My Way with Words
Friday, December 15th, 2006Good evening, friends.
How do you study vocabulary? Kanji?
Certainly there are many ways, and surely a good number of them are effective, especially considering that we are all unique individuals who learn in different ways. In addition to being a different person than you, I also live in a different environment than many of you – Japan, in particular. Perhaps this combination of factors (or perhaps simply the living in Japan part) will pique your interest in learning more about one of the ways in which I study vocabulary and kanji. And of course, it can’t hurt to read about one of the methods of just one more student of the beautiful language that we are all studying together – Japanese.
Beginning next week (yes, I plan to be quite lazy this weekend), every Thursday you can vicariously experience the path that I travel each time I can read a new word around me that I do not understand. Although our circumstances may be different, I hope that you can gain some insight from my methods. So check back here next Thursday.
If nothing else, I think you just might learn a new word or two.
Nathan
Posted by Nathan in Nathan's Notebook |
December 15th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Thank you Natha
See you
December 15th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Looking forward to it, any help is always a bonus!
December 16th, 2006 at 2:09 am
Learning Kanji is amazing but yet quite challenging.
Rikaichan has helped me a lot lately and that has been how I’ve studied Kanji.
Mata ne!
December 16th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Neat! Looking forward to it!
December 16th, 2006 at 7:21 am
Sounds great! Next Thursday my Christmas vacation has started, and then it’s Japanese all (almost) day long!
December 16th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Sounds great…god knows any help is appreciated!
December 16th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Hi everyone. I have a question about how to express the following [and agreeably contrived] sentence into Japanese as accurately as possible:
“I might have had been seen walking in the park.”
In honesty, even though I have a sense of what that might mean in English, I cannot really describe all of its grammatical subtleties. And much less can I translate it to another language like Japanese.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
bakanekoさん、
As far as I am aware “I might have had been seen walking in the park.” is not correct English. (This is not sarcastic, I hate making absoulute statements when I might be wrong.)
I would phrase it:
““I may have been seen walking in the park.”
Unfortunately, the translation must be left to a more experienced person
December 18th, 2006 at 6:48 am
The equally awkward Japanese version would be something like:
公園で歩いていた私は見られたかもしれない。
December 18th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Mina-san,
I’m glad to see that some are interested! Thank you for your support, and I hope you can find something of use in what I have to offer!
December 20th, 2006 at 4:18 am
Is good to know you’ll have your own blog like Miki-san too
You would be of great help to me and all listeners! You’ll have me here every thursday ready to learn all you have to offer!:cool
I’m very happy, JP101 really heard my pleads!
S_R_C
December 21st, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Jason- san, 皆さん
what about:
公園で歩きながら誰か[私を]見えましたと思います。?
since ‘might’ indicates conjecture rather than ability here we can transfer this to the use of ‘to omoimasu’. ‘Miemasu’ has a feeling of ‘being spotted’ I think!
The [ ] indicate that this bit would be omitted if clear from the context.
mikuj
December 21st, 2006 at 11:39 pm
I’m looking forward to one more thing to entertain me at work!
Since the JLPT is over, I’ve reverted to my more passive method of studying kanji.
i’ll usually look up the first 5 kanji/new words that i encounter each day. living in tokyo, they were usually from advertisements that i saw often on the trains. now it’s generally things from the daily bulletin at school or student essays.
i try to learn at least a few words using each of the kanji. and if i’m actively studying i’ll try to use the new words in conversation or on mixi. but i’m fairly lazy lately too…
today i couldn’t be bothered to study, so the only new words were 景品 and 身支度…. no new kanji. but one new reading 度 （たく）
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:15 am
You can’t use 見える like this. We’ve had a couple of discussions on 見る vs 見える in the forums already:
http://tinyurl.com/ydjlnn
http://tinyurl.com/ydcbwv
I think the most natural way would be one of the following:
-私が公園で歩いていたとき、誰かに見られたかもしれません。
-私が公園で歩いていたとき、誰かに見られた気がしました。
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:55 am
Jason-san We miss you! Comeback and post on the lessons comments. Don’t just stay in the forums and blogs, we need you over there specially me
S_R_C
PS: Too much Professors, Graphic Designers, Psycology listeners over there, we need more Computer Science listeners like you and (me, someday) ok!:mrgreen