Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

イメージ comes from the English "image", but it often means something like "depiction" or "visualization" and used as a disclaimer that a visual aid isn't necessarily an accurate representation of reality. In this case it probably means that the curve shown below is just visualizing negative EBITDA and that its shape should not be taken as an exact mirror of the actual situation.

Interesting. I thought it might be ime-ji but that didn't make any sense to me, especially because with the placement, I assumed it was supposed to be a translation of EBITDA.

[golyplot]

Tonight I was watching Saiki K with English subtitles again and came across another example of name readings that have nothing to do with the kanji. Apparently it's meant to be a pun on "marine".

[golyplot]

Tonight, I watched Love Chunibyo ep3 (with English subtitles). Near the beginning, Yuta's friend talks about joining the Light Music Club in order to meet girls, which made me wonder if that was meant to be a reference to K-On! or not. Also, it's interesting that they required five people to start a club in this series but they only required four in K-On! I guess that kind of thing depends on the school (although in this case, the teacher ended up letting them form a club with only four people anyway, so I guess it wasn't a hard requirement).

Also, seeing the club name written out made me realize that 魔術 (majyutsu) bears a striking resemblance to the English word "magic". I wonder if that's coincidence or not.

[golyplot]

Time to finally do a bit of Yotsubato!

白鳥座
こと座…
THE SWAN, THE LYRA...

I find it really interesting that 座 is apparently used to refer to constellations, since it seems so random. I was taught that it means "sit". In fact, "constellation" doesn't show up at all on the entire first page of results on Jisho.


ざがいっぱい
あるな
ざ？
星座だよ

It looks like Yotsuba learns a new word too. I guess it was just short for 星座.


なんで正座
してんだ？

And here we have a pun that will make no sense in English. Apparently, Yotsuba misunderstood 星座 as 正座. The English translation doesn't even bother trying to explain the joke here.


天の川が
おもしろい

I managed to guess that it meant "Milky Way" here from 川 (river) + the context. I guess it makes sense that different languages would have different terms. Although I am surprised that 天 uses a completely different reading here from the ones I learned. Jisho lists "ama" for sky as an "archaism".

[golyplot]

1.5 Year Update

As usual, motivation ebbs and wanes, even as my progress continues, however imperceptibly. A month or two ago, I was very excited by my progress, but recently I've been struggling with lack of motivation again.

Anyway, my main activity has been podcasts, as it's been for most of the year. I listen to Japanese podcasts in the background whenever I can (cooking, eating, going for walks, etc.) I'm rarely focused on it or paying much attention, but I figure it still helps. Last month, I tried estimating the time spent listening to podcasts, and I got an estimate of over two and a half hours on average per day which was much higher than I expected.

Apart from that, I resubscribed to Wanikani and have been doing that again to try to refresh my memory of all the words and kanji I learned last year then forgot. You can follow my WK progress here, but the gist is that I've been spending over half an hour per day most days doing WK reviews as well. Unfortunately, I'm still just trying to whittle down the review backlog there.

Also, a few months ago, I started going to a weekly Japanese practice chat. I can still barely speak Japanese, but I figure it's better than nothing. After all, the only way to get better at speaking is to ultimately try actually speaking it. However, I'm usually not brave and/or skilled enough to actually try saying anything.

As for anime, it's a bit ironic, but a few weeks ago I gave up and switched to mostly watching anime with English subtitles. It's ironic that I'd start watching anime with subtitles now, when my Japanese skills are theoretically better than ever. But I got frustrated with watching Japanese without subtitles in hopes of improving my skills and realized I was still missing most of it anyway. Plus knowing what they're actually saying can help me occasionally catch words I wouldn't recognize otherwise.

JLPT

Since I just reached the 1.5 year mark, I decided to take the same JLPT 4 practice test I took six months ago to see how much I've improved (or gotten worse).

When I took this test at the one year mark, my scores were

Vocabulary: 28/34
Reading and Grammar: 17/35
* Grammar: 11/25
* Reading: 6/10
Listening: 22/28
* Task-based comprehension: 7/8
* Point-based comprehension: 7/7
* Utterance expressions: 3/5
* Quick response: 5/8

Today, my scores were

Vocabulary: 27/34
Reading and Grammar: 22/35
* Grammar: 16/25
* Reading: 6/10
Listening: 22/28
* Task-based comprehension: 6/8
* Point-based comprehension: 7/7
* Utterance expressions: 3/5
* Quick response: 6/8


Overall, my scores were remarkably similar to six months ago, which was pretty disappointing. I scored 1 less on Vocab and 5 more on Grammar. I guess that's still a big improvement since grammar is easily my weakest section on these tests (even today, taking the grammar/reading section was basically torture). Listening was a wash with me scoring 1 more on Quick Response and 1 less on Task-based Comprehension.

One thing I'm puzzled by is how remarkably stable the scores are. For example, it appears that I got the exact same questions right and wrong on the reading section both times. I'm not sure why. Likewise, I don't have my original answers, but I strongly suspect that I got the exact same questions right and wrong under Utterance Expressions as well. I suppose it makes sense, if the same question tricked me the same way both times, but it's disappointing to see that I didn't progress on anything except grammar.

Anime
Instead of providing a list of the anime I watched recently, I decided to instead rate all the anime I've watched in the last year and a half in case anyone is looking for recommendations:

Liked:
K-On!
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
Bofuri
Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun
Drifting Dragons
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

Neutral:
Violet Evergarden
Aggretsuko
Hunter x Hunter
Love, Chunnibyou and Other Delusions
Toradora

Disliked:
Cardcaptor Sakura
Cannon Busters
BNA: Brand New Animal
Sword Art Online
One Piece
Beastars
Teasing Master Tagisan

Hated:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
One Punch Man

[golyplot]

Yesterday, I finished listening to Momoko's podcast and started Noriko again. Not that it matters much.

Anyway, tonight I watched an episode of Saiki K (w/subs), but this time I paused to try to read some of the writing. Unfortunately, most of the writing is left untranslated by the subs.

At one point, a note was showing saying "故障により暖房は使えませ", which as far as I can tell means "Due to a breakdown, the heating system is not usable." However, I was pretty confused by the yori part, because the only time I'd learned about it before was as part of the yori/no hou ga comparative pattern, which was obviously not the case here. Apparently, ni yori is a variation on the advanced grammar pattern ni yotte meaning "because of".

Also, the class sign showed at the end of the episode used a weird kanji I didn't recognize and couldn't find online. I assume it's some sort of pun on "psychic" since normally you'd just use the number 3, but I can't find anything about it.

[dampingwire]

My random guess is that it isn't a kanji at all. I remember my "intro to kanji" book went through the usual "日 is derived from the sun and 川 is a stylised drawing of a river" and so on. Well one of the stages of 川 (or sometimes 巛) is pretty much that scribble.

As I say, just a complete guess ... I've never watched that series (although perhaps I should ...)

[devilyoudont]

Some googling revealed it is from Zener cards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards

[golyplot]

雨だしな
もう夏も終わって
きたかもなー
MAYBE SUMMER WILL END ANY TIME NOW

As with most things Yotsubato, I don't quite understand the grammar here, even after looking things up. As far as I can tell, the dashina part means something like "because it is raining". But why 終わってきた? "End and come" doesn't make much sense.

今からか？
クラゲいるぞ

I looked it up on Jisho, and apparently, クラゲ is written 海月. That's got to be one of the weirdest Kanji readings I've seen. I guess the meanings make sense (water moon -> jellyfish since they look kind of moon-like), but the readings make no sense. Jisho says it's normally written with kana only, which makes sense. I guess it's one of those archaic kanji spellings.


おい よつば
おまえ結構
濡れてんなぁ

I've asked about this a lot before, but I still can't get over the tendency to randomly replace everything with んs. I've heard that it is used to replace r- sounds. Is this some sort of double contraction where it goes te-iru -> te-ru -> te-n?


イルカのビデオ
おもしろかった

And here we have yet another of those weird sea-creature kanji names that are usually written with kana alone, per Jisho. Apparently, dolphins are "sea-pigs" going by the kanji (海豚).

[genini1]

Shina is kind of complicated and basically means b because of a so in this scenario its raining so summer is almost over. The tekita is basically stating that a change will occur.