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Old 01-20-2013, 02:26 PM   #101
kaisap112
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As this might be of interest to someone, I'll just post this here.

A forum called Something Awful has a collection of Let's Play threads, and among them are two that students of Japanese could find interesting: a member is translating a game series called Dangan Ronpa, which is an extremely interesting, fun and immersive murder mystery series in the same spirit as 999 and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. The game hasn't been translated into English officially, but an anime version is in the works and going to be released this year.

The person doing the translating took part in an interview where he and a moderator of the forum discuss translating from Japanese into English: from titles to mannerisms, cultural references and so forth. The interview can be found here and is conducted in English.

The Let's Play threads can be found here: Dangan Ronpa and Dangan Ronpa 2.
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Old 01-21-2013, 02:32 AM   #102
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Talon's Words of the Day (January 20, 2013)

Let's just say I posted this from the West Coast where it's still Sunday ...

Beginner: 成長 n. "growth (as in growing up / becoming an adult)"
reading: せいちょう
components: 成 セイ "become" + 長 チョウ "long", so lit. "becoming long"
other notes: the beginner may be interested to know that, yes indeed, that is なる's kanji you see on the left and ながい's on the right. This vocab word really straddles the line between beginner and intermediate in my book. I definitely think you'll hear it, but not so often that it's usually taught in schools in the first two years.

Non-Beginner: 多数決 n. "majority rule"
reading: たすうけつ
components: 多 タ "many" + 数 スウ "number" + 決 ケツ "decide"
other notes: another perfect example of a word which brings together three beginner-to-intermediate kanji and combines them to form a new word, one which assesses the intermediate student's knowledge of the three characters' onyomi. (Though you should really know all three of these characters' onyomi already! ^^; From words like 多分, 数学, and 決定. But if not, that's okay: this word's a 3-in-1!)
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Old 01-21-2013, 11:38 PM   #103
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Talon's Words of the Day (January 21, 2013)

Beginner: 傘 n. "umbrella"
reading: onyomi: サン kunyomi: かさ

Non-Beginner: various words that are read かじ
家事 n. "housework, domestic chores, family affairs, household matters"
火事 n. "fire, conflagration" (like when a building is on fire)
鍛冶, 鍛治 n. "smithing, blacksmith"
華字 n. "Chinese character"
There are others as well. What prompted this was hearing "blacksmith" in a story, which reminded me of when I first learned the word and remarked on how it sounded just like a fire ... and then realized that that too sounded just like household chores.
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Old 01-23-2013, 12:00 AM   #104
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This might be a little advanced/obscure, but I've been thinking about it and really like to learn about next-to-useless kanji.

So I bum around Japanese Wikipedia on occasion because I feel like it helps me pick up some vocab and see kanji used in context and I keep coming across a rather interesting use of kanji in the articles. When glossing a term in another language, instead of writing out the language in kana (e.g. イタリア語), they use a representative kanji (e.g. 伊). I know some of these from taking a bit of Chinese and because a handful of them are pretty common, but I found that there's actually quite a lot. Is there a list of commonly used ones or (dare I say) a masterlist that contains any that the average Japanese person would recognize?

For an example of what I'm talking about, go here (it's at その地の言語). Italian and French having these abbreviations wasn't news to me and I've seen Spanish and German at least once prior, but Russian and Thai were definitely a surprise.
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Old 01-23-2013, 12:35 AM   #105
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I know what you're talking about, but your link doesn't do for all parties what I think you think it does. If I'm supposed to be looking at the list of languages on the lefthand side of the screen, they're all listed in their native scripts and tongues or in English, not in Japanese. Like, here's a partial copy and paste:

Spoiler: show
English
Esperanto
Español
Eesti
Euskara
Estremeñu
فارسی
Suomi
Føroyskt
Français
Arpetan
Frysk
Gaeilge
Gagauz
贛語
Gàidhlig
Galego
Avañe'ẽ
ગુજરાતી
Gaelg
Hausa
Hak-kâ-fa
Hawai`i
עברית
हिन्दी
Fiji Hindi
Hrvatski
Hornjoserbsce
Kreyòl ayisyen
Magyar
Հայերեն
Interlingua
Bahasa Indonesia
Interlingue
Ilokano
Ido
Íslenska
Italiano
ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ/inuktitut
Lojban
Basa Jawa
ქართული

But I do know what you're talking about. The characters you're thinking of all come from the ateji for those countries.

フランス <--> 仏蘭西 --> drop the rest and you're left with 仏 (Buddha), which is the kanji associated with France when you see it like this
ドイツ <--> 独逸 --> drop the rest and you're left with 独 ("single, alone"), which is the kanji associated with Germany when you see it like this
ロシア <--> 露西亜 --> drop the rest and you're left with 露 ("dew"), which is the kanji associated with Russia when you see it like this

And you can keep doing this for all the nations. There are a few special exceptions though:

USA: 亜米利加 is how it'd be written, but they use the 米 (bei "rice") and not the 亜 since 亜 is associated with Asia and/or since 19th and early 20th century America was the breadbasket of the world anyway and so 米 really fit

Japan: while you do see 日 used, often (as in 日米 nichibei "Japan-U.S."), I want to point out that you will also see 和 used a lot too (as in オンライン独和辞典 "online German-Japanese dictionary"). 和 wa comes from Japan's historic name, 大和 Yamato, lit. "Big Peace/Tranquility/Calm", and you'll see it used in other words like 和食 washoku "Japanese cuisine", 和学 wagaku "Japanese music", and so on.

So like, do be aware of that. As a general rule, the kanji come from the ateji of the country's name (and typically the first position kanji); but, there are some words for which no ateji exists or is necessary and there are other words for which the first-position character is not the character used.

I don't have a handy list for you, but one thing you can do if you're dicking around on the Japanese Wikipedia is to search for wars which, in English, are known by the two countries names. (E.g. the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Turkish War, the Sino-Japanese War, and so on.) Look for those wars and if you're lucky, that text will be in the article's body, and then you can look at the title for the country of interest. For instance, with Russia and the Ottoman Empire, we have all these wars here, and as you can see, they all say 露土戦争 or ろとせんそう "Russo-Turkish War". From this one can deduce that 土 (つち, "earth; dirt") is the ateji character used to generate the To sound in Turkey's Japanese name, トルコ (ateji: 土耳古).
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Old 01-26-2013, 07:17 PM   #106
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Here to clog the thread with a question!

This might be obvious to someone who's studied Japanese for years, but since I haven't: how exactly does the pronoun boku work? Specifically, what is it supposed to signify when used by females?

Most prominent use of this I've seen have been girls cross-dressing as boys in anime/manga, but I've also started noticing it in the lyrics of AKB48-songs. They are very much a girl band, but I'm starting to lose track of whether some of their songs are about a girl loving a boy, a boy loving a girl or girl-girl/boy-boy pairing. Is Japanese music in general more unspecific about genders, unlike Western music (songs often include gender-specific things like "my girl"/"my man"/etc., mostly in extremely heterosexual context)?

I'll use an example to clarify this a bit.

Oogoe Diamond (video)

こんな簡単な
答えが出てるのに
何にためらって 見送ったのだろう?
僕が僕であるために
衝動に素直になろう

大好きだ 君が 大好きだ
僕は全力で走る
大好きだ ずっと 大好きだ
声の限り叫ぼう
大好きだ 君が 大好きだ
息が苦しくなるよ
しまっておけない
大声ダイヤモンド


"Boku" is used to refer to "I", but since it is a male-pronoun, should I assume the song is about a boy loving a girl? Or is this a gay relationship, with this party being the "masculine" one?


Another lyric that has been bothering me is this one:

UZA (video)

彼女なんて 関係ないよ
モラルを思い出す度 気 失うんだ
Black out


I get mixed translations for this particular song. "Kanojo nante, kankeinai yo" is sometimes translated as "I don't care if you're my girlfriend" - but there is no "my" in the Japanese lyrics. Is the idea (as I see it) that it doesn't matter if there is a girlfriend in general ("I don't care if you're already dating someone"), or is it about some particular girl, or even the Western "girlfriend" (a girl's female friend)?

Thank you in advance for any helpful response to this, "boku" especially is driving me up the wall nowadays.
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Old 01-26-2013, 08:28 PM   #107
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The short answer is, it's something some (by no means most) girls start doing in high school and quit doing in college (99.9% before landing a first job or husband).

Spoiler: show
The slightly less short addition is, it doesn't necessarily promise any one of the several things it can imply. For instance, it may imply she's a tomboy ... but non-tomboy bokukkos exist. A lesbian may use boku ... or she may not. A rebellious teen punk may use it ... and so might a spunky, rules-abiding sporty girl.

The long answer, I'll pass on tonight. ^^; Suffice to say, even the Japanese themselves ask this question, and some of the answers people come up with may surprise you. There's even a Wikipedia page for this phenomenon wherein the Wiki article editor(s) put forward the view that bokkukos have stepped out of the pages of fiction into the world of reality more and more as time passes. (They later concede that there is evidence of women using ore back in the Edo Period. ) You might be interested to note two things from that article. First, they specifically and implicitly label this in the first paragraph as being something only girls do, not adult women, with their use of shoujo to denote the kinds of speakers who do this. Like I told you : this is something that most girls grow out of or are socially required to cease once they marry or get a job. Second, Honda Yuki (apparently an education-ologist, not sure what you call that in English ^^; ) did a survey of middle schoolers in 2009-2010 and found that 1.2 - 3.8% of girls report using ore or boku to refer to themselves.
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Old 01-26-2013, 08:39 PM   #108
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From my limited personal experience, I have found that boku is often used in songs even sung from a female POV, probably because it reflects youthfulness and is also one mora shorter than (w)atashi.
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Old 01-29-2013, 12:05 AM   #109
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Talon's Words of the Day (January 28, 2013)

Beginner: 相談 n. "consultation; discussion; advice"
reading: そうだん
components: 相 ソウ "together" + 談 ダン "discuss; talk"
other notes: This is in the second half of Volume 1 of the Nakama text, I remember from my own college days, but I figured I'd list it here since not everyone uses that text and I've no idea when you'd study it otherwise. The noun takes する, as do so many, to form the verb "to consult [with], to discuss, to seek advice [from]".

Non-Beginner: 諸君 n. "gentlemen" / exp. "Gentlemen!" (non-gender specific), "My fellows!", etc.
reading: しょくん
components: 諸 ショ "various; many; several; together" + 君 クン "mister; you; ruler; male name suffix"
other notes: Every now and again I'll encounter this. This weekend was one particularly loaded with use of the term, so it's on the mind and I figured it'd be good to share with students at this level. Some sample sentences should illustrate when it tends to be used. (The following samples are lifted from WWWJDIC):
  • 諸君、ちょっと御挨拶申し上げます。
    Gentlemen, allow me to say a few words in greeting.
  • 諸君は人類の利益のために働くべきだ。
    [Gentlemen,] You should work in the interests of humanity.
  • アメリカ合衆国の同胞諸君、国家が諸君のために何をしてくれるかを求めず、諸君が国家のために何をできるかを求めよう。
    My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. *Note how 諸君 is used to replace "My fellow Americans" and the pronoun "you" that stands in for that definite noun. I've underlined where it shows up in the Japanese sentence.
I heard it this weekend used by NASA in one show, a group of bounty hunters in another show, and I forget where else in the third. No, one doesn't normally encounter it that that often, but it is used. Good to add this one to your arsenal, in any case.
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Old 02-07-2013, 11:34 PM   #110
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Talon's Words of the Day (February 7, 2013)

Beginner: 豆 n. "bean; legume"
reading: onyomi: トウ, ズ kunyomi: まめ
other notes: as in the words 納豆 (なっとう, fermented soy beans) and 枝豆 (えだまめ, green soy beans), but pretty much any kind of bean or pea you could think of. Coffee beans, cacao beans, they all use 豆.
  One of my teachers in college once told me that 喜 (よろこぶ's kanji) has a story behind why 豆 appears to be right there in the center of it, above another mouth 口 and below/merged with samurai 士 . I forget her exact story, but it was something like "The samurai (士) put the beans (豆) in the mouths (口) of the people, thus filling their bellies and making them happy (喜)."

Non-Beginner: 傀儡 n. "(1) puppet; dummy; (2) (arch) prostitute"
readings: かいらい, くぐつ
other notes: this is one I've heard a lot recently. (Came up in both Senran Kagura and Gintama this week, and has come up in Senran Kagura quite a bit before.) The reading I've always heard is くぐつ, but WWWJDIC seems to preference かいらい as the default reading, so *shrug*. I didn't know about the second meaning until just now but am including it because The More You Know™.
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Old 02-12-2013, 02:24 AM   #111
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Talon's Words of the Day (February 11, 2013)

Beginner: 迷う v.i. "to lose one's way" / "to become lost" ; "to waver, to hesitate" ; and other meanings
reading: まよう

Non-Beginner: 迷子 n. "lost child, stray child, missing child"
reading: まいご
components: 迷 "lost" + 子 "child"

Posting from phone, so very brief. 迷子 came up in a show I'm watching right this moment and struck me as a very good word for this sort of exercise. Common enough to warrant teaching but uncommon enough it's not typically taught in school (or at least not in the first few years). The root verb is: I think we learned it in our second year.
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Old 02-17-2013, 10:38 PM   #112
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Talon's Words of the Day (February 17, 2013)

Beginners are encouraged to study all of today's words. Many have been placed under the Non-Beginner ranking only because the words are not too too common in daily speech or, as in the case of 掃除機, the kanji are well above a beginner level of study.

Beginner: シャボン玉 n. "(soap) bubble"
reading: シャボンだま
components: シャボン "soap" (from Portuguese) + 玉 たま "ball; orb"

Beginner: 泡 n. "bubble"
reading: あわ
other notes: the saying 水の泡 (みず の あわ, trans. "all for nothing") literally means "water bubbles". So whereas we would say "All my efforts were in vain," they would say "All my efforts were water bubbles."

Non-Beginner: 虫歯 n. "cavity; dental caries"
reading: むしば
components: 虫 むし "bug" + 歯 は "tooth"
other notes: the literal meaning is amusing, no?

Non-Beginner: 掃除機 n. "vacuum cleaner"
reading: そうじき
components: 掃除 そうじ "cleaning" + 機 き "machine; apparatus", so literally "cleaning machine"
other notes: again, an amusing literal meaning as 掃除 is a very broad term referring to all household cleaning, not just vacuuming.
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Old 02-20-2013, 02:29 PM   #113
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Looking up a possibly archaic verb that the translator has translated into English as "Shut up!", I wasn't finding anything, so I decided to try looking for the word in conjunction with 黙れ damare. And this came up as an early hit. Made me laugh. The first translation is spot on, the second a bit too context-specific, and then that third one ... Hoo boy. (Though the side-offered 消えろ certainly fits and informs the context of that specific usage of 黙れ as well as of うるせえ.) Still. That would be pretty awful if a foreign exchange student wanted to say "Shut up! " and out came that instead.
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Old 02-20-2013, 11:54 PM   #114
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Talon's Words of the Day (February 20, 2013)

Beginner: 絶対に adv. "absolutely; unconditionally"
reading: ぜったいに
components: 絶 ゼツ "discontinue; beyond; sever; cut off" and more + 対 タイ "opposite; versus; anti-" and more
other notes: common word you'll hear that means "absolutely", "definitely", "certainly", etc.

Non-Beginner: 御意 conj.,int.,n. "your will; your pleasure; as you wish"
reading: ぎょい
components: 御 ギョ politeness marker + 意 イ "will; idea; desire" and more
other notes: note the ギョ reading of 御 (ordinarily read ゴ) and the literal meaning of the noun phrase, "(your honorable) will", as it applies to the situations in which it is used. (These are situations like a servant accepting a master's orders or a military inferior accepting his superior officer's.)

Non-Beginner: 断じて adv. "absolutely; positively; decidedly"
reading: だんじて
other notes: this is a very strong word of emphasis. The analogous use in English would be a phrase like "Absolutely not!" where there is heavy spoken emphasis on the "absolutely".
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Old 02-24-2013, 03:42 AM   #115
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Looked through the entire thread again (for a certain kanji which I ended up finding on another site about two posts before where it was posted here >_>), and I was absolutely shocked to not find this little one in here.

Beginner(?): 森 n.adj. "Forest;Dark as a Forest"
Reading: On: シン Kun: もり
Components: Three 木 (Tree) or, alternatively, 木 combined with 林 (Woods). Basically, a lot of trees.
Other notes: A really simple kanji, I first saw it in an OP. But is it ever commonly used! You see it often as 'の森', as in 'Forest of ___'.
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Old 02-24-2013, 04:01 AM   #116
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kindrindra View Post
Looked through the entire thread again (for a certain kanji which I ended up finding on another site about two posts before where it was posted here >_>), and I was absolutely shocked to not find this little one in here.

Beginner(?): 森 n.adj. "Forest;Dark as a Forest"
Reading: On: シン Kun: もり
Components: Three 木 (Tree) or, alternatively, 木 combined with 林 (Woods). Basically, a lot of trees.
Other notes: A really simple kanji, I first saw it in an OP. But is it ever commonly used! You see it often as 'の森', as in 'Forest of ___'.
The reason you didn't find 森 here ...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Thinking it over yesterday, I realized that most beginner students are going to be gung-ho about learning Japanese anyway and so are probably going to teach themselves the core basics (colors, numbers, directions, and so on). Thus, I probably shouldn't bother with those as I have been thus far. I still might provide some core basics from time to time but for now I'll try to provide words which I think 1) are suitable to a beginner's level, 2) are of practical use, and/or 3) are interesting to most people.
... is because of this. ^^; Like I said way back when, I decided against wasting beginners' time for 80 straight updates teaching them the eighty kanji taught in Grade 1. These include:
  • the characters for 1 thru 10
  • the characters for three of the four universal colors
  • characters for core adjectives like large, small, left, and right
  • basic characters in common Japanese surnames
  • other
Your admirable pursuit of further knowledge on your own ... kind of proved my very point. ^^; That people who sincerely care to learn Japanese will learn the rudimentary basics on their own. And 森 ... is one of those basics. Like you said yourself, it's pretty common. Although, tbh, nowhere near as common as many Grade 2 and Grade 3 characters. I just think it's taught early because of how easy it is to write and because of how fun the 木 / 林 / 森 trio are for beginners to write out, young and old alike!

I'd recommend checking out the eighty characters taught in Grade 1. It's the perfect place for a beginner to start.
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Old 02-24-2013, 08:49 PM   #117
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The Eighty Grade 1 Kanji

This should be a pretty good resource for any beginner who is just embarking on their adventure to learn the Chinese characters the Japanese call kanji. The order in the link above is Japanese alphabetical by onyomi. I'm going to reorganize them here by semantic category for you but I'm only going to list the kanji. It'll be up to you to study them (using the above resource or another of your choice) to learn how they're written, what their readings are, and so on.

Disclaimer: these divisions are my own. You can argue them as arbitrary or wrong for you and how your own mind works. Feel encouraged to reorganize as you see fit. I've only organized them like this to try and lend some sense to why they're taught so early.


Nature/Geography: 山 川 林 森 (see 木 with Elements) 田
mountain, river, grove, forest, rice paddy

Colors: 青 赤 白
blue, red, white

Numbers: 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 百 千
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 100, 1000

Weather & the Heavens: 日 月 雨 空 天
sun, moon, rain, sky, heaven(s)

Elements: 火 木 水 土 金
fire, wood/tree, water, earth/dirt, gold

Animals: 犬 虫
dog, bug (insects, worms)

Plants: 花 草 竹
flower, grass, bamboo

Common Actions: 見 出 入 立
look, exit, enter, stand

Body Parts & People: 口 手 足 耳 目 子 女 男 人 
mouth, hand, foot/leg, ear, eye, child, woman, man, person

Directions: 右 左 先 上 下 中 
right, left, ahead, up, down, center

Sizes: 小 大
small, large

Other: 円 王 音 貝 学 気 休 玉 校 糸 字 車 
round/yen sign, king, sound, shell, learn, spirit et al, rest/take a break, ball/orb, suffix for school, thread, written character, car

Other (cont.): 正 生 夕 石 早 村 町 年 文 本 名 力
correct, life/live/alive, evening, stone, early, village, town, year, literature, book (also origin), name, power

So why are these the first 80 characters that are taught? There are several reasons I can think of.

1. Commonness in speech
Many of these characters are very, very common words in any language. Words like "big" and "small", words like "up" and "down", words for numbers and colors. Integral words that every beginner wants to know how to say and often because he or she needs to know how to say them.

2. Commonness in family names
Many, many of the characters here are in common names. 田 ("rice paddy") you may wonder why you need to know, but it's the ta in Tanaka, Tamura, and many other names. (And using those very examples, the characters for naka and mura are also amongst the 80! 中 and 村! Combine them ... and you get yet another family name, Nakamura!)

3. Relevance for pupils
"School" 学校 is formed by combining those two characters. "Teacher" 先生 is formed by combining those two. (Lit. "one who is ahead/further along in life".) These characters may not be quite as trivial to draw as many others on the list, but they're relevant for first graders to learn asap.

Another example of this point about relevance for pupils are the seven characters which line up with the seven days of the week. While the days of the week are three characters long in Japanese and follow the pattern [element]曜日, and while that second character 曜 is not taught in Grade 1, all seven of the characters in the first position are. And this works just fine because, on most Japanese calendars or schedules, you won't see the entire day of the week name written out: you'll just see the leading word. These are:
  • 月曜日 "Monday" (げつようび, lit. moon day-of-week day)
  • 火曜日 "Tuesday" (かようび, lit. fire day-of-week day)
  • 水曜日 "Wednesday" (すいようび, lit. water day-of-week day)
  • 木曜日 "Thursday" (もくようび, lit. wood day-of-week day)
  • 金曜日 "Friday" (きんようび, lit. gold day-of-week day)
  • 土曜日 "Saturday" (どようび, lit. earth/soil day-of-week day)
  • 日曜日 "Sunday" (にちようび, lit. sun day-of-week day)
Keep in mind that the first position characters also pop up again for the planets and heavenly bodies: in addition to the Sun 日 and Moon 月, we have Mercury 水星, Venus 金星, Mars 火星, Jupiter 木星, and Saturn 土星. Kids love planets and dinosaurs and such. So I guess this justifies teaching these characters earliest all the more. (And 星 "star", the second half of those words, is taught soon after in Grade 2.)

4. Common actions with easy characters
The most common verb in all of Japanese, する "to do", usually does not take a character. (It technically can, via 為る, but this is incredibly rare to ever see anyone do!) Many of the other common verbs in the language, like 来る "to come" and 行く "to go", are reserved for Grade 2. But, for whatever reason, the Ministry of Education decided that it'd be a great idea to teach the verbs you saw listed above. Why is that? Again, probably because they show up in other words important for little first graders to know about. 出 (which implies exiting or removing) is part of the word 出口 "exit", seen on some exit signs so likely taught at this level for emergencies. (It's also a very easy character to write.) 入 "to enter" is taught here likely because 人 "person" was already being taught and the two go hand in hand. (They're mirror opposites of one another when written in pencil or pen.) 見る "to look" is an important, common verb but it also fits here since the kids were already being taught 目 "eye". And as for 立 "stand" ... don't know what to tell you since the two likeliest words it'd show up in in a school setting, 私立 shiritsu "private" (as in a private school) and 起立 kiritsu "standing up" (the phrase spoken when in some schools they stand, bow to show respect, and sit down before homeroom begins), don't have their associated characters taught until later years. ^^; So what the point is in teaching "to stand" now I hardly know, other than that (once again) it bears some similarity to another Grade 1 character, "6". Compare: 立 vs. 六. *shrug* Or is part of yet another Grade 1 character, "sound" 音. (Notice how 立 plus 日, both Grade 1 characters, combine to form 音, also a Grade 1 character.) More on this below.

5. Easily formed from other Grade 1 characters
We just saw an example of this with 音 "sound" and how it's formed from 立 on top and 日 on the bottom. And earlier I'd mentioned 見る/目. What are some other examples? Well ... 早 "early" is a very simple character that resembles 日 on top of 十. Put a grass radical above it and you get 草 "grass". 犬 "dog" is formed by simply adding a little dash to the top-right of 大 "large". Add a dash to 日 to get 白, and add a hat to that to get 百. Add an almost 生 to 月 to get 青. (You don't keep the curved stroke on the top-left of 生.)


I hope this post helps the fledgling beginner out. It aims to:
1) introduce the eighty Grade 1 characters,
2) encourage the student to study them on his or her own using the resources provided or the resources of his/her choice, and
3) attempts to explain to the skeptical student why he or she should bother learning these characters first instead of some other characters.

Last edited by Talon87; 02-24-2013 at 09:04 PM.
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Old 02-25-2013, 11:24 PM   #118
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Talon's Words of the Day (February 25, 2013)

Beginner: ホコリ n. "dust"
other spellings: 埃 or ほこり are also seen
other notes: you'll hear this a lot in the adjective 埃っぽい (ほこりっぽい, translates as "dusty" but literally reads ... actually, let's do another beginner word)

Beginner: っぽい suffix "-ish; -like" ; personal note: I would also offer "the essence of __"
common examples:
  • 安っぽい / やすっぽい "cheap-looking"
  • 子供っぽい / こどもっぽい "childish"
  • 大人っぽい / おとなっぽい "adult-like"

Non-Beginner: 誇り n. "pride; boast"
reading: ほこり
radical components: 言 on the left, 大 on the top right, 二 beneath that, and the half-弓 crook on the bottom-right
other notes: contrast with ホコリ "dust" above!

That's right: today's two main Words of the Day are homophones.
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Old 02-25-2013, 11:26 PM   #119
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When I was taught the kanji for 的, it was often glossed as "-ish". What's the difference between that and your example?
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Old 02-26-2013, 12:03 AM   #120
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Originally Posted by Jerichi View Post
When I was taught the kanji for 的, it was often glossed as "-ish". What's the difference between that and your example?
Let's consider the word 女っぽい , which can be translated quite cleanly into English as "womanly". But the subtlety to the word is that it's more like it's saying ... "this person or entity is ... 'woman-y'. It exudes womanness. That which makes women women ... this has it or is it." So like, you could say a haircut is 女っぽい or that a manner of talking is 女っぽい. In this sense, the English suffixes that match up with っぽい include things like:
  • -y
  • -ly
  • -ey
So like ... "pasta-ey" or "fountain-ey" for made-up adjectives, and "dusty" or "waxy" for real ones. Returning to the example of 女っぽい, a human who would be 女っぽい would probably be the textbook woman with long hair, ample breasts, narrow waist, wide hips, slender legs, smooth skin, and so on. If you had one hundred women in a room, the woman you'd use the adjective 女っぽい on would be the one who would make most men go "Now THAT'S a woman!"

的 is different in two senses. First, it's more of a "-like" than an "essence of". English analogues might be phrases like "a warlike people" or "a dreamlike landscape". You're not saying that the people themselves exude the essence that is 'war' or that the landscape is an exemplar of dreams. Second, 的 can be tacked on to near just about any noun to turn it into an adjective with the help of な. For example, mathematics (数学) becomes mathematical (数学的な) by doing this. Patriotism (愛国) becomes patriotic (愛国的な) in the same manner. If we play the fun Etymology Game, then these words are literally saying things like "mathematics-like" or "patriotism-ish". But that's not how they're translated nor (I dare say) how most Japanese minds perceive them in modern speech. In terms of how they're (likely) perceived and how they're used, noun+的な is simply a means by which to turn a noun into a な adjective.

One thing to be mindful of before you go crazy with the powerful playtoy that is 的 is that many nouns do take a simple な or の all by themselves to become their common adjectival forms. A great example of a laundry list of terms where you will find 的な used is any academic discipline. So like ... biology --> biological, psychology --> psychological, and so on. There you'll very much find it. Another example I just so happened to come across and be reminded of is 感動的な. You've probably heard 感動する before conjugated in the simple past as 感動した "I was deeply moved" or present progressive 感動している "I am deeply moved." 感動 is a noun that, when you want to turn it into an adjective for a phrase like "the deeply-moving film" or "the deeply-moving poem", you say 感動的な___ instead of something like 感動の__. The latter would sound like ... say the blank is "song"? It'd sound like "The Song of Deep Moving". Every student knows how noun+の is used to make noun-adjectives, but ... not in all cases, as you're starting to see. ^^; You don't say 数学の__ but instead 数学的な.

That was probably more than you expected this to turn into, but yeah, 的 is quite the ubiquitous little character.

Last edited by Talon87; 02-26-2013 at 12:05 AM.
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Old 02-26-2013, 12:26 AM   #121
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Interesting how the kanji for 1000 (sen) is also the katakana for ti (chi). Do they reuse other kanji for katakana symbols?
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Old 02-26-2013, 12:48 AM   #122
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemini Spark View Post
Interesting how the kanji for 1000 (sen) is also the katakana for ti (chi). Do they reuse other kanji for katakana symbols?
Not quiiiiiiiiite right, but yes, very close. 千 vs. チ. See how the katakana chi's "main stalk" or "body" is curved? Depending on the person, there are "hat" differences too, but the center stroke is the big one.

That stated, there's no denying that there's stroke similarity between katakana and simple kanji. Some other examples (not exhaustive list):
夕 "evening" vs. タ ta
木 "tree" vs. ホ ho
了 "end; finish" vs. ア a
工 "engineering" vs. エ e (they pretty much ARE the same exact character ^^;; )
口 "mouth" vs. ロ ro (likewise!)

And there's also no denying the relationship between 千 and チ! I just wanted to make sure you realized they weren't written the exact same way in modern calligraphy. But if you check out this table ...


(larger PNG)

... you can see how all of the katakana characters trace their roots back to known Chinese characters. And listed right there for チ, not surprisingly, is its near copy, 千. Please do note though how the historical origins of certain characters do not necessarily resemble them very much today or not as much as other, unrelated kanji do. For example, ア vs. 了 (unrelated but looks more similar) vs. the 院 radical on the left (looks less similar today but is the origin for the kana character).
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Old 02-26-2013, 03:21 PM   #123
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Last night, the question about っぽい vs. 的 was brought up. I also mentioned みたい, らしい, and よう. There are a lot of various ways the Japanese indicate that something is like something else, and they carry their own rules for usage, some subtle and some not so subtle. While that's more of a late beginner / early intermediate grammar lesson and I've been avoiding those for the time being, I was just translating some Minami-ke chapters for Mcsweeney in our Minami-ke thread and I came across examples of almost each and every single one of these being used. I'll just provide the cels below, not full pages or chapters. I just want to illustrate that these are all quite common and I also want to show examples of how they're properly used.

Click the spoiler box below to see the images and their translations.

Spoiler: show
Example 1. っぽい



"Whoops, sorry! It's just that there's this mysterious and classmate-like air about you, Mako-chan!"

The っぽい shows up after 同級生 doukyuusei "classmate".

Example 2. みたい



"Like a boy."

The speaker is referring to the power of the boy pictured above. This boy, dressed up as a girl, wrestled with the speaker over a scrubbing stone. The speaker then remarks that the boy-in-girl's-clothing's strength was quite surprising to her and reminds her of a boy's.

Example 3. よう, 的, and みたい



"In other words, if you wear this, your figure will correct itself and bit by bit you'll become like Haruka-neesama!"
"Give realistic advice."
"[Become] like Haruka ...?"

In the first sentence, we have よう being used. ハルカ姉さまのように "like Haruka-neesama". In the second sentence, we have a use of 的 which illustrates the adjectival form I mentioned last night. 現実 "reality" is morphed into 現実的な "realistic". And in the third sentence, we have another example of みたい.

Example 4. らしい



"Chiaki's feminine when she hugs her teddy!"
"Only when I hold my teddy!? -_-;"
"It sure is a feminine hobby."

Here we have 女らしい "feminine; ladylike; womanly; girly".

Aside from the らしい example (which I pulled from memory), the other samples all came from the two chapters I just so happened to summarize for Mcsweeney. I'm telling you this to stress that that's just how common all of these grammar forms are. As for the subtleties in when it's okay to swap them in and out for one another and when it isn't, let's save that for another day.
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Old 03-04-2013, 04:12 PM   #124
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Time for a probably dumb question about dialect!

In an anime I've been watching is a goat who uses a very peculiar dearou (or is it dearo?) at the end of almost every sentence. Here's an example. He's a mafia don, if it gives any context, but phonetically to me it just sounds like how a very, very old man would talk.

Is this indicative of his status or just a random verbal tick, like nyan is for catgirls? I've just got this feeling that dearou could be dropped from the end and it wouldn't affect the sentence all that much or at all. Fansubs translate it as repeating the verb at the end; "we shall do it, we shall".

EDIT: I believe the sign on the blonde character's face that says "RAGE" is related to Buddhism/Shinto, or is it just like in the west that "it's written all over your face"? Japanese comedy isn't my forte just yet but I'm getting there.
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Old 03-04-2013, 05:03 PM   #125
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kaisap112 View Post
Time for a probably dumb question about dialect!

In an anime I've been watching is a goat who uses a very peculiar dearou (or is it dearo?) at the end of almost every sentence. Here's an example. He's a mafia don, if it gives any context, but phonetically to me it just sounds like how a very, very old man would talk.

Is this indicative of his status or just a random verbal tick, like nyan is for catgirls? I've just got this feeling that dearou could be dropped from the end and it wouldn't affect the sentence all that much or at all.
Short answer: it's one way of saying "probably", a common sentence ender in Japanese.

Long answer: In Japanese, the auxiliary verb known as the copula has many forms. The most common are the standard polite です desu and the standard informal だ da. A more polite version of the copula is である dearu (or, conjugated more formally, であります dearimasu). That is what the goat is using here.

Specifically, he is saying であろう dearou, which is the である dearu analogue of a word you've probably heard many times before: でしょう deshou / だろう darou. (Note: であろう is to である what だろう is to だ.)

What does であろう mean? Well, it means the same thing as でしょう / だろう. Quoting straight off of WWWJDIC:
Quote:
であろう (aux) will; probably; may; I think; surely; I hope; I fear; it seems
What does the goat's use of であろう as a sentence ender tell us? First, the formality level tells us that he is speaking like a well-bred individual (he uses である conjugations instead of だ conjugations) but since he uses the plain form of the verb instead of the longer formal form, it tells us that he sees himself as a social superior to the humans he is addressing. Second, the fact that he ends many sentences with であろう indicates that it's probably his character quirk. Many characters in anime have some sort of sentence-ending quirk, from Naruto with his dattebayo to most of the seven Rozen Maidens to several boys in The Prince of Tennis. However, the fact that he's not obsessively forcing it onto the end of every sentence (at least not from what I saw in this video) invites the alternate interpretation, which is that he is just being very well-mannered with how he frames things. Japanese is a language which seeks to mitigate confrontation by a whole host of ways, and one of the ways it does so is by framing things in the form of questions or suppositions rather than in the form of declarative statements. That could simply be what the goat is subconsciously doing: using very polite language patterns (since it's what he was taught) even though his other behaviors indicate that he isn't polite towards the humans at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaisap112 View Post
EDIT: I believe the sign on the blonde character's face that says "RAGE" is related to Buddhism/Shinto, or is it just like in the west that "it's written all over your face"? Japanese comedy isn't my forte just yet but I'm getting there.
The character is the character for anger, 怒. The verb 怒る okoru "to get angry" is written this way.
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