henrydoeslanguages

[henrydoeslanguages]

ドタキャン

means 'last minute cancellation,' from 土壇場 (どたんば) + キャンセル. 土壇場 is literally 'earthen-platform place'; criminals were placed on earthen mounds for executions in the Edo period, hence the meaning of ' last minute'.

[henrydoeslanguages]

3 left-side heart (心) radical adjectives in Japanese that end in しい

The title is pretty self-explanatory. I find myself getting 怪しい ayashii, 惜しい oshii and 悔しい kuyashii mixed up on Anki sometimes, so this is more a note to self, but I hope others may also find this useful. I'll first reproduce (with some minor typographic edits and omissions for brevity) the dictionary entries given in the Sankoku dictionary (三省堂国語辞典 4th ed.)

怪しい・あやしい： 1）ようすがおかしい。異様だ。 2）うたがわしい。信用できない。 3）男女の間で秘密の関係がありそうだ。

惜しい・おしい： 1）（人やものを）失うことが、残念だ。（例：時間が惜しい・惜しい人を失った） 2）そのもののねうちが現れなくて、残念だ。 3）手に入れることができなくて、残念だ。 4）（その状態が続けられなくて）残念に思う状態だ。（例：名残が惜しい。）

悔しい・口惜しい（！）・くやしい： 1）人に負けたり、恥ずかしい思いをさせられたりして、腹が立つような、泣きたいような感じだ。（もう、取り返しのつかないときに使う）

Of these 3 entries, I was most surprised by kuyashii, since a) it doesn't have a straightforward synonym (let's say, ayashii is roughly okashii and oshii is roughly zannen), but also b) the definition provided by Jisho.org for kuyashii is "vexing; annoying; frustrating; regrettable; mortifying​", which I think doesn't capture the nuance as elicited from a Japanese dictionary (mortifying seems the closest, but mortifying comes off a little strong to my ear). I'd translate the Sankoku entry as: "That feeling when you are defeated or embarrassed by someone, and you feel angry and want to cry in [because of?] the helplessness of the situation."

As a memory aid, some other words and compounds that feature the kanji in these adjectives:

怪：怪獣 kaijuu 'monster', 怪我 kega 'injury', 妖怪 youkai 'yokai', 怪しむ ayashimu 'to [consider] suspect'

惜：惜しむ oshimu 'to consider [something] regrettable; to consider [unnecessary usage of something] a waste, i.e. to be frugal; to cherish; [also in the negative i.e. 惜しまない] (lit.?) 'to not skimp out on; do a lot of'. See extra note at end.

悔：後悔 koukai 'regret', 悔やむ kuyamu 'to regret; to mourn [someone's death].'

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NB: the on-yomi for 惜 is seki cf. Cantonese sek3, but Sino-Japanese compounds with 惜 seem quite uncommon, i.e. 痛惜 tsuuseki 'deep regret' 惜敗 sekihai 'regrettable defeat, defeat by a narrow margin'. Also in looking up sekihai, I found this concept which is delightfully nerdy.

[henrydoeslanguages]

Practice Large Numbers in Chinese!

I just learned about this website from r/languagelearning and instantly knew I had to share it. It’s called Number Listening Practice.

As I’m sure many of you have realized, large numbers are tricky in Chinese. 1 million is one hundred ten thousands. 亿 means one hundred million. This website plays recordings of numbers (or years), and you type out what you hear. Even better, you can select size ranges for numbers. The only downside is that it seems for bigger numbers it only reads ones that end in may zeros. So something like 1,330,000 instead of 1,335,839. 

For more number practice, I recommend you try watching an episode of a Chinese idol survival show where they are announcing the ranks. They read the vote tallies out loud, and you can try to write down the numbers as they go.

I’m going to start with 10k-10m and work my way up!

[henrydoeslanguages]

i was today years old when i discovered that 친구 is actually Sino-Korean 親舊 lit. 'close and long-time [friend]' omg

[henrydoeslanguages]

'to shoulder' in japanese: 担ぐ・担う・負う

Japanese has multiple verbs that roughly mean 'to (carry on one's) shoulder'. They're all transitive, but have different uses and nuances.

担ぐ katsugu Katsugu means to put something on your shoulders. It focuses on the action of the placing, the lifting, not the state of having that on your shoulders. For example, a 神輿 mikoshi 'portable shrine' is 担ぐ'ed. It's also used to mean 'lifting up' of someone for a position 候補に担ぐ kouho ni katsugu lit. 'carrying (so.) to a candidacy', and for the idiomatic expression 縁起を担ぐ engi wo katsugu 'to be superstitious' (lit. 'shoulder omens').

担う ninau By contrast, ninau focuses on the state of carrying something on your shoulders. It's used for expressions like 役割を担う yakuwari wo ninau 'to shoulder a role, position' and 次���を担う jidai wo ninau 'to shoulder [i.e. bear the weight of] the next generation'; it's generally used for more abstract 'weights’.

負う ou Ou can mean to carry on one's back as well as shoulders. It has more a sense of 'suffer', like 傷を負う kizu wo ou 'to be injured, suffer an injury' and 責任を負う sekinin wo ou 'to bear responsibility' (though 責任を担う works too). I think of the English word 'burden' when I think of 負う.

Basically if it's a physical thing that you're shouldering, all 3 will work but will have slightly different nuances. If it's something abstract, then there will usually be a specific verb for it and others won't work.

[henrydoeslanguages]

This is a good example of how newspapers don't use non-Jōyō kanji*, found on the front page of today's (21.05.04) Mainichi. 牽制・けんせい means curbing in, containment, restraint (here the implied object is China), but 牽 isn't in the list so is rendered in kana.

*Actually the rules for newspapers are actually slightly different from the list used for schools, see the wiki article (in japanese) for more details!

[henrydoeslanguages]

ノマド

Today's 余録 yoroku* column on the Mainichi Shimbun's front page was about nomads 「ノマド」, following the great success the film Nomadland (dir. Chloé Zhao) had at the Oscars yesterday, including winning Best Picture. This is the first paragraph:

遊牧民を表す「ノマド」がポストモダン思想のキーワードとして注目されたのは１９８０年代だった。仏思想家ドゥルーズらは、画一的・閉鎖的な定住民とは対極的な思想や生き方を示すのにこの言葉を用いた。

First line, no problems. Second line, ??? Buddhist... Druze?

After being thoroughly confused for a good few minutes, I realised 仏 here is from the ateji reading 仏蘭西 used as a bound form for France (like 米 for America; K. 불어 佛- 'French language', cf. Ch. 法國 'France'), so 仏思想家 is 'French philosopher.' This helps us with ドゥルーズ; not Druze, but Gilles Deleuze. ら here is 等, or the associative plural: Deleuze and others like him, essentially. Also のに is not the concessive のに, but indicates aim of use, literally nominal の + に, lit. 'used towards showing...'.

Link to the full text of the column here if you want to nut the whole thing out for yourself!

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*lit. 'after-record' or 'off-the-record' (i.e. not 'news-news'), Yoroku is a daily column on topical miscellanea. This is the description on the Mainichi's website: 毎日新聞朝刊1面の看板コラム「余録」。▲で段落を区切り、日々の出来事・ニュースを多彩に切り取ります。This website (Japanese) says it "mainly deals with topics such as social issues, history, trivia."

[henrydoeslanguages]

there's a 22k-word cantonese deck on anki... do i dare

[henrydoeslanguages]

Amen. I've had exactly the same experience with other languages/types of media. You learn by doing - moving to new media/genres/etc. will always have its challenges regardless of your linguistic proficiency because you'll have to pick up new conventions and language styles.

So while I’m not fond of Peppa Pig, I do find this discussion interesting. And it did make me go check if I could follow Peppa Pig (I can, easily, I know most of the words if not all - though I’m watching without subs so I might miss a little bit). 

*This is a show that WAS recommended to me, if you want to watch a simple show for kids that’s easy to comprehend - 大头儿子和小头爸爸 (and it is cute, it reminds me a little of Arthur and shows I watched when I was little)  : https://youtu.be/bpO2W9Xaigc

Ok back to Peppa Pig discussion, of all things lol.

So on reddit, someone was discussing how they’d been studying chinese 8 months and still could not understand Peppa Pig. I found the discussion between everyone very interesting. All I really think on my end is like? I also could not understand Peppa Pig (or any shows super well) that early on so it is partly a matter of “you just gotta study chinese for a while.” (The reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/mk4665/fed_up_with_my_poor_chinese/ )

But also? I am a big believer in “it gets easier the more you practice.” So if you want to do something in a language, try to DO it. And try to keep doing it - because partly yes, you will likely realize you need to learn more words/grammar and the ‘doing’ may just be a catalyst to ‘make you study more’ so that next time you try to DO you know more and its easier. But also, doing it involves building the skills of getting USED to listening, used to recognizing words you studied in a different context, getting used to recognizing and understanding grammar in real time instead of on a delay (like in a textbook when you can slow down and really look at something and figure it out) etc. So partly, how ‘easy’ it is to read or listen has to just do with how often you’ve done it. Have you done it enough that the parts you HAVE studied you can grasp immediately? Or have you done it so little that even things you ‘studied’ don’t click right away - but they might on a rewatch or if you pause and read a subtitle slower, replay a line, etc. The part of the skills you pick up by DOING you really have to just… do to get better.

I found a few responses from people who are years into studying chinese and still find Peppa Pig difficult. And I think in that case, it might be the same situation as my japanese was (studied for 2 years and could still barely read a manga for bare gist). I think partly at that point, lack of understanding has to do with not practicing understanding by Doing. Someone who’s studied a couple years, likely knows a few thousands words+? If they practiced listening or reading regularly for a few months, they’d likely see a TON of improvement. Because they probably ‘learned’ a lot already they just need to develop stronger skills to comprehend what they studied when engaging with shows/audios/novels etc. And if they just ‘wait’ to engage with material until it feels ‘easy’ they may be unnecessarily holding themselves back. Because a major part of ‘why’ it might feel difficult is simply that they don’t practice the skills of USING what they learned. If they practice more, it will get easier. But if they wait to immerse until ‘easy stuff FEELS easy’ when they first try? Then they aren’t challenging themselves nearly as much as they can probably handle…

Like? I’m not that good. I still only kinda comprehend a LOT of things. But that doesn’t stop me from watching chinese dramas I wanna watch in chinese only. And I think a big reason I can comprehend ENOUGH now to follow the plots of shows I wanna watch? Is because when i was 8 months, 10 months, 12 months into learning - i would watch 12 minutes and look up lots of unknown words, or watch an episode and pause to read hard sentences, or make myself watch when i ‘just’ got the gist of an ‘easier’ show and hope that the more i did it the more i’d understand. And somehow, that did work out. (Also it motivated me to keep studying new words in other activities lol, hoping that would make watching easier). Now I’m at a point where i can turn on new shows I want to watch, and watch them, and follow the main gist and pick up some details. Its nice. Its nice and its getting a bit easier each time i do it. And if i had ‘waited’ until ‘easy stuff’ like Peppa Pig was easy? Or until stuff like “Granting You A Dreamlike Life” was easy? I probably would not comprehend this much right now. I tried to watch gyadl like 8 months in and it was pretty rough… even rougher because i only paused a handful of times an episode to make things go faster. But now? When i watch a show ‘about that hard’ that’s mostly slice of life? I can pick up a ton more easily than before. Doing the ‘hard’ thing eventually made it easier. 

So if there’s anything I think about all it, its just… don’t be afraid to challenge yourself sometimes. Sometimes doing hard things makes the ‘easier’ things finally Actually easier. And sometimes waiting until you can ‘understand’ the easy things means just never trying the easy things - when its trying and doing, that will eventually MAKE them doable for you. At least that’s advice to myself ToT I wasted a ton of time in japanese when I didn’t do this, and helped myself a lot in chinese by doing this. I also did it with french even though i wasn’t really aware what i was doing back then.

Some links:

Peppa Pig in mandarin (let me know how much YOU can follow an episode! - if you can… sit through one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1dhSMSAXxI

Konglongmandarin - a site that teaches mandarin utilizing Peppa Pig episodes. Which, while I do not like that cartoon much, I really appreciate the concept behind this site and its lessons. And I think its a really cool way of making comprehensible input lessons (which I think are a quite easy and Direct way to teach things that click well with my learning style and probably some other peoples’). I am checking the site out currently: https://www.konglongmandarin.com/lessons/

AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER IN MANDARIN - its on WeTV! I didn’t know that! It’s all just free to watch so like?!! I guess I’m doing a rewatch! The downside is these have no subs. The upside is I guess it makes good listening practice since you can’t rely on reading skills. Also, if you’ve watched atla before like me, then you likely have enough context already you should be able to follow what’s going on and pick up some new words: https://v.qq.com/x/cover/m0t0ud0mjg6td5t/v00225ojbpd.html

Again 大头儿子和小头爸爸 - its a show that was recommended to me by a language partner, and its good if you want a show for kids to practice comprehensible input with (I find it a lot more nice to watch then peppa pig but that’s just my preference): https://youtu.be/bpO2W9Xaigc

Two Souls in One - a cdrama I’m watching right now, its really good! Its only in chinese subs rn but I imagine youku plans to english sub it since its on youtube. Its magical premise mixed with mundane reality, a lot of fun identity and gender shenanigans. At my comprehension level its reasonably easy to follow - since most of its slice of life or actor-genre lingo. I think for most people who know 1k-2k common words this should be very doable to watch (just like Granting You A Dreamlike Life was doable to watch and follow the gist of). https://youtu.be/zaX2pdVpmUY

[henrydoeslanguages]

배우 and 배우다

TIL 배우 'actor' is Sino-Korean 俳優, Jp. haiyuu 'actor', Ch. páiyōu 'actor' (dated). It's completely unrelated to the verb 배우다 'to learn', which according to wiktionary is from Middle Korean ᄇᆡ호다 (Yale: poyhwota). Huh.

[henrydoeslanguages]

i know this is beside the point of the joke (which I 100% agree with) but given Jason in the Good Place was pretending to be a Tibetan monk, this is actually pretty accurate depiction of literally everyone vs Tibetan orthography

Legend has it that to take down the English we simply ask them to spell “girls” in Polish

[henrydoeslanguages]

モテる

As good a proof as any that I genuinely don't read manga (not that there's anything wrong with it!), I only just came across the word モテる 'to be romantically popular', i.e. with the opposite sex*. Apparently it probably comes from 持てる, which would be the potential form of 持つ, lit. 'able to hold'. Some derived words are:

モテない - to be unpopular romantically モテ男 (モテお or モテおとこ) - a romantically popular man モテ女 - a romantically popular woman モテ期 - a period in one's life when one is popular with the opposite sex* モテ髪 - a fashionable hairstyle, esp to attract romantic interest

*I thought carefully about whether the 'opposite sex' translation was appropriate, and I decided to leave them as I found them in dictionaries because I don't know enough about gender in Japan to make a critical intervention. Needless to say, these are gender-normative terms.

[henrydoeslanguages]

just a reminder that if your school has institutional access to Pressreader you can probably find heaps of magazines and newspapers in your target language online for free!

[henrydoeslanguages]

靑出於藍 (청출어람)

I've found that if you're watching a Korean show you're bound to come across a good old four-character saying. I was watching TXT's variety show they do, and this time it was 靑出於藍 (청출어람) lit. 'blue comes from indigo'. I did a quick search and it turns out the origin of this phrase is actually the first lines of the first chapter of the great Confucian classic the Xunzi 荀子 (Kor: 순자). 君子曰：學不可以已。青、取之於藍，而青於藍；冰、水為之，而寒於水。(Link to full Chinese text)

The master said: Learning must not cease. Blue is taken from indigo and yet is bluer than indigo. Ice is made from water, and yet is colder than water. (translation my own)

The phrase is now used to mean 'the student is better than their teacher.' The context in the episode I was watching was the master patissier and his student 'competing' in accurately dividing up dough by weight hahaha

I'm no expert on Xunzi or Confucian philosophy but the little I do know about the Xunzi is that it famously argues against the Mencius (孟子 맹자) interpretation of Confucian thought that human nature is inherently good. He seems to be saying, "hey there's always more to uncover, more to derive from what you already have, don't get complacent."

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P.S. Some basic Classical Chinese grammatical notes on the Xunzi passage for the real nerds (I see you!). 學不可以已: a perfect example of how the verb modified by 可 has a passive sense, unless you have 以. 學不可已 would mean 'learning cannot be stopped', which is not correct. 青、取之於藍，而青於藍: my translation above is a bit loose; here we have 青 as our topic, and then the two phrases after as our comment. So it's the first phrase is actually active: 取之於藍 lit. 'take it from indigo' and then 青於藍 lit. [it is] bluer than indigo. Note 於 following verb(al phrases) has that comparative function, 'bluer than indigo.'

[henrydoeslanguages]

'no matter' ようと(も)、ようが、ようがまいが

This is a concessive construction meaning 'no matter X, Y' or more verbosely 'it doesn't matter that...X, still Y'. It's pretty transparently formed; take the volitional -ou ending, stick either ga, to, or tomo. -i adjectives drop -i and take karou, -na adjectives and nouns take darou.

A few nice examples scoured from various webpages (all English translations my own): 誰が何と言おうと、わたしの決意は変わりません。

No matter what anyone says, I'm not changing my mind.

使わないものは、いくら安かろうと買う必要はない。

There's no need to buy things you don't use, no matter how cheap they are.

The construction can be extended with negative volitional form -まい (I might make a separate post about this), with the corresponding particle from the よう, so Vようが...Vまいが or Vようと...Vまいと. It's always used with the same verb, i.e. 'whether you do or you don't'.

早く出ようが出るまいが、電車が遅れれば遅刻する。

[No matter] whether you leave early or not, if the train's late then you'll be late.

P.S. I've just reached the end of the post and realised that this seems to be related to the underlying structure for the ubiquitous しようがない, or しょうがない 'nothing you can do; it can't be helped'?

[henrydoeslanguages]

iroha and the particle zo・ぞ

I revisited the famous iroha pangram poem with my extremely limited Bungo toolkit and was delighted to find a hidden grammatical gem. The third and fourth lines are: わかよたれそ

つねならむ

To fill it out with some Kanji and modern orthography:

我が世誰ぞ

常ならむ

Literal English translation:

In our world who is unchanging? (expecting negative answer)

If we look carefully, the verb naramu is from the copula nari (built from ni + ari) with the doubt/conjecture suffix -mu/n. It looks like it's shūshikei (the normal terminative ending) because it ends the sentence, but notice the emphatic particle zo? When you have a particle like zo in the middle of a sentence, it turns the finite verb at the end of the sentence into rentaikei, or the adverbial form. This is a construction called kakari-musubi (which I don't quite understand the underlying mechanism of, but it's a thing!). In this case, for -mu/-n these endings are the same (-mu/-n), but grammatically the verb is rentaikei, not shūshikei. The more you know!

[henrydoeslanguages]

Japanese readings of 唐

唐 is Ch. Táng, the dynasty that ruled China from 618–907, and is widely considered a 'golden age' of Chinese civilisation (insert hermeneutic suspicion about historiography). It was during this time that Japan started adopting loads of practices and systems from China, and so 唐 enters as one of many sinograms in Japanese for China.

The go-on どう and kan-on とう are pretty straightforward, but when we get to kun readings it gets weird.

We first have から kara (which is the Jōyō kun reading) : から was apparently also used to refer to Korea, and so apparently it may come from the name of the Gaya 가야 加倻 confederacy in the south of the Korean peninsula. There are also apparently alternate transcriptions of Gaya into sinograms that may suggest something like kara or kala for the original pronunciation of Gaya. I haven't actually read any sources other than a few websites, but this strikes me as plausible. Then we have this truly bizarre もろこし morokoshi, which is apparently a native reading of a Chinese collocation 諸越 (cf. 諸々 moromoro; 越す kosu); the few webpages I've read parses this as "various Yue [peoples]", 越 Yue being an ancient state in the South of China and thereafter a generalised term to refer to the South. I'm not sure where the historical links are, i.e. was there a lot of contact between the South and Japan? Or was it through intermediaries? Or maybe morokoshi is actually ateji or a different reading?

Btw, I stumbled into this when I found the word 唐船 with the reading もろこしぶね. I KNOW