Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

As usual, I haven't had much luck listening to Utaco recently. Today, an episode about トイレ came up, but I couldn't understand a word she was saying (apart from トイレ of course). I thought I heard her say "sumari" a lot, but when I tried to look it up afterwards, nothing came up.

[AndyMeg]

I thought I heard her say "sumari" a lot, but when I tried to look it up afterwards, nothing came up.

Could the word be "tsumari" (つまり)?

[golyplot]

Some other examples of words I recently tried to look up:

I heard her say "kyoumi bukai", and of course I already knew that kyoumi=interest, so I looked up "bukai", which Jisho says means "section meeting", but that made no sense - what on earth is an interest section meeting? Then I looked up "kyoumi bukai" just in case it was a set phrase or something, and it turned out to mean "very interesting". Apparently, it's "fukai" rendaku'd. That shows one reason why looking up words might fail - even if you manage to pick out a word and remember it to look up later, you may not have gotten the right context.

There was also an entire episode where she was talking about "jyuuretsujyuusya" a lot. Luckily, since it was the topic of the episode, she repeated it a lot and I eventually figured out that she was actually saying "jyuuretsuchuusya", which per Jisho means "parallel parking".

There's two that have really been bugging me though - nokona and suitaiyori. She says them at the beginning and end of every episode respectively, but I haven't been able to figure out what they mean. Any ideas?

[Sizen]

There's two that have really been bugging me though - nokona and suitaiyori. She says them at the beginning and end of every episode respectively, but I haven't been able to figure out what they mean. Any ideas?

I'm not sure what the nokona part is about. Here's what I hear during the intro:
4989アメリカンライフポッドキャストエピソード〇〇　
こんにちは、utacoです。このポッドキャストではアメリカ生活・海外生活をする中で感じていることや苦労していること、世間話や愚痴などを話して共有しています。

As for suitaiyori, I'm pretty sure what you're referring to is when she says ツイッターより (from Twitter).

[golyplot]

I'm not sure what the nokona part is about. Here's what I hear during the intro:
4989アメリカンライフポッドキャストエピソード〇〇　
こんにちは、utacoです。このポッドキャストではアメリカ生活・海外生活をする中で感じていることや苦労していること、世間話や愚痴などを話して共有しています。

As for suitaiyori, I'm pretty sure what you're referring to is when she says ツイッターより (from Twitter).

Thanks! There's no way I would have ever guessed it meant Twitter.

[vonPeterhof]

As for suitaiyori, I'm pretty sure what you're referring to is when she says ツイッターより (from Twitter).

Thanks! There's no way I would have ever guessed it meant Twitter.

Here's a good example of what happens when a speaker of American English tries to use the native pronunciation of "Twitter" when speaking Japanese

[golyplot]

I'm back!


I pretty much haven't touched Japanese since New Year's, but tonight I decided to finally start trying to actively study it again. I started small by just watching a cartoon episode in Japanese (specifically Carmen Sandiego s4e1), but it was the first time I've done even that since January 1st. Hopefully, I can start doing more meaningful study soon.

[golyplot]

Yesterday, I "read" ch2 of Yotsuba, along with a couple NHK News Easy Articles. I also watched ep2 of Carmen Sandiego, although I still can't understand much.


I noticed Utaco using the word "yamakaji" and realized she was talking about the California wildfires last fall. I thought it was interesting that in Japanese, they say "mountain fire" instead of "wildfire" or "forest fire".

[lemme_try]

I find your log to be the most amusing in here. I have been lurking around. Sometimes I really wonder if you are trolling all of us. Lol.

If not, that sounds like a least efficient and torturous way of learning a language. I will keep following your progress! Good luck!

[golyplot]

If not, that sounds like a least efficient and torturous way of learning a language. I will keep following your progress! Good luck!

What would you recommend instead? I'm definitely not deliberately trying to make things hard on myself.