Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Jun 10, 2022 6:01 am

As I finished reading Hole in the Wall yesterday, today I read the first two chapters of Meditation on Satori Reader. I don't have any interest in meditation, but I had the goal of reading every story on SR, so I figured I'd try reading it anyway. It's a bit dull and repetitive, but at least there are only six chapters.


座ったら、背中をまっすぐ伸ばしましょう。

I previously learned まっすぐ as "straight ahead", so it was surprising to see it mean "erect".


次に、肩の力をゆっくりと抜いてください。

I find it interesting that the Japanese say "extract the strength from your back" to mean "relax your back". It's a phrasing that would have never occurred to anyone in English.


肺が一杯になったら、今度は口から息を「はー」っと勢いよく吐きましょう。

勢い is a word that has always caused me trouble on WK because I can never keep the reading straight with 清い and similar words. Not that seeing it hear in print would ever help with that, of course.

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Glass Mask ep44: Near the end, I happened to notice Hayami say "ganbare yo" to Maya. I probably wouldn't have recognized it except for the fact that I just happened to read the chapter of Japanese The Manga Way about the command form earlier that afternoon, which reminded me of how it ends in -e sometimes and explained that it was often softened by adding "yo" to the end.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Jun 13, 2022 5:57 am

I checked out "Japanese the Manga Way" from the library four weeks ago after seeing it recommended on Reddit, and finally finished it Friday night. It's aimed at complete beginners, so a lot of it is really basic stuff that I had to skip over (e.g. all the verb conjugations), but it was useful to review some of the stuff that I'm weaker on, especially towards the end, including なのに, the various te- constructions (-teoku, -tekuru, -teiku, -teageru etc.).

There was one point that was completely new to me - I didn't realize that yaru was a variant of ageru (as well as the usual meaning of to do).

I also found the pronunciation hint for the Japanese r at the start really interesting. Apparently, you can say えり by saying "eddie" and slurring the d slightly. The usual instinct of an English speaker is to just say the English r, which is of course completely wrong. It would have never occurred to me to pronounce it as a d of all things!

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「見ればわかるでしょ!。」
= Can’t you tell?/ Isn’t it obvious? (If you see something/somebody you will know what it is/who they are.)

The English and Japanese sentences seem to have almost nothing in common here. It's a good thing they included a literal translation as well. I would have never been able to guess the meaning just form the Japanese.

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This morning, I missed 拡大 on WK yet again due to always getting it confused with 莫大 and putting "huge" instead of "magnification". But I looked at 拡 afterwards, and it seems like it has the meaning of "enlarge", rather than just big, so hopefully I'll be able to remember it going forward

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I noticed Utaco say "haihai" repeatedly in ep192. I didn't quite understand the context, but she was talking about driving to the hospital emergency room. Every previous usage of haihai I'd seen was referring to the physical act of a baby crawling, and she definitely wasn't talking about babies, so it was surprising. Presumably, she was talking about the car crawling through traffic.

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Glass Mask ep46 - It's hard to tell for sure, but it looks like Maya is nearly as tall as Ayumi now. I keep wondering whether the animators had made the characters larger as they age. It feels like Ayumi looks different now, but it's hard to tell for sure.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Jun 14, 2022 6:10 am

This morning, I finished the last chapter of Meditation on Satori Reader (good riddance!). The last chapter was listed as "extra long", and they really weren't kidding about that. I kept thinking that I must be near the end, only for it to continue, over and over. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the longest chapter of any story on the entire site. It's a good thing that it was relatively easy material, but even then it still took me 25 minutes to read!

I wish SR would do a better job of keeping chapter lengths short and even. It's especially important with the difficult material like Akiko's Foreign Exchange, but even with easier stories, you'll still inevitably lose focus sooner or later. With the longer and/or more difficult chapters, I've often lost the ability to concentrate part way through and just forced my way through the rest of the chapter without really taking anything in.

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静けさは、常に心の内側にあります。

What is up with 静けさ here? I've seen -さ used to convert -i adjectives to nouns, but I've never heard of it happening with -na adjectives. Is this an archaic construction?

Edit: Apparently 静けさ is just a word by itself and this isn't a grammar thing at all.

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Glass Mask ep47:

I noticed Maya blinking rapidly several times in this episode, which I don't recall ever happening before. I'm not sure if the animators suddenly decided to start animating the characters blinking when they didn't before, or whether it was just more noticeable the way they did it in this episode for whatever reason.

The other oddity was a couple of lines from the minor side character Hamille, the photographer. He was shown speaking French in his introduction in a previous episode. He shows up again in two scenes in this episode, and sounds normal in the first, but in second, it sounded like he was speaking Japanese with an Italian accent! I'm not sure whether it was my imagination or whether Japanese voice actors can't understand the difference between French and Italian.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Jun 15, 2022 5:19 am

I started reading The Jam Maker on Satori Reader this evening. The description says "Satoko lives a quiet life, enjoying her garden and boutique jam-making operation. A positive person by nature, she has accepted her sometimes challenging circumstances and is at peace. Certain things in life are simply not for her, she reasons.", which made me wonder at first if she was disabled, but I figured I was just jumping to conclusions and it is just coincidence, or she might just be old and not able to do much or something.

However, just halfway through the first paragraph, (after first briefly suspecting her of being paralyzed), I began to wonder if the narrator might be blind, due to the description of her feeling the wind and hearing distant sounds when she opens the window, but no mention of seeing anything, and I got more and more suspicious as the story continued in that manner. I was originally only planning to read one chapter, but I immediately went ahead to chapter 2 to see if I was right. Chapter 2 still didn't explicitly say anything one way or another, but the description of her cutting bread by feeling the thickness with her fingers heavily implies that she is blind.

I bet most people would not have picked up on it so quickly, so I guess I can be proud of that, although it also meant that I was distracted the whole time, trying to figure it out, and had trouble focusing on the actual story. I checked the comments, and nobody said anything on chapter 1, while a single commenter mentioned it in the comments of chapter 2 (and another person responded saying that they didn't pick up on it at all, even after chapter 2 makes it obvious). And here I am, having deduced it from the first seven sentences!

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最近コロナってヤバイっすね。
The coronavirus has been scary recently, don't you think?

I found it jarring to see an example sentence talking about COVID on JPDB today. I wonder where they got it from.

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Glass Mask ep48:

I noticed them say 聖地, a word from Wanikani that I never expected to see in the wild. After all, "holy ground" doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you'd be likely to encounter in the real world. But here it is.
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Also in this episode, Ayumi goes topless while playing the role of a mermaid and coincidentally, a large crowd of photographers and journalists show up and take photos of her. I'm sure they're just there because Ayumi is a star, but it sure makes them come across like perverts.

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Especially since they don't bother taking photos when Maya performs (fully clothed) right afterwards. Apparently, they are only there for Ayumi.

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In the last couple of episodes, Tsukikage has Maya and Ayumi perform a representation of Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth as part of their training to play The Scarlet Angel. Ayumi's mermaid thing is water, the third round. It sure is convenient that the crowd of journalists only showed up now on the third round, and not during the first two.

To be fair, they do photograph Ayumi during the fourth round (earth) as well, so it's not like they're actually just there for the boobies. But it is amusing how the episode makes it seem that way.

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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby vonPeterhof » Wed Jun 15, 2022 3:11 pm

golyplot wrote:I noticed them say 聖地, a word from Wanikani that I never expected to see in the wild. After all, "holy ground" doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you'd be likely to encounter in the real world. But here it is.

It's a surprisingly common word these days, because aside from the literal meaning and the hyperbolic usage shown in the screenshot the word can also refer to real life locations that were used as settings or backdrops for movies, TV dramas or anime, with the implication that they're "pilgrimage sites" of sorts for fans of those properties. This sort of tourism really is referred to as "pilgrimages" (聖地巡礼) and it's apparently contributed a lot to local economies of certain towns.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:40 am

By sheer coincidence, 聖地 came up for review on WK this morning. 炎, a word which showed up a bunch in the previous episode when Ayumi was interpreting "fire", also came up for review.

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Today on Satori Reader, I read The Jam Maker ch3 and Sakura and Suzuki's Long Distance Relationship (harder edition) ch1-4. The reason I read so many chapters of the later is that each chapter is short. Really short. They're less than half the length of even the shortest chapters I've seen in any of the other stories on the site. Each chapter is just a brief letter (or probably an email or something) from one character to the other.

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畑や庭は、苺や木苺、ブルーベリー、りんご、イチジクなど、自然の恵みでいっぱいになる。

Apparently, in Japanese, raspberries are "tree strawberries".


このスケジュールでオーケーだったら、予約入れちゃうから、至急、連絡ちょうだいね。

I'm used to thinking of -ちゃう as "happened unfortunately", since that's the most common meaning, so it's always interesting when a different meaning comes up. Here, it is used with the meaning "do completely", which I've seen listed in dictionaries, etc. but don't recall ever actually seeing before.


お正月ぶりだもんな、桜に会えるの。

I've heard of ぶり as part of 久しぶり, but I had no idea that it was a separate word on its own. I always thought of 久しぶり as just being a set phrase or expression.

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I watched a Hayato video today and was surprised to see that he got a new banner image and new avatar for his Youtube channel. Anyway, in the Ark: Survival Evolved video, the main character randomly poops at one point and he brings up the item description, which appears to have a kanji specifically for poop. I had no idea there was such a kanji.

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I finished listening to 4989 American Life this evening and started Noriko's podcast again. Recently, I had decided that the next time I listened to Noriko's podcast, it would be the last, since I thought it was probably too easy for me and boring and so on. However, now that I'm actually listening to it, I don't want to abandon it so quickly!

I think perhaps the issue is that the early episodes are much easier, whether that's because I've listened to them all twenty billion times already by now, or because Noriko was deliberately using slower speech when she first started out and was trying to calibrate the difficulty level for beginners. But in either case, if the later episodes aren't like that, there's no reason to abandon the podcast entirely yet. Worst comes to worst, I can just stop listening to more of the early episodes.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:16 pm

Today, I read ch6 of The Jam Maker (as well as several "chapters" of Sakura and Suzuki), which finally explicitly stated that Satoko is blind. The amazing part is that in the comments, two person mentioned that they didn't pick up on it at all, even after five chapters. Two people figured it out after ch2, but it seems I was the only one to deduce it just from the ch1. I wonder if part of it is that most people don't read the series description. The series description hinted that the main character might be disabled, so I was extra attentive to signs of that, although I bet I would have figured it out much quicker than most people even without that.

This chapter also included the new word 白杖 (and new kanji 杖), though I doubt it will actually come up much in the wild.

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私は慌てて火を消して、棚から大きめのマグカップを取り出した。

I've heard Utaco say マグカップ many, many times, but never paid much attention to it before. I always just assumed it was some sort of cup, much like you have "mai straw" for what I assume means "reusable straw". I never realized that it was just a waseieigo'd "mug" all this time!



ゴールデンウィークまで、あと2週間。

I always thought of あと as just "after". I didn't know that it could also be used to refer to the amount of time left.


こう見えても、一応、柔道三段だからね、甘く見たら痛い目にあうぞ。

Apparently, 目 can mean "an experience". WTF?


あと、大きなカタツムリを見たら、絶対に触るなとか書いてあった。

Here's another alternate meaning of あと.

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I finally finished watching Glass Mask Friday night, so Saturday night, I resumed watching Kotaro Lives Alone on Netflix.

I found it interesting when the new neighbor goes to a school event where the parents watch the kids eat lunch, because it appeared to be the first example I'd seen of 給食. I was really surprised while reading Hole in the Wall on SR, when it had a note talking about the practice of 給食 in Japanese elementary schools, since I had never seen or heard anything about it in anime at all.

Of course most anime are set in highschool and kyuushoku is apparently only an elementary school thing, but I had also watched Card Captor Sakura and Kotaro Lives Alone, about elementary-age and kindergarden-age kids respectively. The later was especially interesting because a major plot point in one episode is the fact that the kids bring bento to school, Kotaro making his own bento, etc. So now it's even stranger that the same school also seems to be doing a non-bento thing now. What's up with that?

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Jun 21, 2022 5:35 am

母は心配になって、かかりつけの小児科に私を連れて行った。

Apparently, 児 is read ni here for some reason. I've never seen that before.


このまま、日本列島に掛からず、太平洋沖に消えてくれると嬉しいな。

Wanikani taught 沖 as "open ocean", but I've only ever actually seen it used as part of 沖縄, so I assumed it was one of those kanji where the "kanji meaning" is basically irrelevant, sort of like how 璧 means "jade disc", but is only ever used as part of 完璧. So I was surprised when I saw 沖 actually used for once here.

This sentence also has an odd usage of 掛かる. I thought it was "to hang", but apparently it means "to cover" as well.

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Kotaro Lives Alone ep9 had some onscreen Japanese text that wasn't translated in the subtitles for some reason, so that is an occasion where knowing Japanese comes in handy, although it was hard to read due to being covered up by the player controls when paused.

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Also a bit odd is that for the first time, the end credits song was played over continued scenes of the episode while the credits appeared on screen, rather than just having the credits over a static image like usual. I thought that might signify the last episode, but there's actually one more episode.

I wonder why anime sometimes have the credits play over the episode ending instead of the usual credits background in some episodes - maybe it's based on how long the story is for a given episode?
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:02 am

I missed 舞台 on Wanikani today, which was pretty frustrating, since I heard it approximately a billion times while watching Glass Mask. I thought it was read "butai", but unfortunately, I second-guessed myself and put "budai" instead.

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あのふわっとしたスポンジの中に入ってる、バナナ風味のクリームが、たまらん!

I thought たまらない had a negative meaning, as in "unbearable", so it's interesting to see that it can also be used positively ("irresistible").

俺、一人で一箱、軽くいけるかも。

I was surprised to see 一箱 is listed as "hitohako", which sounds odd and difficult to say. Why doesn't this rendaku like usual with such numbers?

「沖縄にいる間は、僕がしっかり面倒を見るので、心配しないでください」って言ったら、お母さん、「こんな、不束者の娘ですが、よろしくお願いします」って。

I was confused by "しっかり面倒を見る" while reading this, since it seemed like "properly looking for trouble", but 面倒を見る turns out to actually mean "to look after/care for". So confusing. Also, 不束者 has a weird reading (tsutsuka) for 束 that I'd never heard of before. Apparently, 束 by itself can be read as "tsuka" for "strut", but I'd never heard of that either, and it doesn't seem to be a common meaning.

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I finished Kotaro Lives Alone tonight. In the last episode, Kotaro visits his grandparents' grave, and I got to see what cleaning a grave looks like. I'd heard references to cleaning a grave before, but I never really thought about what that might entail. I just assumed it meant brushing off fallen leaves or something. But apparently, it's a lot more elaborate than that. In this epsiode, they carry water to the grave in a special bucket and pour it over with a ladle, and then use rags to wipe it off.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Jun 23, 2022 5:48 am

There was a big heat wave here yesterday, and I was pretty bored and unable to focus on anything last night, so in order to try to make myself sleepy, I tried reading いつも通りの日常で、、君からすれば for the first time. That is the deck I've been studying all this time on JPDB, and I did recognize a lot of words that I'd been studying, though I often didn't actually remember/understand them. I spent twelve minutes reading it and got a few paragraphs in. Proper names were a real challenge - I had to rely on Google Translate to decode them.

Coincidentally, I finally reached 90% words known for いつも通りの日常で、、君からすれば on JPDB yesterday. I'd been stuck at 89% for ages, and I guess yesterday must have been the last tiny bit that finally pushed me over the edge. Not that it actually matters, as the exact numbers are fairly arbitrary.

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Today, I started reading Oku-Nikkou on Satori Reader. Recently, I'd been reading one chapter of The Jam Maker each morning, plus how ever many "chapters" of Sakura and Suzuki I got around to over the course of the day. However, I got up to Jam Maker ch8 yesterday, which is the most recently released, so I had to start a new series today. The story isn't finished (its apparently planned to have some 60 episodes), but they're only releasing one chapter every other week.

Oku-Nikkou is notable because I made an abortive attempt to read it two years ago, only to quickly be forced to give up due to its relative difficulty. It's still more difficult than most of the stories I've read on SR, but obviously my reading ability is much better now than two years ago, or even six months ago. The other reason I chose it is because Akiko mentioned writing it in the marathon final chapter of Akiko's Foreign Exchange.

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This afternoon, I tried playing Altdeus: Beyond Cronos again, a Japanese VRVN that I tried playing back in February. At the time, I found it to be a miserable slog and almost impossible to understand, so I decided to put it off until much later, when my Japanese skills might have improved sufficiently to take on The Final Boss Of Immersion.

However, I got bored this afternoon due to the heat and decided to give it another try to see if my Japanese had improved enough to play it yet. Unfortunately, I could still barely understand anything. I played for 24 minutes but only got through a fraction of the conversations in a single scene, and didn't understand much of what was going on. The thing that really annoys me though is how the game has no way to go backwards or replay things at all.

On the bright side, I did recognize a couple words that I'd learned recently, so there's always clear signs of improvement.

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As I finished Kotaro last night, tonight I watched Komi Can't Communicate. Back when I was watching it before, I watched up to ep12, which was then the last episode, and I thought it was the end. However, Netflix has continued to release new episodes weekly, so it is now up to 23 episodes.

Watching Komi Can't Communicate of course means tons and tons of onscreen text, and constantly pausing it to try to read things or look up new words. There's way too many notable things to even post all the screenshots I took, so here are some of the highlights:

Here we have a message from Najimi shown, but the subtitles only give a very summarized translation. Knowing Japanese does come in handy occasionally, even with everything subtitled.

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Here's a joke that didn't make sense to me. The fact that the subtitles say "isn't that a copyright violation?" (as best I could tell, the Japanese was something like "is that name ok?") suggests that this name is an allusion to something famous, but I have no idea what it could be, unless it's supposed to be referring to Death Note. Anyone know what the joke is supposed to be here?

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There's a scene where it does a Pokemon parody, and "not very effective" is apparently "効果は薄い" in Japanese. I thought it was interesting because I learned 薄い as thin/dilute, and while it does make sense with a more abstract interpretation, it is not at all how I would have expected things to be phrased.

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