I asked a Japanese friend of mine what the significance of October 1st was with regards to this video; she said that there is nothing special about that date.
(I’ll try to write without a translator so my text may be wrong) こんにちは、最近日本語の単語を勉強しました、理由が読みにできたいけど漢字は本当多い。正直もしかしてこれはただの時間の事、多分一年からは必要だ。 ところでどんな本は日本語の学びがいい？最近「元気」がよみていました、でもいつも私はもっと本の読むが欲しい
What I tried to write: Hello, lately I have been studying japanese vocabulary, the reason is I want to be able to read but there are lot’s of kanjis. To be honest it’s a matter of time, probably just one more year is necessary for that. By the way, what book could be good for learing japanese? I have been recently reading “Genki” but I’m always searching for more books to read.
Because Japanese is a spoken Japanese pizza topped with Chinese writing on half of it but a few bits snuck on the other side, too. Or some better metaphor.
Single kanji -> stand in for whatever the Japanese word is, read it like the Japanese word, probably. Two kanji -> oh shit, maybe, if you’re lucky, it’s the Chinese reading of both. But sometimes it’s not, sometimes it just gets slapped on the Japanese word. And if you’re really unlucky with a word, they mix. Which is first, I don’t know, you don’t know, the Japanese might know, or they might just add the pronunciation right on there. Four kanji -> I dunno, ask a linguist.
Also, thank you for introducing me to that video. Why indeed.
It’s Onyomi (The Chinese-based phonetic way) vs. Kunyomi (the Japanese own phonetic way) of pronunciation.
Like 心 kokoro vs. 心臓 shinzou. The latter in simplified Chinese that this is based off of is 心脏 (Xinzang), which sounds similar.
Commonly, Onyomi is used when multiple kanji are used to describe a single “word” or concept, and Kunyomi is often used when on its own or is a verb with its own trailing character conjugation (okurigana).
Many exceptions apply but I hope this rule of thumb helps you.
That’s awesome! I once had a conversation with a Japanese woman in Mexico. She was speaking to me in Japanese and I was speaking to her in English while a couple of Spanish speakers looked on. It was a bit surreal but also pretty cool.
I don’t know why, but the way 星々(ほしぼし) is pronounced is just so fun for me. I know there are many more reduplicative words but only 星々 feels so pleasing to pronounce.
One of my Japanese teachers pointed out that it’s often used in sentences like OO家族代々墓, which makes it sound like " the OO family are massive idiots.
I also thought 五十五 sounded funny when I first learned it, because I thought it was supposed to be pronounced like “go Jew go”.
It probably doesn’t make any sense noq considering how quickly internet language changes, but I learned the word for ambulance (救急車 きゅうきゅうしゃ) around 15 years ago, and at the time QQ meant crying, and was used to call people emotional crybabies. It reminded of the term “wahmbulance” which people would use when someone is being whiny.
Japanese Language
Oldest