed sound is too clear. But I wouldn’t notice the difference quite like that.
It’s more noticeable in the phrase “Не за что”.
Of course, the problem is that she’s not talking naturally but kind of announces words so maybe it’s meant to be like that. To underline the change in sound.
I mean she’s practically native speaker with probably years of teaching experience. So who are we to comment on that.
All this talk about Russian pronunciation reminded me a story about millipede/centipede/caterpillar with great many legs who was asked in what order does it move its legs. And once it thought about it, it got confused and couldn’t walk anymore.
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once it thought about it, it got confused and couldn’t walk anymore.
“You are now breathing manually.”
