Homophones and Kanji... Yuck

Today I sat down at iKnow... it still wanted me to do 40... so I did.

I've got this nightmarish conundrum I'm trying to sort out.
If I'm saying them correctly...

締める - shimeru - tighten, fasten
閉める - shimeru - close
閉まる - shimaru - be closed
開く - hiraku - open

They're all so similar it's hard to come up with ways to memorize! ugh...

I've also got
きれい(kirei) - clean, pretty
嫌い - kirai - hated, disliked

single vowel differences are a pain for me.
You'd think it'd be easier... like clean v. clone in English... but nope.

Two notable things I learned...
六日 - muika - 6 days, 6th of month
六つ - muttsu - six (things)
I need to learn the whole list of these...

I learned this too.
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny(weather)
It's easy, because it sounds close to "haru", which is 春, spring (season


I've been a little slow at responding to answers... I need to work on focusing better.

My other interesting misc were:
直る - naoru - be repaired, return to normal
お姉さん - older sister (another form... i need to go look up lists and differences. I think this is formal)
辺 - hen - vicinity, area, part
易しい - yasashii - easy, simple


The sentence I'm studying for the day is this:
私はパンよりご飯が好きだ。
I prefer rice over bread (or the other way around, i can't remember)
I'm trying to figure out how comparisons work.

Going on to Grade 2... And Multitasking

Actually, I have two cases of multitasking.
One happened, and the other is a long term plan.

Tonight I watched TV for a few hours, and during that time I had my 日本語 out on my lap.

I decided to write out the grade 2 kanji. It's helped me tremendously already.
As laborious as writing them can be, it allows me to see them in my mind.

That's necessary if I'm ever going to be able to write Japanese - also, it improves recognition dramatically.

The second case is my long-term plan. I plan to sit down and work at Smart.fm / iKnow as weel as writing. After I get done with grade 2, I'll probably write the iKnow vocab Kanji.

My vocabulary should begin to increase considerably.
That's provided I don't give up and slack off...

If you're curious, I just did the first 16.
They're:

引く - hi(ku) - (to) pull, draw
羽 - ha; hane - counter for birds&rabbits; wing, blade, feather
雲 - cumo - cloud
園 - en,sono - suffix for place, farm, garden, park
遠い - too(i) - far, distant
何 - nan, nani - what
科 - ka - dept., section, family (taxonomy)
夏 - natsu - summer
家 -　ie/uchi - house/home
歌う - uta(u) -(to) sing
画 - kaku - stroke, element (of art, kanji, etc)
回 - kai - occurences, innings(baseball)
会う - a(u) - (to) meet
海 - umi - sea,beach
絵 - e - picture, drawing, painting, sketch
外 - soto - outside

Finally Finished!!! (With My Writing Practice)

I've got to stop writing these so late at night. Also, I need to actually go to my blog and post them... I'm falling way behind...

Anyway, I finished with my Kanji writing and I'm going to do some examination on what I've learned. I can't write all of them a million times each... there's literally thousands of them. It would take years at this rate.

I need to learn what I've learned, such that I can improve my overall, rather than each individually. maybe there's a place online with guidelines for determining the stroke order or something.

I am going to re-write them beneath a place where I wrote them all beforehand. That way, I'll be able to compare how much I've improved.

I may start writing Grade 2 ones, but there's twice as many. (exactly... 80 vs. 160)
So... yeah. I don't know. It'll be a lot of work. I really need to get back to iKnow/Smart.fm.

Next time I might post some stuff I've written down that I learned there recently.

Continuing to Write

Nothing new to report in the Japanese department.
I am still writing the grade 1 kanji over and over... how tedious.

I know many of them by memory.

一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八，九、十、百、千
日、月、火、水、木、金、土
子、人
大、中、小、出、右、左
赤、白、青
学、校、本、先、生、年
天、気
足、手、見、
山、
早、空、
円

These are some on the list I know how to say without looking.
Most of the ones I can't I know how they look and mean, just not a word with them off the top of my head.
If there's any you wanted to know, once again you'd find them in The First 80 Kanji.

Dragging through the Kanji

In my last piece on 日本語, I showed you the old grade 1 kanji I've been learning to write.

I'm still working on that. Not much has happened of late, though I am beginning to face some difficult realizations.

First off:
-Kanji have right to left strokes , it seems. And all kinds of other strokes.
(are you kidding!? I'm a cursed American. I wasn't taught to do this before!)

I'm learning to write correctly, as far as I can tell. Rather than look up online how to draw them, I'm just figuring it out by looking at the details. I draw them all kinds of ways, over and over until I get it right.
It's very slow and monotonous work, but I hope to see an increase in my abilities as time goes on.

There's not much to report on, other than I feel like a kindergartner. Well, I can only handle one column on that list in Writing the Kanji at a time. And yes, I'm going right-to-left. Lol...

So, yeah. That's all I got to say 'bout that.

Smart.fm Habits and Writing the Kanji

Lately I've had trouble with Smart.fm/iKnow always wanting to be down. They have issues to work out - having moved their servers from Japan to San Fran in a day, and I'm not mad... still - it makes it hard to maintain my habit of practice when I don't know when I'll be able to.

Today had a ridiculous amount of review.
All that was new was 2 each time. I covered these:
始まる - hajimaru - to begin
食べ物 - tabemono - food
ゲーム (ge-mu) - game
十 - juu - 10
天気 - tenki - weather
暑い - atsui - hot, warm

Desperate for for new material, I identified these along the way.
かゆい (kayui) - itchy
海 - umi - sea, beach
窓 - mado - window
ビデオゲーム (bideoge-mu) videogame
近所 - kinjo - neighborhood
皿 - sara - plate, dish

Hopefully next time I'll see more new.

These are the 80 Grade one Kanji I've been working on writing. I've done the first four columns so far. I'm writing them repetitively kindergarten-style. I've seen marked improvement in my ability to see them in my head - recognizing and reproducing are two different things.
I'm learning to "write" better now!
You can find the meanings in my First 80 Kanji Post.

Credit for these goes to http://www.learn-japanese.info/

iKnow Is Now A Part Of Smart.fm

Today sucks. iKnow is GONE.
By gone I mean they removed the iKnow website.
iKnow was a learning application that the iKnow site provided. Now it's Smart.fm.
The iKnow application is still there, but iKnow's website that held my items in progress, etc. appears to be gone. I had to create a new username for Smart.fm.
the iKnow address redirects to Smart.fm now.
well... it's not all bad.
I'll just move on to the Part 2 of the Core 2000 series I had been in.

The review over section 1 was getting old, anyways.


Today I worked some, but the site keeps going up and down, so I am not sure it saved...

Here's what I have to cope with for now:
時 - toki - time
閉じる - tojiru - close
切る - kiru - to cut
米 - kome - rice
線 - sen - line
決まる - kimaru - to be decided (I know i've used this kanji somewhere before... hmm...)
楽しい - tanoshii - fun, enjoyable
服 - fuku - clothes
後ろ - ushiro - back, behind
嬉しい - happy, glad

日曜日 - Nichiyoubi - Sunday (redundant... i know this)
開ける - akeru - to open, unlock (scarily close to makeru-to lose)
腰 - koshi - hip, lower back
昼 - hiru - daytime, midday
お母さん - okaasan - mother (huh... a form i didn't know)
留学生 - ryuugakusei - student studying abroad (i.e. foreign exchange student)
大学生 - daigakusei - college student (thought i did this... must remember 大学校 (college))
終わり - owari - end, conclusion (the noun form of owaru-to end I suppose)
背 - se - height
手伝う - tetsudau - help, assist

鼻- hana - nose
起きる - okiru - to occur (this is from last time! I knew 大学生 looked familiar!)
熱い - atsui - hot (something actually useful... finally.)
載せる - noseru - to place, put on (apparently you can use either kanji - 載 or 乗 )
悲しい - kanashii - sad
愛する - aisuru - to love, care for (i already know this kanji)
近く - chikaku - vicinity, nearby (another I already knew)
しゃべる(shaberu) - to chat, talk (doesn't have a kanji, oddly)
甘い - amai - sweet (food)
テーブル (teeburu) - table (an English steal)

now I have to deal with English homophones... close/clothes... lol...
well, they're not really homophones, but close enough to be disorienting.
Oh, and "sen" is also 千 - 1000. So yeah, homophones, anyone?

Anyone watch Naruto? Enough to know the character Gaara? The kanji on his forehead is love.


愛

And now for some naughty/immature humor just because I can:
彼女 は お母さん が 熱い です。
kanojo wa okaasan ga atsui desu.
ever heard that weird/dumb song stacy's mom? lol...

well... I can say more things now with my better vocab... like
昨日 私 は 新しい 服 が 買いました。
kinou watashi wa atarashii fuku ga kaimashita.
Yesterday I bought new clothes.

Well... lets keep the vocab rolling I guess... lol... I hope iKnow or Smart.fm or whatever saved my work.

iKnow is going down... and Kanji Grade 2

I need to get on iKnow more... It's supposed to go down for a while for renovation around Wednesday.

I haven't got too much done today.

You'd think I would, as it's Sunday, but I really haven't been up to anything, really.
It's falling back and I've been doing more of photoshop.

I'll get practice in, though. I can't stop just because I have less interest than usual.

I think I'll work on finishing up the Grade 2 jouyou kanji.
There's 160 of them, as opposed to the 80 I listed (in The First 80 Kanji)

I think I have like, 75% of them or somewhere about there to where I recognize them. I need to get to work in that area, though. That way I can move on to better things.

I might list them in a few days... and add the post to my Japanese Resource site.

It takes time to put such an enormous list together, though. I have to have the kanji, kana/romaji, onyomi and kunyomi together in a chart I code myself... it's rather tedious.

I also need to sit down to paper an pen and draw the kanji over and over. That should help my ability to recognize and/or reproduce them considerably.

Putting Off Today

I got my wisdom teeth out today.
I'm writing this retroactively, i.e. I wasn't conscious enough to write this today.

So unfortunately, my Japanese practice didn't get done. I'll work on it tomorrow.
I'm getting my kanji together with my vocab to see what i do and don't know still.

Back at iKnow recently, they've started giving me the last problem, where you have to spell it, twice. The first time they give me the English, like always, but now they want me to know it just looking at the kanji. It's not been so bad... yet.

It should help with my kanji recognition, I suppose. That's always a plus.

I'm to 81% with this section now. I hope to move on to number 2 soon.
I got 13 more passed off, all really old ones that beginners would know.
I think 彼女-kanojo-girl(friend) was among them. Yeah - dumb stuff.

Well, nothing else new besides that. I'm in a lot of pain right now.

The Great Kanji Matchup!!!

Tonight I did some matching of kanji from my charts.
I stopped, because I had to get to bed, but I have several marked in red that are vocab.

I haven't studied kanji in a while - vocab is more important usually, but I want to list my 180-something iKnow vocab to my charts.

I printed out new charts I'm going to find a way to hang up on my wall, and I'm using the old ones to mark what's been done.

I'm going to eventually start marking off the ones I have fully memorized on the new ones, eventually.

I need to learn to write them, too. I may get a stack of blank paper to keep and just write some of them over and over everyday.

I may just start learning to duplicate the charts!

The charts in question are Kanji grades 1,2, and 3 at Nihongo no Narau ("learn-japanese.com")

Not Much Left...

Today's iKnow sessions had all old stuff. Review is important, though.

I'm stumbling over buy/sell:
売る - uru - sell
買う - kau - buy

I get them switched sometimes...

I dealt with a rather unfavorable
変える - kaeru - to change
帰る - kaeru - return/come home ...this is the homophone I hate most.

I got 22 new ones to 100% !!! That's considering I only study 30. I probably have as little as 14/15 sessions left.
Considering I do at least 3 every time I'm on, I'll be done in week or two.

I do need to produce a chart of kanji to study - I need to learn to write them better.
Part of learning Japanese is learning to write. Reading is far easier. It takes a lot less effort to read than it does to write.

Next time is the last pre-V-Day post.
I'll have Valentine's Day phrases in a few languages, for fun. Be sure to check back after Wed. the 11 - I'll include some Spanish, French, and German, with 日本語, of course.

Peeking at Unit Two

At iKnow I did all my practice today.
I'm at 70%, and I have 20 completed.
I've said before, I'm finished "starting" all the words.

I started a new section, even though my first one isn't finished.
I did this just to see what lies ahead.

I'm doing the Core 2000 series, and there are 10-200 blocks.
I started "step 2" just to preview what's next, even though I'm still on the first one.

It gave me ten new ones... I really wasn't ready, but oh well.
閉じる - tojiru - to close
楽しい - pleasure, fun
時 - toki - time
米 - kome - rice
後ろ - ushiro - behind
嬉しい - ureshii - happy
切る - kiru - to cut
決まる - kimaru - to be decided
線 - sen - line
服 - fuku

The last three I'd forgotten and had to go find. I managed to remember the rest, though. That's good- it means I'm retaining most of what I'm learning.

Nothing New! Yay! - Issues Resolved and Electricity

I've officially handled all of the vocabulary words...
I had wondered why it only gave me one new one instead of two.

So it will all be review now.
腕 - ude - arm
That's it for now.

I've studied to write - it's just 書く - kaku.
That had been bugging me for a while.
I'm glad to have something authoritative finally clarify.

My latest blunders and wonders are:
電話 - denwa - telephone (not iKnow vocab)
電車 - densha - train
電気 - denki - light or electricity(not iKnow vocab)
自転車 - jitensha - bicycle

In case you haven't noticed my pattern, I've discovered a new common kanji.
It's electricity - 電. the typical pronunciation is den-____.
It isn't a word by itself - electricity is 電気(denki)

A couple more fun words with it:

電子 - denshi - electron
電池 - denchi - battery
停電 - teiden - power outage/blackout
電圧 - denatsu - voltage
電光 - denkou - lightning
電動 - dendou - electric
電卓 - dentaku - calculator
電線 - densen - power line(s)
電撃 - dengeki - electric shock

your calculator's battery was shocked by lightning!
私の電卓の電池は電光で電撃だった！

lol... sorry. I couldn't resist. lol... No pun intended either.

Kanji Confusion - Reading/Writing

I didn't do much with Japanese today.
I did run into a bit of confusion with some kanji today,

and I'm trying to set some things straight.

the kanji for "to read", "to write", "writings", etc. have me all scrambled.

ok...

to read is
読む - yomu

to write is
書く - kaku

but, to write down (for the purpose of being remembered)...
to write down is 記す - shirusu

to write down/ compose (song/poem) is
詠む - also yomu !!!

so...
write=yomu
write down=shirusu
compose=yomu
read=yomu

confused? I am... but writing all this down has helped.

Expanding My Vocabulary

I've learned a lot of new words recently.

This is all thanks to using that iKnow website's application. It's been very handy.
I have several study cards laid out, with what is approaching a hundred words.

A couple I know off the top of my head -

始める - hajimeru - to start
買う - kau - to buy
売る - uru - to sell
分かる - wakaru - to understand
若い - wakai - young (got these two mixed up at first)
少ない - sukunai - few, little
高い - takai - tall, expensive (building, price)
帰る - kaeru - to return, to go back
変える - kaeru - to change (I still confuse these)
家 - uchi/ie - house/home
作る - tsukuru - to make, to create
置く - oku - to put
聞く - kiku - to hear/listen, to ask
飛ぶ - tobu - to fly
住む - sumu - to live

and a few more I had to look at that I knew but couldn't remember...

時間 - jikan - hour, time
知る - shiru - to know
近く - chikaku - near, close to
近い - chikai - near, soon
顔 - kao -face
言う - iu - to speak/say
続く - tsuduku - to continue/follow
思う - omou - to think
走る - hashiru - to run
立つ - tatsu - to stand, rise
戻る - modoru - to return, turn back

I'm not perfect, but it's helping me a lot! I'm excited!

now, I know and can use more Japanese!
今、私はもう日本語に知る使う！

New Words and Kanji

I have a new word I've picked up.
It's it's music, ongaku.

音楽
The kanji are sound (on) + music/comfort (gaku).

Take note there's a homophone here, which occurs (very!) often in Japanese.
gaku is also learning, or 学
so gaku ≠ gaku if we're talking 学 and 楽

Keep also in mind that in general, 音読みis for pairs and 訓読み is for individuals.
Why?
alone, 学 is gaku, and
alone, 楽 is raku. gaku is the chinese onyomi for pairs for 楽.
(See Kanji - the Chinese Characters for further explanation.)

I'm hoping to get more words like this lodged in my brain once school is over and I have time... It's going to be sad when it ends, though... I'm going to miss all of my friends...

Iku versus Okonau

I am rather annoyed with this character. What character is it?
This one.

行
It has a double meaning.

I hate double meanings.

行く, iku, is a word I am familiar with; it means "to go"

行う, okonau, is a word... but wait... THE SAME KANJI ??? That's retarded.
okonau is the verb "to do".

I have them straightened, so there's no confusion... but I am still learning more complicated verb conjugations, and how and I supposed to know which is which in a real context ???

That's my annoyance of the day.

彼 は 読み書き が できる。
kare wa yomi+kaki ga dekiru.
He can read and write.

And that's the word for today - できる/dekiru - to be able (to).

Teasing Translations

My roommates got people pumpkins for the night we carved them... he left a note on the dry erase board afterward...

I need money
for the pumpkins ($5)
Thanks!

I erased and replaced it with Japanese, just to be annoying...

わたしは南瓜の
金をください ($5)
ありがとう！

I got some kinda threat about spreading my jibberish... lol...
in doing so, I discovered a new word - kabocha, or pumpkin.
the kanji for it is 南瓜, southern+melon. Interesting, huh?

I also got down the word for fountain/spring. It's izumi, 泉 .

I never did look up the word "Halloween"... I'll probably make a list of all the holidays sometime soon.
In the meantime, I need to work on my areas of discipline, that I covered previously.

If anyone is curious, I'm beginning to translate whole sentences. If you want you can submit sentences and I'll translate them for you and post them here.
ではまた！

A Student Of...

I've been learning a few words of education and profession.
my sentence for the day:
彼は医学の学生だ。
かれはいがくのがくせいだ。
kare wa igaku no gakusei da.
He is a medical student.

the knowledge/discipline of medicine is igaku, 医学。
student, a rather common and important word to know, is gakusei, 学生。
so I'm a student of japanese, 日本語の学生。

I've been looking at areas of knowledge, and found these:

(forensic)medicine is (法)医学, (hou)igaku.
physiology is 生理学, seirigaku.
psychology is 心理学, shinrigaku.
nutritional science is 栄養学, eiyougaku.
anatomy is 解剖学, kaibougaku.

science is 科学, kagaku.
chemisty is 化学, also pronounced kagaku.
biochemistry is 生化学, seikagaku. (the kanji 生 means life)
physical science(physics) is (物)理学, (butsu)rigaku.
biology is 生物学, seibutsugaku.
astronomy is 天文学, tenmongaku.

history is 私学, shigaku.
law is 法学, hougaku.
humanities is 人文科学, jinbunkagaku.

language(linguistics) is (言)語学, gengogaku.
lierature is 文学, bungaku.

geometry is 幾何学, kikagaku.
mathematics(algebra) is (代)数学, (dai)suugaku.

Solving the Riddle

I finally solved a problem with a Japanese word I had found!
I've been battling it forever. It's hard to find the meaning to conjugated verbs on the internet. Especially if you're not familiar with every single conjugation.
So, I've been battling this one,
by the name of 命じられた. That's meijirareta for you English folk.
And I'm not totally helpless- I know what 命 is.

命じ(る) is the verb "to command".
That's all I could gather. But no one would elaborate on "-rare-", and you can't exactly type it into search engines, unless you're looking for something, well, "rare". So I was stuck.

Turns out, to conjugate a verb in passive voice (perform v. be performed), you simply drop the ending infinitive U from RU for A and add RERU. That gives you 命じられる!
Which isn't the same, of course. But past tense you replace RU with TA.
And the end result? "was commanded": 命じられた.

So... maybe I should stop relying so much on kana for conjugation; it seems sound can change, and rearrange them.

I'm so proud of myself -- or rather, I feel much less stupid now.
And that's how it happened. The end.