Japanese Language

Tim

2:02 AM

@Kaji: Thanks for the info.

jkerian

7:22 AM

@snailboat Only one of the answerers here actually seem to have read his question ><

Andrew Grimm

8:19 AM

In my question meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/q/1236/91 , do I sound like I'm expecting that Japanese ought to behave in a certain way?

The first answer starts off with a snarky first sentence, and I'm wondering if my question triggered that.

Anonymous

Overall I think it's a reasonable enough question (although I don't think there are any easy answers), but maybe the middle paragraph has a presupposition that is false:

Anonymous

> For example, how do I learn that when you're eating a soup, you shouldn't use "食べる", like you would in English, but instead "飲む"? And that you use "飲む" for medicine, even when it's not a liquid?

Anonymous

We don't say 食べる or 飲む in English. We do use words like eat, drink, swallow, inhale

Anonymous

That sounds obvious, right? But there's a difference there.

Anonymous

I think jkerian is trying to point out that they don't quite line up in meaning.

Anonymous

8:33 AM

I think, based in part on the question & answer I linked to, that at its core のむ means something like "to pass something through the mouth, down the throat into the body, without chewing it"

Anonymous

So swallowing the pill without chewing it, it makes sense that you'd say のむ, and it's not really like saying "I drank the pill"

Anonymous

And by the same logic, まるのみにする or かまずにのみこむ can mean "swallow whole" (= swallow down without chewing)

Andrew Grimm

Thanks.

For the record, I try my best not to regard Japanese as "illogical" merely because they do something different from what English does. I don't want people to think I'm biased into assuming the way things are done in my native tongue is the "logical" way to do things.

Anonymous

8:50 AM

I don't think your question sounded like that

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat Thanks.

Dan Hulme

I don't think anyone who knew much English could think that it is the logical way to do anything

Chocolate

like... かく for 汗, かむ for 鼻, ひる for 屁, あう for 事故?

覚えるの大変だよね

Anonymous

@Chocolate I got a Japanese collocation dictionary, but it hasn't been very useful sadly :-(

Chocolate

I once translated 事故に遭った into english literally and said

"He met an accident"

and i was told that it didn't make much sense

I was like, "うそっ、そうなん？ええ~英語で何ていうの？？"

Then he said something like "involved in an accident" ?

たぶん

Dan Hulme

8:57 AM

"met with an accident" is perfectly good English

Andrew Grimm

@Chocolate a bit Engrishy, and hard to understand, but it doesn't sound totally stupid. People like using vague or euphemistic words.

Chocolate

げ

まぢ？？ｗｗｗｗｗ

Anonymous

Oh, collocations with accident

Anonymous

I think the most common one is "have an accident"

Chocolate

あとはね。。。「秋が深まる」was difficult to explain

have ！

おおお

Anonymous

8:59 AM

We also say that people "were in an accident"

Chocolate

"Autumn got deepened" <--- なにそれ？って言われた

Dan Hulme

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Chocolate

おお～

Anonymous

@Chocolate Meaning "it's getting to be later in autumn"?

Chocolate

確かに、met an accident は低い・・・

@snailboat たぶんそんな感じだと思うんだけど、「秋が深まる」って、日本語でも、

どういう感じなのか、ぼんやりしてて、よくわかんない。

Andrew Grimm

9:02 AM

I attribute English being illogical to being influenced by too many languages. Primarily from being on the receiving end of invasions, but made worse by being on the giving end of invasions.

(Insert the English is the crib house ***** of languages quote here)

Anonymous

@AndrewGrimm Well, all natural languages are "illogical" to some extent. But languages have complication in different spots. Some languages, for example, have practically no irregular verbs

Anonymous

@AndrewGrimm The James Nicoll quote?

Anonymous

I attribute the "illogic" to the fact that languages happen over time rather than being designed

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat yep.

Anonymous

@Chocolate One of my dictionaries says: 「すっかり秋が深まってきた」 "We are well into autumn"

Anonymous

9:04 AM

I don't really know what the nuance is in Japanese

Dan Hulme

we do have the old joke "Winter draws on"

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat no Intelligent Design for languages.

American English's "learned" is more "logical" than British English's "learnt", but it's still an Americanism.

Andrew Grimm

9:26 AM

I started googling for Japanese collocation. I ended up skimming a PDF about teaching English in Japan.

And in appendix 3, guess which verb they talked about? "nomu"!

birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/cels/essays/lexis/…

Anonymous

Oh, with the figurative meanings!

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat is the book itself bad, or is collocation an impossible task?

Anonymous

@AndrewGrimm The book doesn't seem to list common collocations, but rather, a set of idioms that not everyone would know, I think

Anonymous

There are other collocation dictionaries though, and they might be more useful

Anonymous

I was kind of curious about this dictionary

Anonymous

9:33 AM

amazon.co.jp/…

Andrew Grimm

Doing a search for collocation doesn't seem to have any matches on the resources question: meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/756/…

Anonymous

@AndrewGrimm One of the best sources I've found for seeing how words are used is in bilingual dictionaries. Big bilingual dictionaries have a lot more example sentences than monolingual dictionaries, and they often explain how the different senses are used

Anonymous

But it doesn't always tell you if a certain way of using words is common or not

Anonymous

I got an electronic dictionary, and being able to search the example sentences is helpful. It's kind of like searching ALC! :-)

Anonymous

eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E9%A3%B2%E3%82%80&ref=sa

Anonymous

9:37 AM

Although you have to be careful which entries you trust in ALC. It always has some weird ones

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat are you talking about the entries having weird Japanese language, or that the semantic content of the sentences is weird?

Anonymous

@Chocolate I wonder why it's 汗をかく

Anonymous

@AndrewGrimm They're user-submitted, and you can find both weird English and weird Japanese

Andrew Grimm

@snailboat user generated content?

Anonymous

Like, if you pretend you don't know the word snail, and you look up カタツムリ, the top result is "hodmandod"

Anonymous

9:40 AM

But if you look through the results as a whole you see "snail" everywhere

Anonymous

Or if you look up 速い, the top result is "go like stink"

Anonymous

But ALC is still useful! :-)

Andrew Grimm

Sometimes I feel like I'm learning Japanese in order to write lang-8 entries, rather than vice versa!

Anonymous

Just think of it like the Ouroboros.

Anonymous

You're learning Japanese to write Lang-8 entries, to learn Japanese, to write Lang-8 entries, to learn Japanese . . .

Andrew Grimm

9:44 AM

Another Ouroboros I have is that I the following:

Yang Muye

Oh. 庭三郎さん seems to be compiling a 文型辞典, but he hasn't being updating for years...

Andrew Grimm

I program in Ruby. I want to attend RubyKaigi, a Ruby conference in Japan. In order to go to Japan, I learn Japanese. In order to learn Japanese, I try to find Japanese flatmates. In order to find people looking to rent a room on a classifieds website, I write a computer program. That computer program is written in Ruby.

Anonymous

Hehe!

Andrew Grimm

Stack Overflow question related to parsing JMnedict.xml: stackoverflow.com/questions/23707189/…

Anonymous

I'd help, but I don't do Ruby

Anonymous

9:50 AM

So I don't know enough to help

Yang Muye

@snailboat I think it's because 汗が出ると痒くなるので、掻く{かく}

But I actually think 掻けばかくほどいっそう痒くなる

Andrew Grimm

I need to work out which dictionary to get sometime.

Anonymous

@YangMuye Hehe, 'cause it releases more histamine!

Andrew Grimm

I'm appreciative of jisho.org and Wiktionary, and I've supported them financially, but ...

The dictionary part of jisho.org has extremely terse entries.

Anonymous

I have lots of dictionaries. (I've always liked collecting dictionaries!)

Yang Muye

9:57 AM

Maybe it's originally *人に汗が掻く. Just like 木に花が咲く→木が花を咲く, *人に汗が掻く finally became 人が汗を掻く

Andrew Grimm

I haven't noticed any major faults with Wiktionary, but sometimes they don't have the word I'm after.

Anonymous

In English, I often use a lot of different dictionaries. Sometimes I find the same practice helps with Japanese

Anonymous

In Japanese, there are a number of online dictionaries you can access for free, including the two monolingual dictionaries 大辞林（だいじりん） and 大辞泉（だいじせん）

Anonymous

I personally have a preference for dictionaries with example sentences, because I think seeing actual usage is how we learn, not memorizing definitions

Andrew Grimm

In order to learn Japanese, you need to learn Japanese.

Anonymous

10:01 AM

The Progressive Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionaries are also online, freely available.

Anonymous

They have example sentences. You might find them helpful, too.

Anonymous

Here is the entry for 飲む in the Progressive J-E, via Goo: dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/59236/m0u/%E3%81%AE%E3%82%80

Anonymous

Almost all of the larger bilingual dictionaries are targeted at native speakers of Japanese. You'll notice this definition uses Japanese in clarifying the different usages, like 〔液体を口に入れる〕drink

Anonymous

But they're usable for learners of Japanese, too

Anonymous

On the same website, you can see the definition for 飲む in the monolingual dictionary, 大辞泉（だいじせん） dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/172444/m0u/%E9%A3%B2%E3%82%80

Anonymous

10:05 AM

It has a usage note at the bottom, written in Japanese

Anonymous

Weblio also has a lot of dictionaries, including both good and perhaps somewhat questionable sources

Anonymous

Here on Weblio we find the definition for 飲む in the Kenkyusha College J-E Dictionary: ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E9%A3%B2%E3%82%80

Anonymous

And if we click the 例文 ("example sentence") tab, then we get lots of bilingual English-Japanese sentences as examples, a lot like searching ALC, but with different sources

Anonymous

So these are the main online sources I can recommend for you without actually buying a dictionary

Anonymous

Daijirin, Daijisen, the Progressive J-E and E-J, the Kenkyusha College J-E and E-J, Weblio, ALC, and as you are already aware, Wiktionary, and via jisho.org EDICT/KANJIDIC etc. and the Tanaka corpus

Anonymous

10:11 AM

So you can probably use some of those to help figure out which words go together

Anonymous

Out of the seven monolingual dictionaries I have, my favorite so far is 明鏡国語辞典（めいきょう　こくごじてん） and I think I would recommend it if you're looking for one :-)

Yang Muye

@YangMuye Maybe 花を咲く is unusual, but 木が実を結ぶ and 木に実が結ぶ should be valid collocations. 人が汗をかく might be similar to that.

Dan Hulme

Apologies to Tanaka-sensei, but whenever I hear of the "Tanaka corpus", my first thought is that it consists of the example texts from Japanese for Busy People.

Anonymous

@DanHulme I don't use the Tanaka corpus because so many other resources are available

Andrew Grimm

Are there advantages of some corpuses (corpora) over the Tanaka corpus?

Anonymous

10:29 AM

manythings.org/corpus/warning.html

Anonymous

edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_Corpus

Anonymous

> Professor Tanaka's students were given the task of collecting 300 sentence pairs each. After several years, 212,000 sentence pairs had been collected.
>
> From inspection, it appears that many of the sentence pairs have been derived from textbooks, e.g. books used by Japanese students of English. Some are lines of songs, others are from popular books and Biblical passages.
>
> The original collection contained large numbers of errors, both in the Japanese and English. Many of the errors were in spelling and transcription, although in a significant number of cases the Japanese and English …

Anonymous

And see the "Warning/Disclaimer" section at the bottom.

Dan Hulme

12:32 PM

@AndrewGrimm Isn't that the idea? That way, you're learning things you actually want to say, rather than what your teacher/author thinks is important.

Chocolate

1:22 PM

@snailboat 「秋」以外に、深まるものは・・・？

愛。

友情。

親睦。

でも、「冬」「夏」「春」は、深まらないんだね。なんでだろう

理解が深まる。

アバターの、右と下に、「影」がある人とない人がいるんだけど、なぜでしょうか

Anonymous

1:46 PM

51

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Dan Hulme

@Chocolate そのアバターにマウスをたなびけ。

Chocolate

2:15 PM

おおお・・・？

ああっ、そうかぁ！

わかったｗｗｗ

ありがとおおお

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