It’s very vocabulary heavy learning a new language… it’s horrible to want to race through chapters and take in as much as my grey matter will allow, however it’s also quite difficult to store any of this into long term memory when I keep getting new words every day. A couple of them will stick, but not enough I’m afraid. Maybe I need to start entering the words into Anki or Memrise or something so that I can start memorizing them before I continue bombarding myself with more new stuff.
I was able to find sometime to re-listen to Pimsleur 1-11 today in addition to doing new stuff. So, especially having taken notes yesterday, I feel like I was able to listen better today. But then I went and also made it though two chapters of Human Japanese, and another new Pimsleur session.
Let’s start with the Human Japanese stuff first:
Human Japanese
Chapter 13 was quite easy to get through as none of it is new for me. The chapter test at the end was also only 7 questions for a change, so I don’t think they were counting on anyone finding it tricky. But here’s the vocabulary anyways
| か | question mark |
| なん | what. As best as I can tell, when it’s easier to end without the vowel before transitioning to the next word, then it’s fine to say なん |
| なに | alternative to なん. As best as I can tell, なに is not used before counters or です |
| なんようび | Which day? |
| なんがつ | which month? |
| ぞうです | That’s so, |
| です | Is |
| ですか | Is it? |
| でした | It was. |
| でしたか | Was it? |
| ではあれません | It’s not. |
| なんですか | What is it? |
See what I mean? Super easy stuff here.
Chapter 14 on the other hand is a good swath of new vocabulary:
| みせ | 店 | store/shop |
| レストラン | restaurant | |
| スーパーマーケット | super market | |
| スーパー | (abbreviation for supermarket) | |
| ゆうびんきょく | 郵便局 | post office |
| えき | 駅 | station |
| コンビニ | convenience store | |
| こうばん | 交番 | police box |
| ぎんこう | bank | |
| ～や | ～屋 | suffix for “shop” |
| ほんや | ほん屋 | Book store |
| パン | bread – a loan word from the Portuguese who introduced bread to Japan | |
| パンや | パン屋 | bakery |
| ～やさん | suffix for shop worker | |
| ほん屋さん | book store clerk |
“As a pronunciation note, listen carefully to the pronunciation of hon-ya and pan-ya. Note that it is pa-n-ya, not pa-nya. Just like in the pronunciation of kin’youbi, the n does not merge with the following ya sound.”
| き | 木 | tree |
| くさ | 草 | grass |
| はな | 花 | flower |
| かわ | 川 | river |
| みずうめ | 水梅 | lake |
| やま | 山 | mountain |
| そら | 空 | sky |
| たいよう | 太陽 | sun |
| くも | 雲 | cloud |
| あめ | 雨 | rain |
Now, what I find interesting about the above list, is the number of familiar kanji. I’ve been briefly looking into how to learn kanji, and one thing I had been looking at was a list of kanji that are taught in Grade 1. And in the above list, are several. 木 川 水 山 空 雨 are all grade 1 Kanji, and are some of the most common radicals as well. I’ll get into that later this week though. I think tonight is the last night for learning katakana.
| じてんしゃ | 自転車 | bicycle |
| バイク | electric bike | |
| オートバイ | motorcycle | |
| くるま | 車 | car |
| タクシー | taxi | |
| バス | bus | |
| バステイ | バス停 | bus stop |
| でんしゃ | 電車 | train |
| ちかてつ | 地下鉄 | subway |
| まち | 道 | road |
And finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for: The end of my katakana training. Sort of. I mean, I’ll still need to use Obenkyo a few times to really memorize them… but hopefully Human Japanese starts actually writing words in katakana after this chapter.
ラ – 2 stroke – similar to フ with a line over it, and then shrunk down to fit in a square.
リ – 2 stroke – practically the same as the hiragana version, but without any hane (り)
ル – 2 stroke – the end of the second stroke is effectively a hane, swept up
レ – 1 stroke – same with this character, it’s just a vertical line, with a large hane at the end
ロ – 3 stroke – this is a weird one to do with three strokes, but the first goes down, the second goes across then sharply down, and the final goes across.
ワ – 2 strokes – same as ウ, though without the line on top
ヲ – 2 strokes – is largely only used due to the fact that the syllabary mirrors hiragana. It appears that it is used only in rare circumstances such as when old video games used katakana only due to technical limitations, or as a stylistic choice in manga by robots.
ン – 2 strokes – it’s important when writing, that the line move from bottom to top to avoid looking like ソ. Also, the same as the smaller strokes in シ are more horizontal, so should the first stroke be closer to horizontal than vertical.
Pimsleur 1-12
Vocabulary
もういちどきいてください – please listen once more
また – again
もしもし – a telephone greeting
いくら – how much?
いうらですか。 – how much is it?
千円 – one thousand yen
そして – and
Phrases
じゃああしたのばんろくじに。 – Then, tomorrow night at six o’clock
おさけものみませんか。 won’t you drink sake too?
おさけはいくらですあか。 how much is the sake?
There was a lot of counting this lesson! So the overall new content wasn’t so bad.