Nowling JCCC Nihongo

 昨日は、暑くて夏の日のようだったが、今日は、もう本当に寒くて、また冬の日らしいだったんです。昨夜、雷の雪が降ったんです！天気は、ちょっと変ですね。 日曜日の夕映え

 I’m in a Discord community and several of the members on there know Japanese to one degree or another.  One of the members is nearly fluent (A), one of them acts as though she is (B) and I’m not sure about the level of various other members (C).  I do know, however, that I am a long, long, way from fluent….  Recently B schooled A on a pun/slang meaning to everyone’s shock and surprise.  It was fun & we all learned something from it.  But I recently started watching BNA which allegedly stands for “Brand New Animal”, although I am of the opinion, given the show’s nature and the title sequence with repeating cgcgc (base pairs in DNA/RNA for making up gene sequences), that it could equally well stand for Beast-DNA. 7 minutes into the first episode, including the titles, we have the pun that I’m going to get to, but I need to lay a little groundwork first. We see a small raccoon-humanoid girl looking scared and trying to use an ATM, but having to hide from ...

  They have a “review your words” section and this was in it tonight… Seriously, it wants to teach you “half” as “thirty”. There is one and only one specific context where it means thirty but even then, it’s thirty by context, because half is like an operation or a variable in maths - it could literally be any number (except for when it’s explicitly 0.5 ;)). And the one context when it could be thirty is n時半 - n hour and half an hour - which you could call half past n, or, in English, n:30.  But it’s contextual , it’s only thirty because there are 60 minutes in an hour and half of 60 is 30… I’m much more likely to say “half past two” than 2:30**, so 30 for it would never have occurred to me, and certainly not in isolation.  It’s awful!  If you’re going to make it 30, you need counter units, it’s not 30 in a void, it would need 分, you wouldn’t have a thirty in isolation in Japanese. And then you’re at 〜時三十分, which is a stupid mouthful when you could have just said 〜時半...

The new interface has particles attached to words a lot of the time… but they have attached them to the front of the next word, not the word they belong with/are marking… OK, if it is a transitive verb, you could argue that the を that goes on the verb’s object* is only there because of the type of verb it is**, so it should be on the front of the verb, but… Sugawara sensei drilled us endlessly that if we really absolutely desperately must pause after a word, to gather our thoughts or whatever, if we were going to pause after a word, to say the particle first and then pause, so particles obviously belong with the word that comes before them, the word they mark; &  Some verbs are complicated enough that they can be generating multiple particles - verbs to give and to receive tend to generate に &/or から as well as the を particles, for just one example; &  You can have other words after that を or が particle and before the verb, like adverbs, or numbers and counters and ...

 I made the connection between two words today.   Recently, we have been listening to, and practicing reading, the Tadoku book, シュモーハウス.  In it, at one point, they are met at the train station by the governor of Hiroshima Province and by the Mayor of Hiroshima City - 広島市長（しちょう) (& other suchlike luminaries など ;)).  This was a term that I had stumbled over a few times - the sh sound so close to the ch sound, and trying to keep the right speed and fluidity, whilst not running the shi for city too hard into Hiroshima or divorcing it from the rest of the term (& at some point, realising that it was the alternate pronunciation for the 長い (ながい) kanji - perhaps because they were originally picked village elders, or greybeards as we would call them (somewhat disrespectfully) in western culture - maybe long beards in Japanese?  Or just for length of life & experience? Anyway, I just started looking at the vocabulary for Nakama 2, chapter 3, at lunchtime today...

This is probably my third post like this, maybe my fourth*. But I was watching two episodes of a gender bending*** show for the radio show yesterday and in the second episode***** I paused it to text my study buddies and tell them that I can’t really recommend the series, but if one wants to hear a ton of Nakama 2 Chapter 1’s vocabulary in an anime episode, one should watch episode 2 of onimai! 🤣 Then shortly after that I paused it again to tell them that there were a ton of plain volitionals too (this past week’s grammar). And then again to tell them that I had just heard できた too being used for are you ready, is it done too (this chapter’s vocab) and an enhancement to the potential grammar point (or a gotcha to watch out for)… and that I had just realised I heard that before a ton of times and not known it but knew that potential form wasn’t right there from context... It's actually amazing that I managed to watch two episodes with all these pauses for language discussion.^^^ One...

 I was thinking on Wednesday evening* & again on Thursday, about language teachers and the amazing job that they do. The specific item that prompted the pondering was listening to 中田先生 talking us through the vocabulary in chapter 2 of Nakama 2, and the grammar that they take, because it doesn't always** do a very good job of pointing out which verbs take に or を or が or could be more than one at different times depending on context maybe. And one of the vocabulary terms was 空港 (airport***) & another one was 海外, so she used them together in a sentence, to help us learn them by using them in context, instead of dead words pinned on a page of vocabulary like linguistic butterflies with all the life and joy gone out of them... We talked about having the new airport and if anyone liked it, and can you fly abroad from our airport**** and for overseas, we learned it can be combined into the phrase overseas travel & that got used in a sentence.  But it wasn't just any sente...

  10 minute test, which took me four min… there’s a slight chance that I might have overprepared… むりをするでしょう。

 カルちゃん、犬が年上は、心の病気があるんです。薬を飲んだ方がいいですが、苦すぎるんだので、朝ご飯と晩ご飯に薬を入れます。それでも、時々食べません。 ぽっピーちゃん、犬が年下は、食べるのが一番好きです。苦いも、甘いも、しょっぱいも、何でも食べられるんです！早く食べているそしてカルちゃんの食べ物が欲しいんです。ポッぴーちゃんは、心の薬を食べない方がいいです。大変ですよね。 カルちゃん ポッピーちゃん