日本語の道

Good Thing

On completing a task someone said, 「いいことにしましょう」.

I said that it sounded like a future action - 'let's do something good,' I guessed. However, it is a phrase used after doing a satisfactory job.

Flu

風邪(かぜ）をひく means to catch a cold, but the verb and particle change for the flu: インフルエンザにかかる.

風邪をひかないように…

Hard Head

Some students completed a task that was given to them in little time and the Japanese teacher commented on how fast they were. The students replied 「のう が やわらかい」 with pride and said in reference to the teacher, 「のう が かたい」. So we can use 'hard' and 'soft' to refer to the sharpness of someone's mind. Now that I think about the English, what does 'sharpness' have to do with anything?

Book Battle

Whether or not the extensive discussion from the past post will continue or not here I don't know, but seeing as it has become long and is slightly off (the original) topic I am making a new post. Also, the following links may be more useful and easier to spot for other people here rather than buried in the comments section of the last post. So, the book:

Remembering the Kanji, James W. Heisig.

The basic idea behind this book is learning the kanji characters without the on/kun yomi using your imagination to keep them firmly in your memory. The second book moves on to the readings.

It's an interesting idea to leave aside the yomi-kata and learn the characters first. Using imaginative stories for remembering things is hardly a new idea, but by using 'principles' or a common set of building blocks this feels like much more of a complete memory system rather than making up totally different stories for every part of every kanji.

I've only read some of the preview so can't really give a totally useful comment but I'd suggest you have a quick look and join the discussion!

> Book preview (quite a sizeable chunk)
> Kanji clinic review

[Links and discussion credit: Roy & Tae Kim]

Kanji Cards

A friend yesterday showed me the kanji cards he is making by hand. And the other day I was reading Roy's post about kanji cards. These two things combined with the JLPT results being released have got me thinking I should start revising my kanji.

I have my first set of Tuttle flash cards which I have never really used. The idea of making cards by hand just sounds ideal but I know I'd never get around to it - or complete it if I started.

But what I realised after studying for the 2 kyu JLPT is that while I can recognise far more kanji compounds I can probably write fewer kanji than when I was studying for 3 kyu. So, firstly I'm interested in revising the kanji I should know and being able write basic kanji without straining my brain for 2 minutes before each stroke comes to mind!

Back to repetition? The daily (as much as possible) diary seemed to help a while back. I guess it just comes to down to sticking at it, whatever way you do it.

Understanding

Does ぜんぶ分からない mean 'I don't understand at all', or 'I don't understand all of it?' I would've thought the former, but I'm not sure anymore. How do we say each English sentence in Japanese? Am I thinking about this from the wrong angle? I didn't want to use だいたい or ちょっと so...

Hiragana Kanji

'Hiragana' has kanji: 平仮名
Likewise, so does 'katakana': 片仮名

Adj vs Verb

Near the beginning of studying Japanese I learnt 好き（すき） as a 「な」 adjective - 好きな. This seemed confusing enough as it was but with my poor grammar ability I just accepted it as it was taught.

Then while talking to someone about 'being liked' in English, I realised I couldn't say the same in Japanese. My calligraphy teacher said, 「好かれている」. What about 嫌い（きらい） I enquired, to which the reply was 「嫌われている」. 'So they are verbs?' I say. Yes, 好く（すく） and 嫌う（きらう）.

I wondered why I hadn't learnt this from any of my books until now. Am I the only one who thinks this is confusing?

2 kyu Passed!

It's unbelievable and I'm not sure how it's possible but here are the results as they read on my Japanese Language Proficiency 2004 certificate:

Writing/Vocabulary, 75/100
Listening, 93/100
Reading/Grammar 115/200

合格 (Passed)

I hope all of you got the results you wanted - if you're not shy then please tell us how you did.