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: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Aug 30, 2022 5:27 am

Tonight I got bored and searched for a video of a song from 5cm Per Second.

The thing I found interesting is that the train crossing has a sign with arrow shaped lights indicating which way a train is coming from. I've never seen anything like it.

Image
2 x

User avatar
kujichagulia
Green Belt
Posts: 261
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2015 1:26 pm
Location: Japan via the U.S.
Languages: English (N), Japanese (intermediate), Portuguese (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=858
x 566
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby kujichagulia » Wed Aug 31, 2022 3:58 am

golyplot wrote:DeepL is probably a bit better than Google Translate, but it still often gets confused. Here, neither DeepL nor Google Translate was able to help me. In particular, I was confused by the sentence "何もない僕を変えてくれた2人。" and neither was able to make sense of it.

Looking at that sentence, I had to break it into separate parts on my own to make sense of it.
何もない僕 = me with nothing
僕を変えてくれた = changed me
2人 = two people

Using that and the context in that bit of story you posted, the way I translated it was "(Those) two (girls), who changed little old me." I say "little old me", because in the place where I grew up, that is how someone would describe themselves when they felt like they were nothing or not important. I wonder if that is what he (she?) is saying. Seems to make sense, if Erika and Nanami are having that kind of effect on him.

I've found that's a really challenging thing about learning Japanese. Sometimes the translation websites don't help at all, or make things worse - especially when clauses are involved. So I often have to take time and work it out in my head like I did above.

EDIT:
golyplot wrote:Tonight I got bored and searched for a video of a song from 5cm Per Second.

The thing I found interesting is that the train crossing has a sign with arrow shaped lights indicating which way a train is coming from. I've never seen anything like it.

Yeah, they're all over in the big cities here. Never saw them in the States. My question, though, is: is there a need for them other than convenience? Does it really matter which way the train is coming from? I just stop and don't go into the crossing when the gates come down.
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 » Wed Aug 31, 2022 5:03 am

Thanks for the explanation, @kujichagulia.

---

Last night, while looking for a music video of the song from 5cm/s, I discovered that the entire movie is available on Youtube and only 62 minutes long, so I watched it tonight. It is very different from any other anime movie I've seen, and not like what I was expecting. It is a quiet and slow-paced movie, despite being just an hour long, and the first part is mainly told via montage.



Edit: I had always assumed that One More Time, One More Chance was made specifically for the movie, but apparently it is actually a pop song from 1997. What is interesting is that they incorporated the melody of that song into the background music of Part 1. I guess maybe if they're licensing the song anyway, it might not be that hard to license it for use in the background music as well, but it is still surprising.


---

その理由は、重い食中毒などを防ぐためだった。

I learned 防ぐ from WK as "to defend", but apparently, it means "to defend against", rather than "to defend (someone)" like I thought. It's interesting to see how one-word English translations lead to misunderstanding the meaning of words. I can't believe I've been learning it wrong all this time!


しかし、法律で強制する力がなかったため、これを守らないレストランも多かった。

Apparently, in Japanese, you "guard" rules rather than "following" them.
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 » Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:09 am

しかし、今回の新型ウイルスは、この「ワンタイムパスワード」でも防げないものらしい。

I have the phrase "shingata koronauirusu" burned into my mind, so I found it really interesting to come across "shingata uirusu" talking about a computer virus in an old Satori Reader story from (going by the earliest comment date) 2018.

---

I finally read the second half of いつも通りの日常で、、君からすれば ch9 this morning.


七海は思いもよらぬ急接近に激しくなる心臓の音が天斗に聞こえていないか心配だった。

Apparently, the -ぬ thing is a negative form I've never heard of before.

三角関係はとても辛いです!!想えば思うほど。

I've heard of the X-eba X hodo pattern before, but it is interesting that they're using different kanji for the two occurrences here.


---

One of the new level 47 kanji on WK is 炊, which seemed troublesome and arbitrary until I looked at the word list a few days ago and suddenly realized it was the "sui" in "suihanki". It's interesting to make connections like that.
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 » Sun Sep 04, 2022 6:34 am

I almost always confuse 会員, 全員, and 全損 on WK, so I'm happy that I actually managed to get the later correct for once this morning.

---

Another interesting grammar note from SR:

不思議なことに
Literally, this means "as a strange thing."
You might wonder why the na koto part is necessary here. If the intent is to use fushigi ("strange") as an adverb ("strangely"), why not just say fushigi ni?
The reason is that fushigi is not a description of how an event actually takes place. Rather, it is someone's reaction to the situation.
To understand the difference, consider the following sentences in English:
Strangely, no one was at home.
No one was at home strangely. (??)
In the first sentence, no one was at home, a fact that the speaker finds to be strange. In the second (questionable) sentence, no one was "at home strangely" (perhaps they were at home in some other manner?). In other words, in the first sentence, "strangely" is the observer's judgment about the overall situation.
In Japanese, when you want to name an observer's judgment about a situation, it will usually take the form <adjective> koto ni. Here are two more examples:

嬉しいことに、彼女に会えた。
Happily, I was able to meet her.
残念なことに、それはできません。
Unfortunately, I cannot do that.


---

For the last month or two, I haven't been watching Hayato's Ambition like I used to. For some reason, he is a lot less interesting nowadays. I wish he'd play better games. Anyway, instead, I decided to try going to the very beginning of Yuki's Animal Crossing channel and watch them from the start (though I've been skipping a bunch too). Anyway, a few days ago, I got up to the video where she roleplays as Ariel from The Little Mermaid:




This inspired me to try watching the Japanese versions of famous Disney songs on Youtube tonight. Unfortunately, it seems that the only ones Youtube will ever recommend are the songs from Tangled, Frozen, Moana, and very occasionally Encanto. Presumably, these are the only ones that Disney has officially uploaded to Youtube in Japanese. For the older ones, you have to search for unofficial uploads instead, which I haven't gotten around to yet. Anyway, I learned a new word, 雪だるま from "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?".

2 x

User avatar
kujichagulia
Green Belt
Posts: 261
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2015 1:26 pm
Location: Japan via the U.S.
Languages: English (N), Japanese (intermediate), Portuguese (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=858
x 566
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby kujichagulia » Sun Sep 04, 2022 12:56 pm

golyplot wrote:I
This inspired me to try watching the Japanese versions of famous Disney songs on Youtube tonight. Unfortunately, it seems that the only ones Youtube will ever recommend are the songs from Tangled, Frozen, Moana, and very occasionally Encanto. Presumably, these are the only ones that Disney has officially uploaded to Youtube in Japanese. For the older ones, you have to search for unofficial uploads instead, which I haven't gotten around to yet. Anyway, I learned a new word, 雪だるま from "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?".


Ah, Sayaka Kanda, RIP. Gone way too soon. Still painful for me to listen to anything from the Japanese Frozen because of that.

By the way, did you know that in the West, a snowman has three parts to its body, while in Japan a 雪だるま has only two?
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 » Sun Sep 04, 2022 1:27 pm

kujichagulia wrote:By the way, did you know that in the West, a snowman has three parts to its body, while in Japan a 雪だるま has only two?


I did not know that, which is pretty embarrassing since IIRC, I watched them make snowmen in Komi Can't Communicate.

Edit: I just checked, and sure enough:

Image
4 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 » Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:57 am

Didn't do much Japanese today, but my English immersion is going great :). I started reading a book (Loveless) I picked up that looked interesting, having no idea how very British it was. 57 pages in and I've already learned two new words ("car park" and "freshers") and also found interesting the mentions of gender-segregated grammar schools and the fact that the protagonist is shocked when she gets to college and finds out she'll have a roommate because most college, sorry uni, students in the UK don't have one.

---

Tonight, I decided to try looking up some of the older Disney songs in Japanese, starting with Mulan's "I'll Make A Man Out of You". It is one of the most memorable and iconic Disney songs, but unfortunately, it suffered badly in the transition to Japanese, IMO.

It was nice that the video had the (Japanese) lyrics at the bottom though. I vaguely remember learning about 鍛える and the "kita" kunyomi on WK recently, but I would have remembered it without seeing and hearing it simultaneously, and even then, it had to come up two or three times before I made the connection.



---

On the JPDB front, I have been struggling a bit lately. On Friday (the 2nd), I didn't manage to get through the review pile until late at night for the first time since (IIRC) August 12th, and thus wasn't able to do any new cards, ending a three week streak where I was doing 17 new cards a day every day for three weeks. Anyway, the same thing happened again today. It's a bit disappointing, since I was hoping that capping JPDB at 17 new cards a day would keep the review burden low enough that I could power through it every day, and sometimes I've been deliberately adding easy cards to reduce the effective burden further as well. But apparently it's not enough and I'm getting a bit overwhelmed again.

Image
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 » Wed Sep 07, 2022 6:47 am

I previously mentioned that when it comes to Japanese Disney songs, Youtube will only recommend songs from Tangled, Frozen, and Moana for some reason, presumably because those are the ones that Disney themselves uploaded. What I didn't mention is that Frozen 2 also sometimes came up, which I ignored because I haven't seen Frozen 2. I'd prefer to watch songs where I'm already familiar with the song in English so I can better understand it. However, tonight, I went ahead and tried watching two songs from Frozen 2, even though I have no idea what is going on in them (I'm not sure why only two came up in the Youtube recs - it seems to be really insular and badly tuned).



Anyway, what I found interesting is that the song used a kanji for "umi" that I'd never seen before. I guess this is a rare variant of 海.

Image
1 x

User avatar
Sumisu
Orange Belt
Posts: 109
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:57 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N) Japanese (B1?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 0c0a4beb42
x 332

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby Sumisu » Sat Sep 10, 2022 1:39 am

golyplot wrote:I previously mentioned that when it comes to Japanese Disney songs, Youtube will only recommend songs from Tangled, Frozen, and Moana for some reason, presumably because those are the ones that Disney themselves uploaded.


I've always been partial to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. There are a bunch of different Japanese versions of it, including different translations, but for the title track, I like the one below. Unfortunately I can't track down who the singer is. On Spotify the artist is listed as "Popura" but that's all I could find.



"Be Our Guest" is kind of funny and also shows the lyrics:

1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests