Learning Japanese From Zero

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:20 am

Since I can't sleep, it's time for more Yotsubato. Hopefully that will help me fall asleep.

ぼーくらは
みんな
いきーて
いーるー

Here, Yotsuba appears to be singing a popular folk song. It's a reference that would have gone completely over my head if I hadn't heard it numerous times from listening to Noriko's podcast (she has one episode about it, but I keep listening to the podcast over and over). It's a shame the translators here didn't bother trying to explain stuff like that. Then again the translators didn't even bother trying to translate things into grammatical English. I guess that's what you get from unpaid volunteers.

Although there is one difference. The version I learned from Noriko goes ikite irunda, but for some reason Yotsuba just sings ikite iru. I wonder why.


これ今
返却した奴
じゃねーか
ISN'T THIS THE ONE YOU JUST RETURNED?!

The last part seems to be a mangled "jyanai ka", but what on earth is the "yatsu/奴" doing in there?

説明せんでいい
YOU DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN

I'm puzzled by the grammar here. I would have expected something like "setsumei shinaide mo ii". The random "-sen" seems like a divorced component of an "arimasen" or something.

白と黒なのが
かわいい
THEY'RE BLACK AND WHITE. THAT'S CUTE

What's up with the "白と黒なの" here? Aren't they -i adjectives?
1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:14 pm

golyplot wrote:これ今
返却した奴
じゃねーか
ISN'T THIS THE ONE YOU JUST RETURNED?!

The last part seems to be a mangled "jyanai ka", but what on earth is the "yatsu/奴" doing in there?
奴 corresponds to "the one". Colloquially 奴 can be used to refer to things and not just people.

golyplot wrote:説明せんでいい
YOU DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN

I'm puzzled by the grammar here. I would have expected something like "setsumei shinaide mo ii". The random "-sen" seems like a divorced component of an "arimasen" or something.
せん is a western Japanese dialectal negative form of する (the similarity to -ません is not coincidental, since most polite forms in Standard Japanese come from western Japanese). The standard form here would be 説明しなくて(も)いい. Certain features of the Osaka dialect are often used in retorts and rebukes like this one, drawing on the tsukkomi tradition of manzai comedy (although the full-on Osaka dialect phrase would be something like 説明せんで(も)ええ).

golyplot wrote:白と黒なのが
かわいい
THEY'RE BLACK AND WHITE. THAT'S CUTE

What's up with the "白と黒なの" here? Aren't they -i adjectives?

When the adjectival ending is removed they become nouns (think of the English "reds and greens").
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:33 pm

As usual, thanks for the explanations!

vonPeterhof wrote:
golyplot wrote:これ今
When the adjectival ending is removed they become nouns (think of the English "reds and greens").


Thinking of it as "blacks and whites" makes no sense since it's talking about things that are black and white. I guess maybe it's one of those things you just can't understand in terms of English.



In other news, since I started pausing Saiki K. to read the (untranslated) Japanese captions that frequently appears onscreen, I've discovered there's a lot of jokes hidden there that are completely lost on the Anglophone viewer. I really wonder why they didn't bother trying to subtitle them. Maybe they just don't appear on screen long enough? But it's common to have multiple subtitles on screen at once on such occasions, even if the viewer would probably have to pause to read them in time.

I was really proud that I managed to understand this one ("spends an hour every day doing makeup") without looking anything up. Of course, I hadn't seen the word メイク before, but it was obvious from context.

Image


I also discovered that the captions will often do a thing where they put in furigana completely unrelated to the reading. For example, "mai nichi baka" being furigana'd as "evuridei fu-ru". I'd heard that writers will occasionally do stuff like that, but I'd never seen it in action before. But it appears that Saiki K does it pretty frequently. In fact, I spotted two instances in just one episode.

Image


Here, "cigarette butts" is furigana'd as "diamonds" to reflect the character claims that they are (metaphorically) diamonds due to the disproportionate number of points they are worth in the contest.

Image


Incidentally, that wasn't the only joke that is lost on English speakers. For example, the winner of the previous trash pickup contest is named Gomi. On the other hand, the same segment also involves discovery of a tsuchinoko corpse, something I'd never heard of before and had to look up.



In other news, I spent a massive amount of time (1.65+ hours) on Wanikani yesterday and finally made a slight dent in my giant review pile. As usual, you can follow along here if you care about my ongoing quest to conquer an absolutely massive review backlog on Wanikani.
0 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:04 pm

golyplot wrote:Thinking of it as "blacks and whites" makes no sense since it's talking about things that are black and white. I guess maybe it's one of those things you just can't understand in terms of English.

Oh I meant it in a more general sense of the possibility of using the names of colors as grammatical nouns instead of adjectives. It's pretty common when the word for the color isn't appended directly to the noun, but the form with the suffix can also be used.
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:26 am

I doubt anyone here cares about my quixotic Wanikani quest, but I'll crosspost this here anyway since it's worth celebrating.

What does the scouter say about his review level?

It’s under five thousand!!!

Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time on Wanikani reviews today, just like yesterday. Yesterday I ended at 5076 with 131 reviews due today, so I had an uphill climb, but I was determined to try to get my review count under 5000 anyway, and in the end I just barely managed it.

(The fact it ended up at 4999 was pure luck - I wasn’t trying to count the reviews while doing them or anything, though I did plan to keep doing more review sessions until it went below 5000 or I gave up).

I also did an epic ~35 minute Bishbashonce session to do additional review of recently missed items, but I don’t count that since it wasn’t on Wanikani and doesn’t contribute to lowering the review pile. It was more just to try to refresh my memory of recent leeches. I don’t think it’s actually very useful though.

Anyway, I expect the review count to go up again a lot over the next couple days, because as it is now, I have to do an insane amount of reviews just to stay in place (there are 137 reviews coming in tomorrow) and I don’t have much time to spend on it on the weekdays, plus there’s a lot less motivation when I’m not trying to reach a new milestone.

Sun Jul 11 2021:
Time spent: 96m
Reviews completed: 266
Reviews remaining: 4999
Accuracy: 71.80% (191/266)
Accuracy on resurrected items: 86.36% (114/132)
Accuracy on non-resurrected items: 57.46% (77/134)

Current item counts:
Apprentice: 3017
Guru: 872
Master: 398
Enlightened: 1873
Burned 847



As a bonus, some more Yotsubato:


うーん お姉ちゃん
これ見てないけど
たぶん面白いよ

I find it really bizarre that the shopkeeper refers to herself as お姉ちゃん in the first person. Is that something people actually do?

いや おまえは
カサをしっかり
持って

I was under the impression that "omae" is very rude. Why is to-chan using it towards Yotsuba when he's not even angry?
3 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:22 am

golyplot wrote:I find it really bizarre that the shopkeeper refers to herself as お姉ちゃん in the first person. Is that something people actually do?

Yeah, since the line between nouns and personal pronouns in Japanese is a bit blurry this is something that can be done without coming across as talking about yourself in the third person. Admittedly it's not quite as common in real life as it is in certain kinds of fiction, but the situation shown here of an adult talking to a child is about the most realistic situation for this to occur.

golyplot wrote:I was under the impression that "omae" is very rude. Why is to-chan using it towards Yotsuba when he's not even angry?

てめえ is the one that's pretty much universally rude. お前 is just highly familiar, so it's perceived as very rude when used towards people outside of very close relationships.
2 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:52 am

On to the next episode of Saiki K. I was puzzled by the writing here. Yumehara is the name of a character, but I can't figure out what the ka part means. Does anyone know?

Image
0 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:07 am

golyplot wrote:On to the next episode of Saiki K. I was puzzled by the writing here. Yumehara is the name of a character, but I can't figure out what the ka part means. Does anyone know?

化 often works like the suffixes "-(i)fication" or "-ization", i.e. the process of becoming something or like something, or the result of such a process.
4 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Thu Jul 22, 2021 4:49 am

I've mostly been focused on other stuff lately, so my Japanese has just continued on autopilot with Wanikani and podcasts. However, I'm tracking my Wanikani progress over on the Wanikani forums, and there's not much to say about podcasts, so there hasn't been much to talk about lately. I did finish Noriko and start 4989 American Life again yesterday, but I doubt anyone cares about that.
0 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Jul 23, 2021 4:33 am

Tonight, I watched Aggretsuko s2e1 (with subs as usual), the episode where Retsuko's incredibly overbearing mother who keeps insisting she know's best moves in. It made me decide to look up "Mother Knows Best" in Japanese afterwards. I had trouble understanding the song though.

1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 2 guests