idiomaddict
@idiomaddict@lemmy.world
- Comment on Contributing to the local economy 20 hours ago:
I’m an American immigrant married to a German, and it definitely took us a bit to adjust to each other’s feedback styles- he thought every dish he made was my new absolute favorite, and I thought he disliked my cooking at first, because I’d say something was delicious and he’d say it was fine, lol.
But I’ll take it, because this way Germans think I’m quick witted when I respond with that.
- Comment on Contributing to the local economy 21 hours ago:
Long sleeves and long underwear/leggings, two pairs of socks, flannel-lined jeans if you have them, sweatpants and jeans on top if not, flannel or similar overshirt, scarf(!), sweater/sweatshirt, winter coat (or 2 additional sweaters/sweatshirts and a raincoat or other large windbreaker), boots, gloves, mittens, and hat.
You won’t die, especially if you move around. I’ve had to take the coat off while shoveling in those temperatures, though my feet and hands were unhappy after a while. Definitely have a cup of hot liquid when you get back inside though.
- Comment on Contributing to the local economy 21 hours ago:
New Englanders say that too! We also respond to others concerned about our wellbeing in the rain: “I’m not made of sugar,” though we have an answer that Germans don’t say: “but you are pretty sweet.”
- Comment on Typical from my so called imaginary friend 2 days ago:
I can’t tell if it’s anti passive-aggression or ultra passive-aggressive, but it works, lol.
- Comment on Typical from my so called imaginary friend 2 days ago:
I’m also autistic and I discovered (accidentally, when I reacted earnestly once) that if you say “I’m sorry you think that, do you want to talk about your self image?,” it ends the conversation without ending the relationship (useful for colleagues or similar).
- Comment on Should parents be allowed to euthanize their children if they have a diagnosis that just isn't worth dealing with? 3 days ago:
I would be conflicted about a child with infantile tay-Sachs (there are probably other similar diseases, but I don’t know them). That’s a short, excruciating life, and I would not want to live it. But the idea of someone choosing euthanasia for someone else, even someone under their care, is pretty abhorrent to me. It seems too ripe for abuse, and the right to decide to end your own life should not be transferable. The ending of it can be, but only under circumstances determined by the person (so I could tell my husband that I don’t want to keep going if I can’t recognize my children, for example, and when I reach that point, he could kill me, but he can’t decide what the line is).
- Comment on Overexplaining things 5 days ago:
My foot’s a fucking leg end
- Comment on Dunkin' added achievements to their mobile app 5 days ago:
That’s several orders of magnitude worse, fuck. Soon they’ll probably close the loop and consider owning a smartphone to be evidence that things aren’t so bad for you, and you don’t need asylum.
- Comment on Trømp 5 days ago:
They use similar alphabets and have a lot of vocabulary in common, so many Arabic speakers find it pretty easy to learn, ime, though that doesn’t work the other way.
There is a greater linguistic distance between English and Arabic than between Farsi and Arabic, even though Farsi and English have a shorter linguistic distance between themselves than either does with Arabic.
- Comment on Trømp 5 days ago:
Tenses are one of the more difficult aspects of English, as I noted, yes. Luckily, English allows for asimplification in most cases. English seems easy to me because I’m a language instructor (not teaching English) working with students from all over the world and they almost always rate English as pretty easy compared to other languages they’ve learned. One of my current students is a native Arabic speaker who found English easier than Persian in spite of the increased linguistic distance, for example.
The German and Spanish Wikipedias both also include pages for characteristic tenses and modes, respectively (the reason the English page for that case is split is because it’s got a different name in English). Every language has complex aspects, but one does not need to learn how to properly distinguish between “I would have been going” and “I would have gone” to speak English at a B2 level.
I’m sorry you’re not confident in your English, it’s great. Perhaps you haven’t mastered the tenses (many native speakers also have difficulty with them), but you are perfectly competent at communicating in English.
- Comment on How rare is it for people to live without anger? 6 days ago:
I’m also autistic and also don’t really feel anger. I feel disappointed and/or frustrated with how people act, and I can feel a complete lack of goodwill towards people (not my baseline, I generally want to help people if I can). There are certainly people who deserve negative consequences for their actions and I don’t feel any compassion for Assad, for example. I probably wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire, but I don’t feel angry with him (I might if I were Syrian and/or had more experience with the effects of his actions).
In my personal life, I don’t have any exes that I’m angry with (and I have some awful exes), it’s either confused, afraid of, pitying, neutral or positive.
Though tbh, I’m not sure if I just don’t recognize anger but do feel it. A coworker was sketchy about a tip we should have shared the other day, and I felt that it was wrong she pretended she hadn’t gotten a tip, and sad for her that she’d be deceptive about €0,65, but I wasn’t angry.
I do feel spiteful sometimes, which has got to be similar, but the only way I really express that is being extra polite to someone who’s being a dick so they feel guilty. It feels to me like I do that because I want them to be less rude in the future and I want to help induce the natural consequence of guilt that comes along with rudeness, but that could also just be my rationalizing it.
- Comment on For French origin words like "meter" American English inverted the last letters of "metre" to better match the pronunciation. Why isn't it also the case for other similar situations like "possible"? 6 days ago:
There were already multiple patterns for words ending in “er” (both the doer words, like runner, and a series of words like butter, feather, sister), so it could be a conflation, but I think it’s more likely that it’s just a simplification. British has “er” and “re” endings for meter, depending on whether it’s a verb or a noun, and Americans just spell both “er” for simplicity’s sake.
- Comment on Trømp 6 days ago:
If English were one of the hardest languages to learn, it would not be the most common second language worldwide. It is a difficult language to master, but we barely conjugate verbs, have only remnants of a case system, and no grammatical gender.
The hardest parts about English are the spelling and the advanced weird cases, like “I will have done that by tonight,” but those are not things that the standard language learner has to care about. It’s perfectly fine to ignore all the rules that don’t inhibit communication, so no ESL speaker needs to learn about not splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions (unless they want to do academic writing in the arts, I guess).
- Comment on This is what it would look like if you switched ROLES for the day 1 week ago:
This has all been standard in every heterosexual relationship I’ve ever had, with the exception of lifting dudes up onto tables. They’re heavy and lifting them safely would ruin the fun a bit.
I think I might just be sexually aggressive (with consenting partners), because I’m definitely not a top, lol
- Comment on Ok, some nerd please explain the switches on this IRL calculator app 1 week ago:
What does 22/7 get you under “A?”
- Comment on Well you see, gam gam... 1 week ago:
Okay, so my first thought was “Skat,” which is the name of a pretty popular old man card game (not in a bad way, I enjoy playing it very much, but I encounter it in similar situations to euchre or pinochle).
Maybe it’s just a false cognate, which would be a great setup for a joke, if there was an audience that knew about both Skat and the scat stereotype. Unfortunately, I think I’ll be sitting on this one for a while.
- Comment on Well you see, gam gam... 1 week ago:
GodDAMN. I was feeling a little iffy about teasing Austrians, but shots fired.
- Comment on Well you see, gam gam... 1 week ago:
I’m living in Germany again now and I’ve brought this up occasionally with people when we’ve reached the comfortable talking about kinks stage, but it’s a surprise to everyone so far. Germans do definitely like anal more than Americans IME, but not because of the poop, lol. Maybe it’s the Austrians 🤷
- Comment on Well you see, gam gam... 1 week ago:
My boss and I had lived for a few in Italy and Germany, respectively, but were both in the US again at this time. She was looking for jazz music for our restaurant and said “god, I love scat. Don’t you?” and my dumb ass responded before I could think about it for a second “I’m not that German.” (For anyone confused, I don’t know why, but some Americans think Germans are into scat. I have not experienced this in any way, and have no idea if it’s at all based in reality, I was just making a joke I shouldn’t have)
She didn’t know what scatophilia was, did NOT enjoy hearing about it, but wouldn’t let it go until I explained my joke.
- Comment on rule 1 week ago:
When I was young enough to not realize this wasn’t a question for my dad (5-7ish), I asked him what “dropping the soap” meant in a prison context. He explained that mens and womens prisons don’t mix, and gave a kid friendlyish answer. I then proved further, because I was aware of gay people saying it wasn’t a choice, and didn’t get how it could sometimes be a choice.
My dad, completely unaware of how to handle this situation said “when you’re desperate, sometimes a hole’s a hole.” It took about five years for me to understand that answer.
- Comment on rule 1 week ago:
We went by the four Fs: French, feel, finger, fuck. Fellatio would fit right in, but we didn’t really use it and counted that as base 3.5.
Which is why I didn’t initially realize I lost my virginity to a girl, because we just went to 3.5. I was talking to someone about it and they literally looked at me and were like “so gold star lesbians are just all virgins?” and I realized I was being an idiot.
- Comment on Anon makes a troubling connection 1 week ago:
Day one?? It took me years
- Comment on This crossword editor's view of the political spectrum 1 week ago:
Do you want help, because that sounds like ::: spoiler spoiler snorted ::: .
- Comment on rule 1 week ago:
It’s just a practice marriage, so we don’t embarrass ourselves in front of our husbands later.
- Comment on rule 1 week ago:
It might also be aimed at (and hopefully made by) young people who are often very concerned with their sexuality, even before they have enough practical experience and /or self knowledge to know if they’re sexually attracted to anyone.
I didn’t recognize my first crush on a girl until over a decade later, because it was different from my crushes on boys. I thought I just admired her a lot. I had gotten to second base at least with half a dozen of my female friends before I thought I might be into girls (I was not especially self-aware). Hell, I lost my virginity to a girl and didn’t realize it until years later. I could see this being a list for people like me, who are somehow missing the obvious.
- Comment on Yet they know what dishware I'm looking for... 1 week ago:
Luckily, draining an iphones battery is really easy.
- Comment on Yet they know what dishware I'm looking for... 1 week ago:
They still don’t solve them all, so it’s not impossible to get away with it
- Comment on BROTHER 1 week ago:
I’m dumb, so every fall I’m like “why is my cat so obsessed with me right now?”
It’s because most cats cuddle more when they’re cold.
- Comment on Le Reddit Army is Here 2: Electric Boogaloo 2 weeks ago:
I can’t link to it, because I’m on the app, but the modlog says a rule one violation (civility), with no removed or quoted comment, so………
- Comment on Anon degoogles his Samsung 2 weeks ago: