sirgregory wrote:Let's Learn Japanese looks a bit like French in Action. How much of it did you get through?
Now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time. I don't remember the exact number, but it wasn't many. I gave up on it pretty early on.
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A while back, I wrote derisively about hearing Noriko talk about how wonderful it would be to live in Paris and be able to see the Eiffel Tower from your window. Yesterday, that same episode came up again, and I happened to notice a bit that I didn't catch before, which really changes the context for what comes after.
Apparently, the whole discussion started because she got a message from a follower who lives in Paris who really can see the Eiffel Tower from her apartment. So it wasn't just Noriko being naive about geography. I owe her an apology.
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正確な日付は覚えてないんだ。
I don't remember the exact date.
I found this interesting, since Japanese has two different words for "remember", and it seemed like it was using the wrong one, going by the translation. I was under the impression that 覚える meant "to memorize", and that the act of remembering something is instead 思い出す. So it seems like it really means something more like "I never bothered to learn the exact date in the first place" rather than "I can't recall the exact date".
あなたの病気について知らなかったので、病院へ見舞いにいけなかった。
If I had known about your illness, I could have visited you in the hospital.
I'm not exactly good at Japanese grammar, but it seems to me like it means something more along the lines of "I wasn't able to visit you at the hospital because I didn't know that you were sick". Am I wrong? Why is it translated using the conditional here? Is it just implied by the use of the potential form at the end?
そして、ご飯を両手ですくっておにぎりを作った。
When I tried to read this, I assumed the すくって was a kanafied 救う (to rescue), but apparently, there is another common word with the same reading that I hadn't heard of - すくう (to scoop). Why do there have to be so many homonyms, even for the kunyomi verbs?
しょっぱーい!
It's interesting how the words for "salty" and "sour" (酸っぱい) are so similar. I wonder if there's a common connection. It also seems superficially similar to the -poi construction, so I wonder if that's related as well.
よし、この量だったら、くわえて走れるぞ。
Speaking of unknown verb homonyms, here's another. At first I thought the くわえて was 加える (to add), but apparently it is a different word meaning "to hold in one's mouth".
Apparently, that's not even my first encounter with kuwaeru. I wonder how many times it will take to remember. I remember that while listening to Noriko, it took me quite a few iterations of hearing "kasanegi" and looking it up afterwards each time I came to that episode before I actually started remembering it.
神様どんだけひどい人なんだよ
Don't think I've seen the どん honorific before.
トムは日中辞典を買った。
Tom bought a Japanese-Chinese dictionary.
I previously learned 日中 as "during the day", so I was shocked by the translation here, though it does make sense from the kanji (and I've learned some similar compounds from WK before, e.g. 日韓).
Here's an interesting note from SR. Despite covering both of them on WK, I never actually noticed there were multiple kanji for kage/shadow!
You might wonder about these two different ways to write the word kage.
影 is used for a literal shadow, or sometimes the figure or silhouette of a person.
陰 is used for a more metaphorical kinds of shadows, such as when a monster or criminal lurks in the shadows (meaning hidden, murky places where he cannot be seen).
The case of hiding in the shadow of a chair might seem to be borderline, but the focus is not so much on its literal shadow but rather on the refuge from discovery that it provides. Therefore, 陰 is the appropriate character here.
ゆっくりと、座椅子の向こうから現れたのは、クミコだった。
SR lists と as meaning "indicating the manner of action" here. As if there weren't enough meanings for と already. Why do particles have to have so many disparate usages? It makes it very hard for learners to guess what's going on.
老人はトランプで退屈な1日をまぎらした。
The old man beguiled the weary day with cards.
This seems like a strange translation to me. I always thought 退屈 was just "boring". This seems like the kind of odd and poetic translation where maybe the example sentence was English first and just translated to Japanese instead of the reverse. I tried Googling it to see if it was a famous quote, but nothing came up.
Also, I finished 濁った瞳のリリアンヌ ch4, though I had to force my way through and sometimes I feel like I'm barely actually reading and just pasting everything into Google Translate instead.