u/Nukemarine

My wife recently went on a trip to Korea with her mother, and decided she'd like for us to go together this December. Given the long lead time, feels like a decent incentive to learn Korean to at least an intermediate level.

While I'm not a polyglot, this isn't my first rodeo having learned Japanese via self-study somewhat, and used methods developed learning Japanese to learn some very basic Mandarin Chinese which I detailed here a couple years back.

First step is use this website to learn Hangul and make an Anki deck out of it while I'm doing it. The Anki deck feels overkill given how easy Hangul is to learn, but no real harm.

Second step is mirror what I did for Mandarin Chinese, which is listen to a Pimsleur Korean lesson, create a Trimsleur audio from the lesson (remove any English and long pauses like this example from lesson one), and rip audio from one episode of Peppa Pig in Korean that's slowed down to 80% (the normal audio for Peppa Pig regardless of language is 125% speed). I'll also make subtitle files from these audio using SubEdit. I'm hesitant about making a Pimsleur Korean Anki deck for this given the time sink, but probably would be useful (other option is use the vocab Anki in third step for any words covered in Pimsleur). Big thing is putting the Trimsleur and Peppa Pig audio into immersion playlists.

Third step is using an Anki deck that has a good vocabulary + example sentence with audio. This deck even though it's text to speech audio seems to fit the bill, but if anyone has a better suggestion I'm open to switch. Main review method is play audio as the recognition question, and cloze delete for vocab recall. Every 10 new words (that wasn't covered in Pimsleur), I'll also add in a Korean dub of Bluey audio (I get these from Disney+ in Japan). On top of that, with the Korean Anki sentences, I'll likely use a system I did for Japanese to create immersion audio files to play alongside the Bluey audio.

The comprehensible audio immersion is very big in all of this. Big mistake I made when learning Japanese was just immersing in any audio (mainly rips from Japanese Dramas I watched) which turned out not to be very comprehensible. Once I added a step to make the audio understandable by at least looking up unknown words and phrases in the subtitles, the immersion was super effective. Since that's more an upper intermediate step, for beginner/basics I watch a five to ten minute clip with English subs, then Korean subs, then no subs. After that, the audio is pretty comprehensible and short given we're talking Peppa Pig, Bluey, and later Handy Manny.

Anyway, hope I'm able to post the occasional update. Korean feels a lot more fun to learn given there's WAY MORE entertainment on Netflix for Korean compared to Mandarin (not counting dubs, though I'm a big fan of Western media dubbed into a target language).

I've played the original version briefly on flatscreen and in VR (both via laptop) a few years back but never went past the cooks. Got a much better rig late last year and recently loaded up extended edition. If you have the chance to play this in VR, give it a shot. It's still the same gameplay of 3rd person side scrolling, but there's a good profile that makes the world scale 1:1. This gets you close enough so you're not noticing the fourth wall is not there so much, and still can play as intended

I'm not in agreement of certain VR users that insist computer games that can't be forced into 1st person gameplay don't count as VR. There's no doubt in my mind that any average person that gets a chance to see this game in action in VR will immerse themselves and feel the fear as Six runs and jumps for her life. Plus, the big spectacle moment as she climbs up the outside of the ship was breath taking with the scale of it all. Plus that victory walk ... wow.

Also, I'm guessing Enhanced Edition made the game a little easier as there were annoying bits but nothing that was impossible to get past. Perhaps the only frustrating parts were the blind long arm boss fight where I needed to pull bars, and running across the feeding table felt more luck than skill based. Minor in the long run and didn't ruin the overall story. Now for The Kid's story (seems to have issues loading up), the Little Nightmares II and III. I'll wait on the Altered Echoes VR game till it goes on sale.

No doubt that having a tongue cut out is a cruel punishment used throughout history. However, it was less a punishment to stop people from talking, and more in retaliation for what they had already said. Assuming the victim survived the ordeal (major mouth wound without antibiotics probably a deferred death sentence), if the tongue healed over it would functional in the back of the mouth. On top of that, the lips and vocal cords still work. They lose S, Z, T, D, J, L, N (maybe G and K are impacted) or whatever Westoros common tongue equivalent but that still leaves a lot of oral sounds that can compensate. It wouldn't save the victim from the social stigma or the prejudice of others that would dismiss the mumbling words. Likely someone subjected to this punished just doesn't talk even with the limited amount they can out of fear of worse punishment.

Varys's little birds could still communicate verbally in their own language, just modified as kids are like to do when they're forced to deal with a disability. Adults like Illyn Payne, especially after the Mad King died, would likely sing, whistle, or yell as needed. Those on The Silence likely stayed silent out of fear of worse punishment (Euron would rip off the lips of any crew that switched to whistling and pour lye down the throats of those that continued to yell or sing). Wex would use verbal and non-verbal communication though would also benefit from learning to write.

Not saying they'd be as communicative as this lady who had a large portion of her tongue surgically removed, but they would be able and more than a small degree at that. Certainly more than the clicks and clacks GRRM gave to Illyn when talking to Jaime.