Reddit -> Beehaw until I decided I didn’t like older versions of Lemmy (though it seems most things I didn’t like are better now) -> kbin.social (died) -> kbin.run (died) -> fedia.
Japan-based backend software dev.
Particles aren’t really suffixes, but yes:
は ha -> wa を wo -> o へ he -> e
There are some other oddities, especially if you get into dialects (even in Edo/Tokyo dialect, ga can become more like na (with the n being a nasal kinda like ‘ng’ in ‘thingy’).
The modern orthography is so much nicer, though; trying to read old texts is interesting with no small kana at all and some things that were just terrible for writing v pronounciation.
like using imperial units.
Not even proper ones; they’re US Customary units now so all the names are the same but many have different metric equivalents. As someone trying to convert his family recipes to metric and weight-based, this was maddening when all I could get were cup measures for the “wrong” size of cup. Add differences in flour between countries and that was a fun time.
When I was last in the US, most of the supermarkets and such had the eink displays, but most other places didn’t yet.
The reason usually mentioned is that the labels are produced centrally or some such. Though "They know the price to charge at the till’ might be slightly off when the tax is calculated on the transaction as a whole rather than on a per-item basis (i.e. rounding shenanigans). That seems like a totally solvable problem to me, though.
I took my wife to meet my parents and had to remind her when we went shopping that we had to add tax to everything (and tip in bars/restaurants/etc.) Some things looked cheaper than in Japan until tax (especially at that time when the exchange rate was awful).
Japanese does have plenty of exceptions regarding kana -> pronounciation, though it’s better than English. Tons of readings for kanji is also a thing (particularly with proper nouns being crazy).
For just kana orthography vs pronounciation example, n before certain things gets pronounced like an m (see 新聞 しんぶん shinbun -> shimbun).
‘i’ and ‘u’ frequently get devoiced (classic example is です desu sounding like dess). 靴下 くつした kutsushita is a fun one. Even my wife didn’t realize the devoicing as a native speaker.
There are more than I’m forgetting at the moment, but those are the common ones.
For kanji you have 百 hyaku (hundred) 二百 ni-hyaku (two hundred), so three hundred 三百 should be san-hyaku, right? Nope! San-byaku (with that n -> m transition here, too). There are tons of these.
Mine have all given up. I’ve always entertained the idea of adopting later (I had a vasectomy at 35 with no children prior for a number of reasons), but it’s looking less and less realistic as I creep closer to 50.
Which tax? Federal? State? County? City/Municipality? What if some of those are zero?
This is why no one does it. I think smart labels may change that some day, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Edit: ah, to be clear, those tax types can all vary. I used to shop at a place where the same store on the opposite side of the street was cheaper because the tax rate was less.
yes, be very careful of PFICs. I can’t use any of Japan’s versions of ISA/IRA because they all end up being PFICs which are awful to deal with on the US and more than destroy any tax advantage of putting money in them.
Depends upon how you’re seeing liquid. If you just mean water, definitely not. If you mean things that behave like liquids behave or are in their liquid phase (is magma liquid here?) then I’m not sure