• gun@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Trick question, washing machines come in many different genders:

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    If you get the wrong one just accuse the examiner of being transphobic.

      • graphito@sopuli.xyzM
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        1 year ago

        Don’t bite the bait pls, reporting in this case is best course of action. Thanks

      • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sorry you’re being downvoted, I think you’re entirely correct. I hope the other people just don’t realize how jokes that are relativising transphobic experiences like that are downplaying the actual issues trans people are facing.

          • reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            itl be definitely be nice when lgbtq doesn’t need to be a social movement, or a political opinion, just a normal thing in life.

          • StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk
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            1 year ago

            We can, but we have to work for it. When any group is no longer being systemically discriminated and have equal rights, then they’re also valid comedy targets.

            Like with racist jokes. They’re fine in very confined groups where everyone agrees that the absurdity of the premise is part of the joke and where nobody will be made to feel unsafe by it. But to a wider audience where people might misunderstand where the joke came from, in what spirit it was told in, it’s nok OK. Not only can it make people from the group being targeted feel unsafe, but it’ll also embolden actual racists who’ll mistake the joke as support of their beliefs.

            It’s a trust thing I guess. As soon as trans people can see someone crack a joke about them online and rest assured in the fact that the person telling that joke isn’t voting for or otherwise enabling people who wants to take away their rights or straight up hurt them, then it’ll be fine.

            This protection, however, should not apply to people who make it their business to hurt or oppress other people, which is why it’s always open season on nazis.

        • SchizoDenji@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          But nobody is downplaying it? Yes Trans people face a lot of issues and they really need to be supported in many ways, but I don’t think this joke insinuates any of that.

          • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I do think that comparing a non native speaker using the wrong article with trans people having to fear for their lives sometimes is downplaying it. I don’t think that was the intent with the original comment, which is why I also don’t appreciate the other person’s snappy response. But I do believe those kinds of jokes can subconsciously make people believe things aren’t as bad as they actually are.

              • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                First of all, pretty much anything is political.

                Second, I’m not the one to pull transphobia into the context. The joke did that on its own.

                Third, I’m looking to have a civil discussion, you’re the one exaggerating things and starting drama by throwing profanities around and accusing me of virtue signalling.

                • TheLurker@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Oh grow the fuck up would you and quit the offended on behalf of others shtick.

                  OPs post was not transphobic in the slightest. You’re just a shit head trying to manufacture drama.

                  You are not looking for civil discussion so don’t try and sell me that pile of horseshit either. You are trying to create drama and are acting like a cliche virtual signalling douchebag.

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is my go to response when people are trying to claim that English is hard… Well at least I don’t have to remember what gender has randomly been assigned to every noun I want to use.

    • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      No, instead you have to learn to read and spell in a system that often sounds quite different to what is written. I want to read a book that’s never been read. I want to live a life alive at a live show. Anything ending in ~ough which has something like 6 or 8 different sounds. I’m a native speaker trying to work with my wife on English (we speak Japanese at home). It’s insane for any reading/spelling.

      • Slovene@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        Are you through laughing at the English kneading dough in a trough, though?

        • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I think liason is the harder part about trying to transcribe someone’s spoken words as a new learner without a good grasp on vocabulary.

          At least with French, a lot of those silent letters are a lot more predictable than English. English has French borrowings (from two different time periods), Latin borrowings (some of which were borrowed via Norman or Old French first), Greek, Germanic, etc. and we did various levels of preserving the native spelling. This is neat for etymology and maybe figuring out a word one doesn’t know, but kinda sucks for spelling. A lot of words from Normal and Old French are now spelled differently in modern Parisian, but the more recent loans are closer. It’s a hot mess.

      • saroh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And then you also have to get the correct stress on the syllables which are also unguessable. Ask for a banana instead of a banaaaaaaaana and people won’t understand.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        That’s the only hard thing about English. Many other languages have this difficulty plus many more (gender, tenses, complex rules, exceptions…).

        • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          English has no shortage of exceptions to “rules” (sometimes the rule only seeming such because it applies to the subset most frequently used rather than the whole set of whatevers). English’s most common verbs are irregular. That’s not necessarily too crazy (be, have, do/make are often weird in most languages because they resist change the most since they are most used). We have all kinds of things that aren’t “correct” (prescriptive view) that native speakers get wrong all the time. “I have went” rather than “I have gone” is one that grates to me, but I accept that language changes. A lot of verbs are also losing their endings and patterns and gradually going to the dominant ~ed ending where previously they did not (Tom Scott has a good video on this).

        • callyral [he/they]@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          English word order is also pretty weird.

          “The man gave a bone to the dog”, “The dog was given a bone by the man”, “The bone was given by the man to the dog”, etc etc

          These are all valid sentences* expressing the same thing.

          *They may not be gramatically correct, I am not a grammar professional

          edit: I had forgotten that you can also do that in other languages

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think that’s very specific to English, I could write the same subject swap in French, Spanish and maybe Japanese.

            • tiredofsametab@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, we can do it in Japanese. Particles change. Passive voice and subjunctive mood can also be done without too much trouble.

          • Karyoplasma
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            1 year ago

            If you task your male dogsitter to give your dog a treat while you are away and somebody asks you whether your pet is taken care of during your vacation, you can say: “Don’t worry. When I return, the bone will have been given by the man to the dog.”

          • Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
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            1 year ago

            It’s not like you can’t say that in french.

            They have almost a hundred ways to conjugate each verb too (even if there are about a hundred groups).

            English is a walk in the park compared to French IMO.

        • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Then by that metric, Chinese must be incredibly easy. Simple genders, no articles, simple grammar, no verb conjugation whatsoever, very simple tenses. Probably the easiest language out there!