There's a Japanese grammatical construction that has the connotation of, "this may be a controversial thing, but I believe it very strongly."

When I learned it in class (in Japan) I used climate change as my example. Yes, we knew how to say "climate change" [1/?] https://twitter.com/TheValorieClark/status/1311156869210148864

The teacher told me I was wrong, and I couldn't understand why. We went back and forth a few times (in Japanese, of course), and I still didn't get it. So I went to ask after class because I was VERY confused. [2/?]

It still took a few tries but finally the teacher said -- very rhetorically! -- "But climate change isn't controversial, right?" and the lightbulb went off!

I was wrong because *this wasn't considered a controversial belief in Japan* it was considered, simply, fact [3/?]

And my teacher had failed to figure out where I was misunderstanding because to *her*, the fact that it was factual was very obvious!

After that I asked my Japanese friends about it and told them that 1/4 of Americans don't "believe" in climate change [4/?]

They were.... shocked, I guess, but also.... confused. Like, what does it *mean* not to "believe" in climate change? How is that political? It was like I had told them 1/4 of Americans refused to believe in linear time.

There's no point to this thread, that's the end. Fin. [5/5]