There wouldn't be any "h" if you thought of it in terms of Spanish sounds.

If you really get into the weeds, the funky spelling can sometimes give you a clue about how the word is pronounced. (But only sometimes.) For example, "rhetoric" can have a bit of an "h" sound, especially in British English. I notice it some in American English too, but it can vary from person to person.

Or "gnats." The "n" is a tiny bit different than if you said "Nats," like the baseball team. You obviously don't say the "g," but the tongue comes up a little in the back of your mouth, almost like you were going to say a "g."

That's nothing to worry about, it's just something I've noticed.

It sounds like you're thinking about the words and playing with them, which is always a good way to learn. I remember being a kid and laughing about g-nats and k-nees. You know, when you say all the letters and really exaggerate. After a while, you just know it.

My go-to is to look at the word for a while, listen to the pronunciation a few times, and try to say it. If I hear the word again, I can usually see it too. I get a transcript in my head when someone says something, or even when I think something. It's just always there.

If I forget the spelling, the transcript will get blurry or stop. So it's usually easy to remember the spelling, and if I forget it, I really want to look it up.

I don't need glasses. Haven't had my hearing tested, but I think it might be better than average. I can hear high frequencies annoyingly well, 20kHz or a little more (checked with a spectrum analyzer). It's fun to listen to the high harmonics in music. Vacuum cleaners and electric cars are less fun.

I can usually hear my muscles and bones moving. It's very quiet and low frequency, and the muscles rumble. I can usually tune it out though.

Hearing is a backup sense.

That might vary by person, but for me it's not. If I had to pick between being able to see and being able to hear, it'd be hearing, hands down. Being able to see is amazing and I'd miss it, but hearing is just a whole other dimension.

Being able to know how someone is feeling, just by hearing their voice. Listening to music and hearing all the shapes, colors, and feelings that come with it. The colors aren't always ones you can see, like blue or yellow. It's hard to describe. I'll close my eyes and just listen at a concert (not the whole time) and same with TV, a lot of times. I usually remember it better that way.

If I have to find something in a backpack, I'll often do it by feel. I probably look like a raccoon washing its food, but it just works for me. You can tell things apart by feel and sound.

It's impressive to see the big ones in person. It takes them about 70 years to get 6 feet tall. They can live to be 150 and weigh over a ton. Seeing how the sun reflects off of the stone cliffs at sunset is neat too (Arizona). And how many stars you can see at night.

I don't miss the desert (I'm made for the cold), but there are fascinating things about it.

!lemmySilver

Show some love to a big bird, and the light is amazing too.

Ohhh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

There are different ones for different kinds of writing (general, academic, journalism, and more). Chicago Manual of Style is one of the general ones. It's good, and considered authoritative, but you have to buy a copy or an online subscription.

A free one that I like is Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab from a university). It's easy to understand and has good info.

Fascinating. It almost seems like it would be a liability having a hole to your lungs right in the middle of your tongue. But I guess it works when you can just swallow your food whole and maybe don't even have to drink water (?). Maybe a short path to the lungs is helpful for flying.

The title picture is amazing, both the mom's expression and the fluffy chick that's all mouth. Do you happen to know what the hole in the roof of their mouth is? At least it looks like a hole.

A light swoosh is a good way to put it. You can hear it a little bit when they take off and land, but otherwise it's really quiet. They're impressively big up close.

It looks so pretty like that. The eagle owls are striking too. Their orange eyes don't stand out as much as you might think.

I've heard that a lot, and I always thought it had to do with lazy talking (not moving your mouth much). I do think that's part of it, and some people do that more than others.

But the thing about having a potato in your mouth is it pushes your tongue down and back, into your throat. Which is something you need to say the American "r" and a lot of other sounds, like "w" and the dark L like in "pull." It's hard to teach, and very hard to unlearn. It's part of the characteristic American sound.

German is basically the opposite. You can see the difference here, with a German speaker talking in an MRI. There's a lot of space between the back of the tongue and the back wall of the throat. And here's a picture of someone saying an American "r". The base of the tongue is all bunched up in the throat.

Yep. That works well unless you're cooking at altitude, then an overnight soak is the best and easiest way. Unless you own a pressure cooker.

Some beans you can get away with not soaking at all, just cook them low and slow for a couple hours. I've done that with great northern beans.

I have a new appreciation for crows now that I've started feeding the ones that live nearby. Their shiny black feathers are pretty, especially when they come close. And they're really smart.

Were you pretty sure the price would go down, or did you just roll the dice? I've watched prices at the places I've lived, and they only ever seem to go up. As in, I'm paying $1600, about to get raised to $1800, and the unit next door is listed for $1900. But one place used RealPage, and I would bet the other one used something like that too.

Yeah. The voice stays young if you take care of it and are healthy. You can be 60 and sound like 30.

It's not exactly the same for me, but it's pretty close. Sometimes it's a little more faded. Just depends on what it is. Sound, on the other hand, I can picture that loud and clear.

Oh, she does have a great purr. Sounds kind of like a diesel engine :)

I don't think I've seen a petting technique quite like yours. Maybe one of these days I'll get a chance to try it out. The cats let you pet them for so long!

He said, "Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem Scheiß bleiben?" He said the problem was that Trump was rambling (this part of the speech was unscripted). Article is in German. Here's a partial translation by DeepL, tweaked by me:

His interjection should not be interpreted as a political statement. "No, that would be completely wrong. The political content is not the problem,“ says Deja, adding: ”I interpret all the time for people whose political statements I don't agree with. The problem with Trump was that he suddenly started associating freely or saying the same thing three times in a row. The difficulty when interpreting is following these confusing leaps of thought." He explains: "If a speaker has organized thoughts, then as soon as the sentence has started, you can roughly guess what will come next. You can keep surfing that wave. But that's impossible with Trump."

I believe it, because simultaneous interpreting is really hard, intense work. You have to listen, remember it word for word, understand it, and give an accurate, natural sounding translation pretty much instantly. You have to try to convey the tone, understand cultural differences, and figure out how to say things that just don't translate well. It's so much work that interpreters often work in teams so they can relieve each other every 30 minutes or so.