Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

Today, I learned the word 班長 on WK. I thought "huh, that sounds a lot like the English word honcho. What a funny coincidence. Of course, honcho is obviously a Spanish word, so that can't possibly actually be related," but I looked up "honcho" out of curiosity anyway, and sure enough, it actually is borrowed from Japanese!

[dampingwire]

Of course, honcho is obviously a Spanish word, so that can't possibly actually be related," but I looked up "honcho" out of curiosity anyway, and sure enough, it actually is borrowed from Japanese!

I'd've agreed with you but the OED does confirm:

Originally used among American prisoners of war in Japan during the Pacific phase (1941–5) of the Second World War

[golyplot]

Yes, that's what I said. It sounds like a Spanish word, but it actually comes from Japanese (from 班長 in fact).

[golyplot]

Today, I got up to the advanced skit of Erin's Challenge lesson 14. One bit that really surprised me was the line "見たい？見たい？". I always thought that the たい would be pronounced as one syllable like "tie", but in the video, she pronounces it as two syllables. Does anyone know why? Is this always the case with the -tai verb form?

Also, I found this exchange a bit amusing, since it shows just how much Japanese leaves to context compared to English.

さき： 折原君、めがねは？
かおる： 今日は、コンタクト！

Literal translation:
Saki ： Orihara, glasses?
Kaoru ： Today, contacts!

Idiomatic translation:
Saki ： Orihara, what happened to your glasses?
Kaoru ： I'm wearing contacts today!

P.S. The Key Phrase section of lesson 14 (かもしれませ) is the first that I hadn't seen before. Also, the Let's See video shows someone putting their cellphone in a plastic bag for use in the bath. Ah, the wonders of the feature phone era. I don't think that'd work so well with a touchscreen smartphone.

[vonPeterhof]

One bit that really surprised me was the line "見たい？見たい？". I always thought that the たい would be pronounced as one syllable like "tie", but in the video, she pronounces it as two syllables. Does anyone know why? Is this always the case with the -tai verb form?

When I took an advanced pronunciation class at a Japanese language school in Osaka one of the first thing we were told was something to the effect of "forget about the concept of a syllable when thinking about Japanese pronunciation". Basically for Japanese people the basic rhythmic unit of a word is not the syllable (音節), but the mora (拍), which conveniently almost always corresponds to a single kana symbol (ゃ, ゅ and ょ being the major exceptions). Thus, while for a speaker of a stress- or a syllable-timed language the names Nara and Sendai are words of roughly the same length in speech (assuming the last i isn't its own syllable), for Japanese speakers せんだい is a word that is twice as long as なら, but the same length as とうきょう or さっぽろ. Of course in practice the morae don't all have the exact same duration (plus there are arguably reasons to believe that syllabic phenomena do have a limited effect on pronunciation in Standard Japanese), native speakers still perceive each mora as its own rhythmic unit regardless of whether or not they form their own syllable or not. Thus, to a non-native speaker the い in 見たい may sound like part of the syllable たい in rapid speech and as its own syllable in slower or more emphatic speech even if native speakers don't perceive a substantial difference. Conversely, the teacher in my class warned us against pronouncing words like 見たい too "syllabically", as that may strike native speakers as clipped and unnatural, and may even create confusion in certain situations, like the minimal pair 海王星 (かいおうせい) and 可溶性 (かようせい).

[golyplot]

Going by the transcripts in Erin's Challenge, I've noticed that they seem to omit topic and/or subject particles a lot. For example, consider this exchange from the lesson 17 skit. There's not a single は or が to be seen. They just use commas instead. Is this common in speech?

さき： ねえ、エリン。数学、得意なの？むずかしくない？
エリン： んー。むずかしいけど、おもしろいよ。
さき： えー、そうかなあ…。私、数学、ぜんぜんだめなのよね。

Also, I attempted to read the Japanese Wikipedia page on California. As usual, I only got a couple sentences in before giving up, but I did find one interesting thing. The first sentence of the article gives the name of California in a number of different languages （カリフォルニアしゅう、英: State of California、西: Estado de California、中:加利福尼亚州、加州）.

I was surprised to realize that for the Chinese one, I could almost read it phonetically using the Japanese readings I'd learned (ka-ri-fuku-ni-hei), despite the fact that it is Chinese, not Japanese. The only parts that didn't fit were fuku instead of fu for 福 and the last character, which turned out to not even be a kanji at all (I confused it for the similar looking 並 kanji).

Apart from that, I was also puzzled to see 西, which I thought meant "west", but clearly meant "Spanish" in context. I looked it up and it turns out that it can mean Spain or Spanish as well as west. I wish Wanikani covered stuff like this. I'm curious if this is similar to how the rice kanji sometimes means America (apparently the result of archaic ateji).

Also, I finished watching Cannon Busters last night. It's been a while since I watched anime without subtitles.

P.S. EC lesson 17 also introduced something I'd never seen or heard of before - a machine for cleaning blackboard erasers.

[devilyoudont]

In the old days, place names used to be spelled out phonetically with ateji kanji rather than katakana. This is not a standardized system, and you can find a list of forms for each country here.

Countries that have an abbreviation will have a second line on this chart which says 略称.

There are a handful of cases where the abbreviation does not come from ateji (eg Iceland -> 氷)

I say you just learn them as you see them, because it's ridiculous to try to memorize a list of these.

America can be written 亜米利加 so the abbreviation is 米 and the compound 米国 comes from this. Same situation for England, 英吉利, and 英国.

[crush]

加利福尼亚州 would be Jialifuniya Zhou in Mandarin (Gaaleifukneiaa Zau in Cantonese, Cantonese pronunciations tend to be closer to the English counterparts in my opinion). I'm not sure where the 西 comes from in Japanese, but in Mandarin/Cantonese it's 西班牙 (Xibanya/Saibaannga) so i would assume they're just using the standard Chinese version.

[golyplot]

America can be written 亜米利加 so the abbreviation is 米 and the compound 米国 comes from this. Same situation for England, 英吉利, and 英国.

Huh, I never realized that 英 was an ateji. I always just thought it was "England", although I guess it kind of makes sense, since the characters derive from Ancient Chinese, who had little occasion to talk about England. I read on Wikipedia that the "Asia" kanji originally meant "subsequent" but came to mean Asia due to use in ateji, to the point where the original meaning was forgotten. Maybe something similar happened with England.

[devilyoudont]

There are still a handful of words using 英 in its more traditional sense/unrelated to England. 英雄 is maybe the most common word where it does not mean "england"