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    17. Habemus Papam - Leo XIV named first American pope

      Text 288 words
      There's white smoke on St. Peter's Square (at 18:08 local time). Given the time it's probably been the fourth round of voting that yielded a positive result. You can watch the vatican media...

      There's white smoke on St. Peter's Square (at 18:08 local time). Given the time it's probably been the fourth round of voting that yielded a positive result. You can watch the vatican media livestream here with english commentary and here without any commentary.

      Thought I'd post this as a text post to keep it updated with relevant information (e.g. who it is) over the next hour or so.

      The swiss guard has arrived on the square shortly after 18:30. If the previous two conclaves are anything to go by it'll be another 30 minutes or so until Cardinal Mamberti will step onto the balcony to announce the new pope's name.

      Update 19:13: Mamberti has entered the balcony and is making his announcement (rewatch here):

      Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam:

      Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, dominum Robertum Franciscum, Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalem Prevost, qui sibi nomen imposui Leonem XIV.

      Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is a US American by birth, but moved to Peru later on and became bishop there, making him the second pope from America and first ever US American to hold the title. He's generally viewed as a compromise candidate between progressives and conservatives within the catholic church as far as I know. He was created (as a cardinal) by pope francis and was responsible for personell management under him.

      Update 19:23: Pope Leo XIV has entered the balcony and is making his first public statement (rewatch original here or with english subtitles here).

      Update 19:40: After speaking for more than 10 minutes (a lot longer than his predrcessors during their first appearance) he's now issued the traditional blessing 'urbi et orbi' and has left the balcony.

      49 votes

    18. How many languages do you speak?

      ~humanities.languages Ask (survey)
      How many languages y'all speak? From how many different language families? How many scripts can you read? Any special grammatical quirks that your languages have? It doesn't matter if it's A2...

      How many languages y'all speak? From how many different language families? How many scripts can you read? Any special grammatical quirks that your languages have?

      It doesn't matter if it's A2 level or C2 level, share it with us!

      33 votes

    30. How did you learn to read?

      ~humanities.languages Ask
      Question is as stated in the title. How did you learn to read? I am re-listening to the great podcast, "Sold a Story" and it has prompted a lot of questions to myself, and now to others. So, I'm...

      Question is as stated in the title. How did you learn to read?

      I am re-listening to the great podcast, "Sold a Story" and it has prompted a lot of questions to myself, and now to others.

      So, I'm curious, how did you learn to read and what do you remember about it? I am extra interested in people who have learned from "non-phonetic" languages, and also have a new curiousity about French, which I consider a language that does not match the spelling of its spoken and written words (if that makes sense, I'm sure that is my own bias there, as an English speaker).

      My own reading experience

      I can't recall how I learned to read as a baby baby, but I have a lot of pictures of me with books from a very young age.

      I do remember being taught how to "read" aka how to take tests well that involved reading. For me I was taught like this:

      Look at the questions following the written material. Keep those in your mind. Some of those have direct passages referenced, go to those passages.

      When you are inside a paragraph, the topic sentence (first) tells you what the paragraph is about, and what point the author is trying to prove. The middle shit is usually examples and possibly useless, because the final sentence, is the conclusion, which reminds you of what the whole paragraph is about, and what you should think when you finish the paragraph.

      OFC, this fits in neatly with the "five paragraph essay", which is introduction, three examples, conclusion. It's like recursive writing.

      I want to talk about this way of learning to read, because I feel it really fucked with my ability to enjoy reading and my current attention span1. These days, I feel my eyes almost follow this pattern instinctively, there's a lot of going around the paragraph non-linearly, it feels like scanning for "useful" information while also "discarding" useless information. It's almost like I only know how to skim now, but I can't tell. I also have ADHD, so I'm sure this affects my methods of reading.

      However, since I learned this skill very early (at least at age 9), I can't help but wonder if the natural inclination was fueled up by this method of teaching, or what.

      1. When I would read fictional material which has less rigidity, I also felt I was taught to figure out what the tester was going to ask about and focus on that versus actually enjoying reading. Basically all my joy for reading is messed up.
      32 votes