Bah. 燃料 is impossible to pronounce for me. In particular, リョウ ends up sounding like ニョウ (how embarrassing... :-).

I think ンリ is usually fine for me (like シンリ or ケンリ or whatever), but for some reason ンリョ is impossible.

Oh, huh! Because ネンリョウ starts with an /n/, I produce it by putting my tongue to my teeth, and the second /n/ ends up going there too, which results in having to do some weird jump-back with my tongue to further back in my mouth to make the /r/ sound, which is almost impossible.

On the other hand, with other words like シンリ, my tongue never goes as far as the teeth for the /N/, so it doesn't need to jump back for the /r/.

Or something like that... :-) I'll figure it out eventually.

Yeah, I use the non-top allophone when pronouncing シンリ and ケンリ. It's really hard in ネンリョウ for some reason. I think カンリョウ is slightly easier but I might also be pronouncing that wrong. Will need to check with a native speaker...

Hmm. When I make the non-tap allophone /r/, I seem to need to make it further back in my mouth... if I make it near the front it sounds like /n/, not /r/ (even if I do it in complete isolation, like saying /ri/).

More practice needed on my part, I'll stop blogging about it here. :P

@broccoliforest はい！見てすぐわかりました

@DariusJahandarie よくわかんないけど・・

「り」のときも、舌は後ろに下がらない気がします

「ねんりょう」の、「ね」のときと「り」のときの舌の位置は、そんなに違わないような。。

ちょっとくらい下がるのかな

@snailboat √だ？

どこかな

見えない

おおお！√da ！

へ～

新しい発音用語とかかな・・？って

その本、あんまり新しそうじゃないなあ

５０年かあ・・半世紀

ここでは↓、まだ「Japanese Language and Usage Stack Exchange」

japanese.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

おお！ｗｗ

ん？

なんか変・・

「今日は京都に行きます」 って 「今日」を強調してるかなあ。。

そうですね、どこを強く読むか・・・

むつかしいなあ

I think 今日は、京都に行きます is often translated like "As for today, I'm going to Kyoto"

In "As for today, ~~", is "today" emphasized?

It's often 既知情報, old information

so I would say 今日は京都に行きます to reply to 今日はどこに行くの？

and in that 今日は京都に行きます, 京都 is emphasized

And I think I'd say 今日、京都に行きます to reply to いつ京都に来るの？

In that 今日、京都に行きます、 「今日」 is the important/new information

(もしくは「京都には、今日行きます」とか・・。回りくどいかもしれないけど)

ほほう・・・そうすると、

かならずしも、いつも　as for とは、訳せないね・・

"Where are you going today?" -- "As for today, I'm..."

は、おかしいのね・・

I think the main reason "as for" is used is because it allows are "piece-by-piece" translation of things that otherwise don't translate piece-by-piece, like 私は寿司です。

But usually "as for" has the entirely wrong nuance, I'd venture.

wrong... そおなのねｗ

(I think the 'real' explanation of that sentence is two-part: 1. 注文 or similar is omitted/implicit: 私は注文が寿司です。 2. A は-marked argument can play a 'possessor' role, in this case of the implicit 注文.)

(Seeking nicer way to put #2. :P)

(But we see the 'possessor' thing crop up again in passives, like 私はケーキを食べられた => 私のケーキ so I think it's a good way to explain things overall.)

Hahaha.

(Of course those sentences both work with が too given the right context, so it's more "subject" than "は-marked argument", I guess... anyways, enough of this parenthetical tangent.)

My kanji learning has been going good lately! Still reading 下町ロケット (~70 pages in currently), and I recently found an app called Skritter which is basically an SRS for actually hand-writing (or finger-writing, rather) kanji! It's awesome, fun, and super duper helpful for me. Writing things down really forces you to break them down, which is really good in the long run, since you can quickly remember new kanji via their parts.

Since I came into the process knowing how to read a bunch of kanji and write none, it's so weird being able to write some kanji and not read them (the app teaches writings before readings).

One downside of using this app is that my handwriting is somewhat sloppy. No sloppier than a bunch of native speakers I'd guess, but that isn't saying much thinking of my own English handwriting :P.

I at least get the 筆順 right, and the proportions mostly right.

Haha. :)

I was so shocked when I tried writing something by hand and was magically able to despite only having used the app.

Another downside of the app is that the vocab lists it comes with. Basically a bunch of users (and sometimes the company itself I think) have compiled lists using books which have lists of vocabulary in them. The downside is that most of these books/lists are focused on just teaching you, well, words, not teaching you kanji (i.e., teaching 2-3 high frequency words for each reading of the kanji in order for you to learn the kanji).

I have no interest in learning vocabulary from the app. I'd rather learn that naturally.

I think that might work if I knew how to write the kanji character itself, just not know which kanji goes with the word. But since I can't actually write the character, having a bunch of different words show up with the same character is pretty helpful for grasping its meaning and think of mnemonics, etc to remember how to write it.

Thankfully, there are some books/lists which focus on kanji which I'm currently using -- the lists compiled from Basic Kanji Book and Intermediate Kanji Book. They are pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.

The problem is that they end somewhere around the 教育漢字.

Which is certainly miles ahead of where I currently am, but leaves a long way to go.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that (and already feeling the results to a degree!).

Another thought I have is finding some lower-level 漢検 books and scraping the words out of them to try and learn that way. To-be-seen if that actually results in an effective list (not making any bets).

I've heard good things about 漢検ステップ series.

This looks neat!

おんぷじてん・・・・？へえ

漢字検定1級合格14回！

びっくりだな

すごっ

１４回ってどういうこと（笑）

そんなに何回も受ける意味あるのかなｗｗ

０級必要だなこの方には

あはは

ともあれ、一級をチャレンジするために作ったこの辞書から学ぶのはまだまだだと思うんだから、とりあえず教育漢字だな。

頑張るぜ！

部首で分けてないんだって。私なんか、部首、苦手なんで、いいかも

@DariusJahandarie ぐわんばってください＾＾

ありがとう！今の調子だと年末まで克服できるから、元気溌剌。

溌剌　←　わっ。なにこれよめないｗｗ

フフフ

笑、今これ変換で出てきた→　(ΦωΦ)ﾌﾌﾌ…

え、ちょっと・・・

阿蘇山が噴火した？

@ssb さんは阿蘇に引っ越すって言ってたような気が・・

@snailboat あっ、はつらつ

か～

にてる・・

勅　にも若干にてる。。

せめてパソコンの画面では区別がつかないですな

日と曰みたいな

手書きだときっとわかんないよｗｗ

（笑）

確かに…

英語圏では「ッ」はたまに顔文字として使われてる。最初に見た時は本当にどういう意味で使われてるかわからなかった。

★☆Sarahッ★☆みたいな

私も、言われるまで、顔だってわかんなかったですね

あはは

「あはは」て・・　もっと回答せんかーい。何のためにワシが辞めたんかわからへんやないかいな！

私は寿司です

@snailboat 「または」はちょっと堅いです

なんか説明書っぽい言い方

「あるいは」とか「もしくは」なら話し言葉でも使えるかも

「それか」 (sentence-initial only)

I said a wrong thing too, I think! せめて→少なくとも in せめてパソコンの画面では区別がつかないですな.

Reminds me to write more and put it on lang-8.

@DariusJahandarie oh, I noticed it too

でもどう直せばいいのかわからなくて

@DariusJahandarie これもよく見ると、「思うんだから」→「思うから」

ああ、迷ってたそこ。（笑）

(if I understand correctly)

あ

一級 に チャレンジ

でもすごく上手です、直すところが数えるほどしかないので

ELLも卒業してた…

@broccoliforest いやいや、まだまだです。もっと複雑な文章を書こうとするとさらに間違いを犯すレベル。丁寧な訂正、ありがとうございます！本当に助かります。^^

@DariusJahandarie いえいえ、僕の英語に比べれば…

Chinese Languageはまだbetaか…

I wonder how many sites they had graduate this time

See the bottom-right of this image:

rofl. Dear god.

What could that possibly be for?

Looking through stackexchange.com/sites, I really can't see any other site it would obviously be for. Maybe Pets, or Anime? But it makes borderline no sense for both of those too. Let's hope whoever created that image just wanted to draw a hello kitty picture because they were bored.

It seems like a bunch of people have an interest in Japanese when we manage to get on the Hot Network Questions list. I wonder why we aren't retaining the majority of those people.

@DariusJahandarie because the overall volume is tiny would be my guess.

Volume?