Learning Japanese From Zero

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

Postby golyplot » Mon May 24, 2021 3:14 pm

Yotsubato time!

そんなことして
くるしくないか?
ISN'T IT HARD TO BREATHE LIKE THAT!?

I was a bit confused here, because as far as I can tell from Jisho and ichi.moe, it seems like the Japanese means something like "isn't that painful?". I'm not sure where the "hard to breathe" part comes in.

This is especially odd because the translation makes the subsequent line a non sequitur.

でも本当に
苦しいのは…心
BUT WHAT REALLY MAKES IT HARD IS... ...THE PAIN IN MY HEART

I think in the original Japanese, it was just something "but what is really painful is my heart", but the "hard to breathe" translation turns this into a non sequitur. Why would "the pain in my heart" make it hard to breathe?


グッバイ
マイラブ
SO LONG, MY LOVE

This translation was also pretty baffling because she was already speaking English! Why on earth would you change it? Come on, that one should have been a gimmie.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon May 24, 2021 5:48 pm

golyplot wrote:そんなことして
くるしくないか?
ISN'T IT HARD TO BREATHE LIKE THAT!?

I was a bit confused here, because as far as I can tell from Jisho and ichi.moe, it seems like the Japanese means something like "isn't that painful?". I'm not sure where the "hard to breathe" part comes in.

This is especially odd because the translation makes the subsequent line a non sequitur.

でも本当に
苦しいのは…心
BUT WHAT REALLY MAKES IT HARD IS... ...THE PAIN IN MY HEART

I think in the original Japanese, it was just something "but what is really painful is my heart", but the "hard to breathe" translation turns this into a non sequitur. Why would "the pain in my heart" make it hard to breathe?

The most literal definitions of 苦しい in Japanese monolingual dictionaries tend to be something like "physical discomfort due to pain or external pressure", and they often expressly mention difficulty breathing. I've definitely heard it used to describe specifically difficulty breathing rather than pain. This interpretation makes the most sense in the first situation here, since Yotsuba sees Fuuka with her face against a pillow, which is a lot more suggestive of asphyxiation that pain. Of course Fuuka using the word more figuratively* later on makes that translation a bit harder to work with, and the solution the translator came up her is hardly the most graceful one possible.

*Might be appropriate to note here that 心 (as opposed to 心臓) practically never refers to the literal heart as an internal organ. In modern Japanese it usually refers to the more figurative senses of "heart", and in fact it's often more appropriate to translate it as "the mind" or "the soul".
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue May 25, 2021 1:41 pm

I burned an unusually high number of items in this morning's Wanikani session. That's mostly luck, but it's still interesting. What's really interesting is the factor that "instinct" plays.

For example, when I saw 熊本県, I immediately thought "kumamoto". But I didn't actually remember that reading of 本 and thought it had to be "hon", so I assumed I was just misremembering. However, I couldn't think of anything else that "felt" more right, so I ended up just guessing kumamoto and of course it was right after all.

I also very nearly burned 将来. When I saw it, I immediately thought "shourai" and "future". However, I second guessed myself on the meaning half. I thought "it has the commander kanji, so there's no way that means future. It's probably just a homophone of some other word that means future", so I got it wrong.

Of course, my instinct isn't always right. When I saw 失恋, I immediately thought taihen (大変). Presumably, my subconscious mistook 恋 for 変 (ug, why are they so similar?) and didn't look closely. It's especially embarrassing since I just finished reading Yotsubato ch25, where 失恋 comes up very frequently.

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

Postby golyplot » Sat May 29, 2021 5:29 am

Today, while listening to 4989 American Life when Utaco was talking about dogs and cats, I was surprised to hear her say "wanchi" and "nyanchi", presumably cutesy ways of referring to dogs and cats. Is this common?
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat May 29, 2021 11:33 am

golyplot wrote:Today, while listening to 4989 American Life when Utaco was talking about dogs and cats, I was surprised to hear her say "wanchi" and "nyanchi", presumably cutesy ways of referring to dogs and cats. Is this common?

Don't think I've ever heard this particular version, but I do hear "wanko/nyanko", "wanchan/nyanchan" and "wanwan/nyannyan" a lot.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:50 pm

Sadly, there hasn't been much to write about recently. I'm still trying to decide which anime to watch next if anyone has suggestions (preferably ones on US Netflix). Also, does anyone have suggestions on ways to get better at speaking Japanese?

Anyway, today I burnt 厳しい on Wanikani. I would have never remembered the mnemonics for 厳, but I managed to guess/remember that it meant strict and I had "kibishii = strict" drilled into me from thousands of hours of watching podcasts and the like. There've been a few others like that too. Sadly that doesn't work so well for the hundreds of really obscure kanji and vocab on WK that keep plaguing me every day.
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eido
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby eido » Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:26 pm

golyplot wrote:Also, does anyone have suggestions on ways to get better at speaking Japanese?

I can give advice mostly on how to get better at speaking languages in general, though I have learned a bit of Japanese.

My experience comes mostly from Spanish, though I think the general principles I'll espouse throughout this next bit will apply to Japanese as well in certain facets.

It's often said on the forum that the 4 core skills all run into each other and strengthen one another. I agree. I saw this directly proved to me when I started writing in Spanish as a first measure of improving in the beginning of my studies. I wrote often, trying to capture new vocabulary words and grammar. It definitely helped.

I next tried reading and listening in the second major plan of attack in trying to take my skills to the next level back in 2018. I was maybe a B1 in most skills, if that. By the end I was a high B2. It was really impressive. All I'm trying to say here is that each skill on its own fortifies the other. You have to have patience, though. :)

For writing in Japanese, I still recommend continuous practice, even if it's rough at first. I realize it contains 3 different syllabaries and there are various kanji readings. But I think the only way you'll remember the on'yomi and kun'yomi and various pitch accents is by writing out passages or texting somebody and having that inner reader read you a monologue with the correct pronunciation. This of course also takes patience, since you must also check your writing for correct characters and weed your mental landscape out of any nasty dandelions in terms of bad articulation, fluidity, etc.

I know once I got to texting my friend in Korean, conversations began to flow. But it took that initial jump and vigorous guessing and checking. It takes some experience writing to truly get good with speaking.

As always, work hard, and you will see results.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:16 pm

eido wrote:My experience comes mostly from Spanish, though I think the general principles I'll espouse throughout this next bit will apply to Japanese as well in certain facets.

It's often said on the forum that the 4 core skills all run into each other and strengthen one another. I agree. I saw this directly proved to me when I started writing in Spanish as a first measure of improving in the beginning of my studies. I wrote often, trying to capture new vocabulary words and grammar. It definitely helped.

I next tried reading and listening in the second major plan of attack in trying to take my skills to the next level back in 2018. I was maybe a B1 in most skills, if that. By the end I was a high B2. It was really impressive. All I'm trying to say here is that each skill on its own fortifies the other. You have to have patience, though. :)

For writing in Japanese, I still recommend continuous practice, even if it's rough at first. I realize it contains 3 different syllabaries and there are various kanji readings. But I think the only way you'll remember the on'yomi and kun'yomi and various pitch accents is by writing out passages or texting somebody and having that inner reader read you a monologue with the correct pronunciation. This of course also takes patience, since you must also check your writing for correct characters and weed your mental landscape out of any nasty dandelions in terms of bad articulation, fluidity, etc.

I know once I got to texting my friend in Korean, conversations began to flow. But it took that initial jump and vigorous guessing and checking. It takes some experience writing to truly get good with speaking.

As always, work hard, and you will see results.


I've already devoted considerable time and effort to developing listening skills, as this log will attest. The hard part is figuring out how to bootstrap speaking skills.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Jun 06, 2021 2:31 pm

Saturday night, I watched the first episode of Drifting Dragons. I first watched without subtitles, then again with English subtitles so I could actually understand it. It was pretty demoralizing to see just how much I missed.

In mostly unrelated news, I watched a video about the history of speedrunning the Choco Mountain level of Mario Kart 64 yesterday. The video talks about an extremely difficult glitch that lets you beat the entire level in seconds, which was nicknamed "the weathertenko". Afterwards, I realized that the "tenko" part was probably a Japanese word (in fact it means weather). It's kind of interesting to see stuff like that that I would have never noticed before learning Japanese.

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

Postby golyplot » Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:54 pm

Yotsubato time!


ちょっと
きてみ
COME HERE

For some reason, Miura ends most of his sentences in -mi. I thought it might be a contraction of "mitai", but it still doesn't make much sense to me.

こんなのへーきな?
YOU CAN TAKE SOME-THING LIKE THAT, RIGHT?

I couldn't figure this one out at all, and Jisho and ichi.moe didn't help.



やめて
やめて
壊れる
By coincidence, I decided to try learning the various conjugation forms (Causative, Passive, and Potential) once and for all this morning before reading Yotsubato, so I looked them up again on Tae Kim, and wrote down the conjugation patterns to help me remember. If I'm not mistaken, this is the casual potential form (the formal version is indistinguishable from passive for -ru verbs). It was kind of cool to see that knowledge come up so quickly, though I'm not sure how much it helps.

Update - I looked it up, and apparently 壊れる is actually a separate verb. There's no such verb as 壊る for it to be the potential form of. Gaaaah! Why do these things have to be so confusing?!



よつばがかってに
さわるとおこる
そうだ
勝手に叩くのは
よくない

勝手 has long confused me on WK, and here it comes up twice. I still don't understand it much though.


すごい…
上は洪水
下は大火事だ
THEY ARE AWESOME...
LIKE A FIRE AND A FLOOD AT THE SAME TIME!

Here, the Japanese appears to be saying something like "above a flood, below a big fire". I'm not sure what sense the metaphor is supposed to make (wouldn't the flood put out the fire?), but I'm also curious if this is a common construction. Is it a reference to a famous quote or something?

とぶとき
コンセントは
どーする?
Here's one that threw my for a loop. Apparently, "consento" means "electrical outlet", not "consent", like you might expect.
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