Category Archives: Vocabulary

Finding the right opening: 開く (あく) vs 開く (ひらく) vs 開ける（あける）

Originally published on Patreon, Vocabulary

開くaku, 開くhiraku or 開ける akeru? Japanese has three words for “opening”, all based on the same kanji.

And two of them are written exactly the same.

When should you use which one? And why?

This is a slightly more complex question than you might think, and even Japanese people sometimes misuse the terms in certain cases.

Don’t worry though. It’s pretty straightforward.

Side-note. If you want to find the right beginning (初めて vs. 始めて), go here.

The first thing to know is that あく is a self-move verb, but ひらく is both self-move and other-move (and 開ける is other-move only). (Learn the simple secret of self-move and other-move here).

Having said this, there are cases where Japanese people not infrequently use expressions like 目をあく which is incorrect (a little like English speakers saying “they was there” – though I get the impression that it is less uneducated-sounding than that).

Naturally you will stick with grammatical use – not only because it is correct but also because there are only some cases where it is commonly misused and you don’t want to start learning lists of themʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Now, in the large cross-over area where あく and ひらく are both (legitimately) used as self-move there is a difference, but there is a large cross-over within the cross-over.

However, the basic difference is very straightforward:

あくwill be used for a bottle opening (or being open), ひらく for a flower opening.

Things that spread open like a flower or a book are ひらく. If you love children’s songs, you may know むすんで・ひらいて.  Again it is natural that the action of spreading the fingers to open the hand is called ひらいて and not あいて. Books and umbrellas** are also ひらく.

So something that “opens out” is ひらく and something where a lid or a stopper is removed completely to allow access will definitely be あく. However, for a wide range of things – like French doors, eyes, mouth – either can be used.

The actual other-move version of あく is あける and that, just as we would expect, gives us the other-move form of the things that are more あく-like than ひらく-like (ひらくbeing its own other-move version, as it were).

There are occasions when this is less obvious, but the same logic still applies. For example:

店をひらく
Open a shop in the sense of establish it and begin trading.

店をあける
Open the shop for the day. Open the doors.

As you see, in the first the idea is that the shop is made to open out like a flower and begin, in the second it is just a question of unblocking the doorway so the customers can come in.

A supplementary question was:

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Seems like the kind of thing you just have to get used to with exposure. It’s very helpful to know the underlying principles behind them, though. How does ひらける fit into this? Is it just the potential form of ひらく again or is it a separate verb?

Here is my answer:

It isn’t really too difficult. There are things that are clearly あく and things that are clearly ひらく and then some that are less definite. These ones even Japanese people use freely in either form, so you can too.

In reading, you can read either in ambiguous cases. If the writer considers it important she will use furigana since there are small differences of nuance (ドアがひらいた for example tends to emphasize the idea of the door opening wide).

ひらける is not (usually) the potential form of ひらく, it is a derivative of ひらく and seems actually to be its self-move form (several Japanese sources say so).

Now this may seem confusing since ひらく is already both other-move and self-move but I think we need to see it in terms of moving the self-move side of ひらく further over to the ある side of the ある/する map.

Important note – if you don’t understand what I mean by the ある/する map please watch the video as this is a vital foundation of Japanese that never gets taught.

So ひらける means more “being in a state of having-opened-out” than simply opening-out – or at least lays more stress on the opened-out state. This is a kind of sliding-scale since ひらく can also have that implication (especially in the past tense) but ひらける lays more stress on ある-ness, if that makes sense.

If you want to find the right beginning (初めて vs. 始めて), go here

___

Notes:

* Naturally there is no confusion over these misuses when hearing/reading them because if someone is using を then they are clearly using the word as other-move.

** But remember that using an open umbrella is usually  差す  (さす) and this extends to opening it, so this is what you encounter most commonly unless specific attention is being drawn to the process of its unfolding. Though of course, since す-ending 差す is naturally other-move, we would say ひらく to describe what the umbrella itself does.

 

This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed

思われる Japanese omowareru – what it really means

Originally published on Patreon, Structure, Vocabulary

A question today concerns 思われる, the receptive form of 思う. It is a good question because I think this is something that can be confusing, partly because of the way the receptive is explained as passive (which works – as a loose translation – part of the time but not all of it and completely messes up the structure) and partly because Japanese just puts things a little differently from English:

Maybe it’s silly, but I have a hard time differentiating between the receptive form of 思う and the verb 思われる. They seem similar to me. In which cases would you use the former, and in which cases would you use the latter?

Here is my reply:

This really isn’t silly at all because it can seem confusing at first and doesn’t get well explained.

Since 思う means “think”, 思われる means “receive being thought”, which works out in English as “seem” or “appear”. Funnily, English sometimes puts it the other way up: “give the impression”, whereas Japanese puts it “receive the perception”.

At times its meaning is very close to 思う for obvious reasons. “It seems (to me) to be a lemon” is much the same in practice as “(I) think it’s a lemon”. And as in English, the 思われる “it seems (to me)…” version is less direct/assertive than the 思う “(I) think…” version.

However, at other times 思われる does not imply “me” as the originator of the received thought at all and just means “It is thought to be”:

バクテリアの種類と思われる
“It is thought to be a species of bacteria.”

Here the English passive is the most natural translation and is fine provided we don’t let it affect our perception of the particles.

What we must remember is that receptive (so-called “passive”) constructions are made up of two verbs that always have two separate subjects. Which is why it is so damaging to our understanding to see them as a single “conjugated verb”.

The と links the idea or perception (that it is a species of bacteria) to 思う, which has the implicit subject of “people in general” (French “on”). The subject of れる is whatever “it” is that is thought to be a species of bacteria.

Some dictionaries list 思われる meaning “seems” as a separate word from the receptive form of 思う but I think it is clear that it is always actually receptive 思う.

The dictionaries are not actually “wrong” in this. Whether we call something “a different word” or not is simply a matter of cross-language explanation strategy and the strategy of a dictionary is somewhat different from the strategy of teaching/learning structure.

A dictionary’s proper aim is to give people, in a reasonably concise way, a picture of what a word might mean (in English) in a particular circumstance. The implied user is someone reading a piece of text and wanting to know how it would read in English.

The strategy of structure-study is to see what is actually going on in the Japanese, and the implied user is someone who wants to become proficient at understanding the language – not just at putting it into the nearest available English.

In general, the question of “same word” and “different word” in cases like this is a non-question. It implies that Japanese cuts up into units called words that could theoretically be spaced off from each other as in European languages.

This is not in fact the case, and if you read Japanese school grammars (for Japanese children) you will see that Japanese employs a number of terms for the most granular units of the language, but “word” or any close equivalent is not one of them.

This is not an eccentric manner of description but reflects the reality that Japanese lexical units are much more amoeba-like than European words.

We should also note that the confusion between the “two” uses arises because person having the thought that is being received is different in the two cases. This person, if explicitly mentioned would be marked by に as the “giver” of the received action always is.

So

バクテリアの種類と思われる

= ∅が∅に　バクテリアの種類と思われる

The が-marked ∅ is of course the thing thought to be a species of bacteria,  and the に-marked ∅ is “people in general” – the usage is exactly equivalent to French on pense (one thinks = people think or in the more usual passive English “it is thought”).

When “I” is the implicit に-marked thinker, the visible structure is of course identical and we have to understand which it is from context.

Just as:

わたしはウナギだ

can in fact mean “I am an eel” but in the usual context, doesn’t.

In both cases the difference between the two meanings lies solely in the identity of the に-marked zero particle.

And if the concept of the zero particle isn’t crystal clear, please watch this video immediately, because it is the very foundation-stone of Japanese.

This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed

On Dotards and Dictionary Dumping – getting Japanese words right!

Originally published on Patreon, Vocabulary

A while back, someone (who seems to have the idea that I am a language-wonk android) asked me if I could throw light on the word “dotard”.

When I asked why, this person sent a message explaining that Supreme Leader of a certain Asian country had made a speech referring to the President of an extremely prominent Western country as a “dotard”.

Apparently Google was alive with people searching the word, wondering why that particular one was chosen. Could I explain it?

Yes, I believe I can.

Unless I am much mistaken the reason for the choice of this word is that there is a Dictionary Dumper working in translation service of this particular Asian country.

What is “dictionary dumping”? Well, a good (rather sweet) example is when I was doing some coaching in Japanese and got one of those Russian viruses that make me sick, a student sent me a message that included the expression:

もうしわけありません

What this literally means is “there is no excuse (I can humbly make)”. It is a formal apology.

What she wanted to say is I am sorry (to hear that you are sick). The dictionary told her that  もうしわけありません means “I’m sorry”. So she used it.

This is a very simple example of Dictionary Dumping. For a beginner, taking words you have never seen before and dropping them into a sentence based on their dictionary meaning.

For a more advanced user (like our official translator friend), it means taking a phrase in one’s native language and then scouring the dictionaries to find something that expresses the same thing.

The problem at this more advanced level is that while you will probably get it technically “right”, you still don’t know if the word is just going to sound odd and obscure rather than being a natural and stinging insult.

A recent question on YouTube raises the same issue:

 Rewatching this lesson made me wonder a lot the translation of the title “ふしぎの国のアリス”. I can see why “wonderland” was translated as “ふしぎのの国” but I can’t figure out why it’s “のアリス”. Is it not supposed to be a literal translation? If so, if it was supposed to be literal, would something like “ふしぎの国にアリス” be correct?

This was my reply:

You are certainly right that the Japanese title is not a literal translation of the English title. That is because Japanese often doesn’t express things in quite the same way as English.

In this case の is the most usual way of expressing a relationship of this kind and that is the most usual way of putting it (which is why Japanese titles so often have の in them).

Literally the Japanese title means “Alice of the country of wonders”.

ふしぎの国にアリス isn’t quite natural Japanese, but we could say 不思議の国にいるアリス which is grammatical, and does pretty much literally translate the English title, but it wouldn’t have the same feeling in Japanese at all.

If such a phrase were used it would sound something like “the Alice that is in the country of wonders” (as opposed, perhaps, to some other Alice who isn’t).

This opens up a larger and more important consideration if one is writing Japanese. One cannot assume that getting an exact literal rendering of something one would say in English – even if grammatically correct – will have the same implication.

____

So essentially my answer was addressing the question of Dictionary Dumping in a slightly more sophisticated form – not exactly dumping words from the dictionary, but translating English expressions literally and assuming that they will have the same meaning and implications in Japanese.

So how should a beginner avoid Dictionary Dumping?

I wrote an article on this a long time ago, rather presumptuously titled How to Write Correct, Natural Japanese and the advice still stands. Though I ought to update the recommended sentence banks. Weblio is very good.

Essentially using one of these databases of Japanese/English sentences you need to research whether the way you want to express something is actually used in Japanese and has the meaning you thought it did.

Slightly めんどくさい, I know, but I highly recommend communicating in written Japanese and using this method because one instance of trying to express something and working out how to do it is (in my experience) worth ten experiences of simply seeing or hearing it expressed correctly.

This way we become aware of specific issues of expression and their solution. It takes a long time to get this passively.

Though passive listening is very good for helping us get an ear for what “rings right”.

This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed.

Massive Input vs SRS: the Inverse Ratio Effect

Japanese immersion, Originally published on Patreon, Vocabulary

Inverse ratio “rule”: the greater your input the “looser” your SRS can be

When I say “massive input vs SRS”, I am not trying to imply an opposition between the two because I believe that they are (for most kinds of memory) excellent partners. However:

SRS is the thief of immersion time.

This is a saying known to the ancients. Well, maybe not in quite that form, but it doesn’t take a sage to know that time spent on A can’t be spent on B.

And with a lot of vocabulary etc. to learn, SRS can become time-consuming. Some people advocate dropping SRS altogether in favor of pure massive input. My view is that this is actually the best approach if it works for you, but my experience is that it doesn’t work for most people.

That may be because input isn’t massive enough. But sufficiently massive input may be impractical anyway. And I suspect it isn’t just that.

The problem is, of course, that SRS is “rigged” to feed you vocabulary in a way suited to helping you remember it, and wild input isn’t. So one can tend to forget words between natural exposures.

But natural exposures are the real ground for learning. We encounter words as real meaning units in real emotional contexts, with their contextual nuances and knowing the kind of person that uses a particular word in a particular situation. We aren’t “memorizing” all this, but we are absorbing it and this is what eventually amounts to knowing a word rather than knowing its dictionary definition.

SRS is just a pinning device for holding words in place between real exposures.

This is the approach I advocate.

And we can use it to prune down our SRS.

How?

The thing to remember, which gets very obscured in other methods, is that abstract learning through SRS or anything else is (I’m stressing this point)…

a means to an end, not an end in itself.

This has important implications for many things. Including how we approach SRS.

If learning words through SRS were an end in itself, we would have to be much stricter about it. This means failing more words, which means bringing them back into play more often and increasing one’s daily SRS time considerably.

Before I realized this, like many androids, I took the view

90% right is wrong.

And if SRS were one’s means of learning rather than a handmaiden to real learning, that would be correct.

But, provided one is doing at least reasonably massive input, then in many cases

50% right is right.

Why? Well let’s think about what end SRS is a means to. And this may vary, but let’s take what I think is the most common case.

SRS is a means to pinning words so that they will be recognized when we read them.

Let’s take some scenarios:

We see the word on the front of a card and…

know how it is pronounced and know that it can have one of two related meanings – but can’t be sure which.

Pass (usually).

Why? The question to ask is “when I encounter it will the context make it clear which of the two it is?” If so, SRS has done its job sufficiently for its role, which is supporting real exposure to the extent of understandability. We are not trying to learn the word from SRS – that is the job of massive exposure.

Know the meaning but aren’t sure which of two pronunciations it is.

Pass (usually). Possibly press the “hard button”. Fail if one feels a need to get the pronunciation fixed at this stage.

Why? If you are mostly using material with furigana or anime subtitles you will be reminded of the pronunciation on future encounters. Even if not, I am personally more inclined to look them up on the fly* (but that’s me).

Are confused between two words/meanings

Often pass.

Let’s take an example. You don’t recall which of ポッチャリ and ポチャリ means “plump” and which means “splash”.

First question: if you read or hear one, what is the likelihood of not knowing which meaning is intended in context? As an android I can tell you. Precisely 0.037%. Pass.

Second question: How much do you want to be able to use one or both in conversation? If answer “not very much” then pass.

Pretty sure of the general area of meaning. Can’t actually define the word.

Could well be a pass. 

With context the word would probably be understandable.

These principles also apply to putting words into Anki in the first place. There is a tendency to collect words like a squirrel to a greater extent than necessary (certainly for me).

As you get more used to kanji you are often pretty sure of the meaning and pronunciation of a word from kanji plus context. Now, you may want to Anki it just to remind yourself that the word exists for two reasons:

1. Because you want to use it on the fly

and/or

2. Because you want to recognize it when you hear it, with no kanji to help.

This is reasonable and I do it sometimes. The thing to bear in mind is that this is a trade-off. You are trading expanding your SRS time for some immersion time.

You are going to encounter the word again (or if not you don’t need to learn it).

You are also going to get better (and faster) over time at reconstructing the kanji in your mind when listening even for unknown words (from a mixture of context and knowing what onyomi are likely in this case – Japanese people do this all the time – because knowing Japanese does mean kanji-thinking).

You don’t need to worry that everything will drop off if you don’t SRS it. Some of it will. But it will get other chances. Some of it won’t, especially as you get more proficient.

Sometimes in output you will get words wrong (even though you know the components you forget the order – or you misremember exactly which two kanji it was and use a similar concept-kanji for one of them, or use the wrong reading. This happens. It does improve over time. How much time do you want to invest in ironcladding against these little errors in the short term vs. moving on with immersion?

I can’t answer that question for you, but I can suggest that you ask it rather than simply assume everything needs to be SRSed.

The point of this post isn’t to give specific instruction so much as to suggest a way of thinking strategically about the question.

Textbook Japanese tends to inculcate an exam-based view that abstract memorization is an end in itself (or a means to pass exams, which comes to much the same thing).

The ANKI/Heisig focus of the main AJATT-influenced immersion schools ironically can have a very similar effect. Especially since some “second generation” AJATT-related immersionists are prone to put more stress on the “method” than on the real immersion it was originally intended to support.

And if either of these approaches is your preferred one, of course you should ignore what I am saying here.

If not, if you are aiming for what I call direct or organic immersion, then the thing to remember is that SRS is only there as a tacking-stitch to hold things in place between exposures

And shape your strategy accordingly.

SRS is a good servant, but a very bad master.

___

* Personally I find non-furigana’ed text fun for testing pronunciation (a bore if you don’t know most already of course, but if that’s the case furigana’ed text is currently best). Yes, I am reading, not “studying”, but I like words and enjoy seeing if I can guess unknown combinations of known kanji and very often can. I’m happy to do a quick look-up for the game of it – but that’s me. Often I feel sure enough not to.

You also find that an instinct for readings develops. For example I can usually guess in new compounds whether 物 is もの, もつ, or ぶつ. I don’t (yet) have a rule for helping with it, but one gets a “feeling” for what is likely.

This article first appeared on my private Patreon feed

Japanese Verb Tenses: How past, present and future really work

Basic Japanese, Structure, Vocabulary

Japanese verb tenses – the “past, present and future” can be confusing partly because standard explanations of  even the English tense system is rather obscure and misleading.

If you’re reading this, then that probably doesn’t matter for you in English (though it confuses a lot of learners). But it muddies the waters of Japanese and makes the Japanese tenses seem more obscure than they need to be.

So how do we go about setting it all straight?

Easy. Let an android doll do it for you.

This video will make everything clear!

Super-basic Japanese Vocabulary List

Basic Japanese, Vocabulary

This is a list of very basic words that you can use to make simple sentences based on our free Japanese Made Easy Organic Japanese course.

This is very basic vocabulary that you can use for making simple A is B and A does B sentences after the first lesson. They are all written in hiragana and romaji. Please use hiragana if possible (if you can use any kanji or katakana where appropriate, of course feel free to do so).

Nouns

うさぎ　usagi    rabbit

ひと　hito = person

こ　ko = child

とり　tori = bird

おんな　の　ひと　onna no hito  = woman

おんな　の　こ   onna no ko   = girl

おとこ　の　ひと   otoko no hito = man

おとこ　の　こ   otoko no ko = boy

にほんじん　Nihonjin = Japanese person

あめりかじん   Amerikajin = American person

ふらんすじん   Furansujin = French person

ぱん   pan = bread (same as Spanish)

 

(Free gifts!)

ぺん　pen = pen

あいすくりーむ　aisu kuriimu = ice cream

たくしー　takushii = taxi

けーき　keeki = cake

 

Verbs

あるく　aruku = walk

とぶ　tobu = jump/fly

うたう　utau = sing

 

Adjectives

あかい　akai = red

あおい　aoi = blue

うれしい    ureshii = happy

おいしい　oishii = tasty, delicious

おもしろい　omoshiroi = interesting, amusing

Hot Summer Kanji!

Kanji, Vocabulary

This two-minute video is based on some Japanese wordplay.

Just to clarify the words in advance:

蒸し暑い – mushi-atsui is a word that gets used a lot in the Japanese summer. It means humid-hot – and that’s what the Japanese summer is like!

It actually has nothing to do with 虫 mushi – bugs, but the association of the two things is so close that it makes a very good mnemonic.

As for 無視 mushi meaning to ignore or disregard, well, that’s just another word altogether.

So now you’re clear on the real meanings of the words, sit back and enjoy this two-minute episode of Kinoko Channel where our heroine is menaced by flying kanji!

It should fix the words in your mind forever!

Japanese Pronunciation Challenge: Top Ten Difficult Words!

Kinoko channel, Rhythm & Pronunciation, Vocabulary

Today, Kinoko-chan talks about the top ten most difficult words for foreigners to pronounce and more importantly why they are difficult, so you can know what to work on.

She is speaking Japanese as usual, but for the first time we are including a full transcript in Japanese and English. So you can practice your Japanese listening by following the transcript, or if your Japanese isn’t ready for that yet, you can use the English translation.

Enjoy the fun as Kinoko-chan challenges the first half of what are reputed to be Japan’s top ten tough words!

Japanese pronunciation challenge transcript

(The Japanese-only version is beneath this one. If you want to try your Japanese, we suggest you open the video in a different window and follow along with the script)

皆さんこんにちは。木の子で〜す。

Minasan konnichiwa. Kinoko desu!

今日は外国人にとっての一番難しい言葉のトップ１０のチャレンジを挑戦したいと思います。

Today I want to take on the challenge of the top ten most difficult words for foreigners to pronounce.

木の子の日本語はね、恥ずかしいほど下手ですね。

My Japanese is shamefully poor.

でも、頑張ってやってまます。

But I will try hard and give it a go.

深呼吸！

Deep breath!

【アナウンサー】木の子チャレンジ、スタート。その１

(Announcer) Kinoko challenge, start! Number 1.
(literally “that one” = “number one of (this list)”

それはツイッターどすね。なぜあんなに難しいよく分からない。ローマ字で書いたからかもしれません。

That is tsuittaa, isn’t it? I’m not sure why that’s so difficult. Perhaps because it’s written in Romaji.

英語を話す人は「(英語っぽい)twitter」と話すと思います。

English-speaking people say “twitter [English pronunciation]”, I think.

カタカナで書いたらもっと簡単になるかもしれないんですけど、英語を話す人は英語の言葉を見ると半分英語の発音がするかもしれません。

If it were written in katakana it might be easier, but when English-speaking people see an English word, perhaps their pronunciation becomes half-English.

ツイッターは正しいですか。

Is tsuittaa correct?

【アナウンサー】視聴者さまコメントをください。その２。

(Announcer) Viewer-sama, please comment. No. 2.

それは「伝えられなかった」ですね。実は早口言葉のような言葉ですね。

This is tsutaerarenakatta (couldn’t convey), isn’t it? Actually it’s a bit of a tongue-twister, isn’t it?

そして「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」という発音は外国人にとって難しそうですね。

Besides that, the pronunciation of RA, RE, RU, RE, RO seems to be difficult for foreigners.

【アナウンサー】その３。

(Announcer) No. 3.

それは侵略ですね。実は木の子にもそれはちょっと難しいと思います。「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」より「りゃ、りゅ、りょ」という発音は難しいと思います。

This is shinryaku (invasion), isn’t it? Actually this is a little hard for me too. The pronunciation of RYA, RYU, RYO is harder than RA, RI, RU, RE, RO, I think.

それは大丈夫ですけど、「んりゃ」、「んりゃ」はね、ちょっと難しい。

That’s all right, but NRYA – NRYA, that’s a bit difficult.

【アナウンサー】その４。

(Announcer) No. 4.

それは便利ですね。ほとんど同じ問題ですね。「んり」、「んり」と[いう]問題。

This is benri (convenient), isn’t it? It’s almost the same problem. The NRI problem.

でも、もっと簡単だと思います。「べんり」は大丈夫ですか。

But this is easier I think. “Benri”. Is that all right?

【アナウンサー】視聴者さまコメントをください。その５。

(Announcer) Viewer-sama, please comment. No 5.

それは出力ですね。出力は簡単だと思います。♪出力、出力♪、正しいですか。

This is shutsuryoku (output power), isn’t it? Shutsuryoku is easy, I think. ♪Shutsuryoku, shutsuryoku♪. Is that right?

【アナウンサー】今日はこれまでです。来週も来られますか。

(Announcer) That’s all for today. Can you come back next week?

はい。了解。

Yes, ma’am. Roger that.

木の子はどう出来ましたか。コメントをください。

How did I do? Please comment.

皆さまも来週来てください。チャレンジが続きますからね。

Minasama, please come back next week too because the challenge will continue.

これからもよろしくお願いします。

From now on, as always, please be good to me.

バイバイ！

Bye bye!

The blooper reel at the end has Kinoko-chan tripping over

それは「伝えられなかった」ですね。実は早口言葉のような

She is trying to say that tsutaerarenakatta is a bit of a tongue-twister and blooping the rest of the sentence!

Japanese-only version

皆さんこんにちは。木の子で〜す。

今日は外国人にとっての一番難しい言葉のトップ１０のチャレンジを挑戦したいと思います。

木の子の日本語はね、恥ずかしいほど下手ですね。

でも、頑張ってやってまます。

深呼吸！

【アナウンサー】木の子チャレンジ、スタート。その１

それはツイッターどすね。なぜあんなに難しいよく分からない。ローマ字で書いたからかもしれません。

英語を話す人は「(英語っぽい)twitter」と話すと思います。

カタカナで書いたらもっと簡単になるかもしれないんですけど、英語を話す人は英語の言葉を見ると半分英語の発音がするかもしれません。

ツイッターは正しいですか。

【アナウンサー】視聴者さまコメントをください。その２。

それは「伝えられなかった」ですね。実は早口言葉のような言葉ですね。

そして「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」という発音は外国人にとって難しそうですね。

【アナウンサー】その３。

それは侵略ですね。実は木の子にもそれはちょっと難しいと思います。「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」より「りゃ、りゅ、りょ」という発音は難しいと思います。

それは大丈夫ですけど、「んりゃ」、「んりゃ」はね、ちょっと難しい。

【アナウンサー】その４。

それは便利ですね。ほとんど同じ問題ですね。「んり」、「んり」と[いう]問題。

でも、もっと簡単だと思います。「べんり」は大丈夫ですか。

【アナウンサー】視聴者さまコメントをください。その５。

それは出力ですね。出力は簡単だと思います。♪出力、出力♪、正しいですか。

【アナウンサー】今日はこれまでです。来週も来られますか。

はい。了解。

木の子はどう出来ましたか。コメントをください。

皆さまも来週来てください。チャレンジが続きますからね。

これからもよろしくお願いします。

バイバイ！

How to Add Sample Sentences to Anki Automatically

Kanji, Power Tools, Vocabulary

Having a sample Japanese sentence to back up Anki’s definition of a word is often invaluable.

But if you are making your own immersion-experience-based deck rather than using pre-made decks (and you should be), you have to add them yourself. Isn’t this a bit mendokusai (Japanese for pain in the pinky)?

Luckily there is a way to automate this part of the card-making process too. It’s a bit obscure, but once you set it up, it looks after itself.

Important: Rikaisama is no longer functional, but the same direct -to Anki and sentence-capturing functionality can now be found in Yomichan (actually more easily). Since the functionality is essentially the same the rest of this article (after the screenshot below) is still relevant.

This article assumes that you are already using Rikaisama’s Real-time Anki function to make your cards with a single keypress. If you aren’t, this article will tell you how.

When I first noticed that there  is a token for adding sentences in Rikaisama’s Real-time (direct-to-Anki) setup I was a little puzzled. Does Rikaisama contain a database of sentences as well as a dictionary and audio database? How does this work?

Click to enlarge

So I shrugged and  set it up to put the sentences into my Audio folder as shown above, (the last $t moves the focus to my last field, which is Audio – I do audio for my sentences, but that’s for a future article).

Then I typed a word and Rikai’d it (my usual way of adding a word to Anki), hit R (the one-button card-maker) and – nothing.

I had my card made in a single keypress, of course. But there was no sample sentence.

I wasn’t entirely surprised – where were these sample sentences supposed to come from anyway? I didn’t really believe there was a database of sentences, even though there is one of  native-spoken audio for nearly every word which can be added with that same keypress (and which you should be using).

So this is one of the more obscure features of Rikaisama. Actually it isn’t so obscure if you are using Rikai the way Rikai thinks you are. That is, reading something online and using Rikai to give instant furigana plus definitions if you want them.

But that isn’t how I mostly use Rikaisama, and I suspect that is true of most people using it as part of a self-immersion deck-building process. I type in the word, which may have come from a novel or an anime, (usually into an online dictionary, though I don’t actually press Enter to get the dictionary’s definition unless I need some elaboration on Rikaisama’s answer). I hover over it to get the Rikai box, hit the R key and pring! I have a new card.

What the sentence function actually does (and it really is very clever) is import the sentence you were reading into Anki and drop it into whatever field you told it to in the save format (see picture above).

So obviously this kind of breaks down if you weren’t reading a sentence online.

The answer is simple. If you want a sample sentence for your word, you need to

  1. Find the sentence you want
  2. Hover over your target word inside the sentence you just found
  3. Hit R

And that’s it. You will have a new Anki card with all the usual features plus your sample sentence wherever you specified in the format.

Here is an example of the back of an Anki card with an automatically added sentence. Of course you can have your own format (mine are a bit ugly and functional, I’m afraid), and you can have the definition in English (and an English translation of the sentence) if you want to:

click to enlarge

As you see, my setup (which is the one on the first screenshot on this page) has the kanji from the front plus the reading in hiragana, the definition and the sample sentence.

If you are getting your sentences from online reading the process is fully automatic: one keypress for everything. If you are using Rikaisama as an Anki-helper to add words you found elsewhere, you need to go find your own sample sentence. There are plenty of ways to do this. You can use DenshiJisho’s sentence function or the very extensive Weblio sentence database (both of which have English translations) or you can just Google for a sentence. And of course you can always type in the sentence from your book or anime (or copy from the subs file) if you want to use the sentence in which you originally found the word.

The advantage of this is that you can choose a sentence that you think exemplifies how the word is used or perhaps clarifies something not made clear by the definition.

You don’t need a sentence for every word. You can use your own judgment to decide which words would benefit from having an example sentence.

For most of us using Anki as an immersion assistant, this is more like semi-automation than the full automation of the rest of the Rikaisama-to-Anki card-making process, but it still streamlines the procedure and makes adding sample sentences a lot quicker  and easier – and therefore makes one rather likelier to do it!

And it is worth doing because when a sample sentence is needed, it can be a huge help in understanding the word.

Part of the Anki for self-immersionists Master-Class series

湿る vs 濡れる Shimeru vs Nureru – the wet kanji

Kanji, Vocabulary

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 damp sheets 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♪