are there rules for what kanji get furigana?

sometimes it seems easy, common readings get furigana'd in spite of more difficult ones not getting any

@jlptn1 I believe there was a question about it.. here:

@jlptn1 I feel like the words I need furigana for and the ones that get it don't always match...

@ento thanks!

@silvermaple yeah, I wonder if this is something related to how foreigners learn japanese compared to how natives do

I think so

like how the iroha alphabet is

and we learn the a i u e o way

When I was studying german I was surprised to find that the native speakers learned the cases in reverse order from the way I was thought

*taught

iroha?

it's a different ordering for the characters than a i u e o

kind of like the abc song

oh, I learned it "a i u e o"

i think gojuon (a i u e o) is standard now, but i guess a long time ago iroha was the standard

oh, i see, i see

@jessecurry Although I assume "books-on-tape" exist in Japan, Drama CDs might fit what you're looking for a bit better

Yeah, I've seen those. I was hoping for some novel-length Japanese-only audio books

I'm a software developer and want something going on in the background. I don't understand much now, but I would like to become accustomed to listening to native Japanese

I don't think I could give it enough attention while working.. Actually I've tried but it just ended up being background noise. I don't know, maybe it helps on some subconscious level.

Learning by osmosis.

Just maintain the concentration gradient between brain and audio-material.

I'm really just trying to have background noise. Hopefully it will help me to pick out words at a native speakers pace

Going to be tough getting the code through review when variables start being named in Japanese.

:)

Luckily I'm the one that does the reviews

If you keep playing it over and over as you continue your studies, you'll end up having that feeling when you hear something you know you've heard over and over, but now you understand it

:) That's a great feeling

The fist time I saw spirited away after I started learning Japanese, all I could understand where a few isolated words (お母さん、お父さん、とか) and when someone asked a question (か！someone asked a question!!)

I love watching it now and remembering

@silvermaple That feeling makes me anxious over the fact that if I heard something different on the same level - I probably won't understand it.

sometimes I come back to a movie that I can comprehend now, but didn't before, and notice that everything was really pretty easy to begin with - in terms of vocabulary and grammar I should have been able to understand it the previous time, but just wasn't comfortable enough parse the information.

the weird thing is that I always remember it as being at a way higher level

actually i guess that's a pretty common phenomenon not limited to language learning.

Why did I go shopping on an empty stomach.. I got breakfast for a month. I don't even eat breakfast.

haha

I'm quite guilty of that as well

I'm tempted to ask "What is the definition of a 'word' in Japanese?" on the site.

for example, are the transitive and intransitive versions of 触れる different words?

There are a handful of cases where multiple kanji are used interchangeably. Are they all the same word?

My troll sense is tingling

@gibbon I do NOT live under a bridge!

I just sortof assume that a kana-only spelling of a word and kanji-using spelling are still the same word.

:) No it's a fine question. I don't think you'll get a straight answer on it though. I don't think SE is suited for such inevitable discussions. (isn't that partially what the chat is for?)

..though yes, I can't see why kana-spelling and kanji-spelling would make different words.

A Many-to-one relationship is normal with the spoken-to-written language. Japanese is a bit strange in being many-to-many

@jessecurry If you want background then the last thing I would want is a novel to get used to spoken Japanese. Can you just get one the radio stations on line? It depends on taste but J-Wave is my choice in the car - mainly through lack of knowing other stations but - but you get a magazine type mixture of music and chat, lots of interviews with actors, authors, outside broad casts and it is spiced up with lots of English.

Since I'll be writing code I'd just want some talk or light music, if you can point me to a streaming station that plays continuously I'd love to know. One of the guys in my office was able to find me a podcast, I have to restart it every 45 minutes, but it's ok otherwise.

for light music... lastfm actually works pretty well

@jessecurry I just installed some app (android) called TuneIn Radio.. Seems like it might have something for you.

@gibbon Given that linguists actually do study this language... I would assume they've decided what exactly they mean by "word", though.

So, there should actually be an answer

might be

I blame this train of thought on taylor... his rather nitpicky questions about synonyms and such led me down this path

He does like his linguistics

From that, I realized that the English linguistics term "homograph" is tricky with Japanese, due to the multiple writing systems

@gibbon I took a look at TuneIn yesterday, I couldn't get any of the Japanese talk stations to work.

I see.. I only tried one and it was music playing at the time.

I'm listening to a business podcast right now :)

And I'm going to sleep :) Good luck, please report back if you find something better.