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Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:51 am
by golyplot
Xenops wrote:I haven’t read through your whole blog yet, but how are you finding Cardcaptor Sakura? I also thought that might be a good anime/manga to ease into (also, I’m a Clamp fan :D ).


It's pretty good. Better than I expected anyway. There's a reason I've continued watching it for 44 episodes to date.

Plotwise, it's a combination of slice of life and action. You might think it would get repetitive with the whole "capturing a card in every episode" conceit, but the main plot is slice of life, so it's actually pretty varied and often provides interesting snippets of Japanese culture. There are even a few episodes which don't involve cards at all.

The animation is of course cheap by modern standards, but it still holds up reasonably well. It's much better than contemporaries like One Piece, which I gave up after only three episodes. I was also impressed when I realized that the release and capturing sequences are modified to show whatever clothes Sakura happens to be wearing at the time, and she changes outfits a lot. Most magical girl shows don't bother with that, even ones with much higher budgets.

My one complaint is the repetitiveness of the Tokyo Tower dream sequences. Sakura has the same dream of Tokyo Tower approximately a billion times. At least they're short and easy to skip through.

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:09 pm
by Xenops
golyplot wrote:
Xenops wrote:I haven’t read through your whole blog yet, but how are you finding Cardcaptor Sakura? I also thought that might be a good anime/manga to ease into (also, I’m a Clamp fan :D ).


It's pretty good. Better than I expected anyway. There's a reason I've continued watching it for 44 episodes to date.

Plotwise, it's a combination of slice of life and action. You might think it would get repetitive with the whole "capturing a card in every episode" conceit, but the main plot is slice of life, so it's actually pretty varied and often provides interesting snippets of Japanese culture. There are even a few episodes which don't involve cards at all.

The animation is of course cheap by modern standards, but it still holds up reasonably well. It's much better than contemporaries like One Piece, which I gave up after only three episodes. I was also impressed when I realized that the release and capturing sequences are modified to show whatever clothes Sakura happens to be wearing at the time, and she changes outfits a lot. Most magical girl shows don't bother with that, even ones with much higher budgets.

My one complaint is the repetitiveness of the Tokyo Tower dream sequences. Sakura has the same dream of Tokyo Tower approximately a billion times. At least they're short and easy to skip through.


I apologize, I did not make myself understandable: I'm actually well acquainted with CCS, and other manga that the same group produces. I meant to ask about the level of Japanese used in the anime, since you seem to be approaching it intensively. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that you are working through this anime, as I have wondered if the level of Japanese is more approachable for beginners, in contrast to Attack on Titan, for example.

On a different note, I was looking for the CSS manga in Japanese and eBay, and discovered that they put the anime in manga form as well: I cannot get the link to work, but if you search "Card Captor Sakura Anime Japanese Version Full Color 1-10 Set manga" on eBay, you can find it.

My apologies once again for the confusion. :?

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 8:01 pm
by golyplot
Xenops wrote:I apologize, I did not make myself understandable: I'm actually well acquainted with CCS, and other manga that the same group produces. I meant to ask about the level of Japanese used in the anime, since you seem to be approaching it intensively. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that you are working through this anime, as I have wondered if the level of Japanese is more approachable for beginners, in contrast to Attack on Titan, for example.


Oh sorry about that. I couldn't really say, since I haven't watched that many series and I can't understand much Japanese to begin with!

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 8:09 am
by crush
Xenops wrote:I apologize, I did not make myself understandable: I'm actually well acquainted with CCS, and other manga that the same group produces. I meant to ask about the level of Japanese used in the anime, since you seem to be approaching it intensively. I thought it was an interesting coincidence that you are working through this anime, as I have wondered if the level of Japanese is more approachable for beginners, in contrast to Attack on Titan, for example.

Perhaps i can comment, as i watched the first 20 or so episodes of the series. I found the dialog relatively easy to understand (compared to Attack on Titan, which coincidentally i'm watching now). I'm also not at a stage where i can easily understand Japanese content, my comprehension hovers between say 40 and 60%, but i'd say i was closer to 60% and it was far more common for me to understand entire sentences and even dialogs in CCS than it is for me in Attack on Titan.

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 4:12 am
by golyplot
In recent weeks I've been busy with non-Japanese stuff and barely bothered with Japanese. But that's mostly out of the way now, so I intended to devote a lot more time to learning Japanese going forward. (Not that I'm really sure what to do given the time)

This morning I watched a Cardcaptor Sakura episode (ep 45) for the first time in a while. Hopefully all the talk about 最後の審判 (final judgement) will help cement in my mind two words I've struggled with on Wanikani. Especially the former. I don't even know how many times I've missed 最後 and its cousin 最終 at this point.

This morning I listened to a 4989 American Life episode that was talking a lot about cherries, and I realized I've been mispronouncing sakura all this time. In Japanese, the accent is on the first syllable, not the second like I've always pronounced it.

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 6:10 am
by vonPeterhof
golyplot wrote:This morning I listened to a 4989 American Life episode that was talking a lot about cherries, and I realized I've been mispronouncing sakura all this time. In Japanese, the accent is on the first syllable, not the second like I've always pronounced it.

Technically it's only accented on the first syllable as a personal name, whereas it's unaccented as a common noun (the Wiktionary entry doesn't distinguish between the two pronunciations, probably because data about pitch accent in proper names is hard to come by, but I have seen anecdotal evidence that shifting the accent to the first mora in feminine personal names like Sakura or Hana is a thing that happens). But yeah, I would guess that stressing the first syllable in "sakura" when speaking English makes for a pronunciation that's less jarring to a Japanese ear.

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:24 pm
by golyplot
A couple days ago, I finally decided to get serious about Japanese again, but I'm having trouble deciding what to actually do besides the usual WK + watching anime. I had been reading through Tae Kim's grammar guide to start with, but it went down this morning. Besides, just reading about grammar doesn't help all that much anyway.

I finished watching BNA: Brand New Animal last night. Coincidentally, I also finished season 2 of CCS yesterday. This morning, I watched the first episode of The Disastrous Like of Saiki K. It's very different from most tv shows - it's more of a fast paced comedy series with each episode divided into short segments. It's pretty funny so far though (as usual, I read through the subtitle file before watching the episode so I'd have some idea what they're saying.)

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2020 4:09 pm
by golyplot
Yesterday morning's WK review session brought me to exactly 1000 burned items, which I thought was cool enough that I should post a screenshot. However, in generally I've not been doing great on WK reviews lately. It's not just a few leeches bouncing around either. A lot of it is old reviews coming back up that I've completely forgotten. I try to stay positive by reminding myself that kicking stuff back to the lower SRS levels is basically just the same thing as unlocking more material to study, but I wish I didn't have to study it again. Yesterday evening, I wasn't in the mood for Japanese at all. Perhaps today will be better.

Image

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 11:26 pm
by golyplot
This morning I had a crisis of confidence where I seriously thought I might have to give up on learning Japanese and never think about it again, but luckily I'm over that for now.

Yesterday, I started going through Tae Kim's grammar guide again thanks to the magic of web.archive.org, but as before, it's slow going. Reading about the grammar mostly just serves to highlight just how vast the gulf ahead of me is. On the bright side, at least I know most of the vocabulary used in the example sentences now. I recall when I looked at the guides early on in my journey, I really struggled because I didn't know any of the words either. Tae Kim of course provides a vocab section at the start of each lesson, and as I recently discovered, you can mouseover most words to see their reading and meaning, but trying to keep multiple pieces of information like that in your mind at once makes it really hard to learn. The grammar is mindbending enough when you can at least understand the individual words in the sentence.

I also noticed that in 4989 American Life, the host says omiyage very frequently. I learned omiyage previously as "souvenir" but she says it so often that I thought it had to be a different word I wasn't aware of. However, I looked it up and souvenir is the only meaning, more or less. Perhaps she's using it more metaphorically?

Also, I just signed up for Bunpro again for the third time. As usual, I created a new account and started over from the beginning. I think this time I might stick with it for longer, but who knows if I'll just get annoyed with it again.

Re: Japanese listening from nothing: 2020 Log

Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 11:45 pm
by dampingwire
golyplot wrote:I also noticed that in 4989 American Life, the host says omiyage very frequently. I learned omiyage previously as "souvenir" but she says it so often that I thought it had to be a different word I wasn't aware of. However, I looked it up and souvenir is the only meaning, more or less. Perhaps she's using it more metaphorically.


I've never looked at 4989 before but it looks like lots of episodes, so you'd need to pick one as an example. お土産 can be, for example, a gift you bring back from holiday o give to a friend or a neighbour or a boss or a co-worker. Supposedly you can buy them in the airport on your return, but I've no idea if that's actually true! It can also be a gift that you take when you visit someone at their home, for example.

So I guess (like almost everything in Japanese :-)) it depends on context.