Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Apr 24, 2021 4:16 am

Last night, I watched the last episode of Violet Evergarden (I decided to skip the OVA and movie). Tonight, I watched the first two episodes of Bofuri on Funimation's website. I watched them with English subtitles on, although I don't think Funimation's player has any way to turn off subtitles anyway.

I've never tried Funimation before and was afraid I wouldn't be able to watch anything or that the video player wouldn't work well. It worked all right, although there were a couple issues. The first is that the video player never faded away while watching - the controls were on screen the whole time, which was annoying, and meant the bottom of the video was partially faded out, making it unnecessarily hard to see (and that's where the subtitles are!).

The second issue is that Bofuri shows a lot of text message conversations (other players commenting on Maple) and the subtitles didn't work well there. You have to carefully pause the video and just hit unpause and immediately pause again and go through it very slowly in order to actually see the subtitles for the texts. And there's one long text in the first episode where the subtitles aren't visible at all even then!

But apart from that, Bofuri was pretty funny. It reminds me of SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online. It's just a huge shame that they didn't license it to Netflix in the US.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Apr 24, 2021 6:18 pm

More Yotsubato:

おとなは!まったく
おとなは!
Translated as "Grown up! Mean grown ups!" - I'm not sure where that comes from though. Can anyone explain please?

P.S. Last night, I found myself trying to figure out how to say something is "hard to get out". After looking up the grammar, I think it'd be ぬきにくい. Is that right? It seems weird to say.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:52 am

Tonight, I watched eps 3 and 4 of Bofuri. I watched some Touhou videos this morning and read about EoSD for a while, so Silverwing sending out massive streams of ice bullets reminded me a lot of Touhou (particularly Cirno).

I discovered how to hide the player controls by chance. The trick is that instead of clicking on the fullscreen button in the player controls, instead make the video fullscreen by pressing F. That way, the player controls won't show up. If you do need to use the player controls (e.g. to skip the opening theme or read the text message subtitles), you can make them disappear again by minimizing the video, moving the mouse away, and then pressing F again.

I also discovered that while you can't disable subtitles, you can switch them to Spanish or Portuguese, which has a similar effect. However, I was planning to watch it all with English subtitles anyway, similar to Violet Evergarden.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Apr 25, 2021 8:03 am

golyplot wrote:おとなは!まったく
おとなは!
Translated as "Grown up! Mean grown ups!" - I'm not sure where that comes from though. Can anyone explain please?

This is an another example of colloquial Japanese being extreme in omitting everything that should be clear from the context. Basically saying Xは! in an angry or exasperated tone can be a way of expressing annoyance with X without specifying what exactly it is you think about them. A common variant of this is the phrase これだからXは!, often translated as "this is why I hate X" or "this is why you can't trust X".

golyplot wrote:P.S. Last night, I found myself trying to figure out how to say something is "hard to get out". After looking up the grammar, I think it'd be ぬきにくい. Is that right? It seems weird to say.
Sounds good to me, though my first choice would have been だしにくい.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Mon Apr 26, 2021 4:47 am

In Bofuri, the main characters (Kaede and Risa) use aliases while in game (Maple and Sally) and are careful to not mention their real names in game. Which is why I did a double take when at the end of episode 6, the subtitles on the text messages started talking about "Risa". It doesn't make any sense, since the character had no way to know her real name.

I look at the Japanese shown, and sure enough, the actual Japanese appears to be talking about Sally instead. I have no idea why a professional subtitling would make such an obvious mistake. Especially since this mistake required the subtitlers to actively insert something that wasn't in the Japanese. What's up with that?

Image

Incidentally, I found it amusing at the beginning when Risa reverses her name to get Sally, since as an English speaker, they don't seem much alike at all. I guess that's Japanese for you.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:21 pm

Last night, I finished my second time through Momoko's podcast. I thought it was really interesting when she talked about the difference between Japanese and European restaurants and the culture shock she got in the Czech Republic. Apparently, in Japanese restaurants, you just call the staff when you're ready to order, while in Western restaurants, you just wait there until the waiter comes to you.

Personally, the Western version always seemed silly to me, so it's interesting to see that it is not universal. I guess it's due to me being anti-social. It seems like people don't actually go to restaurants for the food, but rather for a place to hang out. The fact that guests are kept waiting around forever in Western restaurants is a feature, not a bug.

I also found it interesting when she said that when asking people if you can have some of their food, you can say "itadaimoii?" or "itadakimasuka?". I always thought that itadakimasu was just a set phrase people said before eating. I didn't realize that the original verb is still in common usage.

Anyway, now I'll start listening to Noriko's podcast for the 12th time.

As for Yotsubato:

恵那ー できたよー
持っていきな
ENA! HERE, TAKE THESE

Wow, first sentence and I'm already confused. I have no idea how the grammar in the Japanese sentence is supposed to work.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:13 pm

golyplot wrote:I also found it interesting when she said that when asking people if you can have some of their food, you can say "itadaimoii?" or "itadakimasuka?". I always thought that itadakimasu was just a set phrase people said before eating. I didn't realize that the original verb is still in common usage.
I think it should be いただいもいい and いただますか. And yeah it's basically the 謙譲語 equivalent of もらう so it's very much in use.

golyplot wrote:恵那ー できたよー
持っていきな
ENA! HERE, TAKE THESE

Wow, first sentence and I'm already confused. I have no idea how the grammar in the Japanese sentence is supposed to work.

The な at the end is the short form of なさい as discussed in this section of Tae Kim.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:30 pm

Sorry, I'm not very good at recognizing Japanese sounds.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:01 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:The な at the end is the short form of なさい as discussed in this section of Tae Kim.


What about the iki part? Is this the te + iku form? Is it saying something like "come here to take it"?

おかずは無くて
いいのよね
YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING ELSE, RIGHT?

This is interesting because it's completely different than how I might expect it to be based on the English. As far as I can tell, it translates literally as something like "It is ok that there is no side dish, right?" Sometimes I despair about ever getting into the Japanese mindset.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:23 pm

golyplot wrote:What about the iki part? Is this the te + iku form? Is it saying something like "come here to take it"?

More like "take it and go" or simply "take it away".
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