Twitterを使ってみた。でも、使う意味がいまいちわからん。ブログはもう持っているし。
この投稿は、１４０文字以内だよ。だから何だ？どうでもいいじゃないか？
Twitter…
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Category Archives: プチポスト
Words waiting to come to life
As a short follow-up on memorable moments in language acquisition, I’ve noticed that sometimes you learn a new word and suddenly you hear it all around you.
Some words or expressions that I’ve wrote about before because I simply couldn’t believe they were not taught or used in most textbooks are 「別に」、「なんで」、「他に」 and 「やばい」.
What words have you learned recently that you can’t imagine getting by without once you’ve learned it?
A commenter left this interesting link about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Now lets see if I hear people talking about this phenomenon all the time. 
まさかこんなことになるとは
最近、自分のスケジュールをよく見て、運動する時間がまったくないことに気づいた。体重が本当にやばくなっているので、仕方なく、運動の優先度を上げることにした。でも、今のスケジュールに入る余地もない。こうなったら、睡眠時間を削るしかないと、そういう結論にたどり着いて、朝６時に起きてジョギングを始めた。
６時起床は、２日連続で、まだ死んでいないから、とりあえず可能だということがわかった。しかし、早起きが苦手で有名な私は、いつまでこんなことを続けられるかは不明。昨晩は、８時に倒れて１１時まで寝たら、朝３時まで眠れなくなっちゃった。
う～、１日の時間を増やせないかな？火星では、１日には２４時間＋３９分があるらしい。火星植民地化はいつごろできるんだろう？あんまり期待しない方がいいか。
日本からきたのに、日本語がわからない
新しい車を買う時、車に貼ってあるステッカーにその車のパーツが作製された場所がちゃんと書いている。車達を見て、Hondaは、日本の会社だけど、エンジンや色んなパーツがアメリカで作成されているとわかった。でも、私の車は違う。エンジン、トランスミッション、すべてのパーツが日本で作製された。私の車は、三重県鈴鹿市で生まれたらしい。おそらく、「本田研究工業鈴鹿製作所」でしょう。
アメリカでは、運転手が左側に座るから、日本版と逆だけど、それ以外、インテリアは全く一緒。特に、ラジオが同じだと思う。なのに、iPodを繋げて、日本の曲名やアーティスト名を見ようとしたら、「—–」って文字化けする。なんでや！あんた、日本からきたでしょう？！日本が好きでしょう？バックミラーにケロロとギロロが飾ってあるし。あんた、日本で生まれたんだから、日本語頑張って！
Fun stuff for the bored
If your workplace is practically empty like mine, here’s a funny video to lighten up your Chinese studies, that is if you’re studying Chinese at all.
China’s Andy Rooney Has Some Funny Opinions About How Great The Chinese Government Is
Bliss
It’s Wednesday and I don’t have to worry about the team conference call for class. I’m free at last! I can start liking Wednesdays again! (The team was great, I just hate using Skype, especially with a group.)
I’m so not there right now
「それどころじゃない」 is one of those strange phrases whose meaning isn’t obvious by the words themselves. I guess those things are called idioms, a word that looks suspiciously similar to “idiot” as in “only an idiot wouldn’t know what it meant”. Well excuse me but we’re not all native speakers, you know.
In any case, I thought of this expression when I contemplated updating my blog. My life is rather hectic right now so updating my blog is the least of my concerns. So here I am, in the ultimate of ironies, updating my blog to talk about a phrase that perfectly expresses how I can’t update my blog.
You: 最近、ブログを更新してないね。
Me: それどころじゃないんだよ！
However, I will post all your submissions for September’s Blog Matsuri sometime near the end of this week. There’s still time to write and submit something to me! Just email me at taekim.japanese AT gmail.com
Japan Matsuri Update
Hey guys, you have only 1 week left to submit your Japan+Language related blog entries to me! So far, I’ve received 1 relevant submission.
See here for details or just email me a link to your post at taekim.japanese AT gmail.com.
Maybe I picked a bad topic… I hope this month’s Japan Matsuri doesn’t end in complete failure due to my incompetence and lack of audience. いかん！前向きにならなきゃ。
みなさんの投稿をお待ちしております！m(*^＿^*)m よろしく
Breathe… relax… you don’t have to know it all
A short post today since real life is starting to be more demanding and clamoring for attention.
Today, I learned a new word: 【準える】
I’m always surprised to see a completely new word based on a Kanji that I’ve probably known for well over 6 years. 「準備」 was probably one of the first few words I learned with Kanji (it helped that the same word in Korean sounds identical). I later picked up other words such as 「基準」、「水準」、「標準」、and 「準決勝」. Later on, I even picked up more advanced vocabulary such as 「準じる」 and the older style: 「準ずる」. And now, after over 8 years since I started studying Japanese, I just learned a completely different word based on the same Kanji.
Another similar example happened to me several years ago with 「集う」, which as far as I can tell is virtually identical to 「集まる」 except used like almost never. At that time, I came upon the word at a local community event at 「川口市」 called 「新年の集い」.
The moral of the story is: don’t worry about learning everything about a given Kanji at once. Relax, give it time, and learn things in context as you go. And whatever you do, DO NOT try to remember all the readings at once. You’ll eventually get to all the various readings and associated vocabulary in time. It might take over 8 years but hey, I’ve been using Japanese happily all these years without knowing 「準える」 precisely because it’s so rare to see it used anywhere.
As an interesting aside, 「なずらえる」 seems to have 3 possible kanji: 「準える・准える・擬える」 but the 「なぞらえる」 reading seems to only accept 「準える」. Probably a modern upgrade, as indicated by older usage of 「ず」 (similar to 「生ずる」、「準ずる」、etc).
Figuring out Chinese: 在 vs 着
Can anyone explain to me the difference between 在 and 着? I looked online to no avail. Here are the differences that I came up with. However, I have no idea if they’re correct and I’m sure I’m missing a whole bunch of other usages.
- 在 can be used to indicate location, 着 can’t.
Ex: 我住在美国。 - 在 is used for a continuous action.
Ex: 他在打电话。 - 着 is used for a one-time action that changes a state and remains in that state.
Ex: 她手里拿着一本书。
The best I can figure out is that 着 is not actually an action but a description of a state resulting from the action, which explains why it comes after the verb. For instance, 下着雨 describes the condition as being rainy. This explains why dict.cn translates it as “rainily” which I don’t think is even a word. On the other hand, 在下雨 is the continuous action of rain falling. That’s why you can have what at first seems to be a crazy duplication such as 雨还在下着. It makes sense when you consider that it’s a continuous action of the “rainily” condition.
Yeah, no wonder I hate Chinese grammar. Next, I’ll try to figure out the difference between 一点 and 一些. Ow, my poor head!