Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

Today, I "read" (i.e. skimmed through) this NHK News Easy article and was puzzled by the use of constructions like "やめさせられた", so I tried Googling it a bit. Apparently, this is the "causative-passive form", a combination of not one but two grammar forms I haven't learned about. There's definitely a lot to make one despair about ever getting a handle on the grammar.


P.S. I found a rather hilarious passage from Google Translate where it managed to use three different pronouns (all of which were incorrect) to refer to one person, all in the space of a single paragraph. I often wonder if I'll ever manage to learn Japanese faster than Google Translate does.

Yuriko Sasamoto
The second daughter of the Sasamoto family. I go to a private high school where I can go on to junior college by escalator. He is the strongest of the three sisters and brings together the three sisters. When angry, it looks just like a dead mother. The ball is scratched and strong.

[golyplot]

I'm seriously considering giving up on my goals with WK again. It's not like the last few levels matter much in terms of reading ability anyway, since the later levels are mostly relatively obscure and uncommon kanji. The only reason I'm persisting is that I've come so far and worked so hard that it feels like I can't just give up now. I owe it to my past self.

Anyway, I tried watching this video. I guess listening to podcasts so much has ruined me because the speech in the video felt unbearably slow. I had to watch it at 1.25x speed, and even then it sounded a bit slow. Not that I can actually understand speech at native speed of course, it's just that anything else sounds wrong to me now. In particular, I couldn't understand any of the video. I still have no idea what the answer to the question in the video title is (why doesn't school start in September in Japan?). I guess I'm stuck where beginner materials are too slow to keep my interest and native materials are completely unintelligible.

[golyplot]

This morning while watching Sakura, I was pleased to realize that I understood a line where mirror!Sakura asks Touya "行きましょう?" (Shall we go?). Obviously it's a very simple line, but conjugations and grammar have long been a weak point for me, so that was cool to see.

Incidentally, the episode involves Sakura buying Christmas presents for her friends and family and a Christmas tree is shown early on. It's a much more Western approach to Christmas than the previous year, when she asks Yukito on a date to the amusement park for Christmas.

I was puzzled by a scene in the episode where Sakura writes a line of kanji on the blackboard and asks Syaoran what it means, until I realized that it must be Chinese, not Japanese.

[eido]

P.S. I found a rather hilarious passage from Google Translate where it managed to use three different pronouns (all of which were incorrect) to refer to one person, all in the space of a single paragraph. I often wonder if I'll ever manage to learn Japanese faster than Google Translate does.

My guess is this happens because Japanese is a pro-drop language. If you had a bunch of 私, 僕, or 俺... then you might be getting better results from the translator. DeepL's much better at this in my opinion since you can choose your own adventure, picking and choosing how you want the translation to sound based on your knowledge of a language. Since the translator isn't sophisticated enough to pick up Japanese's subtle context, it gives you this mush. If you already knew that, then my apologies.

[golyplot]

My guess is this happens because Japanese is a pro-drop language. If you had a bunch of 私, 僕, or 俺... then you might be getting better results from the translator. DeepL's much better at this in my opinion since you can choose your own adventure, picking and choosing how you want the translation to sound based on your knowledge of a language. Since the translator isn't sophisticated enough to pick up Japanese's subtle context, it gives you this mush. If you already knew that, then my apologies.

Oh, I know why it happens. I just found this particular instance hilarious because not only did it get the pronouns wrong, it got them wrong in three different ways in one paragraph. That's not something I'd seen before. Normally, it just writes everything in first person. It's a bit like reading SCP-426.

[golyplot]

Today, I learned the word 削除する on Wanikani. It instantly reminded me of my youthful nights watching Death Note. Sakujyo! Sakujyo! Sakujyo! Sakujyo! Sakujyo! Sakujyo!

[golyplot]

I've been doing badly on WK again lately, but I try not to mind. I figure that I'll learn everything eventually. SRS is what it is - if I miss a review, then obviously it means I needed more time to practice that item anyway. It does get annoying when I miss something due to a mistyping the answer or due to WK lacking a synonym though.

The later levels of WK often feel futile and pointless because you're generally learning obscure kanji and vocab that hardly ever show up. But then again, uncommon doesn't mean nonexistent. You still see words from later levels pop up from time to time. For instance, this morning while listening to Nihongo con Teppei, I noticed him say 香り, a level 37 word on WK. Speaking of which, I finished 4989 This American Life Saturday morning. For now, I'm catching up on the Nihongo con Teppei episodes I missed while following This American Life while I decide which podcast to listen to next.

WK is also sometimes helpful for grammar. I've been going through Bunpro very slowly, but I did recently get to かた and さ. In the former case, I pretty much already knew it instinctually thanks to Wanikani, and specifically all the "way of" or "how to" vocab on WK - 作り方, 使い方, 書き方, 読み方, 言い方, 考え方 etc. I don't have to wonder what form of the verb to stick before kata - I just think of tukaikata. Of course, WK didn't prepare me at all for the のs that Bunpro wants you to stick after nouns, e.g. 勉強の仕方.

Likewise, I already learned the iadj + sa thing from WK. In this case, there aren't enough of those on WK to really drill it in, and they're all size related (大きさ、深さ、長さ, etc.) so it doesn't really illustrate the full breadth of usage for this pattern. On the other hand, WK conveniently explained the grammar pattern already in the description for 大きさ, so it's at least not new to me.

Meanwhile, over in CS land, Syaoran is painting some sort of food green for New Year's. I'm curious what this is. Anyone know?

P.S. I just saw that Netflix has Naruto now. Between Sakura, One Piece, and K-On!, they're really going all out buying up the old popular animes. I wonder how long it will be before they get Haruhi. Not that I actually like Haruhi of course.

[devilyoudont]

Looks like 桃まん (momoman) to me. There's a stub on wikipedia where it calls them "Longevity peaches" but it provides basically no information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_peach

[crush]

The link in the references has a bit more information:
http://www.chinatownology.com/longevity_peaches.html

[golyplot]

Thanks! It's really interesting to learn about all those cultural things I've never heard of before. Incidentally, while reading about longevity peaches on Wikipedia, I discovered that 月見, which I learned on WK as "moon viewing" doesn't just refer to the generic act of watching the moon like I thought. It's actually a specific festival celebrated in the fall.

In other news, CCS ep. 64 had a strange moment when Naoko suggests telling scary stories. Sakura cowers in fear and can be seen in the background repeatedly making the sign of the cross. It'd be strange to see even in Western media, which made it all the more odd to see in a Japanese show. Is that actually a thing people do in Japan?