I read to my children more now than I read for pleasure.
Which is 100% acceptable. Both of my kids look forward to picking their books before bed for 30 mins to an hour of reading.
My boy will go back to the book stash over and over for you to read to him and he sits there and listens and makes comments as you read.
Much of our free time is spent reading with them.
Maybe Iām biased, but grammar in Mandarin is easier than English, Spanish or Russian. 90% of learning mandarin is just memorising characters. Once you know 3k, you can understand most texts youāll encounter in daily life
I agree that learning to speak mandarin is very very very difficult for non naitives
Iāve taken Spanish and Iām trying to learn Russian.
I agree that Spanish is easier, but I struggled with learning cases. Having similar issues with Russian
Russian is difficult to understand for me bc of the prefixes, the way they pronounce prepositions and the word as one word and the subtle differences in soft and hard sounds (e.g., the word for onion and the word for manhole)
On that note, Iāve made quite some progress with Russian and can now understand 1/2 of the titles of the Russian YouTube videos in my feed + basic conversation and random stuff about war
On this note, another education related hot take.
Learning how to read via context clues is one of the most valuable skills a kid learns in school
I absolutely love reading to kids. Itās (HOT TAKE) the 100% best thing - to read a really good or surprising page and then exchange loaded glancesā¦wide eyes or whateverā¦is so much fun. It was a nice thing about working with kids. And of course, creating them.
Iāve also been known (and mocked for) reading to adults. My clients, grown kids, and husband will attest that if I want you to know something Iām not going to chance handing it over. Iām going to read it aloud. And then we can discuss if appropriate.
I think my clients love this about me (I draw from othersā wisdom) but Iām not sure about my family.
I agree!!!
I think thereās research on this
Very heart warming comment to read.
I feel like you are moving the goalposts. If all I wanted to do is understand written basic written Mandarin and donāt care about speaking or writing or understanding speech, I can see your point that Mandarin is not too bad. I just memorize the meaning of a few thousand characters and I can probably work out what is being written most of the time.
But if that is my only goal in Russian, hard vs. soft and preposition blending are also not relevant. The meaning of the written word is clear, even if I canāt pronounce it. Just memorize a few thousand roots and youāll be good to go. And how can you complain about prefixes when Mandarin is full of situations where combining two characters gives a meaning that is only (at best) tangentially related to the meaning of the individual characters? And frankly, you can usually understand the meaning of written Russian even if you donāt understand the details of conjugations and declensions. You just need to know the base words and let context fill in the blanks (which is kind of how Mandarin works anyways).
If, on the other hand, the goal is speaking, writing, and understanding speech, Mandarin has tons of difficulties. Tonalities and the fact that written language has very few clues about how anything should be pronounced (at best characters that look alike are occasionally also pronounced alike except when they arenāt and theyāll have different tones anyways) make learning to speak Mandarin a much larger memorization problem. Understanding speech has a similar difficulty. And writingā¦ Well, itās okay on a computer since you can use pinyin and autocomplete. But I havenāt tried doing anything by hand.
I was read to avidly as a child and loved it.
I am the only one of 4 children that came out with a love for books and reading in adulthood.
I think it is extremely important and helps the child develop intelligence and cognitively to a large degree.
We work on letters and sounds and numbers.
My 2 year old daughter can already count to 50 and say her entire ABCās and read some small words. I just want to make sure I give them the best start possible with education and foster a voracious appetite for learning.
Ahh okay, that makes sense then
My goal with any language outside of my native ones are to be able to consume media and produce written content (to a lesser extent)
Itās definitely a personality thing. I love reading, always have. Next sibling NEVER reads without being made to. Next siblings doesnāt often choose to, but when he does, he enjoys it. Next siblings is always in the middle of a book. Next sibling (heās the youngest, 9 years old), would much rather play soccer and with toys than sit still reading. And in school heās great at math, not so great at spelling.
We were all raised the same by the same parents who read to us daily, but have all just turned out differently.
I used to read books by the dozen before uni and was the kid who read classic literature for fun.
Since uni, I have the time but not the discipline or energy to, especially since reading papers takes priority
Me & Wife took PowerPuffs advice on this (11 years ago!) and still read to Kiddo every night before bed.
His vocabulary, comprehension, use of language, etc. are all lightyears ahead of his grade.
In fact, just as I began this response he read me a story he wrote, which is a mashed up fairy tale between Jack & The Beanstalk, Rumplestiltskin, and Pinocchio- and its awesome!
Totally agree with this. I read with all of my kids from birth and still now read with my son (10 yr old). We take it in turns reading the chapters aloud and both enjoy the time we spend reading together. My daughter who are a little older (12 and 14) read to themselves every night before lights out.
I did not really read books when I was a kid (comics dont count) and only really found a love of reading as an adult. My wife is an avid reader and through her encouragement I started to read more and now enjoy it.
The olā Supreme Court ruling cardā¦ cmon broā¦ you can do better.
Police go out of their way and risk their safety A TON everyday to help people.
Youāre a smart guy but that shitās weak af.
And people wonder whyā¦
Armchair QB opinions mean fuck all
What does this have to do with their lack of legal duty to do so?
I never said they didnāt.
Armchair QBs will be making the calls on this one.
My āshort listā of nutrition-related Hot Takes:
Kinda renders it irrelevant, no ?
these are hot takes??? what has the fitness/nutrition world come toā¦
I agree with this to an extent. As a diabetic the net carbs thing is marketed heavily towards me. I have found that many of the things claiming low net carbs (via high fiber or sugar alcohol especially) still raise my blood sugar significantly vs something like nuts whose carbs are naturally mostly fiber do not have the same effect on me.
Coffee doesnāt need butter or triglycerides - itās already perfect.
Either too many PED using influencers showcasing āperefect livesā or Fat acceptance death cult contributes to this.
Iāve wondered about this. I have my suspicions on it. We buy tortillas that claim 4 net carbs. They actually have about 20, and about 16 grams of fiber. I am confident they are healthier than a standard tortilla, but they also claim they are 60 calories because they remove 16g of carbs (16x4=64 calories) seems a bit of a stretch.
Is there any scientific evidence that a gram of carb that is also a gram of fiber isnāt used by the body as 4 kcal of energy? IDK?