@PostingInPublic
@lemmy.worldYes exactly that! Our languages belong in the same category, west-germanic, so your feeling is justified.
Yeah you're right. Our news would use "Kongo" for the catastrophe and "Kongo-Brazzaville" for the country.
Yeah, there is, not by chance, a "story" in "history". It needs to be told, by somebody who knows how to do that. Learning facts from old books, the studying, is one part, weaving them into a whole, the telling, the other.
I'm also conflicted on that one, and to further compound yours, I can give you the destruction of the Egyptian museum of Berlin in ww2 as an example of a case where stuff would better have been left in the country of origin, or even in the sand.
I would in principle agree with you, however not about English, mainly because it is now a language of international discourse of any kind, and it thus no longer belongs to the local speakers.
It now has a role Latin had until just a few centuries ago, and extrapolating a bit into the future from that example, will remain quite stable while your dialect, American, Australian, Indian, Jamaican, will change until it becomes another language entirely, no longer mutually intelligible with the other dialects.
If you want to participate in the international dialog however, you will have to learn International, which is now English including the differentiation of the theiy'res, even if your native language is English. Your grand-grandchildren may have to learn English like an Italian in 1800 had to learn Latin if he wanted to join the international discourse.
It's super interesting to watch this process unfold right now!
That's actually one of the best ways to learn a language short of full immersion, we call it a tandem!
Allergies. Very popular fabric softeners contain one perfume that makes me asthmatic, every year someone in the office has watched a fabric softener commercial and thinks they are a good idea.
They are not.
Fix the stupid little things first.
Do you have a friend? Ask them if they would stick around for a few while you fix a bunch of stupid little problems you can't find the motivation to do by yourself. You'll need them only for structure, or maybe the occasional stimulus "OK, now write that email", not to do any of it.
Most people can relate. Ask them directly, don't beat around the bush.