I’ve studied it off and on since high school, but really struggle with speak. I get anxious about the times and accidentally saying something nonsensical. But we had a family show up that didn’t speak English, and I was able to do more than crank out 谢谢。
Oh yeah, lmao. Totally my fault - I get confused sometimes.
I understand the urge thing - I get that with things sometimes, but almost never for long enough to become “accomplished” at anything. I’m a dabbler - I dabble with game creation, CAD, languages, music, writing… pretty much anything that randomly catches my fancy.
Here’s the game I was working on if you wanna check it out: https://old-man-bombin.itch.io/ragegame
It’s probably as finished as it will be.
The university club sounds awesome. Tell everyone there that I said hello.
Yeah now when it comes to languages outside the romance category, I might as well be looking at Martian runes. Especially if not written with English characters or whatever. Even if it is, though, it’s still basically gibberish to me. French, Spanish, Italian, German - stuff like that I’m pretty good on. For your average redneck anyway.
I also dabble with a lot of things! In fact I think I have also used the words “whatever catches my fancy” to describe what my hobby is before. I used to do quite a lot of ricing on my Linux desktop - obsessing over the details of my desktop and trying to change everything. I also like trying… uhh… different software such as different browsers or just some cool thing I found recently. I (used to?) often waste the whole evening just fiddling with stuff and making no real progress. I also host my own tiny homelab server though not much is going on there. Only a expense manager (Firefly III), Pi-Hole (DNS server to block ads and other unwanted domains), and that’s basically all.
Cool game you got there! I like the ball buster. A twist on the classic ball busting game!
We are also gonna make a game in the university club! We haven’t even really decided on what to make yet though. Will let you try it once it’s done! It will probably be done by around November, so if you haven’t heard from me by November please send me a message to remind me haha.
I have long been interested in linguistics and learning languages in general, but here’s why I started learning Spanish: Once (back in April I think) I went to a Mexican restaurant and decided it was prime time that I learned Spanish. That’s it. I had never ever considered learning Spanish before that. Pretty random, huh? I even remember watching a video about someone cramming Spanish before going to Latin America and me thinking “I’m probably never going to learn Spanish but maybe German or Korean.” But here I am learning Spanish.
I’ve been wanting to set up Pi-Hole for a while now, but I never seen to get around to it. I’m still a Windows junkie, too which is another thing I’ve been meaning to change - I did get around to de-bloating eventually, though, so that’s something I guess. Got a little “media server” set up, which is just a few shared folders on my main PC that I actually never use at all unless I’m trying to find one of the thousands of random memes I’ve got saved. Also archived a few YouTube channels.
Glad you enjoyed the game. I had aspirations of expanding each minigame with multiple levels and adding more games. Trying to make it a one-stop shop for the classic rage game experience; was working on a Flappy Bird-like game where you controlled the pipes instead of the bird. Ended up getting burnt-out. That’s typically how my hobbies go. Super into them and can’t bring myself to do anything else, and then one day I just stop and never go back. Same thing happened when I got into Minecraft command blocks, and when I moved on to making Minecraft add-ons, and streaming, and writing, and Python, Java, Japanese, German, woodworking… Honestly, the Duolingo AI debacle was just a convenient excuse to give up on Spanish now that I think about it; I was falling off before everybody started getting upset.
Anyways, yeah I’d love to try y’all’s game. I will almost definitely forget come November, but maybe I’ll get lucky and writing this comment will force it into my brain somehow. Feel free to steal any of mine and take em to the next level (pun intended).
I started learning Spanish because I worked with an old Mexican man and he told me that Spanish and Italian are very similar, so I thought to myself “If I learn Spanish, it’s like a 2-for-1 deal. I’m basically losing money if I don’t do it,” lol. Plus I was watching a lot of XiaomaNYC and I thought it would be neat to be a polyglot - even a fake one. My plan was to learn Spanish and then use it to help me learn Italian and Portuguese, and then just kinda worm my way through all the languages I could.
Your little media server sounds great! I don’t really store much actual useful data on my home server. Nothing more than the expenses. Great that you’re archiving YouTube channels!
I see! So the game was modeled after a genre called rage game? I tried looking it up but all I could find was a 2011 FPS game called Rage. Surely that can’t be it, right?
I have so many books about tech that I bought but haven’t really gotten through even half. Books about Java 8 (!), Python 3, Git, two about Linux, four about Minecraft, Word 2010 (don’t know why I bought this one tbh), intro to computer science… you get the idea. My hobbies also go quite like yours: I get into them, and then I almost always eventually quit. Ones I’ve quit include: German, Java, Toki Pona (I was so into this for like 2 months), competitive programming (never got far though), Minecraft… The only ones I haven’t quit are probably Linux and privacy (is this even a hobby though?). Linux sticks around for some reason. Oh yeah, Spanish too. That’s probably because it’s relatively new. I’ve already started feeling that watching those Dreaming Spanish videos I mentioned is a chore. A month ago I would even do flash cards every day, but not anymore. But hopefully that’s just because I’ve been traveling the past 3 weeks (to Okinawa and Taipei) and that I got hooked onto Stardew Valley. Going back tomorrow so I’m gonna pick it back up. I do still feel passionately towards Spanish so that’s something.
I put an event on my calendar such that I remember sending you the game!
The Romance languages are indeed very similar! But I think it might be best to try to perfect your Spanish skills instead of also learning Italian and risk mixing up and saying Italian while speaking Spanish or the other way around. Since they are so similar, I heard that most Italians can sort of understand Spanish anyways. Learning just a little bit of Italian to understand it as a Spanish speaker might work just enough. But again I don’t speak any of the Romance languages good enough so take this advice with a grain of salt.
PS. Sorry for the late reply! I’ve been a bit busy the last couple days.
No worries on the reply timing.
I’m not sure if “rage game” is an actual genre, or if it’s just something I started saying, but if you were around for any of the early 2000s flash games then that’s what I’m referring to. Stuff like The Helicopter Game, Impossible Quiz, Linerider, Nanaca Crash, Happy Wheels, Curveball… Basically anything that you’d find on AddictingGames. Those were my bread and butter when I was younger.
I’ve never had a great many books, but I did have quite a collection of ebooks for a while. I used to be a big reader - when I was doing tech service, I read 100 books in one month. Sounds insane, but I was reading 10-12 hours a day then. My favorites from that period of time were all written by SM Reine - I have a particular fondness for the ascent and descent series.
Traveling sounds nice. I’ve never been fortunate enough to travel outside the US. Furthest from home I’ve ever been was when I worked in Pennsylvania. Or maybe the month I lived in Tampa? They’re pretty similarly spaced from Home. I live in Kentucky, and have been considering reaching out to KFC Japan to see if they’d like a real Kentuckian to come work as a spokesman. Maybe fly me over and get me out of this place.
Ah, calendar reminder, nice! That’ll be a happy surprise.
I’m just gonna learn different parts of all the languages and create my own language. Germtalianglish.
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I spent way too much time on Nanaca Crash and Curveball, myself. The io games came a little too late for me to get into - they were all fake multiplayer games, too, weren’t they?
Yeah, I don’t think I could’ve read that many if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was reading literally every moment that I could. I was a pretty quick reader then, as well. And the books were rather short I think - a few hundred pages, maybe. I’ve never read 1984, but I feel like I have - as much as it gets referenced, especially nowadays.
I figure if they want me, I’ll start my lessons again. The way the world is going, I’m not hopeful enough to believe I’ll have a use for the language if I don’t have a job that takes me there. I don’t see myself ever being able to travel much, and I don’t see the world lasting long enough for that to change. I’m pretty downtrodden these days.
I gotta say - your English is really good. Is it required learning there? I apologize if we’ve discussed this before, my memory is ass and I don’t feel like scrolling back through the conversation.
There are quite a bit of fake multiplayer .io games, but the ones I got into are all real multiplayer games. A lot of mobile games with “.io” in their names are fake multiplayer games. Those apps are just hooking onto the popularity of “.io” and they often don’t even have a .io domain.
I haven’t been able to get to the books piling up in my room. I have a series of a wuxia novels (The Deer and the Cauldron) that has been rotting away in my room for quite a while now.
I’m mostly learning Spanish just for the sake of it. I’m only learning it because it’s fun and maybe because Latin American food seems really appealing to me. Not because I see myself working there or even traveling there in the near future. It’s a hobby, and you’re allowed to have fun choosing whatever hobby you like. You don’t necessarily have to learn a language only because it will be useful. In fact, other than going to places where people speak this language, you also have the choice of simply consuming content in the language online. Make it fun!
I have also been a bit hesitant about learning German and Korean (before my infatuation with Spanish started) because I don’t see myself having use for them in the future. After I went to the Mexican restaurant though, everything changed and I realized that there’s nothing wrong with learning a language as long as I enjoy it even if it won’t be that useful.
Thanks! Yes, learning English is required here, but my English mostly comes from watching a lot of cartoons in English and consuming a lot of English content on YouTube when I was a child. The English classes in the school curriculum didn’t help me much. When the peers were thinking about all the grammar rules trying to pick out the correct option in their heads, I was doing the English tests and exams following my guts. By the way don’t worry about your memory! We haven’t talked about this before.
I do still need to improve on my English more though. I find myself using some certain words excessively (though, but, quite, hopefully, just, etc.), especially in speaking where I have less time to adjust the phrasing. I’d like to fix my overuse of these words maybe.
Ah, I see.
It’s hard for me to find joy in things right now. There’s too much rampant disregard for the state of the world, and I can’t bring myself to enjoy life while everything is burning around us all. I make an effort, occasionally - I played Minecraft for an hour last night, which is more gaming than I’ve done in several months - but it always comes back to “You’re just sitting here while life turns into Hell, and one day your children will look back and ask why you didn’t help them.” So, at the very least, I will not participate. I may not be actively trying to stop it, mostly because I’m so overwhelmed that I didn’t even know where to start, but it just doesn’t feel right to have fun while I’m convinced that there won’t be any for the future generations. And then I start thinking about all of the horrible things that have been done in order for me to even be here - the genocides that took place on this continent, the slave trade, the raping of the ecosystems - it’s just too much. We’ve lost so much culture and wisdom, and nobody seems to care at all. I hate people.