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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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kraemder
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 249 of 1702
07 March 2012 at 6:17pm | IP Logged 
Day off for me today. My family is headed back to Boston so I take the day off to catch up on Japanese heh.
I got an 89 on my last assignment. I've been out of school for a while but I don't think I typically was so
disappointed by an 89. I might talk to him about it. I'm not sure about other Japanese classes but he really
really wants perfect handwriting for hiragana and I have yet to avoid getting marked down for mine. Another
big part of our assignment is translating Japanese into English and I get points lost there too. My old English
teachers would write lots of comments in the margins but he just circles or underlines an area and that's all
the info I get for what I did wrong. I can make educated guesses as to why I got points deducted but unless
it's something like I forgot to tranlate a word I really don't know for sure so that's a bit frustrating. So an 89
and I was grouchy for the rest of the evening as a result.

Heisig is going well. I think I can do it again because I caught up so to speak on the grammar for my class.
Before I actually was a bit scared to go to class for fear of being called on and now it's no problem at all. I
don't know all the answers but it's not a problem and I get some of the tougher questions right etc. It's better.

I'm at 900 in the deck. Again, I'm wishing I could get to the last 500ish of the RTK 1 book so I would at least
know the primitives for -all- of the kanji that we do in class. I know most of them to be sure and it's extremely
helpful. Other students are complaining that kanji is a lot harder for them this semester compared to last
semester. I can readily understand their frustration - some of the kanji has a lot of strokes but really without
breaking kanji down to radicals/primitives you'll hit a wall where it gets painful to just memorize new kanji as a
whole rather than breaking it down. I think in Japanese 201 they start teaching radicals and they should have
started doing it in 102 I think (or even right away in 101). He'll sort of try to break down some of the new kanji
a little like yesterday he pointed out that 運 has kuruma in it but the crown primitive on top he just referred to
as a "thing" and didn't explain it at all. I've only studied Heisig per se and not radicals so I don't know how
that will differ from primitives. I'm curious.

I'd really like to improve my spoken Japanese for the class. We just did relative clauses and I'm totally fine
while reading them but speaking in sentences with them is a bit different - it's slow. Maybe reading Potter will
help? Or I could just do lots of relative clauses exercises which would be boring.

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kraemder
Senior Member
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 250 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 3:43am | IP Logged 
Spring break now for my class. Unfortunately for me I still work full time so it's not really the break it would be if I were a real student. /sigh.

I'm reading Potter. I'm not sure if anyone reading this log is up on their Japanese and can help me out. Here's the sentence (well partial sentence):

――なんと猫ねこが地図ちずを見みている― ―ダーズリー氏しは一瞬いっし

So my question is what is the proper pronunciation for 氏 in this sentence? Rikaichan gives me two options - うじ and し. Furigana inserter thinks it's し. This is repeated all over the place so it would be nice to know.

Oh and I have this homework assignment that's really hard. Here's the 1st question:

Circle the correct item(s) and translate into English. The number of correct item(s) may range from - to 5.

1:  パーティに   **********.
a. 田中さんも山田さんが来ました。
b. 誰も来ませんでした
c. 一人も来ました
d. 百人も来ました
e. 雨で、来ませんでした

Any super nice websites that will check your Japanese and tell if it's right? To me, all of them seem possible although a little weird depending. Obviously I have no ear for the language and I'm happy to just more or less understand what I'm looking at.
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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 251 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 5:35am | IP Logged 
I circled B, D, and E
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g-bod
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 Message 252 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 9:55am | IP Logged 
The correct pronunciation for 氏 in that context is し. Ah it brings back sweet memories of reading Potter myself last year! Do you have the audio book for it? It's very helpful for picking up readings that are ambiguous from using a dictionary.

I'm not sure I can help you with your homework (for a start, I could be wrong and then you'll lose marks). I can say I would have circled the same ones as you though.
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Kappa
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Japan
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99 posts - 172 votes 

 
 Message 253 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged 
Howdy,

Regarding the kanji 運, I could explain but I'm lousy at explaing things so I'll leave it to dictionaries. Here:

運 (12) ウン    はこ(ぶ) wrote:
   
As per 軍 (Type 1 Phonetic) (circularity) + 辵 movement → move about in a circle → transport; carry; convey → (make) progress; manage/carry out (an undertaking). Fate comes from the idea of the circulation of good and evil in the course of one's life; compare 業.

軍 (9)   グン wrote:

車 vehicle + 勹 wrap → military encampment (compare 営) formed by chariots arrayed in a circle → army → soldier; battle. The replacement of 勹 with 冖 dates from SCR.

You probably already know about this website but you can look up things like that on KanjiNetworks. If your Japanese is up for it, I believe Wiktionary provides such information, too.


I don't think there's such a website yet. If such were possible, then online translators could really profit from that. Your best bet would be post questions on websites like Lang-8 and ask native speakers. And you actually got it right. (a) and (c) are obviously not correct.

"*田中さんも山田さんが来ました。" should be either "田中さん山田さんも来ました。" or "田中さんと山田さんが/は来ました。"

"*一人も来ました。" is incorrect because "も" expresses that something is beyond one's expectation or limits in amount (number), "as many as...". There are a few other usages but none fits. (i.e. "一人しか来ませんでした。", Only one person came.)

About (e), this is a little obscure. Translation would be a tad unfair as there are several possiblities without any context. "で" in this case indicates a reason or cause. (Same as "雨の為、来ませんでした。", "雨が降ったので、来ませんでした。") Althought the sentence by itself sounds a bit like "(someone) didn't come by rain" (like by train, on foot, etc), but I believe it's still grammatcial.


I myself have yet to develop an "English ear". I think it comes with lots of exposure, practice and time. We have to be patient...


Best,
Kappa

Edited by Kappa on 10 March 2012 at 10:58am

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kraemder
Senior Member
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 254 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 4:25pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
The correct pronunciation for 氏 in that context is し. Ah it brings back sweet memories of reading Potter myself last year! Do you have the audio book for it? It's very helpful for picking up readings that are ambiguous from using a dictionary.

I'm not sure I can help you with your homework (for a start, I could be wrong and then you'll lose marks). I can say I would have circled the same ones as you though.


Thanks for that tip! Any feedback on that homework I would double check myself over and over heh. I wouldn't just pass in homework answers that someone else told me unless I was convinced it were right.

Oh and the audio book. Yes I did find a torrent for the 1st book. It'll be enough to keep me busy for a while I'm sure but I'll undoubtabley want the later books in their full audio glory at some point. It's kind of frustrating that for Japanese ebooks/audiobooks I'm sort of reliant on torrents as I can't find them online otherwise.

Edited by kraemder on 10 March 2012 at 4:30pm

1 person has voted this message useful



kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5182 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 255 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 5:35pm | IP Logged 
Kappa wrote:
Howdy,

Regarding the kanji 運, I could explain but I'm lousy at explaing things so I'll leave it to dictionaries. Here:

運 (12) ウン    はこ(ぶ) wrote:
   
As per 軍 (Type 1 Phonetic) (circularity) + 辵 movement → move about in a circle → transport; carry; convey → (make) progress; manage/carry out (an undertaking). Fate comes from the idea of the circulation of good and evil in the course of one's life; compare 業.

軍 (9)   グン wrote:

車 vehicle + 勹 wrap → military encampment (compare 営) formed by chariots arrayed in a circle → army → soldier; battle. The replacement of 勹 with 冖 dates from SCR.

You probably already know about this website but you can look up things like that on KanjiNetworks. If your Japanese is up for it, I believe Wiktionary provides such information, too.


I don't think there's such a website yet. If such were possible, then online translators could really profit from that. Your best bet would be post questions on websites like Lang-8 and ask native speakers. And you actually got it right. (a) and (c) are obviously not correct.

"*田中さんも山田さんが来ました。" should be either "田中さん山田さんも来ました。" or "田中さんと山田さんが/は来ました。"

"*一人も来ました。" is incorrect because "も" expresses that something is beyond one's expectation or limits in amount (number), "as many as...". There are a few other usages but none fits. (i.e. "一人しか来ませんでした。", Only one person came.)

About (e), this is a little obscure. Translation would be a tad unfair as there are several possiblities without any context. "で" in this case indicates a reason or cause. (Same as "雨の為、来ませんでした。", "雨が降ったので、来ませんでした。") Althought the sentence by itself sounds a bit like "(someone) didn't come by rain" (like by train, on foot, etc), but I believe it's still grammatical.


I myself have yet to develop an "English ear". I think it comes with lots of exposure, practice and time. We have to be patient...


Best,
Kappa


Wow. Thank you very much for the response. I didn't know about that etymology website and it's really interesting. I have it bookmarked now and just printed out stuff for next class's kanji. I'm glad you agreed with my answers to question 1. I translated the last one as "It rained at the party, so I didn't go."

Oh and I'm going to bring your explanation to my study group for the class heh. It was really in depth and good.

Edited by kraemder on 10 March 2012 at 6:28pm

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Kappa
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Japan
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99 posts - 172 votes 

 
 Message 256 of 1702
10 March 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged 
It's our pleasure to serve you, sir. ;)


"雨で、来ませんでした" wouldn't take "I" as the subject like that. The English word come and "来る" are actually different. For instance, when there's somebody knocking on your door, you can say "I'm coming", but it doesn't like that in Japanese. In a nutshell "来る" means something/someone to come towards you (the speaker) or where you are, either physically or figuratively. There're other meanigs derived from that and there's possibilities 1st person is the subject (e.g. "また明日来ます。", I'll come (here) again tomorrow.). On the other hand, "行く" means to move from where you are to somewhere else, either physically or figuratively. So the subject can't be "I" unless you're in the place (the party) at the moment.

i.e.:
(At the place where the party was held)
Guy: Did you come to the party yesterday? 昨日のパーティーに来ましたか。
You: No, I didn't come because it rained. 雨が降ったので、来ませんでした。


I should've made it clear but the information on Kanji history are NOT from me! I just copied and pasted it from the KanjiNetworks site. There's absolutely no way I could have come up with such a detailed explanation. I'm just a regular guy who knows next to nothing about languages including his own. I'm sorry for the confusion.


Best,
Kappa


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