Nihongo: listening and reading

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tungemål
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:11 pm

How to remember japanese words: It is easier if you know them already.
For instance, 巻く "maku" means to roll. This is the word in "Maki sushi roll".

By the way, I like a language where in the 2000 most basic words, they need to include 3 words for "restaurant": 食堂 , そば 屋 , レストラン. In addition I know 居酒屋 .
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby devilyoudont » Tue Jan 21, 2020 12:32 am

vonPeterhof wrote:The explanation I've read is that Japanese people prior to contact with Chinese culture had superstitions against counting numbers higher than eight, so eight was often a stand-in for much larger, or infinitely large numbers.


This makes an intuitive kind of sense to me, given that numbers 1-8 are doubled by ablaut, and then that pattern breaks down

1 hitotu 2 hutatu
3 mittu 6 muttu
4 yottu 8 yattu
5 itutu
7 nanatu
9 kokonotu
10 too

Worst romanization scheme imaginable employed in order to emphasize similarities between 1&2, 3&6, and 4&8.
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Tue Jan 28, 2020 10:48 pm

Finally got through the 2000 words of the Core 2k anki deck! That is, in the beginning it was 2007 words, but I pruned it down to 1976 words. A little dicipline goes a long way: 100 days with 20 words a day. Of course I should continue to do reviews for some time.
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:53 am

Can anyone recommend a graded reader for japanese?

It should be:
- ideally for the Kindle, or for reading on a computer
- if it is a physical book it needs to have large print
- vocabulary of about 1000-2000 words
- with kanji, not all in hiragana
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:52 pm

ロータス recommended this on golyplot's log

ロータス wrote:No grammar explanations but here are some free graded readers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/ ... s_into_an/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/ ... df_merged/
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Sat Feb 01, 2020 12:49 pm

Kanji often have divergent meanings in different words, but how is it possible that this character can have two opposite meanings?



- It can mean "to stay, remain" as in 在留
- but also to "be away" as in 留守 and 留学
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby devilyoudont » Sat Feb 01, 2020 2:51 pm

The original meaning is the "to stay" meaning

Originally in China, 留守 referred to someone who was in charge of conducting things while the emperor was out of town... In other words, literally someone staying behind to protect things. This kind of meaning is preserved in a small number of phrases containing 留守.

留守番
留守を預かる
留守家族

Some googling indicates that this had shifted towards it's modern meaning as early as the Kamakura period in Japan.

I can't give an explanation for why this shift occurred, only that it's not uncommon for a random word here or there to shift to the opposite meaning (eg English "terrific" from "terror", English "awful" from "awe"... another Japanese example would be かわいい whose original meaning is preserved in かわいそう).

These kinds of words that contain a contradictory meaning are called "auto-antonyms." It is often the case that what happened is that 2 separate words which sounded alike collapsed into 1 word due to sound shifts. In English "Bound" (tied up, vs leaping) is an example of formerly separate words collapsing into a single word.

However, we actually have an auto-antonym very similar to 留守, which also just appears to be from semantic shift: left

I left the room.
I was the only one left in the room.

Sometimes Japanese <-> English dictionaries can also muddy the meaning of words, and using a Japanese monolingual dictionary will clarify why a word means what it does, no etymology necessary.

The 留 in 留学 actually comes from 在留.

From goo.ne.jp

留学
Study Aboard
他の土地、特に外国に在留して学ぶこと。
To reside in another place, especially a foreign country, and study.

在留
To reside
ある期間、ある土地にとどまって住むこと。特に、外国に居住する場合にいう。「日本に在留する外国人」
To remain and live in a certain place for a certain amount of time. Used especially in the case of residing in a foreign country. "Foreigners Residing In Japan"
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:27 pm

I am working with chapter 11 of "Colloquial Japanese". I have decided to do all the audio dialogues of this book. The texts are not that difficult, but I am having trouble understanding the dialogues by ear. They seem to speak at normal speed - i.e. not slowed down for learners, so it is quite fast. I just need more practice listening.
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:13 pm

This weekend I:

- listened to (or watched) this youtube video. Good level for me, good for learning everyday spoken japanese, allthough not particularly interesting content.
- read one chapter of the Tadoku graded reader level 3 (the one posted above here) about Beppu Onsen. Easy text, right level for me, allthough many special words were introduced, about all the different kinds of onsen they've got there. I wanted to go there after reading about it.
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Re: Nihongo: listening and reading

Postby tungemål » Wed Feb 12, 2020 1:59 pm

This character: 坊 is given the meaning "boy" in the Heisig method, but it can also mean "buddhist monk". Since it is pronounced "BO" I wonder if the "boy" meaning is inspired from English.

坊っちゃん - botchan - boy
坊さん - bosan - buddhist monk

And then we got this word: 寝坊 - nebou - which means "to oversleep", and which doesn't seem to make sense. Well, it is easier to remember that with the "monk"-meaning: I just imagine a monk that oversleeps, and is late for the tasks of the day. Fortunately all he's got to do that day is some chanting and reading of a buddhist text.
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