Singularity on the Plane

34 new grade 4 kanji have been learned:

浅胃祝紀約要飛借倉候孫案害帯席徒挙梅残殺浴特粉料差脈航訓連郡巣停健側

The favorite pick is 飛 which is associated with flying. An example word is 飛ぶ (tobu, to fly). 飛 gets the pick because I’ve heard it lots of time (”tonda! tonda!” in Hello! Morning) and because the strokes composing it are unusual. The writing order is even wicked, going left to right to left and then back to right again:

The least favorite pick goes to 郡 (gun) which means district. I’ve already got too many kanji related to governance such as 都 (to, metropolitan), 州 (shuu, province), 区 (ku, district), and 県 (ken, prefecture)… Those kanji are always boring.

Another kanji with unexpected writing order is 帯 (tai, band (like, valence band)). It contains a shape resembling 山 (yama, mountain) but the stroke order of that shape is different. Compare:

For the word dump related to those kanji, there are 147 new words which makes my word count 2917. What follows are the words themselves:

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I’ve learned 54 more kanji:

衣求兵束低位児冷別労努告完改希折材利臣良芸果刷卒念例典周協参固官底府径松毒治法泣牧的季芽単省便信軍勇型建昨栄

I’m now trying a policy of memorizing 3 compounds for each new kanji. For example, for the kanji 軍 (ikusa, war) I chose 軍配 (gunbai, tactics), 空軍 (kuugun, air force), and 軍用 (gunyou, for military use). This is so that I know at least one on-reading of the kanji (for 軍 it is “gun”). Previously I don’t memorize compounds if that kanji can stand by itself.

In the process of learning those kanji, I gathered 185 new words which makes my word count 2770. Azis commented on a previous post that word dumps which are too long makes the main page hard to read. I actually don’t like to separate the summary/intro and main content (”click here to view the rest” etc.). However, after rethinking it, I think the list of words itself aren’t actually something most people are going to read. Therefore I’m trying a new system: if words in a word dump exceeds 50, they won’t be displayed in the main page. Let’s see how it goes…

So, what follows is the word dump itself (more than 50, so won’t be in main page):

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So, I’ve now started learning grade 4 kanji. There are actually 200 kanji to digest, but I’ve already learned these 8 beforehand:

士愛囲初笑英達変

From the remaining 192, I’ve managed to learn 30:

不夫欠氏民史必末失包未付令以加司功札辺印争伝仲共兆各好成灯老

The stroke order of 必 (kanarazu, certainly) was unexpected. I expected it to be first writing 心 (kokoro, heart) followed by the last stroke ノ. It turns out different:

Anyway, here is the associated word dump:

67 words which makes my word count 2585.

Some language elements are naturally used by native speakers but probably hard to master by foreign language learners. An example is dozens of gobi in the Japanese language (yo, su, wa, ne, na, sa, etc). Another example is “lah” in Bahasa Indonesia. In this post I’m going to explain some use cases of “lah” (not as a suffix such as “biarlah” and “tingalkanlah”).

“Lah” can be used to emphasize a statement. An example is:

Rudi: Kamu seneng dia ya? (You like her, don’t you?)
Tono: Enggak lah! Dia kan temenku dari kecil. (Of course not! She’s my childhood friend, you know.)

Rudi: Jagoin siapa Ton? (Tono, who are you holding?)
Tono: Arsenal lah! Mana mungkin MU menang. (Of course Arsenal! MU can’t win.)

When used to start answering a question, it indicates that the answerer thinks that the answer should be obvious to the questioner.

Rudi: Ini maksudnya gimana sih? (What does this mean?)
Tono: Lah, kemarin kan udah dijelasin sama dosennya? (Didn’t the lecturer explained yesterday?)

Tono: Eh, Liat kertas tadi nggak? (Do you know where that paper is?)
Rudi: Lah, bukannya barusan kamu pegang? (Weren’t you just holding it?)

“Lah” can also be used to indicate confusion, when something expected don’t occur:

(while watching a film) Lah? Kok jagoannya mati? (Huh? The hero dies?)

(searching a book in the bag) Lah? Kok bukunya nggak ada? (Huh? Why isn’t the book here?)

“Lah”, when appended at the end of an advice, makes it sound more relaxed.

Jangan ngebut-ngebut lah, toh masih banyak waktu. (You shouldn’t drive too fast, there’s still much time.)

Santai aja lah, sebentar lagi juga dia bakal ke sini. (Just relax, he’ll surely arrive here soon.)

Lah, kok tiba-tiba ngomongin bahasa sendiri? (Why am I suddenly talking about my own language?) Well, when I was thinking about Japanese gobi, I asked myself “Can I explain a similar language element in Bahasa Indonesia, like “lah”?” Thus this post.

Added some words to pass the 2500 milestone. Some are from song titles, some are objects or things I thought myself.

With those 65 new words. My word count is 2550. Because it’s another milestone, I did a cleaning up (merging entries that should be on a line). After cleaning up, the word count is 2518.

So, I’ve passed 2500 words. Before moving on to memorize grade 4 kanji, I’m going to spend some time reviewing all the kanji and words I’ve learned so far…

Entries in my word list are based on the free Japanese-English dictionary EDICT. Here’s a sample EDICT entry:

登る [のぼる] /(v5r) (1) to rise/to ascend/to go up/to climb/(2) to go to (the capital)/(3) to be promoted/(4) to add up to/(5) to advance (in price)/(6) to sail up/(7) to come up (o n the agenda)/(P)/

As can be seen, a word can have many meanings.

For words with multiple meanings, I usually don’t add all meanings of the word directly. To continue with the example, I learned のぼる (noboru) while learning the associated kanji 登. The meaning I chose was "to climb", so I added this to my word list:

At a later date, it’s very possible that other meanings get added. For example, I found "taiyou ga noboru" (taiyou = sun). Translating it as "the sun climbs" doesn’t really fit. What’s better is translating it as "the sun rises". So I added another meaning of のぼる, "to rise":

As can be seen, those two separate entries are actually the same EDICT entry. Therefore from time to time I clean my word list to eliminate the false entries. This is done by merging the corresponding entries. To make it possible, I add a "to-merge" tag for items that need to be cleaned at a future date, like so:

The result after cleaning up is something like this:

This is Morning Musume’s 22th single. A nice energetic song. The song tells to not cry because of a fleeting first love, because it’s just the beginning of everything.

• Previous "average new words/song": 23.71
• New words in this song: 13
• New "average new words/song": 23.11
• Total words in word list: 2485

This is a song from Morning Musume’s 6th album. I first heard it sung live by Niigaki Risa in the show Hello! Pro Hour. Instantly hooked!

"Koe" means "voice". This song is about a girl who misses her boyfriend’s voice so much. Alas, when they planned to talk all night by phone, the girl fell asleep! However she was very happy to know that her inbox was full of worry mails the next morning.

• Previous "average new words/song": 24.13
• New words in this song: 17
• New "average new words/song": 23.71
• Total words in word list: 2472

This nice song is from Final Fantasy X. Most of the lines are poetical like "the wind, like a heart that swam in the gathered words". I’ve actually played the game halfway during the holiday.

• Previous "average new words/song": 24.73
• New words in this song: 15
• New "average new words/song": 24.13
• Total words in word list: 2455

This is Goto Maki’s 13th single. The title "suppin to namida" means "a makeup-less face and tears". She is actually one of my least-liked members of Momusu. However this song is nice so here it goes…

The song is about a woman moving out because her husband recently passed away. She can’t stay because "there’s too much memories" in their old house. As the woman ate her last lunch in her favorite cafe, she recollects the memories left by her husband, for the last time. Some excerpt:

But I’ll clean up	だけど掃除して
And move tonight	今夜引っ越すの
There’s too many memories	思い出が多すぎて
I just can’t stay…	なんだか居られない
I have no makeup on, so it’s okay to cry, right?	スッピンだから泣いていいでしょ
I should have said "I love you" more	もっと「好き」と言えばよかった
After I wipe away my tears	涙拭いたら
I’ll say "bye bye" with the memories	思い出達と「バイバイ」して
And go home	帰郷るね

The words and stats:

• Previous "average new words/song": 24.93
• New words in this song: 22
• New "average new words/song": 24.73
• Total words in word list: 2440