日本語の道

Literature

While I was browing at a book shop I stumbled across 'Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text', by Giles Murray.

Seven famous Japanese stories in different genres - from comedy to horror - are presented here, in a bilingual format for students of Japanese. Each page of Japanese contains a full English translation and a guide to grammar and vocabluary. Each story is also prefaced with an author biography, story background and helpful hints for reading.

I was tempted to buy the book, but then I thought of all the books I haven't finished yet which are sitting on my shelf. Have you read this book? Any opinions?

The audio files that accompany the book can be downloaded from the Breaking into Japanese Literature site.

One Year On

去年のこの日日本から戻ってきた。もう一年が経つなんて信じられない。時間が本当に早く経つものだよね。

今でも日本が恋しいけどイギリスに戻るのは思ったほど悪くない。もちろん日本の友達とさようならをするのが悲しかったけど、もう会えないわけじゃないし、たまにメールで連絡をとってるから大丈夫だ！それに日本よりこっちにいたほうが仕事の機会があって戻ってよかった。

もったいないのは俺の日本語の実力だ。日本語を忘れないように勉強はしてるけど、毎日使う必要はなくてなかんか難しい。日本語を読むとよく「この漢字が読めるはずなのに…知ってたのに…読めなくなった！」って思って、落ち込まないでいられない。覚えた単語を全部思い出せなくてもこの一年間の間に新たな単語を覚えたはず。

日本語を話すと「俺はこんなに遅く話してたっけ？」と思う。それにイギリスにいる日本の友達がみんな英語が分かるから自然に英語の言葉をまぜてしまう。でも日本語で話す相手がいてくれて感謝してる。皆さん、我慢して俺の日本語を聞いたり、言葉を教えたりしてくれてありがとうございます。これからもよろしくお願いします。

Blog Power

A number of my Japanese friends read my English blog. Some, I have recently found, are using my posts for their English study. I think I should try the same. Here is an interesting post from NavyBlue-san's blog.

Here are a number of kanji which I couldn't read properly:

溢れる あふれる - to flood, to overflow, to brim over
欧米 おうべい - Europe and America, the West
互換 ごかん - interchangeable
充電 じゅうでん - charging, electrification
縮小 しゅくしょう - reduction, curtailment
熟す こなす - to break to pieces, to digest, to handle easily
撤退 てったい - evacuation, withdrawal, repeal, retreat
添付 てんぷ - appended, attached
汎用 はんよう - generic, general purpose, all-purpose
敷居 しきい - threshold
呆気 あっけ - taken aback, dumbfounded

NavyBlueさん、ありがとうございます。
勉強になりました！

Verb Combo

One thing that you may find initially confusing while learning Japanese are compound verbs like 飛び出す(とびだす). This means to 'jump out', 'dash out', etc. Many like this example have obvious meanings, while others are not so obvious.

I came across a number of different examples from a textbook earlier today:

雨が降り続いています（ふりつづく）> continue to fall
うわさを打ち消す（うちけす）> deny
仕事を引き受ける（ひきうける） > undertake/accept a job
通り過ぎた（とおりすぎた） > went past (a place)
車を組み立てる（くみたてる）> put (a car) together
道路に飛び出してはいけない（とびだす）> dash out

Masu Less

One of the things you notice when looking at a Japanese newspaper is that when joining two clauses, often a Ｖます form is used instead of the て form we learn earlier in our studies:

7時に起きて準備をする。

A friend of my encouraged me to write using this form when writing my Japanese diary. Although I had assumed it was a fairly formal way of writing, I was assured that it was fine for my casual diary (then again, this friend prefers ので to から and so on).

In any case, I came across something which I presume could be exception to this rule. That is, verbs like 出ます and 来ます which have only one consanant-vowel pair before ます in their ます form. It would seem unlikely, I told myself, for 出ます to become simply 出 and 来ます to become 来 but I could be wrong. In this case do we need to revert to て form (出て and 来て)?

Bent Shaver

Today's new word: 反る（not 剃る）e.g. the slightly curved surface of a cricket bat.

剃る（そる）ー　shave
反る（そる）ー　curve, be warped, to bend (backward)