Lots of "progressive" folks make fun of people for struggling with reading and writing. This is a bad thing. Let's talk about why.Literacy Center Search: htt...

Really eye opening video.

  • ttmrichter@lemmy.ml
    3·
    4 years ago

    I’m functionally illiterate. I’m barely able to make out common words in important signage or product labels and the sort when shopping. I can’t read most web pages and I sure as Hell can’t write much beyond such elementary words as to make Kindergarteners look upon me with pity.

    Because a) Chinese is **hard ** and b) I am too busy working and taking care of my family to spend time in the endless and expensive classes it would take to become passably literate. Had I chosen to live almost anywhere else in the world I’d be functionally literate at the very least by my first year and fully literate within five. But I chose to live in China and, well, I’m functionally illiterate.

    • rockroach@lemmy.ml
      2·
      4 years ago

      this is triggering so many red flags, and it’s not even because china’s flag is red.

    • uthredii@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      4 years ago

      Thats interesting! Why did you choose to live in China? Have you tried using any apps that translate text?

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 years ago

        Family tradition of a sorts has everybody in each generation moving a huge distance away from the previous. :D For me a move to China from Canada was just tradition.

        Or, to translate, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

        When I came here there were no such apps, so I got a pocket dictionary (that I still have!) and learned to tear apart characters into their constituent parts so I could have a chance of finding them in it. (That’s not particularly reliable a way of translating, but it can get you enough to function. Slowly.) Nowadays, though, there are really spiffy mobile phone apps that will translate text from photographs, etc., in a bewildering variety of forms (not just carefully-printed text in simple fonts) so it’s actually quite possible to stumble through life quite effectively despite being illiterate.

          • ttmrichter@lemmy.ml
            1·
            4 years ago

            Since 2001. My original flight to China was disrupted by a month because of all the shenanigans surrounding 9/11.

              • MobocraticEgoist@lemmy.ml
                1·
                4 years ago

                There are lone anarchists in most countries I think, but in the face of political repression and without an anarchist movement it’s necessary to subtly insert oneself in other movements like art, literature, and less revolutionary political movements like everyday labor struggles.

              • ttmrichter@lemmy.ml
                0·
                4 years ago

                I wouldn’t call myself an anarchist. Nor a communist. Nor a capitalist. Nor a fascist.

                “Cynicist” is likely the best descriptor of my political views.