Singularity on the Plane

In the spirit of recursivity, I hunted words from the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia. I got 204 words, which boosted my word count to 2368.

There are some interesting findings…

First, "programmer" and "user" have 2 forms, one with an elongated end and one without. Compare プログラマー (puroguramaa) and ユーザー (yuuzaa) vs. プログラマ (purogurama) and ユーザ (yuuza). Does this duality exist in similar cases? In EDICT, I found メンバー (membaa) and メンバ (memba) which both mean member. However, for other words like ライダー (raidaa, rider), リーダー (riidaa, leader), and スイマー (suimaa, swimmer), there is no corresponding form.

Second, there are 2 versions of "version" (no pun intended). In this article ヴァージョン (vaajon) is spotted. Another form (not in this article) is バージョン (baajon). In general, foreign words with "v" can be transliterated to v (like ヴ (vu) and ヴァ (va)) and b (like バ (ba) and ブ (bu)). For example, ヴィールス (viirusu) and ビールス (biirusu) are both valid (don’t say balid) transliteration of "virus". It all depends on the taste of the user. From what I see, the b form is a lot more popular (not limited to those 2 examples, but generally).

Third, some unexpected katakana: カジュアル (kajuaru, casual), サーチ (saachi, search), シソーラス (shisoorasu, thesaurus), オランダ (oranda (suspiciously similar to "belanda"), Holland)

Being illiterate sucks, so I have decided to learn grade 4 kanji after my word count reaches 2500.

Here are the words from this article (which also ends the entry):

Well, probably not that random. Most of them are taken from the non-main text (navigation etc.) of the Japanese Wikipedia.

With the addition of those 16 words, my word count is now 2164.

What song could give 78 new words? It’s "Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari", or "The Story of Noisy Girls" in English.

In this song, each Momusu member is described by other members in a comical-but-somewhat-true way. Since each 14 (yes, fourteen) members gets their own short story, there are lots of vocabulary in this song! The fact that this song is more "chattery" rather than "poetic" could be another significant factor.

Stats:

• Previous "average new words/song": 20.09
• New words in this song: 78
• New "average new words/song": 24.92
• Total words in word list: 2148

This is from Morning Musume’s 29th single.

Stats:

• Previous "average new words/song": 20
• New words in this song: 21
• New "average new words/song": 20.09
• Total words in word list: 2070

This is a song from Final Fantasy IX (never played the game myself). Created by Nobuo Uematsu, the celebrated composer of the Final Fantasy series. An English version of the song also exists.

Stats:

• Previous "average new words/song": 20.44
• New words in this song: 16
• New "average new words/song": 20
• Total words in word list: 2049

I have a high school friend that is a fan of X Japan, in the truest sense of the word. He would bring his guitar to school and play X’s songs during the break. From him, I know some of X’s songs.

My favorite X Japan song is Endless Rain, a very sad ballad. It is the subject of the current word dump.

Stats:

• Previous "average new words/song": 20
• New words in this song: 24
• New "average new words/song": 20.44
• Total words in word list: 2033

This song is vocabularily challenging (vocabularily, just made that up). From the two words ころし (murder) and まやく (narcotic), you can probably paint a certain image of the band and their songs.

Anyway, the word koe (voice) appears in this song using the unusual 聲 instead of 声. The kanji is in KANJIDIC but it is not in EDICT nor in Windows XP’s IME. I don’t know the nuance conveyed by 聲.

Still on the topic of kanji, the word utsusu is also written using a rare kanji 寫す. It also isn’t in EDICT nor in Windows XP’s IME.

It is interesting to note that this rock band is closely related to Morning Musume. How? Well, ex-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi likes both X Japan and Morning Musume! (his favorite song is X Japan’s Forever Love)

49 random words from no particular source. Some are from Japanese Wikipedia’s non-main text (navigation etc), some are from Haromoni, some are kanji-related terminologies from the English Wikipedia article on Kanji.

With this my word count is 2009. When will I start to learn grade 4 kanji? Probably after my word count reaches 2500 or 3000. Still haven’t decided the sweet spot.

Notice that the title is now “Song word dump” instead of plain “word dump”. This is because I’ve recently started gathering words from Wikipedia articles (which will subsequently be titled “Wikipedia word dump”).

This word dump is from Morning Musume’s 2nd latest single, 「Ambitious! 野心的でいいじゃん」 (Ambitious! Yashinteki de Ii jan):

Stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 20.5
• New words in this song: 16
• New “average new words/song”: 20
• Total words in word list: 1960

Note the word おたがいさま (oTAGAIsama) which means “we are of equal status in this regard”. In Go, when two players are of the same strength, the games they play will not use handicap and is called “TAGAIsen”.

For the last 2 songs, the new word count is lower than average. Easy songs, or law of diminishing returns?

In Bahasa Indonesia “berdua” (dua = 2) means “together (2 people)”, “bertiga” (tiga = 3) means “together (3 people)”, and so on. For example, “kami bertiga tidak ikut” means “we (3 people) didn’t go”.

However, “bersatu” (satu = 1) means “to become one/united” instead of “alone (1 person)”. “Alone” is “sendiri”. “diri” means “self”, while “sen-” seems to be a prefix that is derived from “se-” which means one (segelas = one glass, serumah = (living in) one (same) house, sekelas = (being in) one (same) class).

My last word hunt is from the Japanese Wikipedia article on September 11 attacks. I only gathered words which were readable by me. For example, 事件 was skipped because I haven’t learned 件.

I think hunting words from a song is a richer experience (shouldn’t be surprising) because:

• When learning from a song, I can hear how the words are spoken (sung). Alternately, I can look at the romanization which is usually available. This helps for words with several readings (e.g., ? can be read ?? or ??). Wikipedia has a "Spoken Wikipedia" project, however there is no Japanese spoken articles until now.
• English translation is usually available for a song. This helps to know the intended meaning (e.g., ?? can mean "to deliver" and "to produce").
• The song itself provides an easy way to memorize the words. Memorizing an article, while possible, doesn’t seem to be fun.

However, vocabulary from songs is certainly limited so other sources like Wikipedia articles is a must to have a broad-enough vocabulary.

The article is gigantic, so I managed to add 262 new words:

And so my word count is 1944.

In this particular article, there are lots of place names like サンフランシスコ (sanfuranshisuko, San Francisco) and アフガニスタン (afuganisutan, Afghanistan). Some transliteration are particularly unexpected like ロシア (roshia) for Russia and インド (indo) for India (Indonesia is インドネシア (indoneshia)).

Also, at around 37%, katakana is quite pervasive. I’ve read an old katakana book trying hard to assure the reader that katakana is USED in Japanese, not to be regarded less important than hiragana and kanji. Fast forward now, I’ve read an article bemoaning that loanwords (which is written in katakana) is overused in modern Japanese.

Hunting words from article this large is very tiring. I won’t do another one immediately…