Does anyone else struggle with certain topic related vocabulary? I don’t follow anything to do with government or politics. So all the cabinet members, house of representatives and words around this topic alyways get me. I don`t even know what they are in English haha. What about you guys?
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Military ranks
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You’ve never watched something like Fullmetal Alchemist or Pumpkin Scissors or whatever, where they’re all running around calling each other “chewie” and “showy” and whatnot? It was such a lovely aha moment when WaniKani taught me that it’s 中尉 and 少尉. 
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I’ve seen Fullmetal Alchemist.
I couldn’t tell you what the order of military ranks are in English. The fact that the Japanese kanji do make some sense relative to each other doesn’t help for that.
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Ah, that probably helps. I’ve read quite a bit of military SF, so I guess I’ve gotten the hang of it.
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Is that supposed to be a joke?
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Legal related vocabulary.
It’s already difficult in my native language, but in English… 無理
Suspension Of Indictment, Suspended Sentence, Articles Of Incorporation…
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In pretty much every language, I struggle with abstract adverbs, like remembering the difference between “at first” and “the first time” and “after all.”
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Nobility titles. There’s no history of marquis, barons, counts, earls or dukes where I’m from, so even if I look up the Japanese, it’s all still pretty vague.
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Medical/veterinary vocab, especially kanji. I can understand the basics, but on forms and pamphlets I end up having to look up a lot of stuff. Especially liability language! I had a MRI recently and the form was so overwhelming.
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I’m even struggling to understand your title if I don’t do googling about what smutherment is.
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Police departments / agencies. I just relabelled them all police.
And baseball - I really wish I could remove them
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I still don’t understand what a bureaucracy is.
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History terms. It feels like there’s an unending supply of new history related words to learn with really niche meanings. The old-fashioned names are confusing and hard to read too.
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political terms. with the USA spamming the rest of the world with news of their domestic drama, you pick up new vocab without even wanting to… vocab you never thought you’d ever need.
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Smutherment doesn’t mean anything - it’s a standard way of showing disdain for something by repeating the word, but replacing the first letter with “schm”. For example, “kanji, schmanji”. Only in this case, it’s not quite “schmovernment”.
TV Tropes calls it Word Schmord. (Warning, TV Tropes link - do not click without a rehearsed exit plan.)
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Ok, I see now, thanks!
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