Category Archives: Languages

Weekly Wordlist – iPhone Contacts

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June 27, 2011
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Well, inspired by Khatzumoto, I went ahead and set my iPhone’s interface into Japanese. It didn’t seem like it would stretch my skills that much (after all, the icons don’t change!), until I went to voice dial and it interpreted “Kim Dobie-Watt” as some random sequence of numbers. So, now I have to learn how to actually use the voice commands in Japanese.

  • 連絡先 【れんらくさき】 (n) contact address
  • 自宅 【じたく】 (n) one’s home
  • 携帯 【けいたい】 (n,vs,adj-no) (1) something carried (in the hand); handheld; (n) (2) (abbr) (col) (See 携帯電話) mobile telephone; cell phone
  • 勤務先 【きんむさき】 (n) place of employment
  • 編集 【へんしゅう】 (n,vs,adj-no) editing; compilation; editorial (e.g. committee)
  • 送信 【そうしん】 (n,vs) transmission; sending

So, now instead of saying “Call Kim Dobie-Watt, home” I have to say キム・ドビーワット、自宅.

: Languages

Weekly Word List – Moving

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June 13, 2011
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Translations will have to wait; I’m not gonna try that from a mobile app that doesn’t even do Autocorrect. OK, I got the translations up!

  • 家 【いえ】 (n) (1) house; residence; dwelling; (2) family; household; (3) lineage; family name
  • 引っ越す 【ひっこす】 (v5s,vi) to move (house); to change residence
  • 梱包; こん包 【こんぽう】 (n,vs) packing; crating; packaging
  • 段ボール箱 【だんボールばこ】 (n) cardboard box
  • モーゲージ (n) mortgage
  • 弊行 【へいこう】 (n) this bank (humble); my bank

Yeah, lazy, but at least i got it up for Monday. 僕の家を梱包しの時間だよ！

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“Weekly” Word List – Slacking

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June 6, 2011
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Wow, I suck. I even thought sticking “weekly” in there would help me stick to a schedule. Shows what I know, eh? Well, I better poke fun at myself a little bit. So, why not a word list on screwing up?

  • 仕事 【しごと】 (n,vs,adj-no) (1) work; job; business; occupation; employment; vocation; task
  • ずくなし (n) bum; slacker; good-for-nothing; loser
  • 果せる 【おおせる】 (v1,vi) to succeed in doing
  • 欠かす 【かかす】 (v5s,vt) to miss (doing); to fail (to do)
  • 早い(P); 速い(P); 疾い(oK); 捷い(oK) 【はやい】 (adj-i) (1) (esp. 速い, 疾い, 捷い) fast; quick; hasty; brisk; (2) (esp. 早い) early (in the day, etc.); premature; (3) (esp. 早い) (too) soon; not yet; (too) early; (4) (esp. 早い) (See 手っ取り早い) easy; simple; quick; (P)
  • 遅い(P); 鈍い; 晩い; 遲い(oK) 【おそい】 (adj-i) (1) (遅い, 鈍い only) slow; (2) late (e.g. “late at night”); (3) (遅い, 鈍い only) too late

Now, to add a calendar entry to remind me to post next week. Or hey, I could even work ahead.

Pssht, yeah right. Someone tweet at me next Monday to prod me into doing it, okay?

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Weekly Wordlist – Birthdays

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April 19, 2011
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Late again! I meant to do this last Wednesday, but things have been so hectic lately. So, why not do a wordlist on one of the things that has been making my life so hectic lately? Lydia had a spectacular birthday party yesterday, I (and, I hope, everyone else) had a great time at the Leduc Rec Centre, so let’s pull some vocab off of that.

  • 誕生日 【たんじょうび】 (n) birthday
  • お誕生日おめでとう 【おたんじょうびおめでとう】 (exp) Happy Birthday
  • 誕生会 【たんじょうかい】 (n) birthday party
  • 贈り物(P); 贈物(P) 【おくりもの】(n) present; gift
  • 泳ぐ(P); 游ぐ 【およぐ】 (v5g,vi) to swim
  • 友達(P); 友だち 【ともだち】 (n) friend

As always, dictionary entries come from WWWJDIC.

: Languages
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Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs

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April 12, 2011
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As I was driving to work this morning, I noticed something that I don’t think I’ve seen pointed out anywhere before. At least, if it was pointed out, I didn’t notice it.

To negate an i-adjective in Japanese, you drop the い and replace it with くない. To turn an i-adjective into an adverb, drop the い and replace it with く. You can use this adverb to modify a verb, like, say, ある (to be/exist for inanimate objects). ある is somewhat irregular, though, in that the negative of it is simply ない. Hey, isn’t that the same thing?

I’m sure this is a well known, obvious thing, probably taught in Japanese elementary schools, but I thought I’d point it out as, like I said above, I haven’t seen it pointed out anywhere in any of the guides to Japanese that I’ve looked at so far, and it seems like a neat mnemonic for remembering one or the other of these constructions.

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Weekly Wordlist – Spring

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April 6, 2011
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Yes, it’s been more than a week. I’d been planning on doing it on Wednesdays because I like the alliteration. I’m going with a short list this week since I slacked last week and didn’t really learn all the kanji/words on my list, at least not as thoroughly as I’d like. Since spring seems to have at last sprung in Edmonton, it seems like a good time to pick some happy spring words!

  • 春 【はる】 (n-adv,n-t) spring; springtime
  • 花(P); 華 【はな】 (n) (1) flower; blossom; bloom; petal; (2) blooming (esp. of cherry blossoms); cherry blossom
  • 花咲く 【はなさく】 (v5k) to bloom
  • 雪 【ゆき】 (n) snow
  • 雪水 【ゆきみず】 (n) water from melted snow
  • 天気 【てんき】 (n) (1) weather; the elements; (2) fair weather; fine weather

No spring blooms yet, but I can be optimistic, right?

(Words grabbed out of WWWJDIC.)

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Weekly Wordlist – Family Time

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March 29, 2011
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I’ve spent a lot of time recently (well, it seems like a lot of time, but only by virtue of the seeming scarcity of free time these days) trying to kick-start myself into some sort of usable bilingualism.  The previously mentioned app I’ve got on my iPhone is pretty handy at picking up grammar, and the quizzes on Kim’s website help. There’s a companion app that helps with kanji studying, but one thing I feel that would help me would be to pick a set of words (rather than kanji) to learn each week. Ideally, they’d be words in a set, so that they can be used together to make full sentences, and even better if each week’s vocabulary built on the previous one. Since being able to put together sentences with all this memorized grammar is a goal, at least one verb should be included, and a good blend of parts of speech overall would be ideal. As an added bonus, this could be easily recycled for any language that has similar vocabulary. Now to just pick a subject; most Japanese guides seem to put a big focus on school vocabulary (hence why I can recite (if not write) many words I rarely use, such as 先生 (sensei, teacher), 学生 (gakusei, student), 学校 (gakkou, school), 勉強 (benkyou, study), etc. So, why not a handy wordlist for things I’m more likely to do? How about this?

Family Time

  • Family - 家族 【かぞく】 (n,adj-no)
  • Play - 遊ぶ 【あそぶ】 (v5b,vi)
  • Father – 父 【ちち】 (n) (hum)/父さん 【おとうさん】 (n) (hon)
  • Mother – 母 【はは】 (n) (hum)/お母さん 【おかあさん】 (n) (hon)
  • Daughter – 娘 【むすめ】 (n)/お嬢さん 【おじょうさん】 (n) (hon)
  • Son – 息子 【むすこ】 (n) (hum) / 息子さん 【むすこさん】 (n) (hon)
  • Ball – 玉 【たま】 (n)
  • Toy – おもちゃ (n) (uk)

(Words grabbed out of WWWJDIC.) Now, let’s try a sentence. 息子では、父や娘が遊んだ. 今晩には、父や娘遊ぶ.

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日本語！

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March 23, 2011
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So, I recently downloaded a nifty little app for my iPhone called “Learning Japanese” by Ronald Timoshenko. Thanks to that, I’ve found what is easily the best resource I’ve found for learning Japanese in all the years I’ve wanted to learn it: Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese. I’ve picked up many, many language guides over the last thirteen few years, most of them for Japanese, and all I have to say is “when the heck is Tae Kim going to write guides for the other languages I want to learn?” If I’d had this when I started wanting to learn Japanese, I’d be fluent by now. Every time I pick this up, I learn something new and useful, and things I thought I knew I finally understand. I’m grasping the difference between は and が (okay, I wasn’t too bad on that one) now, between だ and です (blew my mind, that one, but I’m glad to finally have a handle on the rules for だ), に and で (I was really clueless about these, but now I’m glad to understand them a bit better). What I need now is Tae Kim’s Guide to Irish, Tae Kim’s Guide to Swedish, Tae Kim’s Guide to French, Tae Kim’s Guide to German, and Tae Kim’s Guide to Finnish. I really recommend this to anyone interested in learning Japanese. Maybe I’ll finally be able to cross that barrier and become comfortable with a second language. It irks me that for someone as in love with languages as I am that I’m essentially monolingual. But this is my year to achieve goals, and this one seems achievable. Once I’ve got some grounding in this, I’ll have to try finding some conversational partners to practise with (LiveMocha may work well for that, but it’s a bit spammy and I’d rather have someone local that I can chat with face to face). I think I’ll dig out Marc Bernabe’s Japanese in Mangaland again too, but I suspect I’ll be putting my other books up for sale (or, considering the condition of books that lived in my pocket in high school, the freecycle bin). Anyone want a copy of Teach Yourself Japanese?

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