Learning Japanese From Zero

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

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Jun 07, 2021 4:46 pm

golyplot wrote: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.

み is a very colloquial imperative/suggestive form of 見る as an auxiliary verb meaning "to try". I think it's usually analysed as a clipping of みて, but in some contexts it might be equivalent to みろ, みな(さい) or みよう.

Also there you go mixing up Miura's gender again :lol:

golyplot wrote: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.

へーき is just a sort of eye dialect spelling of へいき (平気). The pronunciation of /ei/ as a long e is so common I've seen some pronunciation guides for learners describe it as the default one in the same way as the hiragana spelling "ou" usually represents a long o, but if the NHK's pronunciation dictionary is to be believed the former pronunciation isn't quite standard.

golyplot wrote: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.

勝手に basically means "at will" or "as one pleases", and when used with actions that affect someone else it usually carries the implication of "without permission".

golyplot wrote: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?

It's actually a somewhat well-known children's riddle with the answer being a bathtub, specifically the old-style type with a wood-burning stove for heating directly below. Of course this riddle probably flies over the heads of most modern-day urban children who are used to hot water coming from the faucet, with the heater possibly not even in the same room as the tub itself. I think the implication here is that Miura uses the phrase just for the impressive-sounding imagery of destruction and either has no idea what it actually means or doesn't expect Yotsuba to know it yet.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:12 am

でもこれ
種なしだぞ?

A common kanji that WK doesn't have - not something I expected to see in Yotsubato of all places. It's kind of frustrating how haphazard WK is. It's missing a lot of kanji and kanji readings used in common words, while meanwhile including kanji that aren't even used in anything. I've thought about trying to create my own version of WK some day, and stuff like this reminds me of that dream.

いつもよつばが
お世話になってるんで
これ うちの田舎から
送ってきたもん
なんですけど
I JUST WANTED TO GIVE THIS TO YOU...
..TO THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE FOR YOTSUBAIT'S FROM MY HOMETOWN IN THE COUNTRY

The Japanese grammar here isn't what I was expecting based on the English translation. For example, Jisho tells me that お世話 means "assistance". Why would it be osewa ni naru then? How do you become assistance? Shouldn't it be morau or the like be involved? And why is there a de instead of a kara at the end of that's the explanation of why he's giving a gift?

なんかアイスとかスイカとか
この前は朝ごはんも
もらっちゃったよーで

The use of ちゃった here was puzzling since it normally means "happened unfortunately" but that's obviously not the case here. Presumably, it's an example of the less common alternate meaning "to finish". Although that seems a bit strange here as well - is it meant to imply that she fed Yotsuba a bunch in the past but won't do that anymore? Why not use the simple past for morau here?



P.S. I listened to an episode where Utaco talked about her cats, Nyanchi and Kurochi. At one point, it sounded like she said they smelled nice. Is this a common thing with cats? I've never heard of it before.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby Xenops » Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:36 am

golyplot wrote:P.S. I listened to an episode where Utaco talked about her cats, Nyanchi and Kurochi. At one point, it sounded like she said they smelled nice. Is this a common thing with cats? I've never heard of it before.


YES!!!

Ahem, I like kitties. :D It's delightful to rub your face in their fur. They don't smell nice like flowers, more like clean fur or wool. A well-groomed cat has a particular scent that is nice. Dogs, on the other hand... :?
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Jun 08, 2021 2:25 pm

I watched Drifting Dragons ep 2 last night. Once again, I watched it twice, once without subtitles and once with English subtitles so I could understand what happened.

I forgot to mention that when I watched the first episode, I found the main character's animation to be stilted and unnerving, like a VTuber avatar. However, either it got better or I got used to it because I didn't think it was so bad in ep2. Presumably, I'll be able to ignore it once I get more invested in the story, just like with Sakura's creepy looking hair ribbon.

Anyway, I do sometimes notice bits of the Japanese even while rewatching with subtitles on, and even stuff I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. For example, in the scene in ep2 where they talk about taking a loss even with all the money from the dragon they just hunted, I noticed the word "akaji", a word I first encountered in one of Hayato's Cities: Skylines videos. I would have never noticed that without the subtitles to tell me what they were saying.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Jun 08, 2021 10:31 pm

golyplot wrote:いつもよつばが
お世話になってるんで
これ うちの田舎から
送ってきたもん
なんですけど
I JUST WANTED TO GIVE THIS TO YOU...
..TO THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE FOR YOTSUBAIT'S FROM MY HOMETOWN IN THE COUNTRY

The Japanese grammar here isn't what I was expecting based on the English translation. For example, Jisho tells me that お世話 means "assistance". Why would it be osewa ni naru then? How do you become assistance? Shouldn't it be morau or the like be involved? And why is there a de instead of a kara at the end of that's the explanation of why he's giving a gift?

お世話になる is a stock polite phrase most commonly used for acknowledging indebtedness, either your own or that of somebody you're responsible for in the そと・うち framework, like in this case. While おXになる is a fairly standard construction in honorific language, I've never actually considered how お世話になる doesn't really work the way this construction normally does, since it's usually meant for clauses where the other party is the subject instead of the speaker. A brief search showed me a plausible if not 100% certain explanation: one theory is that the せわ part is related to the adjective せわしい, "busy", so if the honorific お is interpreted in the sense of "your" the literal meaning of the phrase お世話になっています becomes something to the effect of "I've become a source of your business" or "I keep becoming a burden on you".

んで is just a form of ので, which is in many ways synonymous to から.

golyplot wrote:なんかアイスとかスイカとか
この前は朝ごはんも
もらっちゃったよーで

The use of ちゃった here was puzzling since it normally means "happened unfortunately" but that's obviously not the case here. Presumably, it's an example of the less common alternate meaning "to finish". Although that seems a bit strange here as well - is it meant to imply that she fed Yotsuba a bunch in the past but won't do that anymore? Why not use the simple past for morau here?
Well you can think of it as "unfortunate" not in the sense that Yotsuba was harmed by it, but in the sense of unwittingly contributing to the situation where the Ayases keep giving things to Yotsuba without getting much in return. This is another そと・うち situation where the father basically apologizes to the neighbors on behalf of his daughter by acknowledging, perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly, that she's been a bit of a drain on their household resources :D
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:21 am

めーわく
かけてないよ?
I'M NOT BEING A BOTHER!

For some reason, the Japanese here ends with a ? while the English ends with a !. Is this just the transcribers being silly or is there some meaning to it?

これでしばちく
ほっとけば
できるからね
JUST LEAVE IT BE, AND IT'LL BE FINISHED

Neither ichi.moe nor Jisho could make any sense of the でしばちく part. Does anyone know what it means? Also, here's yet another conjugation pattern to learn (the eba form). Arg. I'm never going to remember them all!

二人も
呼んできて
GO GET YOUR SISTERS

Earlier, the mom said "sannin" when telling Yotsuba to collect the bedding from the three sisters. I find it completely crazy that in Japanese, you can apparently just say the number of people and let who you're talking about be inferred from context.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:39 pm

golyplot wrote:めーわく
かけてないよ?
I'M NOT BEING A BOTHER!

For some reason, the Japanese here ends with a ? while the English ends with a !. Is this just the transcribers being silly or is there some meaning to it?

I think I mentioned this here before, but the question mark isn't always used for questions in Japanese. Using a question mark in a direct translation would be inaccurate since she's not really asking whether or not she's being a bother, she's stating that she isn't, but in a semi-questioning tone, as if fishing for a reaction, or expressing mild surprise that this even has to be stated. Since this isn't really done that way in English a more accurate translation would rephrase it as something like "What? I'm not being a bother!"

golyplot wrote:これでしばちく
ほっとけば
できるからね
JUST LEAVE IT BE, AND IT'LL BE FINISHED

Neither ichi.moe nor Jisho could make any sense of the でしばちく part. Does anyone know what it means?

I was surprised to read that software had trouble parsing しばらく in that sentence before I accidentally highlighted it with my popup dictionary and saw that it was misspelled as しばちく. Transcription errors strike again!
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:20 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:I think I mentioned this here before, but the question mark isn't always used for questions in Japanese. Using a question mark in a direct translation would be inaccurate since she's not really asking whether or not she's being a bother, she's stating that she isn't, but in a semi-questioning tone, as if fishing for a reaction, or expressing mild surprise that this even has to be stated. Since this isn't really done that way in English a more accurate translation would rephrase it as something like "What? I'm not being a bother!"


Would it make sense to translate as "I'm not being a bother, am I?"

vonPeterhof wrote:I was surprised to read that software had trouble parsing しばらく in that sentence before I accidentally highlighted it with my popup dictionary and saw that it was misspelled as しばちく. Transcription errors strike again!


Ha, I initially read it as shibaraku as well. I guess that shows that my Japanese is getting good enough that I can sometimes fill in the gaps automatically. :D
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:43 pm

golyplot wrote:Would it make sense to translate as "I'm not being a bother, am I?"

It could work, but I don't think it's the best option in writing, since without additional cues like the tone of the voice or (outside of comics) facial expressions it may come across as less confident than the original Japanese phrase.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Jun 11, 2021 5:27 am

Yesterday, I noticed Utaco use the word chuusen (lottery). I looked it up afterwards, only to realize it was a word that previously came up for review on WK which I missed. Sometimes I wonder whether there's any point to doing WK, but I'm sure making a connection like that will be helpful.

Incidentally, I finished 4989 American Life today and started listening to Noriko again. I don't know the exact numbers, but estimating each episode of American Life at half an hour means that I've been averaging over two and a half hours of podcast listening per day! That's actually a lot higher than I expected.
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