Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

Welcome to the latest episode of Golyplot Listens To Noriko. I don't have anything notable to say, but I wanted to exult again in how nice it is that I can just listen to her podcast and actually understand it most of the time.

It does depend on the topic though. For the kind of topic she tends to cover a lot, like the merits of extensive reading, I've already learned the relevant vocabulary long ago through repeated exposure and context, so I can understand it easily, but sometimes I run into more difficult episode. For example, ep 242, 青春映画. As usual, I wasn't paying attention and only started trying to follow it halfway through. I could tell she was talking about movies, and particularly sports movies, but it was difficult to follow. Even looking at the title didn't help - I had to look up 青春 afterwards.

[golyplot]

Yesterday evening, I finished my sixth go through Noriko's podcast and started listening to the Noriko and Teppei podcast instead. Noriko's is a lot easier to understand, but I figure it's useful to get more variety as well.

I learned a new word from Noriko yesterday - betsubara (dessert stomach). I couldn't follow the actual episode, but I noticed she was using that word a lot and looked it up afterwards out of curiosity. I found it interesting that Japanese has a term for that, since I can't think of any readily accepted English equivalent. Today, I learned a new word - inoshishi (wild boar) after hearing it from Noriko and Teppei and looking it up.

[golyplot]

Well this is it. My Wanikani subscription has finally expired. To be honest, I’m almost glad that I don’t have to spend so much time every day on Wanikani any more.

It’s crazy that a month after hitting level 60, my reviews were still taking me an hour and twelve minutes a day on average, every day, even at the end. A month after hitting level 60, my Apprentice count is still at 137. In fact, my Apprentice count has only dipped below 100 at all twice since April, back when I was still in the low levels. It’s really funny because a lot of people on WK advocate keeping your Apprentice count below 100, but mine was never not above 100!

[golyplot]

This evening, I finished my second go through the Teppei and Noriko podcast and started listening to Noriko for the seventh time. I noticed Noriko was talking about books having an "obi", which greatly confused me, because WK had taught me that obi meant belt. However, I looked it up on Jisho afterwards, and it turned out that obi can also mean the paper wrapper on books and CDs. I presume this is what we'd call a "dustjacket" in English, although it may be some unique Japanese thing instead.

[kelvin921019]

This evening, I finished my second go through the Teppei and Noriko podcast and started listening to Noriko for the seventh time. I noticed Noriko was talking about books having an "obi", which greatly confused me, because WK had taught me that obi meant belt. However, I looked it up on Jisho afterwards, and it turned out that obi can also mean the paper wrapper on books and CDs. I presume this is what we'd call a "dustjacket" in English, although it may be some unique Japanese thing instead.

Usual Japanese novel / bunkobon (文庫本) has a thin strip of paper (usually 1/4 size of the dustjacket) wrapping over the book like a dustjacket, usually containing a short description / comment of the book (those made by famous person / publisher). It's something on top of a dustjacket and usually I just use them as bookmark or just throw them away. It's something very common in Japan and some books from Taiwan.

This is the pic I found on internet


Japanese people also use obi (a strip of paper) to wrap gifts and money notes and basically anything. At least that's my impression whenever I buy souvenirs in Japan.

[golyplot]

I looked up Hyaku nichi go ni shinu wani tonight after hearing it mentioned by Noriko. The (English) Wikipedia article has hardly any information, but that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that per Wikipedia, the wani in the title is written in katakana. I guess it makes sense since many animal names are written in kana, but I was still surprised because Wanikani made a point of teaching the kanji 鰐蟹. I guess like most of the late level kanji, they're ones that aren't actually used much in practice.

[devilyoudont]

I think they just made you learn those kanji due to the name of the program... In the case of 蟹, well it is used in some place names and is on the jinmeiyo list. 鰐 tho isn't on either the jinmeijo or joyo lists, tho I was able to find it in a handful of personal and place names.

[golyplot]

This evening, listening to Noriko while eating dinner, one episode had her talking about 満員電車. (I had trouble looking this word up, but luckily, it was in the title of the episode.) But the main reason it stuck out at me was because per the kanji readings, I would have expected it to be pronounced something like maan-eeen, but instead it sounded like the English word "mine" except perhaps a hair more drawn out. It's interesting how readings can be smushed together even across kanji boundaries. In fact, the n in man isn't in evidence at all!

The next episode opened with her commenting about how the weather has been nice lately which is unusual since it rains a lot in Belfast. She said something that sounded like "harurashi", but I was unsuccessful in looking it up later. It stuck out at me since it sounded like a Grammar Point. I vaguely recalled something about rashi meaning "seems like" so it could be Spring-like or perhaps clear weather-like. (Though I looked it up just now and Jisho tells me the later is actually hare, not haru. I could never remember that one, as my many failures on WK will attest)

I also remembered the words "sanpi ryouron" that she said a lot to look up later. But really, I think that's more telling of my progress in Japanese than anything. Nowadays, if I focus, I can remember up to three or four unknown words well enough to look them up later. Admittedly, this mostly only works for jukugo - picking out conjugated verb stems is much harder - but still. I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to do that six months ago.

[kelvin921019]

The next episode opened with her commenting about how the weather has been nice lately which is unusual since it rains a lot in Belfast. She said something that sounded like "harurashi", but I was unsuccessful in looking it up later. It stuck out at me since it sounded like a Grammar Point. I vaguely recalled something about rashi meaning "seems like" so it could be Spring-like or perhaps clear weather-like. (Though I looked it up just now and Jisho tells me the later is actually hare, not haru. I could never remember that one, as my many failures on WK will attest)

I think you're referring to らしい (ra-shi-i). It can either mean "seems like" or "-ish" depending on context. 春らしい can either mean "seems like spring" or "spring-ish" depending on where and how it is placed in a sentence.

[golyplot]

This morning, one phrase I noticed from Noriko was "kuchi urusai". I recognized the individual words as "noisy lips" or something like that, but decided to look it up afterwards on Jisho anyway. I was surprised to see that it is actually written as 口煩い.

I was expecting it to use the "lips" kanji 唇, since that's what I remembered from Wanikani. I completely forgot that 口 could also be read as kuchi. I guess this shows how words that appeared much later on in the WK course and that were difficult for me stuck in my memory a lot better, despite being less common. Of course, it doesn't help that 口 is often rendaku'd when it does use the kuchi reading, as in 入口.

As another example, I also noticed her saying "engi no warui" while talking about superstitions. I remembered engi=omen from WK, so I immediately deduced that it meant bad luck. The reason it stuck out at me was actually the use of the no particle, since it seemed to me like it should be using the na adjective connector instead. I've heard that Japanese used to use no in place of na, so maybe that's why.

Anyway, I also looked it up in Jisho and found it interesting that engi can also be performance (演技) in addition to omen (縁起), which I had completely forgotten about. The former is level 23 in Wanikani, while the later is level 44. I guess this is another illustration of how the later level items tended to stick in my memory better, although it probably also has to do with how many times I missed them and had to repeat the reviews as well.