When I started learning languages in my late teenage years, I began with French and Persian. French, like most European languages, uses an alphabetic writing system, whereas Persian, like many languages in the Middle East uses an abjad writing system. I later also learned north Indian languages which use abugida writing systems, and last year I began learning Japanese which makes use of both syllabic and logographic writing systems. If you’re reading this article you’ll be familiar with alphabetic writing systems, where individual symbols generally represent both vowels and consonants.

At some point over the last two weeks I came across a subreddit about ’non zero days’. As far as I can tell, the community on Reddit sprung up in response to a comment made by ryans01: Rule numero uno - There are no more zero days. What’s a zero day? A zero day is when you don’t do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on.