Wow, what a busy week it’s been. The only Japanese I have had time for has been in the cracks between other things…so today I am posting a round up of miscellaneous bits that passed under me last week. Now it’s the weekend again, I have time to make this a somewhat bumper entry and I think it’s good to keep a record!
Firstly…what was I trying to do with today’s title?
日曜日
(にちようび)
“nichi-yōbi”
Sunday
追いつく
(おいつく)
“oitsuku”
catching up
日曜日に追いつく
(にちようびにおいつく)
“nichi-yōbi ni oitsuku”
catching up with/to Sunday
This might not make very much sense and I hesitated to put it in the title to this entry because it is almost certainly not natural Japanese. However, “catching up to Sunday” isn’t really natural or conventional English, either. I meant it in a figurative sense of being behind on a journey and “catching up” not to a person but to a day. I felt it might be appropriate for this entry.
Below is a more conventional use of oitsuku, taken from an example on Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC:
トムに追いつくために走らなければならなかった
(とむにおいつくためにはしらなければならなかった)
“tomu ni oitsuku tame ni hashiranakereba naranakatta”
I had to run to catch up with Tom
Hopefully the license I took with 日曜日に追いつく isn’t too egregious. Indeed, sometimes new uses of language come from speakers applying what they know in a logical sense that then catches on. Who knows?
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One new place I have been getting Japanese content from is JapanesePod101. I searched for some topic vocabulary sheets and Google put me onto the site. I had to register to get access to printable versions and after registering was then barraged with emails, mostly with a bias towards getting me to become a premium member. For this reason, I’m not sure that I recommend the site but as a free account user it’s still pretty cool to get a daily email with a Japanese word of the day.
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I have continued to enjoy Steph and Locksleyu’s blogs. Check them out, if you haven’t already!
Locksleyu had a particularly prolific week of posting. Lots of interesting stuff there in the recent entries.
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P has a super-cool habit of putting Japanese sentences into our emails, which is something I need to start doing myself (“wah but I don’t want it to kill my ‘natural voice’ wah”). Below is one from the previous week.
昨日、ケンブリッジで友達に会いて、私たちは昼ごはんを食べました
(きのう、けんぶりっじでともだちにあいて、わたしたちはひるごはんをたべました)
“kinō, kenburijji de tomodachi ni aite, watashitachi wa hiru gohan o tabemashita”
Yesterday, I met friends in Cambridge and we had lunch
Something I find interesting about this is that “Cambridge” is written ケンブリッジ rather than ケンブリジ or ケンブリージ. That is, the “idge” part of the word is with a double “j” – which comes out in pronunciation as a slight pause before “dge” after the “i” sound. I wouldn’t have expected that, but it does make sense for how we say the word!
* * * *
I stumbled upon an interesting language article on the Japan Times website and discovered that they have many such articles. You can see them all under the “language” category. I find that newspaper to be quite sensationalist and even in the language category there is some absolute guff, but it’s still a good mine for miscellaneous language information.
* * * *
Finally, three fun tweets:
同じレベルで遊んでくれる友達って大事よね
(おなじれべるであそんでくれるともだちってだいじよね)
“onaji reberu de asonde kureru tomodachi tte daiji yo ne.”
It’s important to have friends who play at the same level
As a passionate gamer I totes feel this vibe. But it’s also important for learning languages 😉
An MTG-related comic, which today’s header image is snipped from. I will translate it for you in a later entry 😉
A rather nifty diagram from a language master 😉
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Naturally it would have been nicer to spread these through the preceding week, but sometimes work and life gets in the way!
