Learning Japanese From Zero

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:00 am

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.

---

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.

----

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.
1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Fri Apr 22, 2022 4:15 pm

golyplot wrote: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?

This just seems like the translator's choice to paraphrase the sentence to make it come across a bit more natural in English. Japanese does seem to use structures like "X, therefore Y" or "Because X, Y" more frequently than English.

golyplot wrote: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.


Wow, I wasn't even aware that this was an actual honorific. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that in this case the only honorific is 様, followed by どんだけ, which is a very colloquial way of saying どれだけ.
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Apr 23, 2022 5:46 am

vonPeterhof wrote:Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that in this case the only honorific is 様, followed by どんだけ, which is a very colloquial way of saying どれだけ.


I guess Jisho betrayed me then. Oh well.

---

One thing that really frustrates me about JPDB is how so many of the example sentences don't have a translation available. An example sentence with no translation may as well not exist, since there's no way to understand the context that the word is used in and check your understanding of the sentence. Sometimes, I'll even just give in and blacklist words because they don't have any decent example sentences.

JPDB seems like it has a lot of potential but it will also require a lot of work before it really gets good. Unfortunately, it's not like I have much choice - it's still better than Anki at least.

---

トムが帰宅したら、話してみます。
I'm going to talk to Tom when he comes home.

I guessed the meaning as "Tom will try to talk if he gets home", which didn't make sense. How do you figure stuff like this out?

毎朝の地下鉄があんなに混雑しなかったらなあ。
I wish the subway wasn't so crowded every morning.

And here's one I definitely couldn't guess. I didn't realize the conditional could be used for wishes.

トムは紐の梯子を上った。
Tom climbed up the rope ladder.

It's kind of amazing that I've been studying Japanese for nearly 2.5 years and never encountered the word for ladder before. One thing I wonder is why it doesn't use the kanji 橋 for "hashi".


 3ヶ月過ぎたあたりから首が据わり、お座りができるようになった。

I find it interesting that Jisho lists 据わり as a rare kanji variant of 座り. However, it apparently has a different meaning (to hold still), listed as "esp. 据わる". It's interesting that this sentence contains two different variants of the same word with different spellings and meanings. I was also puzzled by the ヶ - apparently it is actually read "ka" for some reason.


これらの権利は不可譲だ。
These rights are inalienable.

For some reason, JPDB has no furigana for the 譲. I've never seen furigana straight out missing on jpdb.io before.


壁の穴に入ると、そこに妹が立っていた。

When I read this, I mistook 立 for 泣く. To be fair, they do look pretty similar. I guess technically I should have known because it would conjugate differently in the -te form, but it's hard to pick up on subtle clues like that.

僕が固まっているのに気付いた父ちゃんが、「どうしたんだ、お前。顔が真っ青だぞ。

I'd heard of 真っ黒, 真っ暗, 真っ白, and even 真っ赤 before, but I wasn't sure how 真っ青 would work, since 青 (ao) is all vowels, so there's no consonant to intensify with the little tsu, even in the middle like with 赤. Apparently, the solution is that it is read massao for some reason. I was also surprised that SR gave the definition as "ghastly pale; pallid; white as a sheet", given that you would expect it to mean something like "completely blue", given the kanji, and you would expect them to use 真っ白 instead when they mean white.

---

I watched Hayato's latest Raft video today, and encountered the word 釣り堀 (artificial fishing pond). I thought it was interesting as WK taught 堀 as "ditch", but apparently it also means "moat" which is presumably just a short jump away from "pond". He also mentioned palm leaves (yashiba) at one point, which reminded me of those Animal Crossing videos I tried watching a while back, and in particular the one about the different kinds of trees in AC. That one was a pretty boring video, but I remember seeing another Animal Crossing youtuber who seemed pretty interesting - maybe I should try watching more of that one.

---

Tonight, I watched the last episode of Komi Can't Communicate (w subs). In this episode, Najimi is forced to wear a sign reading 反省中. 反省 is a word that I used to have a lot of trouble with on WK, so it is interesting to see it show up in the wild.

This episode also prominently features an event called 未成年の主張 (translated as "Rooftop Confessions") at the school festival. I'd never heard of it, and it's hard to find any non-Japanese sources on the topic (for example, Jisho doesn't seem to know about it).

Image
Last edited by golyplot on Sat Apr 23, 2022 8:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Apr 23, 2022 8:50 am

golyplot wrote:トムが帰宅したら、話してみます。
I'm going to talk to Tom when he comes home.

I guessed the meaning as "Tom will try to talk if he gets home", which didn't make sense. How do you figure stuff like this out?

Context usually goes a long way in determining who or what is meant to be the subject, but in this case what makes Tom be an unlikely subject of the second half of the sentence is the level of certainty, which is uncharacteristic when talking about other people's intentions. In Japanese etiquette it would be highly presumptuous to say on Tom's behalf that he will try to talk to someone; normally you would add something to the statement that would clarify that it's either something Tom himself said he was going to do or you own conjecture.

golyplot wrote:毎朝の地下鉄があんなに混雑しなかったらなあ。
I wish the subway wasn't so crowded every morning.

And here's one I definitely couldn't guess. I didn't realize the conditional could be used for wishes.

Yeah this also confused me a bit when I first saw it in some of my earliest business correspondence, not really having encountered it in my prior studies. I think it's helpful to think that there's an いい after the conditional that's been omitted.
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:04 am

予算が足りず、五千円ほど足が出た。
We overran the budget by about 5,000 yen.

What on earth is the second 足 doing here, and what does that have to do with the translation? The second bit doesn't make much sense to me. If you assume 足 means "money" for some reason, you could read it as something like "money to the extent of five thousand yen went out", although even then I have to presume that it is context which lets you know that it is referring to the additional, rather than total expenditure.

---

Tonight, I tried watching the first episode of Glass Mask (2005) on Crunchyroll. I remember watching a 10-15 episode stretch from the middle of the series as a teen (including the one where her mom dies), but I never actually watched it from the beginning. It was a bit sad, seeing her mother in the first episode, knowing that she's going to die soon, even if all she does is scold Maya onscreen (admittedly for good reason!).

Also, I know people like to joke about Chigusa being a psychopath due to her extreme training methods, but I never realized just how apt that joke was. In the first episode, Chigusa's very first meeting with Maya involves her approaching Maya without introducing herself and asking Maya her name and where she lives while menacingly putting a hand on Maya, which causes her to scream and run away. If you only watched this episode and didn't know anything else about the show, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Chigusa is the villain.

Unfortunately, I was annoyed by the inability to disable the (English) subtitles, so I doubt that I'll continue watching it.

---

Also tonight, I watched the Zero Punctuation review of Tunic, which just happened to include some Japanese onscreen at one point as a joke. I was happy to realize I could actually read it. Or rather, that I could read the first line (You committed a mistake). For the second line (He is an egg with dubious motives), I had to look up most of the words and still had trouble. It was really cool to see my Japanese abilities randomly be actually sort of useful in the real world. Also, I found it surprising to see 犯す here, since I thought it just meant "to commit a crime". I didn't realize it could also be used for stuff like making a mistake.

Image

1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:24 am

golyplot wrote:予算が足りず、五千円ほど足が出た。
We overran the budget by about 5,000 yen.

What on earth is the second 足 doing here, and what does that have to do with the translation? The second bit doesn't make much sense to me. If you assume 足 means "money" for some reason, you could read it as something like "money to the extent of five thousand yen went out", although even then I have to presume that it is context which lets you know that it is referring to the additional, rather than total expenditure.

Here it makes more sense to treat the whole phrase 足が出る as a single idiom for exceeding the budget. The image I get is of the legs being the excess that the blanket (i.e. the budget) failed to cover.
2 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Apr 25, 2022 5:25 pm

A couple weeks ago, I checked my listening stats on Castbox and saw that I was up to 910 cumulative hours and was curious to see when I would hit 1000. I was shocked when I checked again a few days later and saw that it was now showing a listening time of 0 for the last few days. Even worse, when I checked again the next morning, another day had been zeroed and the cumulative listening time correspondingly decreased.

It's frustrating to know that the listening stats are unreliable like this. They say that they fixed the bug, but the data from those four days is gone forever, and who knows what other bugs were lurking in the system. Oh well.

Image

----

Another mistake on JPDB:
The example sentence for ダイヤ is

台風の影響でダイヤが乱れ、どの電車もすし詰め状態だった。
Due to the typhoon, the train schedule was disturbed and all the trains were jam-packed.

However, the only definition listed is "diamond", which is obviously wrong. Either "railway schedule" needs to be added to definitions, or this example sentence removed.



顔に出ていたのか、大原は言う

And here's another misparse, where it lists 原 as hara, but I think it should be gen. It's frustrating that I have to keep blacklisting words due to the lack of good example sentences.


彼にビールを一杯注いであげてください。

Here JPDB introduces the つぐ reading of 注ぐ, as opposed to そそぐ. How on earth are you supposed to tell them apart? Per Jisho, it seems like they both mean "to pour", though the later seems to have a broader meaning.
1 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Apr 25, 2022 5:46 pm

golyplot wrote:顔に出ていたのか、大原は言う

And here's another misparse, where it lists 原 as hara, but I think it should be gen. It's frustrating that I have to keep blacklisting words due to the lack of good example sentences.

No it's definitely not げん. 原 has a variety of kun pronunciations as a second element in proper names (since the first "h" may undergo rendaku or shift to "w", plus the final "a" can turn into "u"), but the on pronunciation is very rare in personal names. 大原 in particular seems to have a variant with 大 using an on pronunciation (だいばら) but none with げん.
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:15 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:No it's definitely not げん. 原 has a variety of kun pronunciations as a second element in proper names (since the first "h" may undergo rendaku or shift to "w", plus the final "a" can turn into "u"), but the on pronunciation is very rare in personal names. 大原 in particular seems to have a variant with 大 using an on pronunciation (だいばら) but none with げん.


Wow, I didn't even notice it was a name. Now I feel a bit embarrassed. Either way, it certainly wasn't using the "field" meaning that JPDB thought it was.
0 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Apr 27, 2022 4:26 am

Despite my previous reservations, I continued watching Glass Mask (with subtitles).

Tonight, I got up to ep4, and wow, Maya's mom is horrible. Even knowing that she's going to die tragically later, it's hard to feel sorry for her. She throws a kettle of boiling water at Maya and then declares that she's "no longer [her] daughter".

Mother of the year here, everyone.

Image

Surprisingly, in the very next scene, she writes a letter of apology and mails Maya a change of clothes. Which Tsukikage secretly burns. I vaguely remember that the episodes I watched as a teen had an arc where someone was secretly hiding all of Maya's mail, tragically making her friends think she had abandoned them and vice versa. I was surprised to see that plot element show up again here.

I also surprised by the exposition that Tsukikage has a secret benefactor funding the school. Presumably that's Hayami (aka Future Purple Rose Guy), but I didn't realize he was helping out Tsukikage too. It's also confusing how much time has passed. They say that Tsukikage sold her mansion, which is presumably the location she was seen in all the previous episodes. It's hard to imagine how she could have sold it offscreen in the middle of the episode, or why she would when she's already being secretly funded by Hayami.

----



In other news, I learned the term 小確幸 from Noriko's podcast, an "abbreviation" of 小さいけど確かな幸せ coined in an essay. The part I found amusing is that no part of the abbreviation sounds anything like phrase it is "abbreviating", as the former is all on-yomi and the later all kunyomi. Only in Japanese could you have an abbreviation that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the thing it is actually abbreviating.
0 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Kraut, Sizen, tastyonions and 2 guests