Learning Japanese From Zero

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

Postby golyplot » Tue May 11, 2021 7:21 pm

vonPeterhof wrote: Just to be sure, the って in 連れてって isn't the quotation って, but a clipping of いって, from 連れて行く.


Gaah, that's even more confusing!
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Thu May 13, 2021 2:27 pm

I tried watching an episode of Terrace House with English subtitles on last night so I could actually understand what was going on. I felt like I could understand a lot more of the Japanese with subtitles than without. There were a bunch of cases where I was able to recognize the Japanese when I already knew what they were saying where I would have never been able to figure it out without subtitles.

Also last night, I started doing Wanikani again. My first review session back was like getting kicked repeatedly in the face, since I've forgotten most of it, especially the rare high level kanji and words. It will probably take me several months to get through the review backlog, but hopefully I'll able to get better eventually.

Also,

ハンバーグ
こないだ食べた
ばっかじゃないの
WE JUST HAD HAMBURG STEAK THE OTHER DAY

Why is there a "jyanai" in there? It seems like she's saying they didn't just have hamburger steak.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu May 13, 2021 6:12 pm

golyplot wrote:ハンバーグ
こないだ食べた
ばっかじゃないの
WE JUST HAD HAMBURG STEAK THE OTHER DAY

Why is there a "jyanai" in there? It seems like she's saying they didn't just have hamburger steak.

I've touched on it in a previous post, this is an example of じゃない as a tag question. In speech the clearest distinction between じゃない as a true negative and as a tag question is probably the fact that the ないin the former carries semantic stress while the latter doesn't (compare the way it's pronounced here and here). In writing there's things like a question mark or questioning particles like か and の to help, but sometimes the tag question interpretation makes more sense without those, or even with an exclamation mark. I think this sentence from Yotsuba is an example of that, but it's a bit hard to explain why. I feel like even in English just negating the sentence to something like "we didn't just have hamburg steak the other day" would feel off from a pragmatics point of view: what's even the point of saying that, to imply hat the last time you ate hamburg steak was further back in time or that what you ate the other day was something other than hamburg steak?
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dampingwire
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby dampingwire » Thu May 13, 2021 8:13 pm

golyplot wrote:ハンバーグ
こないだ食べた
ばっかじゃないの
WE JUST HAD HAMBURG STEAK THE OTHER DAY

I think that might perhaps have been clearer as
"WE JUST HAD HAMBURG STEAK THE OTHER DAY, DIDN'T WE? (SO WHY ARE WE HAVING IT AGAIN)"

and (to be ultra clear) "JUST" here means "recently in time" not "the only thing we had".

I think this sentence from Yotsuba is an example of that, but it's a bit hard to explain why. I feel like even in English just negating the sentence to something like "we didn't just have hamburg steak the other day" would feel off from a pragmatics point of view: what's even the point of saying that, to imply hat the last time you ate hamburg steak was further back in time or that what you ate the other day was something other than hamburg steak?[/quote]

vonPeterhof wrote:
golyplot wrote:I think this sentence from Yotsuba is an example of that, but it's a bit hard to explain why. I feel like even in English just negating the sentence to something like "we didn't just have hamburg steak the other day" would feel off from a pragmatics point of view: what's even the point of saying that, to imply hat the last time you ate hamburg steak was further back in time or that what you ate the other day was something other than hamburg steak?


The only sense I can make (in English) of "we didn't just have hamburg steak the other day" is "we ate a number of things the other day in addition to the hamburger (which we also ate)."

ハンバーグこないだ食べたばっか (without the tag question) would (I think) be a statement that you've recently eaten a hamburger (for some value of recently).
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sat May 15, 2021 11:50 pm

I recently got an Oculus Quest 2 and bought my first VR game, Moss, today. Since it had Japanese as a language option, I decided to try setting it to Japanese. Unfortunately, the Japanese translation appeared to be very poor.

At one point, every single line was along the lines of「...」おじさんはなしました, like someone translated word-by-word from English. No quotation particles, repeating the names with every line, etc. I'm not very good at Japanese, but I'm still pretty sure that's not how you do Japanese. Although I suppose could be wrong. Anyway, seeing that made me not trust any of the translations, so I set it back to English. What a shame. The narration is boring and melodramatic enough that playing in a different language would have added some much needed spice.

Incidentally, if anyone else is interested in trying out Moss, there's a secret trick to the giant thorny vines. I got stuck for ages on the vine level, carefully trying to jump past them while constantly healing Quill, dying repeatedly, etc. Eventually, I finally managed to get past the second to last set of vines just by chance, only to fall off the platform soon afterwards and die, at which point I ragequit.

I tried to refund the game, but couldn't figure out how, despite it supposedly being possible, so I checked a walkthrough video on Youtube instead. It turns out that level wasn't even supposed to be a challenge in the first place. You can just chop down the vines with your sword. It would have been nice if the game gave any indication of this. Also, the video showed a door in the wall and a platform with a scroll that I couldn't see while playing. It looks like the person in the Youtube video was playing standing up and thus had a different viewing angle. It's pretty frustrating that they say the game is meant to be played sitting down, but you can't see important game elements when sitting down.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Mon May 17, 2021 6:58 pm

Yesterday, I listened to the episode where Utaco talks about "suwifto" shops again. I always just assumed that "swift shops" was just one of those weird Japanese English terms that didn't have a clear English correspondence, sort of like "raibu" for concert. However, I noticed from the title of the episode that she was actually trying to say "thrift shop" all along. Even after discovering that, it still sounded more like "swift" than "thrift" to me. This is notable because usually even when foreigners have thick accents, a native speaker can still understand what they meant to say, but this is one of those rare cases which led to a complete misunderstanding.


Later on, Utaco talked about being confused after moving to the US by the difference in terminology between "straw coffee" and "cold cup coffee". I'm not even sure which of those is supposed to be the Japanese term and which the American since I've never heard either one in English. Then again, I'm not much of a coffee drinker either.

Also, in Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun ep9, I noticed one girl bowing while talking on the phone. Is that something people actually do? It seems weird, since the person you're talking to has no way to see it.

Also, I was disappointed that when the show was skewering the 相合傘 trope, they didn't take the opportunity to acknowledge that holding an umbrella like that would barely protect you from the rain in the first place. Instead, it takes a car driving past to drench the characters. Noone in fiction ever seems to realize that rain often doesn't just fall straight down, and even when it does, it bounces and splashes on the ground, so even with an umbrella, your legs will usually still get wet in heavy rain. And that's the best case scenario. Sharing an umbrella with someone much taller than you like that means that you could very well even get your head wet.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue May 18, 2021 3:12 pm

This morning, I watched this video, although I couldn't understand much of it. I guess I'll have to rewatch it, pausing every second to look up the subtitles.



I also checked out the Wikipedia page using Google Translate, and was struck by one line: "The people who appear are deformed into a cute three-headed picture with a slender body and a large head ." As far as I can tell, the Japanese meant something like "the characters are three heads tall". Google Translate often butchers the grammar and turns things into word salad, but you can still usually tell what it meant to say based on the translation. However, this is one of those cases where the mis-translation resulted in something completely incomprehensible.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri May 21, 2021 5:12 am

The latest episode of Hayato's Cities: Skylines had me laughing like a maniac the entire time.

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

Postby golyplot » Sat May 22, 2021 12:52 am

When talking about peanut butter vs "peanut cream", Utaco said something that sounded like "sonton" several times, but I can't figure out what it could have possibly been. Any ideas?
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun May 23, 2021 2:15 pm

Friday night, I finished watching Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun. I haven't decided what to try watching next yet.

I spent a lot of time on Wanikani Saturday (almost an hour and a half), although it feels really pointless sometimes, bashing my head against the endless permutations of obscure kanji from the highest levels.


Also yesterday, I noticed Utaco saying "kamihanki" a lot. I initially assumed that it meant "hair dryer" or something like that, in analogy to "suihanki" = "rice cooker". However, when I looked it up, it turned out to be completely different. It's a big frustrating how Japanese words are built out of kanji that have so many possible homophones with unrelated meanings, especially the on-yomi kanji.
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