Yearly Archives: 2008

A (not very) sarcastic conversation in Japanese

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A: Yeah right, like there’s NO sarcasm in Japanese.
B: Yes, that’s right. There’s no such thing as sarcasm in Japanese.
A: Yeah, like NOBODY is sarcastic in ALL of Japan.
B: You can say that.
A: And that’s because you know EVERYBODY in Japan, right?
B: Well no, but Japanese doesn’t really have the capability for sarcasm. There isn’t even really a word for it in Japanese.”
A: Yeah, Japanese like totally can’t express even the CONCEPT of sarcasm.
B: Well, the closest thing I can think of is saying 「はい、はい」 to be dismissive instead of being agreeable.
A: And you know EVERYTHING about Japanese.
B: Are you trying to be sarcastic?
A: I dunno. I thought I was just speaking randomly in all caps for no reason.

You can translate this back into Japanese for fun times!

The NEW 常用漢字 and why we shouldn’t give a damn

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According to Wikipedia, revision of the 常用漢字 (Jōyō kanji) was first proposed in February 2005 and work began in September of the same year.

2005年2月に国語分科会が「情報化時代に対応するために常用漢字のあり方を検討すべき」であるとした報告書を文化審議会に提出した。これを受けて、同年3月、中山文部科学相は常用漢字表の見直しの検討などを文化審議会に諮問した。同年9月から文化審議会・国語分科会の漢字小委員会が常用漢字見直しの審議に入った。
– Wikipedia

Three years later, there was news as recently as last month of a tentative list to be released in February of 2009. The new list is currently said to have removed 5 kanji and added 188 new ones, bringing the new total from 1945 to 2128 characters.

文化審議会国語分科会の漢字小委員会は１５日、常用漢字表に新たに入れる可能性の高い漢字１８８字からなる字種候補案を承認した。話題になった「俺（おれ）」も含まれる。今後、音訓を決める段階や、来年２月に作成される新常用漢字表（仮称）試案を修正する段階で、この追加字種の数は若干変わる可能性もあるが、ほぼ固まった。

現行の常用漢字表からはずす可能性が高いのは銑・錘・勺・匁・脹。１９４５字からなる常用漢字表からこの５字をはずし、新たに１８８字を追加すれば、新常用漢字表は２１２８字となる。
– 朝日（２００８年7月15日）

The new additions apparently also include the “controversial” character 「俺」. Personally, it seems crazy to not include it based on how often it’s used. And what is so controversial about 「俺」 anyway especially considering the fact that they’re adding kanji like 「勃」 and 「淫」? That’s just my opinion in any case and I think the difficulty they are having in determining the criteria for what goes in the list is indicative of fundamental problems with the whole idea behind the list in the first place.

Never let the 常用漢字表 tell you which kanji to learn or not learn

What is the purpose of the 常用漢字表 anyway? To tell you which kanji to learn? So I’m supposed to learn 「斤」, some obscure unit of measurement but not the kanji for the word “who” （誰）? That makes perfect sense, right?!

Also, why did they even have the removed characters （銑・錘・勺・匁・脹） in the first place? Was “pig iron” commonly used at some point in time? I mean, the list came out the year I was born and I don’t think I’m THAT old. And why haven’t they removed stuff like 畝 or 逓 yet? I don’t think they come even close to falling in the category of “common usage” no matter how you define it.

And now, almost 30 years later they’re finally going to add kanji for words like “smell” （匂い）, “loose” （緩い）, “nail” （爪）, and “butt” （お尻） in 2010? What kind of crap list were we using all these years?

The list burned me personally when I bought my first kanji dictionary. It only had the 常用漢字 because after all, that’s all we need to know, right? Well, one of the FIRST words I encountered in my self-study was 「瞳」 and guess what, it’s not in the list! If I had known better, I would have never wasted money on anything that only covered the 常用漢字.

Thankfully, I later found an online dictionary that didn’t use the 常用漢字表 as an excuse to be lazy and saved me from quitting Japanese in frustration. For comparison, the 漢字源 in my Canon G90 has 13,112 characters, almost 16x what my first crap dictionary had.

Don’t fall into the trap of learning from a list

In my opinion, the worst problem with the list is that it fools innocent learners such as you and I into thinking we should use it somehow in our studies. The thinking goes, “Hey here’s a list of (supposedly) common kanji. I should make up some index cards and memorize them one by one.”

However, what many beginners don’t realize is that you have to be some kind of super-genius to memorize 1945 characters with absolutely no context. Even if you DID somehow manage to memorize them all, you’re not learning any real words, you have no idea which readings are used and when, and you have no sense of when and how it’s used. Where’s the reading material, vocabulary, and conversation practice? It’s like putting the cart before the horse AND sitting in the seat backwards.

The first character on the list is 「亜」 for crying out loud! For all you know, that’s the most useful character in the world when in fact I have never used it in all my years of study. Do YOU write 「アジア」 and 「アメリカ」 as 「亜細亜」 and 「亜米利加」? I sure hope not! I thought for a second that maybe it’s used in the word 「唖然」 but no, not even! If anything, 「唖」 belongs in the list much more than 「亜」 if you ask me. Obviously, they never consulted me (I was -2 months old at the time) and no, it’s not in the list.

Conclusion

I don’t know, maybe the list has some good uses for educators, policy makers, publishers, and whatnot. It’s certainly better to have an improved version over the crappy one we have now. But I can’t help but think it was overused throughout the years and caused more harm than good for people learning Japanese. Personally, I think we would have been better off without the damn list in the first place.

The bottom line is whatever new list they come up with and no matter how “good” it is (whatever that means), we should always think of it as a guide and never forget to use good ol’ common sense.

What’s the stroke order of 【龜】? Who cares?

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This is yet another post that’s been picking up cruft in my draft folder for over three years.

Stroke order is one of those things that might seem difficult at first but actually comes quite naturally with a bit of practice. You just have to make sure you learn the the correct order of the most important radicals such as 口 and 田. You should also pay careful attention to radicals like 厂 that have more stroke orders than you would think. (Hint: it’s more than 1.)

Once you learn the stroke order for the most common radicals, you can figure out the rest for most kanji by yourself with general principles like the following.

  1. Stroke orders generally go from top to bottom and left to right (from the top-left corner to bottom-right corner).
  2. Vertical lines that go straight through are written last as opposed to those that connect (十 vs 土）.
  3. Stuff that encloses something else gets drawn first but closed last （回 and 団）.

When in doubt or for weird kanji like 必, you can always check the stroke order on the WWWJDIC by looking up the kanji and clicking on the SOD link. You’ll get a nice animated gif like this one.

However, the problem with these animations is that it only gives you the order and not the direction of each stroke. If you’re confused about stroke direction, another site you might want to try is gahoh, which has animated .mov files with the direction and order. Here’s one for 必.

Their collection isn’t as complete as the WWWJDIC but it is useful for odd or crazy and complicated kanji like 龜. The request page in particular has some of the odder and trickier kanji like 凸、凹、飛、 and 卵 so you might want to check it out and double-check your stroke order.

So how useful is it to learn the proper stroke order of 龜? Not very but hey it’s fun times for everybody, right? Right? Hello? ………anybody?

These SnapShots are going to make me snap!

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Ok, I have to vent a little bit here on something that’s been annoying me lately.

Dear Internet,

Please stop using Snap Shots for your links. When I’m moving my mouse cursor over a link, it’s because I want to actually click on the damn thing. I do not want an annoying pop-up preview box that is completely useless to me and too small to actually see anything. What is the preview box for? So that I can admire the general theme and color scheme of the website?

Also, do you know why the CSS tool tips built in most browsers wait until you hover a bit before showing up? It’s to prevent them from ambushing your cursor when it’s trying to go somewhere else!

Internet, people built pop-up blockers for a very good reason and I don’t think it was so we could descend to the level of mini pop-ups that jump out as you’re trying to move your damn mouse!

Regards,
Tae Kim

I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily install this thing on their site. Is there some kind of ad/affiliate revenue generating scheme in there somewhere I’m not aware of?

SexyBeijing, better than real TV!

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With the Olympics going on in Beijing, I’m finally seeing some programs about China on the major TV networks. It seems like it takes a big event like the Olympics or major disasters to get traditional TV to actually take even a cursory look at anything outside the US borders. However, a lot of the stuff is rehashed and almost seems like a collection of whatever they had lying around that had the word “China” in the title.

The problem with TV is that it needs to cater to a large audience and hence the lowest common denominator. With the increasing number of stupid reality/game shows and absolutely no in-depth coverage of any issues that actually require thinking (for example, telcom immunity), the intellectual level of TV seems to be getting lower and lower.

Fortunately, with buzzwords like Web 2.0 and the Long Tail, decentralized media can cater to people even like me who are interested in getting a candid look at China and maybe even a little listening practice from Chinese speakers. With subtitles, that means you might have to actually read something. OMG! Real Americans don’t want to read!

For comparison, watch SexyBeijing.TV’s video about McDonald’s in China versus CNBC. The first difference you’ll notice is that I couldn’t embed the CNBC’s version so you’ll just have to go to their site.

Versus

CNBC’s Big Mac in China

The CNBC’s version is only about a minute long but I watched a longer program on TV (I don’t remember which channel it was) about China and McDonald’s and it was pretty much the same kind of deal so I think this is a reasonably good comparison.

While traditional media has much more influence and can talk to, for example, the CEO of McDonald’s in China, they seem to avoid talking to anybody who can’t speak English. I don’t recall having to read a single subtitle in the program. Even if they did interview a local, you’ll get the customary and absolutely horrible dubbing they do for any foreign language speakers.

In contrast, SexyBeijing’s version has some very funny dialogue with real people such as asking a fat kid whether he thinks eating at McDonald’s makes people fat. The one guy who is stuffing his face and goes to McDonald’s everyday is absolutely hilarious. Since his mouth was constantly full of food I had trouble making out what he was saying but the translation is a riot!

Thanks K and safarinew for helping me figure out what he said. Native ears sure are awesome!

你最喜欢吃的是什么？ – What’s your favorite thing to order?
汉堡啊。大个巨无霸跟我体型差不多。 – I like the Big Mac. It’s big, like me.

Personally, the SexyBeijing’s version seems more entertaining, informative, and real rather than some American dude narrating a digested version of the story on a background of related images from China. The CNBC’s version might be more informative with statistics of this and that but I don’t really care how many billions or dollars McDonald’s rakes in every year in China or how many hundreds of stores they recently opened.

The traditional media will be around for a while but I’m glad that the internet has allowed new and decentralized channels for content distribution. Let’s just hope they don’t take control (Net neutrality) or shut it down (Usenet) with scary tales of pirated movies and child porn lurking everywhere.

Check out SexyBeijing.TV for more interesting videos! Let’s hope Youtube starts rolling out the higher quality versions. Here’s the Youtube page.

Bah, humbug to methods!

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I recently received this question via email from Shiki.

To: taekim.japanese AT gmail.com
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 11:39 AM

Subject: Some questions about your method…

You said that when you were learning Japanese you didn’t study kanji, but the words made of them. So when you encountered a new word, what did you do to “drill” it into your memory? I’m just wondering what steps to take when I encounter a new word.

Also, how often did you find yourself reviewing? When I say reviewing, I mean like SRS/flashcard reviewing. I ask this because the method you described yourself using for learning Japanese is very appealing to me, as I think it’s in line with what will help me learn Japanese successfully. It’s not that I don’t have the time to review, but I just find reviewing for long periods of time very boring. I’m not really interested in coming home and having to do 4 hours of reviewing that my SRS scheduled for me today. I’d rather just jump straight into reading manga, looking for new words and kanji, having fun while learning.

Thanks.

I do not have a method, I do not play monopoly

I did not do any review, I did not use an SRS, I did not pass Go, I did not collect $200, and I definitely did not use flashcards. Or more accurately, I did try to use flashcards early on but all my efforts at making and reviewing flashcards soon petered out due to boredom.

Here are some of the things I did do depending on my mood and how much interest I had for any given vocabulary.

  1. I skipped the word if I was lazy or too absorbed into the story to stop reading. (Usually when it didn’t hinder my comprehension too much)
  2. I looked up the word, found the definition, and moved on.
  3. I remembered other words that used the same Kanji, and looked those up as well.
  4. For new Kanji, I looked up the meaning for the individual Kanji and practiced writing the odder ones like 「飛」.
  5. For fairly abstract concepts such as 「関して」 or 「かつて」, I looked up other example sentences similar to the steps described in this post.
  6. In conversation practice, I asked my partner to write down words I didn’t recognize and reviewed my notes later (or not depending on how lazy I was).

The only thing that could be considered review was going back and reading something over again for the fun of it. On reading it over, I might look up words I skipped previously or have forgotten since then.

Here, let me put words in your mouth

While that’s what I did to study Japanese, I’m going to read a bit between the lines here and answer what I think the question is really asking, “How should you study Japanese?”

Here’s the short answer:

Do what works for you.

Similar to diet fads, people seem to want to gravitate toward some magical method for mastering Japanese. Various books and software try to reel these people in with claims like, “Learn Japanese the Easy Way!” or “The Fastest Way to Learn Japanese!”. In my opinion, 99.9% of these products are complete crap. I won’t say which ones because I rather not say anything rather than being overly negative.

Regardless of whether you think Japanese is more or less difficult than learning other languages, the bottom line is that mastering any foreign language is a large task. So do yourself a favor and take an approach that makes learning Japanese enjoyable and interesting for you.

Are you having trouble writing the Kanji? Try the Heisig method. Are you having trouble recalling vocabulary? Try an SRS. Are you getting bored with the study material? Try new kinds of material such as dramas, movies, books, comics. Or here’s a crazy idea. How about making some Japanese friends to practice with? The important thing to realize is that no single method is going to cover everything.

The point is, I can’t advocate a single method or steps to learning Japanese because we all learn in different ways and have different goals. Here are some questions that might affect how you want to approach Japanese.

  1. What is your desired pace and average study time?
  2. What are your areas of interest?
  3. How best do you learn: visual, audio, or mechanical? You need to incorporate all three but you can use your natural disposition to your advantage.
  4. Do you like to learn in an organized or unorganized fashion?

I also suggest you read my post on studying tips. Practice makes perfect, so you should not forget that eventually you’ll have to use Japanese in the real world to get better at it. Feed Me Japanese also has some good posts about learning methods.

Finally, my last piece of advice is this.

If it’s painful, boring, or frustrating, stop doing it and try something else.

And if everything starts to feel that way, try taking a little break. But don’t let it last too long otherwise it might became a hiatus and you start forgetting what you’ve worked so hard to learn. Remember, like proper dieting and exercise, the importance is in consistency and not speed.

Conclusion

So Shiki, it sounds like you answered your own question. If you don’t like reviewing for long periods of time and prefer to jump straight into reading manga, then go do that! It worked for me! (In addition to having Japanese friends to converse with.)

In Soviet Russia, expressions use YOU

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This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost 3 years so I decided it’s high time to get it out the door finally.

「逆に」（ぎゃくに） is one of those expressions that is used all the time. Even if you decide to stop reading the rest of this post because you hate me for being so cool, you’re probably going to pick it up somewhere along your studies.

「逆」 by itself means, the “reverse” or “opposite”, and is a pretty useful word by itself as you can imagine. It is used as a noun as shown in the following (admittedly cheesy) dialogue.

田中）　明日、レポートをちゃんと提出するんだな？
みき）　あっ、はい！
田中）　あんまり仕事をサボるんじゃないよ。
みき）　はい！わかりました！
Aさん)　田中さんは、なんでいつもみきちゃんに厳しいのかな？みきちゃんのことが気に入らないとか？
Bさん) その逆だと思います。

Loose translation:
Tanaka) Going to submit your report tomorrow, right?
Miki) Um, yes!
Tanaka) Don’t slack off too much.
Miki) Yes! Understood!
A-san) I wonder why Tanaka-san is always hard on Miki-chan? Maybe he doesn’t like her or something?
B-san) I think it’s that exact opposite.

It’s slang, it’s not supposed to make sense!

While that’s all fine and dandy, you wouldn’t think adding 「に」 and making it an adverb would be a very useful construction. I mean, how often do you say “oppositely” in English? But in Japanese slang, it doesn’t have to mean what it actually means!

みき)　このレポートのせいで、今晩のデートはだめになっちゃったよ。
Aさん)　逆にいいんじゃない？彼氏と別れたいって言ってたでしょ？
みき）　それはそうなんだけど、残業よりましよ。

Loose translation:
Miki) Thanks to this report, my date tonight is ruined.
A-san) Isn’t it oppositely good? You were saying you wanted to break up with your boyfriend, right?
Miki) That is true but it’s better than doing overtime.

As you can see from my crappy translation, 「逆に」 doesn’t have to be the direct opposite of anything in particular, really. It can be used to describe a result that might run counter to what you would normally expect. It can also be used to turn the tables around on someone (much like the title of this post).

彼女に振られたと聞いて、慰めようとしたら、逆に怒られちゃったよ。

I heard he got dumped by his girlfriend and when I tried to cheer him up, he oppositely got mad at me.

In fact, one very popular slang is 逆ギレ, which is when someone who is in the wrong turns around and gets angry at the person who confronted him or her.

Aさん）　遅いよ。もう３０分も待ってたよ。
Bさん）　電車が止まってたから、しょうがないだろう！！
Aさん)　・・・（逆ギレかよ）

The 「日本語俗語辞書」, which I talked about in my last post has additional similar slang such as 逆ナン and 逆セクハラ but I’ll let you figure those out for yourselves. I’ve done enough damage already, I think.

Using 「とは」 to look up strange words

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The edict dictionary is one of best online dictionaries available, better than any print E->J dictionaries I know of. It is also continuously being expanded from user submissions. Even in the rare instance that it doesn’t have what you’re looking for, you’re covered with the monster huge 大辞泉 and 大辞林 J->J dictionaries available for free at Yahoo!辞書. If you have the patience to work through the Japanese definition, you should be able to find a definition for every word in any print dictionary available to native speakers. However, with new words and slang being invented all the time, you might run into words that are not in any traditional dictionary. The good news is that a lot of Japanese people won’t be familiar with them either. Here’s a quick tip from me to easily find Japanese sites that explain and define words of this nature. In the process, I’ll also discuss a very special double particle.

The 「とは」 double particle

While you can guess the meaning of most double particles from the sum of it’s parts such as 「には」 (a target that’s also a topic), 「とは」 really has a meaning of its own. Simply put, it is a somewhat formal and concise way to define something. For example, try searching on Google for 「とは」 and you’ll get pages with titles like 「ITとは」 and 「WWWとは」. If you go to the site itself, it’ll give you a short definition of the relevant term.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. When I run into a term that’s not in the dictionary (which in my case is usually new expressions or slang too stupid to put in a real dictionary), I search the term in Google with 「とは」.

For example, when I was listening to 眞鍋かをり’s podcast titled あなたの周りのＫＹな人, I had forgotten what “KY” meant. Now, looking up a term like “KY” is usually very difficult because there isn’t a lick of Japanese in the “word” (and I use that term loosely). But all I had to do was attach 「とは」 and soon found this neat and in-depth definition in no time.

From http://zokugo-dict.com/09ke/ky.htm

その場の雰囲気や状況などを察する（感じる・掴む）ことを「空気を読む」とも表現する。KYはこの「空気」と「読む」の頭文字で、主に空気が読めない人を意味する。また、逆にそういった人に「空気を読め」と提言する際にも「KY」と耳元で囁くなどして使われる。女子高生がメールのやりとりで使い、普及した。

若者の間では以前から使われているが、2007年、こういった頭文字略語の存在が話題となり、広く知られる。

In fact, thanks to this search, I found the 「日本語俗語辞書」 with all sorts of stupid slang that I’ll probably end up wishing I’d kept to myself. Please don’t send me an email along the lines of, “Hey, after reading your blog, I called my boss an AY for fun and he actually knew what it meant! He totally MMed on me and now I’m out of a job. What should I do?”

Anyway, in addition to the regular KY語 (God, it’s turning into its own language now?), this tactic was also useful for looking up Internet slang when I wrote about 電車男. For instance, the first search result for 「ROMとは」 turned up this nice little definition.

From http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/ROM

書き込みをしない人のこと。あるいは書き込みをせずにいること。（「ROMる」、「ロムる」などと表現する）

ネット上のコミュニティでその場の雰囲気をつかむために「ROMったり」、「ROMになったり」する。

他人に対して「ROMってろよ」と発言するのは「黙ってろよ」と発言するのと同義。

So there you have it, a simple neat tip from me to you. I just wish I had better examples that won’t turn your cute little 「ます／です」 classroom Japanese to the dark side. Just don’t be using this stuff when you’re talking to me. You’ll totally get the hand and I mean that.

LOL! KTNXBYE

WPtouch, cool but sounds kind of risque

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I just installed WPtouch on this blog for you iPhone users. Personally, I would never spend that much money on a phone every month. It would definitely fall under the “Latte Effect” on my budget. But I thought it would be a nice touch for those of you who can afford it. Now you can read my pointless ramblings with ease wherever you go! Yay!!　＼(^〇^*)／

So if you’re reading this from an iPhone, how’s it look? I tested it out using iPhoney (OS X only) but it only works so-so. Maybe I’ll try it out on an real iPhone the next time I visit the Apple Store.

The plugin seems to work pretty well but I don’t know why Pages don’t have comments despite the fact that they’re enabled (this has now been fixed). Also, I wish there was a way to get the Archive Page on the iPhone version only and without having to manually hack the Theme. Finally, it doesn’t work with WP Super Cache yet so I had to disable it. Oh well, it’s not like the meager traffic on my blog is going to put any kind of strain on a server that also runs Groklaw and Project Gutenberg (both directories are next to mine under “g”). 🙁

Google, what will they think of next?

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I don’t know when this was released (couldn’t find any announcement on the Google Japan Blog) but it looks like Google finally introduced street view for Japan. I suppose it was only a matter of time once they figured out how to censor people’s faces automatically. They covered an amazing range of streets for Osaka and Tokyo and partial areas near there such as Kyoto, Saitama, and Chiba. Smaller areas are also viewable in Sendai, Hakodate, and Sapporo. I can’t even imagine how many hours it took to drive through all those tiny little streets!

Hopefully, with the ability to actually see where you want to go, this will become another tool in our arsenal to navigate the crazy no-name streets of Japan. Although without any street names, it’s almost impossible to even know where to put the little yellow guy. But with a little bit of searching, you can at least use it to show your family where you lived or are living in Japan!

For instance, if you work for Hitachi, you might end up in their 第二志村寮 like I did. And here’s the crappy old building I used to work at before they moved their headquarters to the fancy and new ダイビル in 秋葉原. Before that, I worked briefly at the ironically named 新丸の内ビル near Tokyo station just before it was torn down to be rebuilt. (I wonder if it’s already been rebuilt and reopened?)

If you have never been to Tokyo or Osaka before, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the never-ending spans of concrete with the occasional tree or bush here and there. It gets pretty hot once all that concrete and metal starts baking in the summer. Who says we need nature? Ha!