A Kind Samurai Told Naomi How My Yak Ran Wild

Five things about studying Japanese, with five footnotes:

1. Regarding 犬, meaning dog, Wiktionary says:

The character is considered a rather abstract rendition – Confucius is quoted as saying “The ancients must have had very strange looking dogs” (500 BCE).

Indeed, Master Kong.

2. It amuses me to no end that the modern ordering of Japanese kana is inherited from Sanskrit. Extra-indo-european diffusion FTW.

3. As I slowly memorize the grade 2 Kyouiku Kanji,* I generally find that what first sticks is a kanji's meaning, the concept it represents, then the kun'yomi, the native Japanese word(s) for the concept, and only last the on'yomi, the Sino-Japanese** word(s) for the concept. Which seems an odd order -- is this typical for English-speaking learners?.

The main exception to "generally" is numerals, where on stuck before kun. I suspect this is evidence that as a child I learned only the ichi-ni-san (on) and not hi-fu-mi (kun) numbers. I can remember knowing how to count (and read) to 10, but not with what words.

4. Can anyone recommend a good beginner's Japanese-English*** dictionary?

5. Polyvalency -- it's what's for your confusion. That, and the finer points of conjugating**** i-adjectives.*****


* What Japanese second-graders learn -- or more precisely, what they learned in the 1960s, as I'm working out of an old book. Since almost all of what's in it is somewhere on the current list, I figure it's good enough for a few more grades while I figure out what kanji learning strategy will work best for me.

** That is, a Nihongofied pronunciation of the Chinese reading of the hanzi at the time it was imported -- most commonly the reading of the T'ang court, but sometimes that of other times and places, either as alternative or in addition. This nihongofication altered the original as much as adopted English words today, whereby television becomes terebi. I seriously wonder how well a native Mandarin speaker understands on'yomi readings.

*** As opposed to a kanji-English dictionary.

**** Not a typo.

***** I'd add the unpredictability of rendaku as well, but that's not so much confusing as tedious.

---L.

A Kind Samurai Told Naomi How My Yak Ran Wild

Five things about studying Japanese, with five footnotes:

1. Regarding 犬, meaning dog, Wiktionary says:

The character is considered a rather abstract rendition – Confucius is quoted as saying “The ancients must have had very strange looking dogs” (500 BCE).

Indeed, Master Kong.

2. It amuses me to no end that the modern ordering of Japanese kana is inherited from Sanskrit. Extra-indo-european diffusion FTW.

3. As I slowly memorize the grade 2 Kyouiku Kanji,* I generally find that what first sticks is a kanji's meaning, the concept it represents, then the kun'yomi, the native Japanese word(s) for the concept, and only last the on'yomi, the Sino-Japanese** word(s) for the concept. Which seems an odd order -- is this typical for English-speaking learners?.

The main exception to "generally" is numerals, where on stuck before kun. I suspect this is evidence that as a child I learned only the ichi-ni-san (on) and not hi-fu-mi (kun) numbers. I can remember knowing how to count (and read) to 10, but not with what words.

4. Can anyone recommend a good beginner's Japanese-English*** dictionary?

5. Polyvalency -- it's what's for your confusion. That, and the finer points of conjugating**** i-adjectives.*****


* What Japanese second-graders learn -- or more precisely, what they learned in the 1960s, as I'm working out of an old book. Since almost all of what's in it is somewhere on the current list, I figure it's good enough for a few more grades while I figure out what kanji learning strategy will work best for me.

** That is, a Nihongofied pronunciation of the Chinese reading of the hanzi at the time it was imported -- most commonly the reading of the T'ang court, but sometimes that of other times and places, either as alternative or in addition. This nihongofication altered the original as much as adopted English words today, whereby television becomes terebi. I seriously wonder how well a native Mandarin speaker understands on'yomi readings.

*** As opposed to a kanji-English dictionary.

**** Not a typo.

***** I'd add the unpredictability of rendaku as well, but that's not so much confusing as tedious.

---L.