Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:10 am

Prompted by this discussion, I went out and listened to Usseewa again, and found it interesting that at one point, she pronounces です as "de-sue" with emphasis on the second syllable, since normally it's one syllable with the u silent. I guess it's one of those things where people don't pronounce it when talking normally but will if it's needed to may the rhythm work in a song. Later on, she pronounces it the normal way with silent us.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Sep 29, 2021 5:13 am

One interesting thing is how occasionally, even words from languages completely unrelated to Japanese (i.e. all of them) will interfere.

For example, last night, I watched Death Note ep3 without subs. I had a lot more trouble following it, since I didn't remember what happened as well as the beginning. Anyway, Ryuk has a conversation with Light at the end where he was using the word jyumyou a lot, but I couldn't remember what it meant. At one point, I thought it might mean "twins" due to confusion with the French word jumeaux. (I did eventually realize that it must be "lifespan" and he was explaining Shingami Eyes to Light).

Another example is that I sometimes confuse kinou (yesterday) with the German word kino (movie theater).
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:26 am

In one podcast episode, Noriko talks about the cultural difference between the West and Japan about letting women vs men go first, and she says something that sounds like "ready first" many times throughout. I'd always assumed it was some custom about letting people who are ready to go go first or something like that.

Out of however many dozen+ times I've listened to it, it was last night that for the first time I realized that she was probably actually saying "ladies first". In my defense, the Japanified English doesn't at all sound like the original, and the only reason I finally guessed it is because it would make sense in context.



Akiko ch11 (hard) had a very long and convoluted sentence: まあ、輪廻転生とか、昔からうちのおばあちゃんに言われてきたこととかは、信じなくもないかな~、と答えたけど、だからと言って、それが確実に死んだ後に起きるとも思っていない。It's like they had a contest to see how many different nested quotations, modifiers, etc. they could stack up. How do people make sense of stuff like this?

Speaking of which, ch11 (both versions) had a new kanji I hadn't seen before - the 廻 in 輪廻転生.



Also, while watching Little Witch Academia tonight, there was an odd moment where the subtitles said "Akko", but I noticed that the dialog sounded like it said "anata". I was very surprised by this because the usual custom in Japanese is the opposite. In Japanese you often refer to people by name where you would use pronouns in English (and hence the dialog will contain names where the subtitles use pronouns as in idiomatic English), but I've never heard of the reverse happening. I thought anata was only used in songs and the like when you weren't speaking to a specific person.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:22 am

Tonight, at the end of LWA episode 23, I noticed Croix say いよいよ, which is one of the words I encountered in Satori Reader last week and added to my SR study list. It's interesting to see them come back up like that. Likewise, I noticed Noriko say きちん at one point, another of the words from SR. If only I could actually remember the words...
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby Dr Mack Rettosy » Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:05 pm

Your attention to detail is incredible! And your dedication, especially with wanikani, unparalleled.

How are you feeling about your progress with Japanese? Have you noticed improvements in your listening comprehension? Any plans to start reading? Apologies if I missed a recent update!
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Oct 06, 2021 12:20 am

Dr Mack Rettosy wrote:How are you feeling about your progress with Japanese? Have you noticed improvements in your listening comprehension? Any plans to start reading? Apologies if I missed a recent update!


It's not really possible to notice improvements in comprehension unless you compare yourself against a long time ago.

As for reading, I started Satori Reader a couple weeks ago, but I haven't done any "real" reading.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Oct 06, 2021 5:14 am

A little known secret of Netflix is that even though the Audio and Subtitles menu in the video player only displays a maximum of six options (typically English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, and English - Audio Description), there are often a lot more language dubs (and subs) actually supported. The Netflix original kids shows in particular tend to be dubbed into dozens of languages.

In the past, the only way I knew of to access the hidden dubs was a method I stumbled on by accident - changing your profile language to a given language will cause that language to always appear in the options whenever it is available. So if you want to say, watch the Dutch dub of Hilda, you need to change your profile to Dutch, and then it will appear.

Back when I started learning Japanese, I went ahead and switched my profile language to Japanese to I could rewatch cartoons dubbed in Japanese. However, the downside is that it makes all the menus and UI and so on unreadable, so I eventually got tired and switched back.

Tonight, I went into account settings to change back to Japanese, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is no longer necessary. Account settings now has two different language options - your display language (for the UI), and a list of languages you want Netflix to show shows for. Checking Japanese on the later lets you watch Japanese dubs while still having all the UI in English.

Also, I watched the last two episodes of LWA tonight.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Oct 07, 2021 3:33 am

Tonight, I watched the Japanese dub of My Little Pony: A New Generation. I'd already watched it in English a week and a half ago, which made it somewhat easier to understand (Unfortunately, I still couldn't understand it anywhere near as well as say, the French dub).

I noticed them say いよいよ twice in the movie, which was cool, since it was a word I first learned from SR last week. I also noticed them say うんざり at one point, a word that I learned a couple weeks ago from jpdb.io.

One thing I found really strange is that Izzy and Zipp's names sounded like they were pronounced "Iji" and "Jipu". I can understand the Z->J thing in Korean, but Japanese already has a native Z sound! Why on earth would they change the Zs to Js when they can already pronounce Zs just fine?

Also, I've noticed a word that sounds like "okashi" come up an awful lot recently, both in this movie as well as Noriko's podcast. Obviously, I know that お菓子 = sweets, but I hear the word used very frequently and in contexts where "sweets" makes no sense, so I suspect that it's just a common adverb of some kind. However, I haven't been able to figure out what it is and haven't had any luck trying to look it up. I guess I'll have to wait until I hear it again on Noriko's podcast and then look up the corresponding transcript.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby AllSubNoDub » Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:27 am

golyplot wrote:One thing I found really strange is that Izzy and Zipp's names sounded like they were pronounced "Iji" and "Jipu". I can understand the Z->J thing in Korean, but Japanese already has a native Z sound! Why on earth would they change the Zs to Js when they can already pronounce Zs just fine?


I believe these would be the choices. It's just a product of using a syllabary rather than an alphabet, I guess. I'm sure English has equally annoying properties to foreigners lol.

za [za] ザ
ji [(d)ʑi] ジ
zu [(d)zɯ] ズ
ze [ze] ゼ
zo [zo] ゾ

golyplot wrote:Also, I've noticed a word that sounds like "okashi" come up an awful lot recently, both in this movie as well as Noriko's podcast. Obviously, I know that お菓子 = sweets, but I hear the word used very frequently and in contexts where "sweets" makes no sense, so I suspect that it's just a common adverb of some kind. However, I haven't been able to figure out what it is and haven't had any luck trying to look it up. I guess I'll have to wait until I hear it again on Noriko's podcast and then look up the corresponding transcript.


Are you thinkin of おかしい?

1) “What? I put money in and pushed the button, but no juice came out. Okashii.”
In this case, “okashii” means “strange” or “unusual.”

2) “His stories are so funny “okashikute, okashikute”, I can’t stop laughing.”
In this case, “okashii” means “funny.”
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Oct 07, 2021 3:01 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:Are you thinkin of おかしい?

1) “What? I put money in and pushed the button, but no juice came out. Okashii.”
In this case, “okashii” means “strange” or “unusual.”

2) “His stories are so funny “okashikute, okashikute”, I can’t stop laughing.”
In this case, “okashii” means “funny.”


Thanks! That must be it.
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