Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:23 pm

I can usually tell apart the -y sounds in speech (the -u sounds on the other hand are impossible - I can't tell apart ho/hou, ko/kou, etc. but can distinguish kou/kyou etc.)

My point was that they were similar enough that I still got them confused when recognizing the word. I suspect a Japanese person would see them as completely different categories and not understand how anyone would see them as similar.
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gsbod
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby gsbod » Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:32 pm

Maybe the fact that ゲン is an on-reading for 言 and both words relate to an aspect of language contributed to the confusion?

I always struggled with 持つ and 待つ. I never had trouble writing the correct one, but when reading they are so easily confused, not least because grammatically they are often used in similar ways. There were a few times I got frustrated I couldn't grasp the meaning of a sentence until I realised I'd misread the verb...
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Oct 12, 2021 6:17 pm

gsbod wrote:I always struggled with 持つ and 待つ. I never had trouble writing the correct one, but when reading they are so easily confused, not least because grammatically they are often used in similar ways. There were a few times I got frustrated I couldn't grasp the meaning of a sentence until I realised I'd misread the verb...


I confuse those while reading all the time too. I actually considering posting about that yesterday (it came up on SR) but forgot.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Oct 14, 2021 6:05 am

ジンジャーさんとスコットさんは、朝にシャワーを浴びてから、仕事に行く

One thing that bugs me about kara - how can you tell when it is a conditional and when it means "from"?


だから、みんなと時間が重ならない

Here we have another new kanji reading. Apparently, 重 is kasa, something not covered by WK. And here I thought that just keeping straight the jyuu/chou readings was bad enough!


Also just like the 待つ/持つ confusion mentioned earlier, I ran into another confusing pair yesterday - 叫ぶ and 呼ぶ.
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bolaobo
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby bolaobo » Thu Oct 14, 2021 8:09 pm

golyplot wrote:ジンジャーさんとスコットさんは、朝にシャワーを浴びてから、仕事に行く

One thing that bugs me about kara - how can you tell when it is a conditional and when it means "from"?


だから、みんなと時間が重ならない

Here we have another new kanji reading. Apparently, 重 is kasa, something not covered by WK. And here I thought that just keeping straight the jyuu/chou readings was bad enough!


Also just like the 待つ/持つ confusion mentioned earlier, I ran into another confusing pair yesterday - 叫ぶ and 呼ぶ.


重 has multiple readings even in modern Chinese, so I'm not surprised it has lots of readings in Japanese! In Classical Chinese it was a character with separate pronunciations for "heavy, serious" and "pile up, repeat".
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gsbod
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby gsbod » Thu Oct 14, 2021 8:40 pm

golyplot wrote:ジンジャーさんとスコットさんは、朝にシャワーを浴びてから、仕事に行く
One thing that bugs me about kara - how can you tell when it is a conditional and when it means "from"?


If から is preceded by a verb in te-form, as in your example, it means "after" or "since", as in describing the order of events - "After showering in the morning, Ginger and Scott go to work". Maybe it helps to think about this sentence pattern being ~てから rather than just another use of から?

If から is preceded by a complete clause or sentence it means "because".

Maybe it helps to consider the difference in meaning between clauses like 朝にシャワーを浴びてから ("after showering in the morning") and 朝にシャワーを浴びたから ("because [I] showered in the morning").
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:30 am

風邪でも引いたかなぁ

でも、たまにはお風呂に浸かって、鼻歌でも歌ってゆっくりしたいなぁ。

So でも can obviously mean "but", and I learned (thanks to Hayato using it in his video titles) that it can also mean "despite" or "even though", but WTF is this? Apparently, it can also mean "or something"? Just how many meanings and usages does it have?!


In other news, I recently looked up "takoyaki' on Wikipedia (EN) and found it interesting when the article mentioned "green onion (negi)" since I learned tamanegi (玉ねぎ)=onion. In English, "green onion" is seen as a modified kind of "onion", but apparently, in Japan, it's the other way around! They see "onions" as "ball-shaped green onions". It's interesting to see differences like that.


昨日は、早めにベッドに入ってぐっすり眠れた。

As I was reading this, I first read 入って as いって then went "no, that doesn't sound right, ah, must be はいって". I was pretty proud of myself for "intuiting" the reading there. On the other hand, I thought that the ぐっすり meant "medicine" (as in a rendaku'd 薬), and was confused when it turned out to actually mean "sleeping soundly".


Also, the kanji 咳 came up for review on Wanikani no less than three times in the last couple days. This was highly improbable because there are ~5000 items up for review, so the odds of an item appearing even twice are relatively low.
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crush
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby crush » Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:37 pm

でも can also mean "...or something". Not really sure the best way to explain it, but here's something from Maggie Sensei (search for "2. ~ and so on / and something") with more examples:
https://maggiesensei.com/2020/01/22/how ... 2%82-demo/
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Oct 16, 2021 4:00 am

Not really Japanese related, but tonight, I watched Natsuki Hanae's Game of Darkness video (with English subtitles on) where three voice actors get together to play Uno and shout every move like they are characters in a battle anime. It's pretty funny, though the gimmick does get repetitive at points.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:29 pm

I encountered a new kanji (凧) in the "easy" version of SR this morning. Amusingly, there was a note explaining that "fly a kite" and "fry octopus" are both pronounced the same in Japanese (tako wo ageru).


Last night, I watched Great Pretender ep 2_3, and towards the beginning, the characters say "I refuse" a lot, and every time, it sounded like they said something like "koushitsu suru". I tried to look it up afterwards, but couldn't figure it out.

Luckily, Great Pretender has Japanese [CC] subtitles available on Netflix, so I checked again with Jpn subs on and was able to figure out what they said - it turns out to actually be "kyohi suru" (拒否).

Image

It's a bit frustrating that I was so far off in the sounds of what they were saying. I've long felt like it is impossible for English speakers to distinguish certain Japanese sounds (i.e. the long vs short vowels), so we have to work extra hard to deduce everything from context. And here, I was completely wrong even about the consonants!

On the other hand, I came across a video today which says that even in English speech, unstressed words are unintelligible in isolation and even native English speakers have to fill them in from context. Maybe the Japanese aren't so different after all!

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