u/Which_Loss6887

Hot tip for those of us who are in the midst of summer heat waves right now: Chilled shou is actually a top-tier thirst quencher.

I live in a very hot climate and do physical work outside/in spaces with no AC, the kind of work that can result in heat sickness if you’re not careful. I drink a ton of iced tea in the summer of all different types, and my top 2 favorites for quenching thirst are roasted barley (unsurprisingly), and shou (much more surprisingly). My partner who I work with has also caught on to this and has started pilfering my jars of cold shou even though taste-wise he generally prefers black tea with sugar. Chilling tends to make the sweet notes slightly more prominent and earthy notes fade away (though, note that I usually do this only with shous that lean sweet to begin with, nothing too funky, foresty, or smoky; think like V93 or Red Loon), and the viscosity is also very pleasant cold.

This question is mostly for folks who learned a language primarily or entirely through exposure to media, with little or no other instruction.

Did you have the subtitles on in a language you already knew and use those to parse what was being said? Were you actively trying to pick out words and phrases you knew and building on them? Or was it more like the way little kids will pick up languages that are spoken around them even if no one is actively teaching them, like an intuitive process where you get enough hours listening to the new language plus having the visual context as a clue what is being said, and it just sort of clicks into place?