Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Mar 09, 2021 5:13 am

On to Yotsubato! ch 6:

when talking about the hot weather

クーラーしないのか?

Before flipping the translation on, I guessed this meant "You don't know about air conditioners?", but it actually means "You're not using the air conditioner?" Apparently, "to know" is shiru in the infinitive, but turns into shiranai in the negative, while shinai is actually the negative form of suru. Why does Japanese conjugation have to be so confusing? And that's a godan verb, the easy kind. To be fair, I should have realized, since shiru is usually used in the -teiru form anyway.

ちきゅう…ほんはんばー

This is translated as "global... warming", but I was rather confused, since the Japanese term for global warming is read ちきゅうおんだんか, which bears little resemblance to what Yotsuba says here. My assumption is that she just couldn't remember it correctly, but usually when she makes a Japanese mistake, the translators reflect that in the English. I guess they didn't bother this time.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Mar 09, 2021 5:37 pm

golyplot wrote:Apparently, "to know" is shiru in the infinitive, but turns into shiranai in the negative, while shinai is actually the negative form of suru. Why does Japanese conjugation have to be so confusing? And that's a godan verb, the easy kind. To be fair, I should have realized, since shiru is usually used in the -teiru form anyway.


Well, to be... fairer?, the situation with the relative frequencies of the basic non-past form and the -teiru form is pretty much reversed in the negative, so you are indeed more likely to come across しらない than しっていない. 知る is an unusual kind of verb whose conjugations are fairly regular but the way they're used is anything but. Not really sure if the reasons for this are grammatical or purely semantic.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:35 am

Last night, I finished my eighth go through Noriko's podcast and started catching up on the Teppei and Noriko podcast, and wow, I'd forgotten just how much I loathe the omnipresent "two people chatting" podcast format. I'd been planning to go through the whole podcast for the third time, but even just the several hours I listened to today were extremely frustrating.

Podcasts where the speaker talks to the listener like Noriko's are much easier to understand than podcasts of people talking to each other rather than the listener. In the former case, you have someone actually making an effort to be understood and speaking about a consistent topic, adding clarifications, etc. But when it's just people chatting, they give no affordances to the audience and often mumble or trail off in the middle of a thought.

But what makes it really frustrating is how ubiquitous it is. Even Noriko's original podcast spends more time chatting with "special guests" nowadays than it does on normal episodes. Presumably, it's a lot easier to produce content where you just record people talking, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.


Anyway, apart from that, I watched the last two episodes of Hilda tonight, the later of which is inexplicably twice as long as a normal episode. When Hilda is yelling at her mother at the beginning, I noticed her say "zaitaku", which made me think of "zaitakukinmu" (remote work), a word I learned from Noriko's COVID era podcasts. In this case, Hilda's complaining that her mother just stays by herself at home all day, going by the English version.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:01 pm

Onward with Yotsubato!

わからん

I assume this is a contraction of wakaranai. Doesn't stop it from being confusing though.

虫とりアミやカゴは?

Neither Jisho nor ichi.moe managed to figure out that アミ actually means "net" here. Presumably they got confused because it is inexplicably written in katakana here. Why is that, anyway?

なんとかしろ!

Here Yotsuba uses the rude command form towards an adult, and this time she's not just mimicking her father either. Jumbo responds with こいつ口のきき方を知らん ("This girl doesn't know how to speak to adults"). Incidentally, this looks like another case of the -ranai -> ran contraction at the end.

いいかよつば俺はセミを捕らせたらプロ級だぜ

ichi.moe told me that Jumbo's using the conditional causative form here, but I can't figure out why. It's not like people were making him catch bugs, right?

よおしついてこい!

Here's another case of the command form (from Jumbo), though I didn't figure it out until looking it up, mainly because it uses a third ending. Why does a single verb form have to use three different vowels? Gaaaaah!


Anyway, this chapter is about a cicada hunt. It reminds me of playing Pokemon as a kid, where Bug Catcher is a common trainer type and the second game features a bug catching contest. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it is interesting, since it's not common in the US. I haven't played Animal Crossing, but I've heard that those games involve lots of bug catching too. Apparently, it's a common pastime for Japanese children. It's interesting to see cultural differences like that.


Also, this morning, I abandoned Teppei and Noriko's podcast and started listening to Noriko's podcast again for reasons I mentioned in my last post.
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Sizen
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby Sizen » Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:33 pm

golyplot wrote:Onward with Yotsubato!

わからん

I assume this is a contraction of wakaranai. Doesn't stop it from being confusing though.

Technically, I believe the ん negative form comes from a contraction of わからぬ which used to be the negative attributive form (used to let a verb modify nouns among other uses). This is actually the same thing that happens in the polite negative form ~ません, which historically is the honorific auxiliary verb ます conjugated to the imperfective form ませ so that same negative ぬ, which could be contracted to ん, could be attached: positive ます -> negative ませぬ (ません). This probably looks pretty weird, but Japanese conjugation used to be quite a bit weirder than it is now with more classes of verbs and different vowel changes. You can still see the す -> せ change in many western dialects, like Kansai, where する can have negative forms like せん, せな, せんで, etc. You can also see this す->せ change and another conjugated form of the negative ぬ(ん) in very rigid speech where people might say せねば for しなければ. Basically, the take away is that most verb forms that end in ん, or even contain an 'n' sound, will be negative 99% of the time in Modern Japanese. (There are some cases where ん is a contraction of an old auxiliary verb む, which has a different meaning, but this is pretty rare in modern Japanese and not something that you'll likely come across much at this point, but it does show up in the Star Wars quote, "May the force be with you": フォースと共にあらことを)

golyplot wrote:いいかよつば俺はセミを捕らせたらプロ級だぜ

ichi.moe told me that Jumbo's using the conditional causative form here, but I can't figure out why. It's not like people were making him catch bugs, right?

This is just one way of making a judgement of someone's skill. If you put the verb in the causative conditional and then follow it with some sort of word that denotes someone's ability (歌わせればうまい, 文章を書かせたら下手), it's equivalent to saying something like "I'm a pro/very bad when it comes to X." It's kind of like a hypothetical in Japanese, though: "If you were to make me do X, I would be a pro at it (because I am)".
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Sizen
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby Sizen » Thu Mar 11, 2021 6:43 am

Sorry for the double post, but...

Sizen wrote:Basically, the take away is that most verb forms that end in ん, or even contain an 'n' sound, will be negative 99% of the time in Modern Japanese.

Man, I don't know what I was smoking when I said this earlier today. ん isn't this consistently the negative. Not only was ~ているの becoming ~てんの already mentioned in this thread, but a whole slew of ら行 characters (i.e. starting with /r/) can also become ん. In many cases, this happens when the verb is conjugated to the negative form, so there's no worries. For example:

ら -> ん
わかない -> わかない
なきゃ - > 登なきゃ

れ -> ん
ない -> くない
逃げらない -> 逃げらない

る -> ん
な -> 来
ふざけな -> ふざけ

り -> ん
ない -> 足ない (This might be the only one... I don't know...)

However, this can also happen with positive a meaning:

り -> ん
なさい -> 謝なさい
な -> 入

る -> ん
ぞ -> あ
の -> す


The problem is that it might not always be clear in isolation if this ん is positive or negative for ichidan (ru-verbs?) verbs. A question like "食べんの?" might be "食べるの?" or "食べないの?" depending on who you ask (I think this boils down to ん being more often the negative in western Japan, but this usage has been spreading into Tokyo Japanese creating confusion). Context (and intonation) can help, though: あんま食べんな is clearly the negative because of the presence of あんま (it is, however, unclear in writing whether it means あんま食べるな or あんま食べないな). Also, a verb ending in ん followed by nothing else, like 行かん, is very likely negative (unless it's the contracted む I mentioned in my last post, e.g. いざ行かん "let's go", but like I said, this is extremely rare). However, a lot of dialects have different forms for the negative that include ん and which can make it more obvious that it is the negative: 行けへん, できひん, 食べやん, etc.

The good news is that godan verbs, like 分かる, are pretty easy to distinguish since the positive and negative forms using ん diverge: positive 分かん(の) vs. negative 分からん. That helpful negative あ段 character (i.e. ending in /a/) will always be there in the negative: 走ん、読ん、泳ん. A verb with /-an-/ in it is pretty much guaranteed to be negative: 買わんかった.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wanted to show you that Japanese isn't always dumb and that it can sometimes be pretty clear-cut, but then I remembered it's actually a mess. ^^;

PS:
The ら行 to ん change happens with words other than verbs, too.

負けないかな -> 負けないか
で -> そ
だけ -> こだけ
がとう -> あがとう

PPS:
You don't have to really worry about ろ becoming ん. The only example I can find is いろいろな becoming いろな.

PPPS: Let's just forget about dialectal ~てん for the past form ~た, okay?
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Mar 13, 2021 3:08 pm

Well, I took the plunge.

I found a Japanese practice group that holds a Japanese chat every Friday evening (via Zoom), and I tried going for the first time. I expected it to be a disaster, and it was. I could barely figure out how to say anything and even when I did try to say something, usually noone could understand me. I figured you have to start somewhere, although at the moment it's pretty daunting. I'm not sure how I can even improve to the point of barely passable.

By the way, does anyone have tips for answering yes/no questions? I didn't want to just say "un", because I thought people would misunderstand it, especially given the un/uun thing where yes and no are basically the same word, and I thought "hai" seemed too formal. I tried just repeating the statement in the affirmative, but of course I usually messed that up.
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kelvin921019
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby kelvin921019 » Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:56 pm

golyplot wrote:Well, I took the plunge.

I found a Japanese practice group that holds a Japanese chat every Friday evening (via Zoom), and I tried going for the first time. I expected it to be a disaster, and it was. I could barely figure out how to say anything and even when I did try to say something, usually noone could understand me. I figured you have to start somewhere, although at the moment it's pretty daunting. I'm not sure how I can even improve to the point of barely passable.

By the way, does anyone have tips for answering yes/no questions? I didn't want to just say "un", because I thought people would misunderstand it, especially given the un/uun thing where yes and no are basically the same word, and I thought "hai" seemed too formal. I tried just repeating the statement in the affirmative, but of course I usually messed that up.

I recently also struggled a lot with speaking, hope we can both improve overtime
はい いいえ should be fine and don't bother with the politeness for the time being.
if you want some other interjection you can try そうだね
Have you tried tandem / hellotalk? Usually I try to speak by typing first (i.e. texting), this allows me to slowly form my own sentences without the need to be spontaneous.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:05 am

I've mostly been slacking again, but I did finish ch6 of Yotsuba. I got tired of looking up every line and started only looking up bits that seemed interesting or confusing to save time.

There's one notable scene where the English translation has one character say "Did you catch any Ena?" to which Yotsuba responds. However, it doesn't look like she ever referred to Ena by name in the original Japanese, which makes Yotsuba's misunderstanding much more understandable. I guess this is what you would call a Tranlasion Induced Plot Hole.

Image
Image


Also, I started watching K-On! again for the first time in months. There was one little detail I found interesting - at the party for Mio's fan club, they eat a giant cake which appears to be sponge cake with strawberries and white frosting, i.e. the standard Christmas Cake. I guess it's not just eaten for Christmas. I wonder why that particular type of cake is so popular in Japan.

Image
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:52 am

I forgot to mention one line of interest when I was reading Yotsubato last week.

あー
逃げちゃった…
なんでかなぁ

(AWW, HE FLEW AWAY...I WONDER WHY...)

I remembered that ちゃった is an abbreviation of shimatta (meaning "happened unfortunately") from going through Erin's challenge. However, I wasn't confident about it, so I looked it up in ichi.moe anyway. Much to my surprise, ichi.moe got it wrong, listing the meaning as the lesser used alternate meaning "indicates completion (to finish ...)" instead. Or am I the one wrong here?

Incidentally, I also noticed Noriko say what sounded like "hamachatta" when talking about the show Snowpiercer, presumably meaning that she has unfortunately been addicted to it lately, a combination of ちゃった and はまる (to be addicted).


Last night, I watched the episode "Careers" of K-On!. I noticed another example of rashi = like - after telling an embarrassing anecdote about Yui, the girls say "yuirashi" in the way that an American might say "That sure sounds like Yui all right". Assuming that I interpreted that right anyway.

In the same episode, Yui sings a song that Japanese students apparently use to remember the auxiliary verbs of classical Japanese, although she doesn't remember what any of it means. It's a shame my Japanese isn't good enough to appreciate things like that. Of course it's presumably hard for actual Japanese people too. On the other hand, I can't even understand basic stuff like when Yui sings the first verse of a kids' song about The Tortoise and the Hare at the beginning of the episode. (Incidentally, that episode focuses on the tortoise and hare statues on the school banisters much more prominently than usual.)

Tonight, I watched the episode "Finals". I was amazed that the fan wiki contains a page for the guy who is after them at the talent show, despite him literally just appearing once in a single still shot. I was also amused when Yui read the clothing sale sign in English, since in the last episode, she complained about English along with Ritsu and said that noone really needs it.
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