Pamasich

Switzerland here.

Constitutional amendments are very common and easy here, but they need to go through the people and require a double majority (majority of the people + majority of the states). So the government can’t just abolish democracy, to use the example from your comment, without convincing regular people to agree to it.

As for the danger of the head of government ignoring the constitution like what Trump is doing in the US, that would be a lot harder here due to our “head of state/government” being a collective of seven people from four parties. So if any of them wants to ignore the constitution, they have to get the others to agree.

Imo numbers are the best comparison, because just like with kanji, a number has multiple readings and a meaning.

A “2” can be read as “two”, “twe” or “seco” depending on how it’s used (2 vs 12/20 vs 2nd). Just off the top of my head.

Kanji aren’t really hard, there’s just a lot of them. And I can’t learn that many at a time. So it takes ages to get to the point where you can actually read stuff, just in terms of volume. At least with my limits.

That said, one issue I’m noticing is that kanji with the default internet fonts are usually too small for me to make out the differences in the more complex ones. I often need to increase the font a bit with a userstyle to actually make stuff readable.

The “real” hard part is numerous readings (depending whether it’s paired with kana or another kanji, reflected from kunyomi & onyomi plus nanori when applied in people’s names).

Just don’t learn all the readings from the start. When the kanji is used alone as a word directly, there’s just one reading used for it. Other than that, you’re dealing with vocabulary.

We learn “2” as reading “two”, not “twe”, despite that reading being used in “twenty” and “twelve”. We learn the latter two as separate vocabulary words that simply include the “2” character. The same should be applied to kanji. Learn one word for the kanji, and the rest through vocabulary that uses the kanji.

Wanikani iirc takes this approach where they usually teach you the primary onyomi with the kanji, so you can read most vocabulary words right away, while only having to learn one reading. All of ther other readings are taught through vocabulary items indirectly.

There’s also Mbin for Reddit-likes.

Unlike Piefed and Lemmy, Mbin also has dedicated support for microblogging in addition to threads. But iirc that is on Piefed’s roadmap as well.

Swiss German is my native language, and I’m fluent in English. My English pronunciation is garbage though.

Theoretically I can also speak German, but I’m extremely rusty in it and lack confidence, so practically I turn into a stumbling mess that can’t say anything without running away to either one of the above two mid-sentence subconsciously.

Mbin supports microblogging and following users. I’m following quite a few Mastodon users. Also, upvotes are publically visible.

Piefed has multi-communities, though I forgot their name.