Learning Japanese From Zero

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bolaobo
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby bolaobo » Mon May 09, 2022 2:53 pm

golyplot wrote:這い這いが出来るようになり、行動範囲も広がったことにより目が見えないことで、危険なことが増えるために誰かが必ず付いているという状態だ。

Why is there a なり here? What kind of grammar is that? I tried to look it up, but the only results that came up were for ようになる instead


Isn't this just the conjunctive form of なる? See this post.

https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/56958
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Aozora
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby Aozora » Mon May 09, 2022 3:14 pm

I found this one notable because I only knew of 貯 as cyo/takuwa. I had no idea it also had that ta- reading.


In my opinion, it's better not to think of these as readings "takuwa" "ta," but instead as words たくわえる ためる ちょきん
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed May 11, 2022 5:33 am

JPDB:
My overdue review pile on jpdb.io climbed over 150 today (I've currently got it down to "only" 132). Prior to the update Saturday night, I was clearing out my reviews every morning and evening, but now with the huge wall, it's incredibly demotivating, so I just do a few reviews and the pile keeps growing and growing.

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花と種を取り扱っています。
We sell flowers and seeds.

WK taught 扱う as "to handle", so I was surprised to learn that it also means "to deal in; to sell" among other things.

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Glass Mask ep16: The story briefly cuts back to Yokohama for the first time in like 11 episodes in order to show Maya's mom, who is now coughing up blood like a Victorian era tuberculosis victim. Which is of course rather strange to see in a show set in ~2005 Japan. Is there any way that could plausibly happen in modern Japan, or is it just artistic license?

Also, the narration says that Maya recently turned 15, another vague indication of the passage of time. It occurred to me that the first episode is set on New Year's Eve, so if we knew when her birthday is, we could know how much time has passed since the start of the show.

Anyway, I thought this might have been the episode I started with when I tried watching Glass Mask back in my youth, but it didn't seem familiar at all, so I guess I've forgotten it well enough that it is like watching it for the first time. The selfish boy near the end did seem vaguely familiar, and I definitely remember Wuthering Heights, so this probably is where I started. This time around, I'll have a lot more context for what happens next in the show. I do recall some of the broad plot details from before - the Helen Keller arc, Maya briefly becoming a movie star, then getting isolated from her friends and sabotaged, her mother dying, them putting on a free play in the park, Tsukikage having her pantomime riding a bus and train, etc.

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遠くからクミコの母ちゃんの、「クミコ、クッキーは一つ以上食べちゃだめよ~」という声が聞こえてきた。

Sometimes SR will have a note saying "you may be confused by..." that didn't confuse me because I never learned the rule in question in the first place. In this case, SR has a lengthy note about the use of 以上.

Apparently, when it follows a number, 以上 includes the number (i.e. X以上 is "X or more"). However, sometimes people fudge that when it is clear from context, so this sentence means "you can't eat more than one cookie" like it seems from context (as "you can't eat one or more cookies" makes no sense since you'd just say that you can't eat cookies at all in that case).

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kelvin921019
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby kelvin921019 » Wed May 11, 2022 6:21 am

Hope you don't mind I try to give my comments on your previous few posts in one go. I

golyplot wrote:
花と種を取り扱っています。
We sell flowers and seeds.

WK taught 扱う as "to handle", so I was surprised to learn that it also means "to deal in; to sell" among other things.



This is a compound verb - 取り扱う (to deal with / to handle - or alternatively to deal in) If you want to look up the meaning be sure to look up the entire verb since verb meaning can differ significantly in compound verb.

golyplot wrote:
自分の容姿を見る手段がないため、自分で触って確認するくらいだろうか。

I was confused by ため here, because I thought of it as just being "sake" or "purpose" but here it seems to be listing a reason instead.



golyplot wrote:
I was also thrown by the use of ために here, since I usually think of it AためにB as meaning "B in order to A". However, it can apparently mean "B because of A" as well. It's confusing that it has two basically opposite meanings, and it doesn't help that learning resources and examples all seem to focus on the first meaning.



ため and ために means "a reason" or "a reason driving you to do something" so it's more of a translation issue. "because of", "in order to" or "because of" is more of a contextual translation.


golyplot wrote:這い這いが出来るようになり、行動範囲も広がったことにより目が見えないことで、危険なことが増えるために誰かが必ず付いているという状態だ。

Why is there a なり here? What kind of grammar is that? I tried to look it up, but the only results that came up were for ようになる instead.


This is exactly the situation for "ようになる" (become able to do xxxx, which is a very clumsy translation I can think of. You can check the explanation below)
https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8B-you-ni-naru-meaning/

golyplot wrote:
君はこの作文を明日の正午までには書いてしまっているだろう。
You'll have this composition written by noon tomorrow, won't you?

I was surprised by the use of しまって here, since it usually indicates that something happened regrettably. I guess this is one of the non-regrettable uses.


~てしまう also has a "do an action completely" sense
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed May 11, 2022 3:54 pm

kelvin921019 wrote:Hope you don't mind I try to give my comments on your previous few posts in one go.


No problem. Thanks for taking the time to comment!

kelvin921019 wrote:This is a compound verb - 取り扱う (to deal with / to handle - or alternatively to deal in) If you want to look up the meaning be sure to look up the entire verb since verb meaning can differ significantly in compound verb.


I actually suspected as much and did look it up as one word. However, Jisho also lists 扱う by itself as "to sell" as well.

kelvin921019 wrote:This is exactly the situation for "ようになる"


The part that confused me was why it was nari rather than naru.

kelvin921019 wrote:~てしまう also has a "do an action completely" sense


I know it has different meanings, it's just really jarring when they come up, since it usually means "happened regrettably" and thus that's what comes to mind when I see it.
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bolaobo
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby bolaobo » Wed May 11, 2022 6:24 pm

I've never actually seen しまう described as "happened regrettably" before, although now that you mention it, it does seem to often have that meaning. My grammar reference gives its primary meaning as "indicates completion of an action" but also recognizes that it sometimes expresses regret.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu May 12, 2022 5:26 am

月曜日になり、いよいよ期末試験の週がやってきた。

Here's another example of naru turning into なり for some reason, courtesy of SR. The explanation for it when clicked just says "Verb or adjective stem", with no explanation of the grammar form in question.

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You might have learned that the word sayounara has a long you in it. That is correct! Originally, the expression was sayou nara. Sayou means the same thing as sou, so this expression literally means "If it is so...(then I will be leaving)."
Sometimes you hear sayou in other extremely formal speech. For example:

左様でございますか。(=そうですか。)
Is it so?

So sayou nara is certainly the original form of this word. However, just as the English greeting "How do you do?" evolved to just "Howdy," the longer sayou nara has evolved to just sayonara. The longer form is certainly still acceptable, but sayonara is now a completely acceptable equivalent and in fact the standard version of the word in certain expressions.


I had no idea that "howdy" was derived from a contraction of "how do you do?" It's interesting when you're learning more about English than Japanese!

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それでも涙は一向に止まってくれなかった。

I found the use of てくれ interesting here, since it is treating the tears as an independent actor, saying they didn't stop "for me". It kind of makes sense, but it's just not a way of looking at things that would ever occur to an English speaker.


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Glass Mask ep17: Up until now, Maya was always shown with blank white eyes in the sequences where she is metaphorically putting on a mask. However, in this episode, she is instead shown with blank blue eyes for some reason. I wonder why.

This episode also marks Hayami explicitly making comments implying he is in love with Maya for the first time. It's pretty creepy, given that she's 15 and he's a grown man. Of course, he's been creepily obsessed with her for the whole show, but up until now, one *could* have just dismissed it as his being a fan of hers rather than romantic attraction.

Image
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genini1
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby genini1 » Thu May 12, 2022 11:03 am

golyplot wrote:月曜日になり、いよいよ期末試験の週がやってきた。

Here's another example of naru turning into なり for some reason, courtesy of SR. The explanation for it when clicked just says "Verb or adjective stem", with no explanation of the grammar form in question.



It's the masu stem form which has a few different grammatical functions depending on where it is in the sentence, but here it is acting as a conjunction similar to the -te form. It's saying the things happened either together or in sequence depending on the context. It became Monday 'and then' it was my final exam week.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu May 12, 2022 6:09 pm

I fixed up the table of links to the monthly status updates in the first post of my log today. A while ago, former poster ロータス left the forums and the admins deleted all their posts for unknown reasons.

As ロータス was a frequent commenter on Japanese logs back in the day, my own included, this leaves the early log rather strange, as you can see all my replies to ロータス posts, but not the posts themselves, except when people quoted them.

However, what I didn't realize until recently is that this had a side effect of breaking all the links to my milestone status updates, since the vanishing of ロータス meant all the posts were two pages earlier in the thread than before. I fixed the links to the three, four, and six month updates. The seven month update link was still fine, which implies that ロータス vanished sometime between the 6th and 7th months, i.e. sometime in July 2020.


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Some interesting notes on Satori Reader today about uwabaki and randoseru:

Regarding the pronunciation uwa rather than the expected ue, there is a tendency for words that end in an -e sound to become an -a when combined with other words in kun-kun combinations (that is, combinations of native Japanese words, not Chinese roots). Another example is mune, "chest," which combines with ke to become muna-ge, "chest hair."


I'd encountered 上着 and similar oddities before, but I always thought they were just random anomalies you just have to memorize. I never realized it was related to kunyomi compounds.

P.S. It's probably not related, but I wonder why 浮気 is uwaki instead of just uki like you'd expect from every other 浮 word. That one probably just is a random anomaly.

A randoseru is a backpack with sturdy leather or artificial leather sides. It's quite unlike a canvas backpack. In fact, it looks almost like a briefcase that you carry on your back. The word comes from the Dutch ransel, and today, randoseru are used exclusively by elementary school students, so the word conjures up images of lines of small children walking to school with matching backpacks.


I'd noticed those backpacks occasionally in anime (Cardcaptor Sakura and Kotaro Lives Alone, probably), but I never picked up on the fact that it was a thing specifically for young children in Japan. I guess I need to pay more attention to what backpacks people are using. I wonder why they use that kind of backpack, and why specifically only elementary schoolers.

It's also interesting because I could have sworn that I've seen that kind of backpack in European shows as well, though I can't think of any specific examples. I did a quick check of one German kids' show, but the closest I found was a boy who was carrying a leather briefcase-like pack, but by his side, rather than on the back (and there was also a girl with a normal canvas backpack).

Incidentally, it seems like it would be pretty uncomfortable to carry a briefcase by your side with no straps like that. And the carrying capacity would be lower too....

Image

Anyway, I looked up "backpack" on (English) Wikipedia, which only covered the normal kind, but it took me to the "satchel" article, which did show this kind of backpack. In fact, the article has a photo of kids in Germany with satchel-backpacks, so I guess I was right about them being in use in Europe after all. The article also mentions that they are used in Japan as well.

Image

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それに、私が学校の廊下を歩くと、知らない子たちが、私を指して、『お前の髪は真っ赤っか。お前の母ちゃん、で~べそ。お前の父ちゃんは外国人だ!』なんて言うの。

Hole in the Wall ch3 had a note talking about the 廊下 of traditional Japanese houses, which apparently have a corridor along the edge of the building with doors on one side and windows on the other, rather than the modern Western conception of a "corridor" as an interior hall with doors on both sides. I guess this sentence is confirmation that 廊下 also applies to the modern sense of corridor, since the schools are presumably not designed like traditional Japanese houses.
Last edited by golyplot on Fri May 13, 2022 1:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri May 13, 2022 5:30 am

(crossposting from my Wanikani log)

Scaling the review mountain part 4 - half done is well begun

Last year, I raced through Wanikani as fast as possible, reaching level 60, and then stopped after a year. However, I later realized that I had forgotten pretty much everything, so I resubscribed and attempted to start whittling down the pile of thousands of reviews I had accumulated.

I started this challenge on May 12th, 2021. In honor of the anniversary, I decided to start another thread, the fourth in all.

One Year Older and Wiser
When I started, way back in May, I had 6218 reviews to get through. I naively thought that I’d mostly remember everything and that I could get through all that in just a few weeks. Boy was I in for a rude surprise.

Instead, I could barely remember anything, and doing reviews was like getting slapped in the face over and over and over. In fact, no matter how hard I tried and how long I spent doing reviews, my review count actually kept going up over time, peaking at 6618 before I finally gave in and reset my level. I initially reset my level from 60 to 48, which helped a lot, but still not enough. I ended up resetting again to 47, and finally to level 46.

Even after resetting, I spent months with little visible progress. However, I’ve been making much more rapid progress over the last few months. Here’s a graph of my review count over the last ~310 days:

Image
As you can see, my review count was essentially flat for many months after I started and only started to go down very slowly. However, for the last few months, it has been going down much more rapidly. Partway through, I started tracking the number of reviews due in 7 and 30 days (the red and yellow lines above), and those have also started to decline significantly.

A look at the number of items I had in each SRS level over time also reveals a similar pattern. Below is a graph of my Apprentice, Guru, Master, Enlightened, and Burned counts over time.

Image
First, you can see my resets at the left of the graph. (The review count graph above only starts after I reset to 46 in order to avoid skewing the graph, but this graph includes the entire year.)

Even after resetting, my Apprentice count continued going up for a while, peaking at 3107. Even after it peaked, it declined only very slowly for months.

The horizontal axis of the graph is days since I started, so the six month mark would be around day 180, a little to the left of the 200 line marked on the graph.

However, if you look to the right of the graph, you’ll see that things have been going down much more rapidly of late. Part of that is that I slowly got more familiar words over time, as I kept reviewing and failing them until I started to remember them sometimes. The other part is that items that started at Apprentice 1 (which is most of them) had to be reviewed and passed four times before they could graduate to Guru, so there was a lot of invisible movement at first.

Here is the same graph with the burns on bottom:

Image
This graph also shows another interesting pattern. When I started this challenge a year ago, I had 3120 items already still at Enlightened from when I was doing WK back in 2020. Since it had been so long, I didn’t remember most of them, but I did get some right and managed to guess some.

Over the first several months, I very slowly whittled down the pre-existing Englightened pile. A fraction were burned, the majority, I failed and sent back to Guru (and then to Apprentice). Pass or fail, I gradually worked my way through them, so the blue area narrows significantly.

However, around the eight month mark, you can see that the blue area starts to widen again. That’s when all my successful reviews had accumulated enough to start kicking new items up to Enlightened (and eventually Burned). Since these ones are by definition items I already passed several times, my accuracy rate is now much higher, and I’m finally starting to burn items in significant numbers.

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I reached half of my peak (post-reset) review count today, hence the title “half done is well begun”.

Thu May 12 2022:
Time spent: 25m
Reviews completed: 135
Reviews remaining: 2667
Reviews in next week: 3160 (+493)
Reviews in next month: 3985 (+825)
Accuracy: 88.15% (119/135)

Current item counts:
Apprentice: 1292
Guru: 1424
Master: 958
Enlightened: 1234
Burned: 2244
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