Singularity on the Plane

This word dump is from a song in W’s first album. A short song, but a very nice one.

The obligatory stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 22.5
• New words in this song: 9
• New “average new words/song”: 20.57
• Total words in word list: 1683

The new words in this song is notably low (9). That’s because the song is short, used lots of repeated sentences, and because the lyrics isn’t wacky. A notable word is 百合 which is read yuri and means lily. For that word, both the kanji 百 and 合 is read using its nanori reading ("yu" and "ri", respectively). In that regard, I can’t help but to think the plant as a person.

PS: W, pronounced "double u" (ダブるユー in Japanese), is a H!P unit consisting of 2 graduated Morning Musume members, Tsuji Nozomi and Kago Ai.

Although I didn’t study Japanese as much as I wanted during the holiday, I still managed to accomplish something significant. I wrote all remaining grade 3 kanji with one of its reading and meaning on a book, and when I had time I made various mnemonics for them. After the holiday, I gradually added them to Mnemosyne.

So, I’ve now memorized the last 110 grade 3 kanji. Here they are:

期板柱根植業様横橋次歯死氷決油波注泳洋流消深温港湖湯漢炭物球由申界畑病発登皮皿相県真着短研礼神祭福秒究章童笛第筆等箱級終緑練羊美習者育苦荷落葉薬血表詩調談豆負起路身転軽農返追送速進遊運部都配酒重鉄銀開院陽階集面題飲館駅鼻

And here are the reading and meaning(s) I’ve memorized for those kanji:

The grade 3 kanji are supposed to be more common than higher grade kanji. However, the measure of commonality is probably based on medias I don’t touch a lot such as newspapers and books. The medias I currently consume are musics (strong bias towards Momusu/H!P), TV shows (exclusively Momusu/H!P), and sometimes movies (featuring Momusu/H!P members) and anime (any random anime I get from friends). Therefore I learned some kanji for words I’ve never encoutered before (e.g. 筆 (writing brush) and 品 (goods)) while not learning kanji for oftenly-encountered words such as "ai" (愛, love) and "namida" (涙, tear).

Also, I often encounter a radical used recurringly complex kanji while not being introduced to the radical as standalone kanji. An example is the kanji 士 (different from 土) which is used in 売, 読, 声, and 仕. I’m always curious to know the meaning of such kanji.

Therefore, supplanting the ministry of education’s common kanji, I handpicked 25 kanji used in words I oftenly encounter or used oftenly as a radical:

愛士囲初笑英達変非志仮可片優涙輩碁鈴旨駄御緒恋懐嬉

Here are the reading and meaning(s) I’ve memorized for those kanji, with some optional comments:

Armed with 200 grade 3 kanji and 25 extra kanji, I then kanjified the hiragana words in my word list. 147 words were kanjified:

Let’s give a context about the usefulness of my kanji knowledge. I now know at least 465 kanji. That’s 80 from grade 1, 160 from grade 2, 200 from grade 3, and 25 extra kanji. I know some other kanji (like 私 (I)) but I haven’t learned them "formally" (i.e., entering them to my kanji list and Mnemosyne). How useful is my current knowledge to decipher, say, a random article from the Japanese Wikipedia?

I can say that it’s pretty useless. I’ll be quite lucky to find a sentence which doesn’t contain an unknown kanji. However I’m feeling more and more closer to literacy because I can identify more fragments than previously possible.

Anyway, after tidying up, my word count is now 1674. Using my upgraded kanji knowledge, I will now switch back to "word hunt" mode.

After holiday, it’s mid semester test. The last test day is November 10th. Probably no real blog until then…