Learning Japanese From Zero

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

Postby golyplot » Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:06 pm

Inspired by the video Crush posted, I decided to try some intensive reading with ch5 of Yotsubato, looking up all the words and grammar. Of course, I predictably got sidetracked on the very first sentence, reading about imperative forms and so on.

But what annoys me is the lack of furigana in the example sentences on Tofugu's page. I can try to read them, but without at least optional furigana, there's no way to know if I was actually right. I looked up a couple of the sentences on ichi.moe, and it's a good thing I did, because it turns out that I misremembered the reading of 熊 as "kuruma" rather than "kuma". That was kind of embarrassing. At least I managed to get 逃げろ right. I remember back in my Wanikani days, I really struggled keeping straight the "ni" and "noga" readings.

Another sentence had the word 強盗, which was completely unfamiliar to me. Naturally, the 強 uses a weird reading. I was going to say I haven't seen it before, but it turns out that it's actually on Wanikani and I'd just forgotten it.

I guess the solution to that is to install Yomichan, which I've been resisting, but maybe I'll have to give in and do that after all.

Speaking of the command form, -ro for normal verbs is reasonable enough to remember, but then it uses -e instead of -o for other verbs. Also, a conjugated non-te form that ends in -te is just evil. Why Japanese people, why?

P.S. Tae Kim's guide, which I read before, just said that the command form is really rude and rarely used. It's a good thing I landed on Tofugu's page this time, which is much more informative.
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crush
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby crush » Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:57 am

golyplot wrote:I guess the solution to that is to install Yomichan, which I've been resisting, but maybe I'll have to give in and do that after all.

Any reason you've been holding off? I use it all the time, i use it + an mpv script to mine cards from TV/anime shows quickly and easily, i also use Yomichan on my phone where i do all my reading (i find it's easier to tap on new words than to find them with the mouse). It's one of my favorite Japanese-learning tools.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:42 am

On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I took it easy, but tonight I returned to Japanese again. I got a couple pages further into Yotsubato ch5, but got stuck on the line ならねーよ 泣かねーし, which I couldn't figure out, even with ichi.moe, Google, etc. Does anyone know what kind of grammar that is?

One other notable bit: At the beginning of the chapter, Yotsuba's dad says to her "はやくしろーおいてくぞー". From what I've read, this form is considered a bit rude, but is often used by parents towards their children, so that makes sense. Therefore, I was surprised later on when Yotsuba says the same thing back "とーちゃーんはやくしろーおいてくぞー". I figured that's just Yotsuba being Yotsuba, but it was still odd to see.


Apart from that, I watched the last two episodes of Carmen Sandiego season 4 (and the show in general, apparently - I wasn't expecting the show to end already).
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kelvin921019
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:47 pm

golyplot wrote:On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I took it easy, but tonight I returned to Japanese again. I got a couple pages further into Yotsubato ch5, but got stuck on the line ならねーよ 泣かねーし, which I couldn't figure out, even with ichi.moe, Google, etc. Does anyone know what kind of grammar that is?

I don't know if it's type of colloquialism or dialect, but it means ない
One famous japanese comedy group called 我が家 and their famous catch phrase is "言わせねーよ" (I won't let you say that!)
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Mar 04, 2021 7:12 pm

golyplot wrote:At the beginning of the chapter, Yotsuba's dad says to her "はやくしろーおいてくぞー". From what I've read, this form is considered a bit rude, but is often used by parents towards their children, so that makes sense. Therefore, I was surprised later on when Yotsuba says the same thing back "とーちゃーんはやくしろーおいてくぞー". I figured that's just Yotsuba being Yotsuba, but it was still odd to see.

Pretty much, a big part of her character is her inability to wrap her head around various norms of speech and behavior due to being a small and hyperactive child.

kelvin921019 wrote:I don't know if it's type of colloquialism or dialect, but it means ない

It's a typical feature of Eastern Japanese dialects, but since it happens to be present in the traditional dialect of the Tokyo area it's often seen as a general colloquialism rather than a dialectal feature. The stereotypical working class Tokyo (Shitamachi) dialect even has this vowel shift appear word-internally rather than just in endings (for example, pronouncing 帰る as けぇる or 大丈夫 as でぇじょうぶ), but it seems like pretty much nobody who grew up in Tokyo after the 1940s pronounces those words like that anymore unless they're deliberately putting on a performance.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Mar 06, 2021 8:15 pm

I read a bit more of Yotsubato! today. There was a lot of grammar I couldn't figure out, even with both Jisho and ichi.moe.

For example, the dad says "ハラへってんのか", translated as "Are you hungry?" I'm familiar with the expression "はらへった" to mean I'm hungry, but I haven't seen it with the -te version before, and I have no idea what the んのか part is for. My guess is that てん is some sort of contraction, but I can't remember the details.

I was also stumped by the line "おおー?でけーな おい!" (OHH!? THAT'S HUGE!!).

When Yotsuba said "たべものやさん", it took me a while, but I managed to figure it out on my own. The ya means shop, and she added "-san" for some reason. Is that just her being silly again?


One last thing is that often even when I can identify all the words and grammar used, that doesn't necessarily make it easy to understand! For example, the Dad's line here is translated as "Yeah, that's where all the little shops would be", but as far as I can tell, the Japanese literally translates as something more like "That's a place where shops come out". It's interesting that the English is written as a conditional, while the Japanese isn't.

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

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:43 pm

golyplot wrote:For example, the dad says "ハラへってんのか", translated as "Are you hungry?" I'm familiar with the expression "はらへった" to mean I'm hungry, but I haven't seen it with the -te version before, and I have no idea what the んのか part is for. My guess is that てん is some sort of contraction, but I can't remember the details.

-てんの is a colloquial simplification of -てるの, which is itself a colloquial contraction of -ているの.

golyplot wrote:I was also stumped by the line "おおー?でけーな おい!" (OHH!? THAT'S HUGE!!).

でけー is another example of the vowel shift we were talking last time, the original verb form is でかい.

golyplot wrote:When Yotsuba said "たべものやさん", it took me a while, but I managed to figure it out on my own. The ya means shop, and she added "-san" for some reason. Is that just her being silly again?

No, adding "-san" to the names of organizations and establishments is actually pretty common (although in this case it can be ambiguous because the suffix や can refer to both the establishment and the person running it). If anything I assumed that it's the "たべものや" part where Yotsuba is being silly by thinking you can add や to any sort of produce to make the name of the establishment selling it, but turns out it actually is a real word. Guess I learned something today.

golyplot wrote:For example, the Dad's line here is translated as "Yeah, that's where all the little shops would be", but as far as I can tell, the Japanese literally translates as something more like "That's a place where shops come out". It's interesting that the English is written as a conditional, while the Japanese isn't.

I think I talked about this recently in someone else's log, but technically "would" is a subjunctive, not a conditional. Japanese verbs have at least three different conditional forms but no real equivalent to subjunctive ones. A conditional sentence describing a hypothetical situation, like (もし)おまつりに行けば(きっと)楽しかった(のに) (the bits in the brackets aren't really necessary, but they make it more obvious that the situation described is hypothetical instead of what had actually happened), would require the subjunctive if translated into English (Surely it would have been fun if we had gone to the festival), but the sentence in Yotsuba is a more ambiguous case where different translation choices were possible.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Mon Mar 08, 2021 5:32 pm

Yesterday, I finally finished ch5 of Yotsubato. Some points of note:

これは乗っちゃだめ ("Don't ride this in here")

Somehow, ichi.moe actually identified the grammar correctly here. Apparently, っちゃ is a contraction of って + は somehow, despite looking completely different. Ug, why do things have to be so hard?

おもしろかったな ("That was fun")

I always thought of omoshiroi as "interesting" but apparently it can mean "fun" too.

ラーメン食ってこう

It's nice that they had furigana on the 食 here, because I would have never guessed the reading otherwise.


だまってくえ ("Eat quietly")

And here we have a combination the word 食う and the command form, both introduced earlier in the chapter. But why can't they use kanji?


じんじゃみる!("Let's go look at the shrine!")

This one completely threw me. My guess was that it meant something like "A shrine! Look!". How are you supposed to tell the difference? Why didn't it use the mashou form if it's making a suggestion?

やっぱりとーちゃんはすげー

I guess this is what "sugoi" turns into with the weird dialect they use. As if things weren't hard enough to understand when they say things normally.

あよつばんち!("Ah, our house")

My guess is that んち is a contraction of "no uchi", but how the heck do you figure these things out? Gaaah!


Apart from that, I watched s2e10 of Hilda dubbed in Japanese.
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crush
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby crush » Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:35 pm

golyplot wrote:これは乗っちゃだめ ("Don't ride this in here")

...Apparently, っちゃ is a contraction of って + は somehow, despite looking completely different. Ug, why do things have to be so hard?

You see/hear this all the time in anime/manga. "Te + wa" turns into "cha" as it's faster and easier to say.

golyplot wrote:じんじゃみる!("Let's go look at the shrine!")

This one completely threw me. My guess was that it meant something like "A shrine! Look!". How are you supposed to tell the difference? Why didn't it use the mashou form if it's making a suggestion?

Not sure about this one, but she could just be saying "I'm going to see the shrine" without really asking for her dad's opinion. vonPeterhof may be able to provide a better explanation, but that's how i'd take it.

golyplot wrote:やっぱりとーちゃんはすげー

I guess this is what "sugoi" turns into with the weird dialect they use. As if things weren't hard enough to understand when they say things normally.

Again, すげー is something you'll see/hear all the time in anime/manga. That えー sound pops up everywhere. Eventually it just sounds normal, but yeah if you aren't familiar with the original word it can be tough to figure out.

golyplot wrote:あよつばんち!("Ah, our house")

My guess is that んち is a contraction of "no uchi", but how the heck do you figure these things out? Gaaah!

Yeah, んち is just のうち, as mentioned earlier in your log. English has contractions to, you just get used to them i suppose. It shows up in the dictionary, too.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:05 pm

crush wrote:
golyplot wrote:じんじゃみる!("Let's go look at the shrine!")

This one completely threw me. My guess was that it meant something like "A shrine! Look!". How are you supposed to tell the difference? Why didn't it use the mashou form if it's making a suggestion?

Not sure about this one, but she could just be saying "I'm going to see the shrine" without really asking for her dad's opinion. vonPeterhof may be able to provide a better explanation, but that's how i'd take it.

Nah that's pretty much it. Seeing it out of context I assumed that she was responding to a direct question about what she wanted to do next, but I checked the chapter and nope, she just blurts it out as they're passing the shrine.

crush wrote:
golyplot wrote:やっぱりとーちゃんはすげー

I guess this is what "sugoi" turns into with the weird dialect they use. As if things weren't hard enough to understand when they say things normally.

Again, すげー is something you'll see/hear all the time in anime/manga. That えー sound pops up everywhere. Eventually it just sounds normal, but yeah if you aren't familiar with the original word it can be tough to figure out.

I was about to say "it's easy, pretty much any i-adjective can change its ending into "ee", but after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized that that's not the case at all and there's a lot of limitations. From what I managed to figure out, the general rules are as follows:

1. -ai turns into -ee
2. -ii stays unchanged
3. -ui turns into -ii
4. (can't think of any adjectives ending in -ei)
5. -oi turns into -ee in all cases aside from the two adjectives that only consist of two morae

Now the only -oi adjectives in existence are 濃(こ)い and 良(よ)い. The former doesn't seem to undergo any transformations, while the latter instead becomes いい, which has become so common as to almost entirely displace the original form from everyday spoken language (curiously, Kansai and many other Western Japanese dialects don't generally feature any of those transformations, but they do have ええ for 良い for some reason).
I've tried searching for other exceptions on the Internet and those seem to be either so marginal as to be considered typos or deliberate misspellings for meme purposes (a particularly common one is かわえぇ for 可愛い).
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