“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.”

That made me giggle fr. 🤭 Especially how even still nowadways, some monolingual English speakers can be so obnoxious in expecting other countries to cater to their language needs when travelling; and then justify it by learning only a few basic, mispronounced phrases, and some people probably don’t even do that, which is the BARE MINIMUM. But they still want to travel and ‘experience other cultures’ - and they don’t even realise how much culture they’re missing out on by NOT making more than a MINIMAL EFFORT in the local language !!

"she was only just a woman" does he know he is only just a man??

im learning so much in this book it’s lowkey making me feel like im an uncultured swine despite having lived in 3 foreign countries 🐽 (France, Japan, USA. i’m Australian.) i feel like im at university myself in a way lol

also having studied French (at school) and Japanese (self-taught) all the language stuff is fascinating to me and inspiring me to keep working towards fluency and not completely lose what little sepaking ability i managed to gain in those languages !! the struggle is real tho 🥲

and i also didn’t think it was possibile to gain even more respect for multi-lingual people, but alas 🫡

This is such a well written book so far. R F Kuang never shies from unsavory topics. Making her books such a breath of fresh air.