The biggest problem of doing anything Japanese related on Android is the lack of Rikaisama.
Not only can’t you instantly look up words as you browse the Web the way you can with Rikaichan, but you can’t turn new words into Anki cards with a single keypress the way you can with Rikaisama. Ok, we’re spoiled by the Rikai family, but we’d like to stay spoiled, even on Android.
Enter the Popup Japanese Dictionary by Nifty Gnomes which was kindly introduced to me by Sadolit-san (see comments below).
This little-known free app amazingly brings Rikai-like functionality to your Android device – and not only in your browser. Wherever you can use the copy function you can use the Popup Dictionary for on-the-fly kanji-readings and word definitions.
Like Rikai it deconjugates words for you, though apparently this function is a bit hit-or-miss.
The biggest problem for me is that there are no Japanese-Japanese definitions and neither can you turn off definitions. As I like to stay in all-Japanese as much as possible this is a drawback, but for a lot of users it should be ideal
But it is possible to get something close to it with a free app named simply Jisho. For those wanting a J-E dictionary this is just about perfect. It has everything you might need including kanji lookup.
And for Anki you just need to press and hold a definition and it gives you the option to export it to Ankidroid (so long as that is on your device too). Select that option and you’re done. You have an Anki card ready-made.
So why do I say it is only “close to” the Rikaisama function? Well, for one thing there are no sound files, and more importantly, this is only a Japanese-to-English dictionary.
If your Anki set-up does not extensively use sound (mine does) and if your definitions aren’t primarily Japanese to Japanese (mine are) this Android dictionary app probably covers all your Japanese dictionary needs – at no cost! However J-J Dolly is still pining for her pasokon!
The app just goes by the generic name of “Jisho” so I am reproducing the logo here, to make sure that you can find the right one.
For Japanese-to-Japanese dictionaries, the best free one I have so far found is the Weblio app. Not as good as Jisho and of course does not have the direct-to-Anki function or the on-page pop-up function, but is a usable and free J-J dictionary.
Android Text-to-Speech in Japanese
Since typing on Android and other mobile devices is a pain in the petunia, I have also been experimenting with Google Speech-to-Text. I am finding that it works fairly well.
Actually it is very clever. Most of the time it knows when I am speaking English and when I am speaking Japanese and transliterates my speech accordingly. However, in both languages it does make quite a few mistakes. It probably is fairly good for training one to speak clear Japanese (and clear English, come to that!)
An interesting note for those who still pronounce katakana-ized from-English words half-way as if they were still English words and think that is ok. On Android’s Google Search function I tried the experiment of saying:
“Smile Precure”
It correctly transcribed the words and then popped up a page of English-language results about Glitter Force (the unfortunate English language version of Smile Precure), introduced by an English-speaking synthesized voice.
I then tried saying.
スマイル・プリキュア
(Sumairu Purikyua)
Google search correctly transcribed the words in katakana and popped up a page of Japanese results about the real Smile Precure introduced by a synthesized Japanese voice.
So yes. Speaking katakana correctly does matter. Even an Android can tell the difference.
As part of our ongoing series of “what’s the difference” kanji close-ups we look at the three ways of writing wakaru, which is usually – but very misleadingly – translated as “understand”.
Please don’t panic. Even at intermediate level you don’t need to “learn” these. But you can get a lot from reading about them and gaining a deeper understanding of the word wakaru – which is actually one of those “trap words” that makes Japanese less understandable overall if you – ahem – misunderstand it – that is, if you believe the textbooks that tell you it means “understand”.
Video version
So what does it mean? It has several shades of meaning, but let’s start off with the root-meaning, which is to “become clear”. The fundamental wakaru kanji – 分 – shows a sword dividing something in half. Literally wakaru means that something becomes clearly distinguished from other things* – i.e., understood.
Not “understand”. Become clear – which includes “be clear” or “be understood”. In other words (most of the time) the thing being understood is the real subject of the sentence (not the person doing the understanding as English prefers and the textbooks imply). Therefore the thing being understood is what takes the subject-marker ga-particle
（私は）日本語が分かる (watashi wa) nihongo ga wakaru
“(in relation to me) Japanese does understandable”
Of course in English we say “I understand Japanese” and that is a valid “loose translation”. But it matters that we know what is really being said because if we don’t we will become very confused about what the ga and wa particles are really doing in this sentence and about the structure of Japanese as a whole.
This is explained more fully in Unlocking Japanese, which shows you how clear and regular the language really is, as opposed to the rather complicated and confusing way the standard Western grammar texts teach it.
All right. So what about the three ways of writing it? They are all pronounced the same and all get the same dictionary definition, regardless of which kanji is used. So does it matter which kanji is used?
Japanese texts that try to give English equivalents say
「分かる」＝know.「解る」＝understand.「判る」＝prove or judge.
However, they are following the Western translations and giving rise to the same misunderstandings. So let’s go a little deeper and see what Japanese texts independent of English tell us.
The first thing wrong with the above definitions is what I have already told you. It is important to realize that they should have said “be known”, “be understood”, “be judged or proved (to be)”.
The second problem is that it is misleading to suggest that 分かる has a separate meaning. You will see 分かる used in all three senses a lot of the time. That is why I don’t advise people who are not intermediate to try learning them. You probably won’t encounter the other two in simpler texts.
What happens – as with the different kanji for kiku (hear) and many others – is that the less common kanji are used in writing to hone the word down to a more exact meaning. Also, if you see either or both of the others used in a text, you can assume that when 分かる is chosen, it is chosen advisedly to give its particular implications. Otherwise, it very often isn’t.
So let’s look at them from the Japanese perspective.
The implication of 判る
判る easy to remember because it is really just 分かる with the sword and the halving arranged horizontally rather than vertically.
This is the kanji used in 判明 hanmei “(with suru) establish or prove”, 判断 handan “judgment” etc.
In a phrase like
犯人がわかる han’nin ga wakaru
“It has become known (to us) who the criminal is” (in English this might be “We now know who the criminal is”).
Clearly the “judgment” element is present. The “correct” – or better, the precise – form is 判る.
Equally with
身元がわかる mimoto ga wakaru
“His background has become known (to me/us/them)” (in English probably “I/we/they now know his background”).
The implication is of having been able to form a judgment on something previously unknown – or to put it closer to the Japanese, if somewhat more awkwardly in English – something having become the subject of an accurate judgment or investigation.
Note that the “understander” is not the grammatical subject and is not even visibly present in these statements as she is in English equivalents. We will know who the understander is from an explicit or implicit wa-statement drawn from context. This may sound complicated but it really isn’t at all once you understand it. Japanese six-year-olds use it with ease. Find out how you can too in Unlocking Japanese.
The implication of 解る
If you are intermediate you certainly know this kanji from words like 解く which all have to do with unraveling or untangling. If not, you can remember it as a 牛cow in the 角corner having her matted hair untangled with a 刀sword. Note that the sword-element is common to all three wakarus.
解 appears in words like 解釈 kaishaku “explanation” and 理解 rikai “understand” (this is the word you want when you really want to say “understand”, not wakaru).
So when you say
日本語がわかる Nihongo ga wakaru
“Japanese is understandable (to me)”
解 is the most exact kanji, though more often than not it will in fact be written 分かる.
Implication of 分かる
As you see, you can’t really judge the special implications of 分かる much of the time, but it does have the implication of “be(come) known” which is not appropriate to either of the others.
To give a simple example of how these kanji can sometimes be useful: if someone asks “what is the oldest a turtle has ever lived?” in Japanese and you answer “わからない wakaranai” there could be a confusion over whether you mean “I don’t know how long a turtle has lived” or “I don’t understand the question”. If you could specifically say 解らない wakaranai it would be clear that you meant the latter.
If you said 判らない the implication would be “that is not something on which (I am) able to form a judgment” and if 分からない were taken in its exclusive sense it would mean “I do not have that information” – which is probably the most likely interpretation of the spoken phrase unless there were reasons to suppose one of the others (such as being a foreigner, which might lead the questioner to be unsure that you had understood).
To sum up – you can always use 分かる in any of the senses on this page. You will never be wrong. If you use one of the others, be careful to use it correctly
* It isn’t a coincidence that the two words wakareru both mean separating.
What is the difference between 湿る shimeru and 濡れる nureru?
The answer here is very simple. (Become) damp vs wet.
湿る shimeru shows ⺡– “water” falling on the ground and being sucked up by the 日– “sun”. The kanji is often used for atmospheric moisture, but it can refer to anything damp or somewhat wet, as opposed to really soaked.
The main on-reading of 湿る shimeru is shitsu. You want to know this as it appears in a lot of compounds like 湿度 shitsudo – “humidity level” and 湿気 shikke – “humidity, dampness”.
Note that in 湿気 shikke the つtsu of しつshitsu is replaced by っsmall-tsu to become しっけ shikke. This is absolutely regular and happens almost all the time when a つtsu is followed by an unvoiced consonant in making a compound word.
So remember that damp things shimmer. And you can think of dampsheets shimmering on the washing line for both kun and on readings.
濡れる means wet. Like soaking. You see there is both ⺡– “water” and 雨 – “rain” and also a 而 – “rake”. Why a rake? Well, it is that kind of wet that if you just raked the ground the grooves turn into little rivers.
If you need a mnemonic, just remember to keep new rare things out of the rain, or they will get soaked and ruined.
What about the on reading(s)? Well, unlike 湿, 濡 does not have many on-compounds that are much used. Most compound words use the kun-reading. So I really wouldn’t bother about the on-readings at the learning-the-word stage*. This is one of the reasons why blindly learning on-readings from lists is inefficient and wastes a lot of time.
Note that both 湿るshimeru and 濡れるnureru have transitive すsu-versions: 湿すshimesu and 濡らすnurasu. If you know the First Law of Japanese Transitivity, you will find this entirely predictable and know exactly what they mean!
*Note: It isn’t necessary or recommended to learn on-readings when learning kanji organically as words, but these articles are primarily intended for tying together and clarifying the main points of words/kanji you already know. Of course if you learn them for the first time here – ♪bing-bong-BONUS♪
“There are no hard-and-fast rules to Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs. You just have to learn them on a case-by-case basis”. This is the conventional wisdom on the subject. Another huge bunch of random facts that you “just have to learn”.
We got rid of most of the “random facts” in grammar by showing how logically the whole language fits together in Unlocking Japanese. An evening with that little book gives you a shortcut through the thickets that take most learners years to master, just by showing how Japanese really works.
Can we do the same with transitivity pairs? To a large extent we can. There are a lot of Google searches for “Japanese transitive and intransitive verb worksheets”. Worksheets! You don’t need worksheets, for heaven’s sake! You need some good information!
So let’s get started!
Video version
Transitive and intransitive verbs – what they are
We’ll start off by looking very quickly at what transitive and intransitive verbs are, because some people get confused and mix up intransitive with the so-called “passive” (it isn’t really passive).
As is often the case, the Japanese terms for transitive and intransitive are much clearer – and more accurate – than the English ones. The word for “verb” is 動詞doushi, which means literally “move word”. A word for an action. And the words for transitive and intransitive verbs are
自動詞jidoushi – self-move word (“intransitive”)
他動詞 tadoushi – other-move word “(transitive”)
In English “dance” is an intransitive verb because it is a self-move word. We say “I danced”. We can’t say “I danced Jane”. It describes self-movement, not a movement done to someone or something else.
“Throw” is a transitive verb. We can say “I threw a ball”, but we can’t just say “I threw”. It is an other-move verb and has to have an object.
“Eat” and “sing” can be transitive or intransitive. I can “eat bread” or I can just “eat”. I can “sing a song” or I can just “sing”.
In Japanese we sometimes use a different form of the verb for the transitive and the intransitive (the other-move and the self-move) version of the action.
But by no means always. The examples given above, “eat” and “sing”, work just the same in Japanese as in English. The transitive and intransitive forms are the same.
But there are various pairs like
負けるmakeru – “lose”
and
負かすmakasu – “defeat” (lit. “cause-to-lose”)
where the transitive and intransitive forms are different. And as you can see, rather than being an unnecessary bother they are often a gift. English learners have to learn “lose” and “defeat” as two quite separate words. In Japanese, if you understand makeru, you can understand makasu. Especially when you understand the simple rule that makes one clearly transitive. The rule that I call “the First Law of Japanese transitivity”.
So let’s go right ahead and meet the Three Laws.
The Three Laws of Japanese transitive/intransitive verbs
Aru and suru are the two most basic verbs in Japanese. As you know, they mean “be” and “do” respectively.
Their sounds are used in many ways to indicate that a verb is closer to the “being” or the “doing” end of the scale.
For example, the so-called “passive conjugation” ends with the helper-verb reru/rareru, which has its roots in aru, while the causative ends with the helper-verb seru/saseru, which has its roots in suru.
Can you guess which side of the scale transitive and intransitive (other-move and self-move) verbs respectively fall on?
Yep. You guessed right. So you shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that the First Law of Japanese Transitivity is:
All verbs ending in すsu are transitive verbs. Whether they have an intransitive “pair” or not.
Su-ending verbs are based in suru. They are transitive.
The eru→asu transformation seen above in makeru→makasu is a very common pattern which you already know from
出るderu – “come out”→ 出すdasu – “take out”
There are other patterns such as
落ちるochiru – “fall” 落とすotosu – “drop”
Some are a bit irregular, but that doesn’t matter because all you need to know is that if it ends in す it’s transitive.
Here is the Second Law:
Verbs ending in aru are intransitive
As you would expect! Aru-ending verbs are based in aru – “be”. This means not just ある-ending words, but words ending with any kana in the あ-row + る.
The most regular pattern here is aru→eru
上がるagaru – “rise” → 上げるageru – “raise”
下がるsagaru – “descend” → 下げるsageru – “cause to descend”
重なるkasanaru – “lie stacked or piled” → 重ねるkasaneru – “(to) stack or pile”
There are many, many pairs that conform to this pattern. A few have a different pattern, such as
包むkurumu – “wrap” → 包まるkurumaru – “be wrapped”
Again, it doesn’t matter because all you need to know is that if a version ends in aru, it is intransitive.
The Third Law of Japanese Transitivity is:
-u→-eru flips transitivity
As we know, so-called “conjugations” (actually helper-verbs) that end in る usually change a the resulting compound-word from whatever it was before into an ichidan verb (sometimes called a ru-verb) – the most basic type of verb – with an altered meaning.
This also happens when we flip transitive and intransitive verbs with u→eru. Whatever ending the verb originally had, its final character becomes the え-row equivalent and る is added.
It is now an ichidan (ru) verb meaning the opposite (in transitivity terms) of what the original verb meant.
The problem here is that (unlike the aru→eru pattern of the Second Law) this u→eru ending can flip transitivity either way. So we don’t immediately know which half of a transitivity pair the –eru version is.
However, there are some tricks that can help us.
Untangling the other Japanese transitivity pairs
There are a few sub-rules that make the “others” much easier.
〜む-mu → 〜める-meru flipped pairs – The honorary 4th Law
The 〜める-meru version is always the transitive verb
There are a lot of these mu→meru pairs. So many that we can almost regard this as an honorary Fourth Law.
I recommend having one example in your mind as a reference-point, such as
The same is true for bu→beru and tsu→teru. The –eru (flipped) version is always transitive. Remember that b is sometimes interchangeable with m in Japanese (as in sabishii/samishii) so they often work in the same way. Unlike mu→meru, there aren’t a large number of these two.
〜せる-seru versions are always transitive Some pairs have a 〜せる-seru-ending version, such as
This せるseru is a close relation of するsuru and always marks the transitive verb.
This actually covers most of the possible endings. What we are left with is
く、ぐ ku, gu → ける、げる keru, geru
うu → えるeru
and る-ru-ending verbs that don’t fit either of the first two Laws.
For these, unfortunately, there are no general rules. They can flip either way. And there are quite a few of them. So the “gotta learn ’em all” school might seem to be around 20% right.
But wait. There is more we can do. We can apply the Basic Concept “rule”.
The Basic Concept “rule” for Japanese Transitivity pairs
For those transitivity pairs that don’t fit any of the above rules, we can use the Basic Concept “rule”, which is less hard-and-fast but actually quite intuitive as you become more familiar with Japanese by immersion.
Remember that –eruflips a verb from intransitive to transitive or vice versa. In other words, one of the two is the “base verb” and the other is the “flipped version”. If you remember that the extended -eru (え-row plus る) is actually a helper-verb it becomes much more intuitive.
Let’s take some examples:
売るuru – “sell” → 売れるureru – “be sold” (sell as in “sell like hot cakes”)
It is pretty clear here that the base concept is the act of selling (transitive) and that being-sold (intransitive) is the extended or “eru-flipped” version.
It is pretty clear that the act of obeying or accompanying (intransitive) is the fundamental idea and that compelling obedience or being accompanied is the extended or “eru-flipped” version.
This method is more “feeling-based” and less hard-and-fast than the other rules, but it works easily and intuitively a lot of the time once you have some immersion experience.
And that is precisely why am a little dubious of things like transitive/intransitive worksheets. What will really give you the feel for how words work is meeting them and making friends with them in real contexts, not learning them from lists or worksheets.
The rules I have given here are essentially “force multipliers”. They make it far easier to grasp quickly what the words are doing. That is why I use and recommend them. But they don’t substitute for making real friends with the real words in the real world (whether that “real world” be an office in Tokyo or a fantasy anime).
Also, learning from lists and worksheets that this or that word is “transitive” or “intransitive” may in fact give a false idea of what the words actually do.
Let’s go back to our last example to explain that:
Shitagau is the “intransitive version” of the verb. The (J-E) dictionaries mark it as intransitive. The grammar books call it intransitive…
But wait! In English it would be mostly transitive, wouldn’t it? You obey someone, follow someone, accompany someone, don’t you?
But on the other hand shitagaeru is thought of as “more transitive” than shitagau because you are causing someone to shitagau. Surely this is closer to “causative” than “transitive”.
And there are a lot of so-called “transitivity pairs” like this, that actually have no real relation to the Western concept of grammatical transitivity.
The moral of this is, don’t take these Western-imposed grammar terms too literally. Sometimes they fit perfectly, other times they don’t really fit at all when you examine them.
If you think in Japanese terms and call them self-move verbs and other-move verbs the whole thing is much clearer. In obeying, following or accompanying someone, you are moving yourself, not that other person. In subduing or being accompanied, you are moving (or causing the action of) the other person.
In truth what Western textbooks call the “transitive verb” of a pair really means “the more suru-like version” and what they call the “intransitive verb” is the more aru-like version. Sometimes this corresponds exactly to Western notions of grammatical transitivity and other times it doesn’t at all.
Understanding this and developing the feeling of real Japanese by immersion makes the Basic Concept “rule” much more effective and intuitive, and puts the whole concept of Japanese “transitive” and “intransitive” verbs into the correct Japanese perspective rather than an artificial Western-textbook one.
How to learn transitive and intransitive verbs
If you want to learn by the immersion-based approach advocated by this site, how should you approach learning “transitive” and “intransitive” verbs?
Don’t try to learn lists of transitivity pairs. That doesn’t serve any very useful purpose. Build your core vocabulary organically, but you will encounter transitivity pairs naturally in the course of this.
Do bear in mind the Three Laws and other rules. Especially, you will soon start noticing: “Ah yes, this word is the transitive すsu-version of that word”. “広がるhirogaru? Yes, that must be the intransitive aru-version of 広げるhirogeru.” You will begin to notice eru-flipped versions and start to get the instinct that meru-versions just feel like other-move verbs.
I recommend keeping one simple “Exhibit A” example of each Law in your mind (such as 出る / 出す for the First Law). This is much easier than remembering it purely as an abstract rule.
By all means leverage the two-for-one advantage of putting both versions on an Anki-card when the opportunity arises, (you may even want to check for a “partner” if a word sounds like, say, the –aru, –su or -meru half of a pair) but bear in mind that if a word is one of those eru-flips not covered by the Laws, your head may be clearer for knowing one of them before you get to the other.
I have used the terms “transitive and intransitive verbs” in this article because they are the usual ones that you find in the textbooks, but also bear in mind that they can’t be taken literally all the time.
If you are starting to think in Japanese, or even if you aren’t, there is a lot to be said for using the correct words, jidoushi and tadoushi – self-move and other-move words. Because that is what they actually are, and the less you clog up your Japanese with cast-offs from foreign grammar the more easily you will understand it.
Vocabulary is a major task in any language. There are just so many words! But Japanese – viewed through Western eyes – has more words than most languages. Between twice and three times as many as English.
Does that make for a completely overwhelming task? Not when you understand how it really works.
Watch this article in video form:
In Unlocking Japanese, you learn how Japanese is a modular language. It doesn’t work like Western languages, and when you try to explain it in Western terms (the way the textbooks do), it seems full of strange, arbitrary “rules” and “exceptions” that you “just have to learn”.
But actually Japanese is far simpler and more logical than Western languages and you can learn in an evening the basic principles that underlie and eliminate 90% of the “arbitrary rules” and “exceptions” and make Japanese crystal clear.
Watch this article in video form:
Of course, there is not a “magical solution” like Unlocking Japanese in the case of vocabulary. There is a lot to learn. Learning core vocabulary organically helps a lot. But another important step to increasing your Japanese vocabulary is to realize that the vast number of Japanese words found by comparing the main Japanese dictionaries to their English equivalents actually creates a degree of misunderstanding. Japanese vocabulary isn’t that excessive, and learning the basic principle can help bring order to some of the apparent chaos.
What is the “secret” principle here? Actually it is very similar to the secrets that unlock grammar. Japanese, unlike English, is a modular language, and its vocabulary is modular, rather like its grammar.
The huge profusion of Japanese words comes from the fact that the very concept “word” is different in Japanese and English. Japanese has “words” for things that in English are regarded as two or three words.
For example, “(the) dog I love”, “goods returned to the store”, “new goods”, “new car”, “(the) car I love”, “the 〜 I prefer to use” and many other elements that are phrases in English are called “words” in Japanese.
But they aren’t words in the sense that they are new sounds specially made for these compound concepts. They are in fact built from simple kanji that (if we are at the stage of learning this kind of vocabulary) we already know.
Almost always they use the on-readings of these kanji, and despite the bewildering variety of on-readings you will find in the dictionary for some kanji if you try to learn them raw (non-organically), those on-readings are usually in fact very consistent and predictable.
Making friends with the Sound Sisters will help a lot in handling and remembering on-readings, making it a lot easier to increase your Japanese vocabulary.
So let’s look at some of the examples I just gave:
愛犬 ai-ken – the dog (I) love, (his) beloved dog Ai is love. Ken is the regular on-reading of inu – dog
愛車 ai-sha – the car (I) love, (her) beloved car sha is the regular on-reading of kuruma – car
新品 shin-pin – new goods
Shin is the regular on-reading of atara(shii) – new Hin is the regular on-reading of shina – goods. The hi always becomes pi when next to ん.
新車 shin-sha – new car
返品 hen-pin – returned goods (or the act of returning goods)
愛用(の)〜 ai-you (no)〜 – (the)〜 one uses regularly / loves to use you is the regular reading of 用 – usage, business
You see the pattern here. Part of the problem lies in regarding these words as separate pieces of vocabulary. Actually shinpin (new goods) or shinsha (new car) are no more single words than they are in English. They are sets of two very regular and understandable verbal elements that could just as easily be called words.
Japanese does not have word-breaks for a reason. The barriers between “words” are much less clear-cut than in English. If you read Japanese school grammar textbooks (as opposed to Japanese grammar textbooks intended for foreigners), you will be surprised to find that sentences are broken down into various elements with names like tango and bunsetsu, which cut right through the barriers of what the textbooks and dictionaries teach as “Japanese words”. The concept of the “word” (kotoba) as the basic building block of a sentence – as in English – is largely absent.
There is no need to learn about this, however, in order to take a fresh approach to increasing Japanese vocabulary. Once you understand the modularity of words, you can start to hear and read many “new words” just as easily as you can read a new combination of English words when you know the words that make it up.
For example, I recently heard the word 店名 tenmei (name of a/the store). I couldn’t see the kanji, but it was still quite obvious what they were: ten, the regular on-reading of mise (shop, establishment) and mei/myou, the regular on-reading of na(mae), name.
This extends to longer, multi-kanji words too. For example,
海水 kai-sui – seawater Kai is the regular on-reading of umi – sea Sui is the regular on-reading of mizu – water
海水魚 kai-sui-gyo – seawater (as opposed to freshwater) fish gyo is the regular on-reading of sakana – fish
海水浴 kai-sui-yoku – seawater bathing yoku is the regular on-reading of abi(ru) – bathe
and just from these last two we may be reminded of other regular words that use the same elements, such as
人魚 nin-gyo – mermaid (person-fish)
漁船 gyo-sen – fishing boat Sen is the regular on-reading of fune – ship, boat
入浴 nyuu-yoku – taking a bath (lit. entering the bath)
Nyuu is of course the regular on-reading of hai(ru) (enter) and is used in countless words such as
入学 nyuu-gaku – entering a new school or university
You can see all these as “words” if you wish, or you can see them as a very efficient approach to building set-phrases or collocations. It doesn’t really matter, except that as in my tenmei example above, it can be psychologically useful to see the elements of a “word” as something closer to words in themselves.
The reason for this is that instead of thinking “a new word to learn” you handle it just the same way as you handle “the dog I love” in English. You know “dog” and you know “love” and you don’t have to worry about the combination as if it were a new and separate problem.
The trick of hearing (or seeing) word-elements in the way that you see English words comes with time and familiarity. But it comes more quickly when you grasp the modular nature of the vocabulary to begin with.
Whether you want to put these combination words in your Anki can be decided on a case-by-case basis according to whether it will help you to increase your Japanese vocabulary. I sometimes do, not because I need to “learn the word” in the ordinary sense, but because I want to familiarize myself with the existence of that particular combination. Other times I don’t because it doesn’t seem necessary.
I also sometimes enter set phrases into Anki when it seems a useful idea. And the distinction between the two – the whole question of where “word” ends and “phrase” begins – is one that hardly needs to be asked and can in fact do more harm than good.
Just let it be fluid and allow your own sense of the language and its structure to develop. That way your Japanese vocabulary will increase naturally.
Can you learn Japanese through playing games? Well, the right games can certainly help a great deal. And this week saw the launch of one of the best games for the purpose. And even better – it’s free!
The game is called めがみ めぐり Megami Meguri, which could perhaps be translated as Goddess Tour (though I don’t think any translation really captures the spirit of the title).
From the language-learning perspective, the most interesting things are that it is almost fully-voiced and it involves teaching human language (i.e. Japanese) from the ground up to a new-born Goddess who knows almost nothing.
The game uses artificial intelligence and the “Megami Speak Engine”, an artificial voice synthesis system developed by Capcom and Toshiba, using Toshiba’s voice synthesis engine, ToSpeak G3, as its base. The Megami Speak Engine is used in Megami Meguri by having the character make use of user-input words to converse in a near natural-sounding synthetic voice.
In fact, talking is a major part of the game. As the senior Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, advises at one point:
話して、話して、話しまくることじゃ Hanashite, hanashite, hanashimakuru koto ja (=da)
The makuru auxiliary verb has been explained as “to do with reckless abandon”. The meaning here could be rendered as “talk, talk, talk ’till you drop”. Because by talking, learning new words and learning all about you, your heroine grows and develops.
This means that you are spending a lot of the game interacting in Japanese and developing the character of your fledgling goddess. Her appearance and voice are your constant companions. And fortunately, since her language-learning process is not really naturalistic (this is entertainment after all) you can’t actually teach her wrong Japanese. She will develop correctly in the language. And in fact, despite not knowing the names of many simple things, she is really quite competent in Japanese from the start.
The game has essentially two overall aims, both concerned with developing the heroine as a person (or rather goddess). One is to develop the relationship between yourself and your heroine through conversations with her, the information you give her and the things you tell her about yourself. The other, as expressed by Amaterasu, is
人間に関する知識は重要だ Ningen ni kansuru chishiki wa juuyou da
Human-related general knowledge/common sense is of great importance.
This is interesting for those who want to learn about Japanese culture as well as language. “Human-related knowledge” means in fact “Japan-related knowledge”, just as “human language” is Japanese.
You are in fact raising an intelligent and functional person who is nonetheless like a small child in relation to things Japanese – rather like you at the start of your Japanese self-immersion.
You will be traveling all over Japan. In fact, you can visit every one of the 9000+ railway stations in Japan!
Nearly everyone in Japan is a little bit of a 鉄 tetsu (railway enthusiast), and more than other countries, the railway system does still feel like the main arteries of the country. If you have spent time in Japan, just hearing the names of railway stations makes you feel natsukashii (nostalgic).
Traveling to different places you also learn about their special foods. Again, the Japanese are very interested in the 名物 meibutsu or special product of each area – usually food. You can barely mention Kobe to anyone without the subject of beef coming up, for example.
You will be learning about a lot of other things too. Things Japanese people mostly know already, but love to celebrate, presented in a way accessible to people who don’t know these things, because that is what the heroine of the game is.
And you will be learning about Japan, not only in Japanese but through Japanese eyes – learning the things that are salient to the Japanese soul, rather than the perspective of the foreign tourist (or even the foreign “otaku”).
I very much doubt if this game will ever come to the west. It is far too Japan-centric. And if it ever did, far more even than most things, it would be localized out of existence.
Pros and cons of Megami Meguri
I am not going to list pros and cons separately, as one person’s pro may be another person’s con and vice versa. But here are my thoughts.
The voice used by the heroine of Megami Meguri isn’t perfect. Actually it does sound pretty natural in intonation, and the limitations in sound production just make her seem a little nasal/muffly, which actually suits her naïve personality. Everything she says also appears as text onscreen, so understanding is not a problem. In fact she is quite understandable anyway.
There are no furigana in this game, so if you need them that could be a problem. Just about everything the heroine says is voiced, but the explanatory commentaries of Amaterasu are not. There is some good voice-acting for other characters, but not always, so if kanji are a sticking-point the game might not be ideal for you. On the other hand, there is a lot of voiced text.
3D seems to be unused. I don’t know if it will be employed for some effects, but so far I haven’t seen any. Some people don’t seem to like 3D and even turn it off, but I love it, so I found this a small disappointment.
Building a relationship with a virtual character is really the central point of this game. To me this is very important. I actually downloaded a demo of Konami’s LovePlus some time ago. I really liked the idea, though as a doll I wasn’t too interested in playing a boy or having a “waifu“.
This game seems to be doing what LovePlus does, only for a broader audience and with the huge enhancement of having your virtual partner actually talk to you.
The game is free-to-play. The business model relies on in-game purchases, but I don’t think you are ever forced to make any in order to continue. Of course, as you get more involved you may end up tempted into doing so!
It is easy to download if you have a Japanese 3DS. If you haven’t, I can only say that getting one is one of the best immersion investments you can make. People complain that 3DS is region-locked, and while I understand the complaint, from a self-immersion point of view, being locked into Japan is no bad thing, and fortunately it doesn’t lock you by the region you are in but by the region your 3DS comes from.
Obviously Megami Meguri isn’t a game for the absolute beginner, but as a supplementary immersion strategy it has some really important advantages.
Cure Tadashiku: You have always said that in order to learn Japanese you need to use Japanese, and that means communicating in Japanese, not just having massive input of anime, novels and such.
However, learners seem remarkably loath to do that. You’ve discussed the reasons for that, but the fact remains. How do you suggest tackling it?
Cure Dolly: That’s right. Well, look, if people don’t want to communicate in Japanese, that’s their affair. Many people spend endless time on English-language Japanese forums. Essentially, if that’s what they want to do, if that’s where they get their fun, who am I to complain?
I don’t think it is a good use of time if you really want to learn Japanese (rather than learn about Japanese), but all I am here for is to offer my advice. After that it’s up to the individual to do what she wants to do.
Cure Tadashiku: But you have tried to make ways for people to use Japanese – notably the KawaJapa Forums and now the new Line Group. You seem to be especially interested in the latter at the moment.
Cure Dolly: I think the problem with the Forums has been essentially a critical mass problem. Because only a minority of Japanese learners seem to want to (or reach a level where they can) interact in Japanese, the demand for such a forum is not high, which presumably is why there aren’t other all-Japanese learners’ forums online.
It is quite possible that once people do reach a high enough level, if they are actually interested in using Japanese they move on to online interaction with actual Japanese people, as you and I have done. However, I still think there might be a place for interaction with other second-Mothertongue speakers, partly as an easy entry for beginners (interaction beginners, not Japanese beginners) and partly because we do have things in common that we might want to discuss (which is why there is such a lot of English-language forum activity).
A rather bigger site than ours started such a forum a while back and abandoned it from lack of participation. Ours keeps going in a quiet way, but the problem is that someone comes, is quite enthusiastic, but because not many people are there, understandably moves on. Occasionally a small community starts to form, but it will only be two or three people, so when one of those people gets busy or goes on vacation or something the group dissolves. We don’t reach a critical mass where an active self-sustaining community is formed.
The Forum still works well in its quiet way. We have quite a few visitors per day and it rarely stays quiet for more than a day or two. But it hasn’t reached critical mass.
Cure Tadashiku: So what about the Line group. Do you think it can break this pattern?
Cure Dolly: We’ll see. I think there is a chance that it could. Line interaction is more casual. You can post a picture, say a word or two, share a link. You can have real-time chat if people are there, or slow-motion chat if they aren’t. Importantly, it doesn’t need many people. It is a format ideally suited to a small handful of participants. It may grow, but it doesn’t require critical mass in the way a Forum does.
Cure Tadashiku: So might it eventually replace the Forums
Cure Dolly: Probably not. They work differently and the two may end up complementing each other. A Line group is not an ideal medium for laying out ideas in detail or having an in-depth discussion. Those things want their own thread and a more permanent location. People may well do that on the Forum and link to it from the Line group. We’ll have to see how it all evolves.
Cure Tadashiku: It is certainly an interesting experiment and I have to salute your tenacity in an area where no one seems to have made a lot of headway!
Cure Dolly: You’d be welcome to join the group too you know (－ｏ⌒)
Cure Tadashiku: I don’t have a keitai, and honestly I am less involved with non-native Japanese speakers (as well as non-Japanese speakers) these days. So I guess I am part of the problem. I think there are those Japanese learners who really want to stay based in English, and conversely those who really move into Japanese and out of the foreign-learner circuit altogether.
Speaking of which, how do you see your future in these terms? I know you want to become a writer in Japanese eventually. I know you thought you would never do another English book and then you did Unlocking Japanese.
So where do you see yourself going in the long-to-middle-term? Will you continue to support the Forums, Line group etc? More broadly, will you go on blogging in English? Do another book in English?
Cure Dolly: I don’t know. Really I don’t. A community may form via the Forums and Line group(s). If so, I guess we may grow together. So far the Line group is attracting people who are pretty darn serious and really want Japanese as a second Mothertongue, I think. That being the case we are likely to grow in Japanese together and stay friends in Japanese.
As to the rest, I did Unlocking Japanese because I realized that I (with the help of you and others) had discovered some really important things about Japanese that no one else has ever put into English – things that can be extremely helpful to Japanese learners. In some ways they revolutionize Japanese learning. For that reason I felt I had to do a book. I would have been failing in a duty not to lay out these discoveries in usable book-form.
I continue to discover more so there may be another book at some point. For the present I continue contributing to this site. I don’t guarantee to do it forever! I really am not that interested in working in English, but I do want to help people tread the same path. I want to share what we have learned. But, yes, there is probably a limit to that.
Cure Tadashiku: So if people who are not dedicated second-Mothertongue people want to join the Line group?
Cure Dolly: Absolutely welcome. So long as people are wanting to interact in all-Japanese we are happy to welcome them. At some point, if it all expands, we may form different groups. If it doesn’t expand, that’s fine too.
We are happy to announce that we have a new group on the Line messaging application for readers of this blog, members of the KawaJapa Forums and Japanese learners in general.
We engage in casual text conversation, sometimes real-time, sometimes not, and some of us play online Japanese games like Pigg Party or synchronize meetings in Doubutsu no Mori.
We are happy to welcome new members. The only rules are, be polite and courteous and only use Japanese.
This is not a group for beginners. You must be able to function at least minimally in Japanese. It is a kind, supportive group, so it’s fine if you are a long way from perfect (none of us is perfect), but if you need to use English for some things, you need a different group.
There are endless resources online for people who want to “play Japanese” in English, and very, very little for people who actually want to use Japanese (it seems not many people do!), so we try to fill that gap.
The Line group is one way of expanding your “Japanese life” in a supportive group that is perhaps a gentler entry-point than native Japanese online locations.
If you want to join, please contact me, Cure Dolly, via the KawaJapa Forums, or the Dollygram (my address is on all Dollygrams, including the introductory one. Just hit Reply).
Or you can just use the comment box below.
Please write in Japanese. There is no test to join the group other than that, but if you can’t write a little note in Japanese, the group would not be of much use to you. Don’t worry, it isn’t an essay – a one-line yoroshiku will be fine!
Once in the group, you are free to interact as you like or just watch. The only reasons we would ever eject anyone is for being rude or unkind to other members, expressing hentai, cruel or hateful things, or using English.
Looking forward to hearing from you and making a new Line friend!
Everyone knows that “moshi moshi ” is what Japanese people say when they answer the telephone.
But what does it really mean?
There is a legend that kitsune (shape-shifting fox-spirits) cannot say “moshi moshi ” , so if someone answers with that phrase, you know she must be a real human being – or at least not a kitsune.
However, that isn’t where the phrase comes from. It is actually a contraction/doubling of the word 申す mousu, which is the humble form of 言う iu – “say”.
So “moshi moshi ” is really a polite, humble way of saying “speaking, speaking” or “I say, I say”.
Moshi moshi is not only used on the telephone. It can also be used to call someone’s attention in person. Kind of like saying “Is anyone home?” when someone doesn’t seem to be listening.
The pronunciation of moshi moshi varies somewhat, so it can come out sounding like
moshmoshiii
or
moshimo-osh
Other places we often find the mousu of moshi moshi are in phrases like
（私は）メアリーと申します (Watashi wa) Mary to moushimas My name is Mary
What this literally means is “(I am) said Mary” – a bit like the French je m’appelleMary (I call myself Mary).
The usual way of saying this would be
（私は）メアリーと言います (Watashi wa) Mary to iimasu
which also means “(I am) said Mary”. By using moushi-masu instead of ii-masu you are turning it into something like “humble little me is said Mary”. You use this on more formal occasions, like meeting your Japanese boss for the first time.
Another common place we find the moushi of moshi-moshi is in the expression:
申し訳ありません moushi-wake arimasen
which the dictionaries often translate as “I’m sorry”.
A Japanese beginner once wrote to me
びょうき で もうしわけ ありません
(in grown-up Japanese: 病気で申し訳ありません) Byouki de moushi-wake arimasen
What she meant was “I’m sorry you are sick”.
But what moushi-wake arimasen literally means is something like “there is no excuse I can humbly say”.
It does of course mean “I’m sorry” but not the “I’m sorry” of “I’m sorry you’ve been sick” – well, not unless your bad cooking was to blame for it.
As you probably know, the word あたたかい atatakai (warm) can be written in two different ways: 温かい or 暖かい. Is there a difference between them?
Yes there is, and actually it is a fairly obvious one, but I think it is a little less well known to learners than similar differences in other temperature-words.
Of course you know, unless you are a very early beginner, that there are two words for cold: 寒い samui, which means cold weather or ambient temperature, and 冷たい tsumetai, which meansa cold object, cold hands, a cold drink etc.
You probably also know that there are two forms of あつい atsui (hot), which correspond directly to the two words for cold: 暑い (atsui with a double dose of sun) is hot weather or ambient temperature, 熱い (atsui with a fire under it) is a hot object.
So it isn’t too surprising to learn that atatakai does the same thing – though not quite as absolutely.
暖かい usually means warm weather or ambient temperature. I see this one as 爪 tsume–chan lifting her 友 friend into the warm 日 sunshine.
Oh – you haven’t met tsume-chan yet, have you? Some day I would like to do a book introducing my personal kanji-element characters. Tsume-chan is the 爪 element – a happy UFO-catcher claw who rescues her friends from all kinds of danger. For example, she helps 子 children 浮 float when they fall in the 氵water.
She looks like a UFO because she works in a UFO Catcher when she isn’t out on rescue missions.
Anyway, enough of that. I do love my characters!
The only other thing to remember about 暖 is that its usual on-reading is dan, as in 暖房 danbou (interior heating) and 暖炉 danro (hearth fire).
温かい is more prone to mean a warm object, warm water etc. From the kanji, warm water might seem to be a primary meaning. It is easy to remember that the 日 sunwarms氵water in a 皿 dish .
The on reading of 温 is on. Easy to remember if you think of 温泉 onsen (a warm-water spring or spa).
The two atatakai forms are not as absolutely distinguished as samui and tsumetai, and there is some crossover between them. 暖 especially seems to cross over into the area of things that warm the body, like a warm coat or a hot (i.e., warming) drink. It also seems much less used than 温 for metaphorical warmth (warm-heartedness etc), just as a cold-hearted person would be described as tsumetai, not samui.
While the two are not absolutely distinguished, if you bear in mind their general tendencies it will help you to use them in a natural-sounding way (for your own use you can treat them as equivalent to samui and tsumetai on the warm end of the scale) and to catch the nuance when you see them used.
Note that both forms of atata(kai) are used to make the two verbs atatamaru and atatameru. This is a regular maru-meru transitivity pair, so if you know the Honorary Fourth Law of Japanese Transitivity, you will know exactly what the words mean!
The biggest problem of doing anything Japanese related on Android is the lack of Rikaisama.
If your Anki set-up does not extensively use sound (mine does) and if your definitions aren’t primarily Japanese to Japanese (mine are) this Android dictionary app probably covers all your Japanese dictionary needs – at no cost! However J-J Dolly is still pining for her pasokon!
