Singularity on the Plane

I kanjified 72 words on my word list. In the process I learned 31 new kanji:

己裂閣陛朕痛撮疲壊砕抜蚊喫困煙蛇菓傘逃帽拙眼汚奴郵謝条垂余勧慌

Here are the 72 words:

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Random words and kanji are those that I randomly encounter, for example while watching a movie.

Side-effect words are dictionary words that I picked when learning a new kanji from another dump. For example, I encountered 激しい (hageshii, intense) while hunting from a song. 激 was a new kanji for me, and to know its on-reading I searched for some compounds in the dictionary. Those compounds, e.g. 激化 (gekika, intensification) are considered side-effect words because they are not in the original material.

It is also possible that I deliberately set out to memorize words or kanji from a particular source, but the amount is too small to warrant its own section.

A notable source for the current dump is guidetojapanese.org and the name of Morning Musume and Berryz Koubou members.

There are 51 new kanji:

彩暇磨擬譲怒穏契華吉皆叫翼裕蝉痩呟茉莉閑臥釆菅餌澤雍卿嗣雅沙箇荒柳拳圭奈須智紗属欲玄琴勢妻尊垣寧謙耶紺

And 405 words:

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We will learn 3 shapes this time!

First is the plant shape. Observe the blue shapes in these kanji:

草 is the kanji for grass (kusa), 花 is the kanji for flower (hana), and 菜 is the kanji for vegetables (na). I call the blue shape the “plant” shape. Here’s an image of two plants:

For decoration, I made the flowers bloom :). Note that you can see the roots underground. The superimposed image should make it clear why it is called the plant shape:

Of course the discussion wouldn’t be complete without the stroke order:

OK, the plant shape… I’ll guarantee that you will meet it often (and many times in a plant-related kanji). The other two shapes are less common but I bring it here because they are similar to the plant shape.

Next is the bridge shape. See the blue shapes in the following kanji:

算 is the kanji for calculation (san), 鼻 is the kanji for nose (hana), and 械 is the kanji for machine (kai). This shape is devilish because it is so similar to the previous one. Having a completely different mnemonic is a must if you don’t want things mixed up. Look at the image below:

It is a nice bridge that allows you to cross the river! The image fits well with the shape:

Hence it is called the “bridge” shape. Remember, the key point is the bend on the left vertical stroke. Plant roots don’t bend sideways because, well… probably because gravity. Or is it because they can “smell” more water below and try to dig downwards as far as they could? Whatever, here’s the stroke order:

Now for the last one, the fence shape. Take a good look at the blue shapes below:

黄 means yellow (ki), 散 means to scatter (chi.ru), and 昔 means olden days (mukashi). It’s the plant shape with an extra stroke! But I use a different mnemonic, not related to plants, so that those two aren’t mixed up. Look at my drawing below:

Why, it’s a nice fence that protects the garden… Focus on the two vertical woods, and superimpose the kanji shape:

It fits perfectly! Therefore I call it the “fence” shape. The stroke order:

I hope with those mnemonics, your kanji quest can be made easier. Happy kanji hunting!

Why must instructors give a very “long” problem which doesn’t test understanding any better than a “shorter” problem?

Here’s an example problem to test the understanding of shift cipher:

Encrypt the plaintext “example” using the shift cipher with key B.

That problem should suffice. However here’s what some instructors like to give:

Encrypt the plaintext “iliketoseemystudentssufferhahahaiamevil” using the shift cipher with key P.

The second problem isn’t intellectually harder, it’s just more laborous!

I can forsee a similar agony in a microbiology test:

The nucleotide sequence of one DNA strand of a DNA double helix is:
-GGAGATCGCATGCATGCACAGCTGACGATGCA-
(dunno whether it is realistic, I just typed the ATGCs randomly)
What is the sequence of the complementary strand?

Isn’t a strand of -ATGC- enough?

PS: Oh and about that second example, it’s actually quite nice considering that my instructor gave a LONGER ciphertext to encrypt… Unbelievable…

In Japanese, the kana ん (n) is considered a sound that can stand by itself. It sounds somewhat like “uhm”.

In normal speaking the ん sticks to the preceding kana. For example, りんご (ringo, apple) is pronounced “rin-go”, not “ri-n-go” (ri-”uhm”-go). Note that because ん is considered one mora (beat), “rin” (composed of 2 mora, “ri” and “n”) should sound longer than “go” (only 1 mora). The elongation is done by holding the “n” sound for a while.

However, in songs ん is oftenly detached and voiced by itself! This is very funny considering that the same thing doesn’t happen in Bahasa Indonesia and English. Consider Indonesian words like “jantan”, “makan”, and “jalan”. In songs (and conversation), they are always pronounced as “jan-tan”, “ma-kan”, and “ja-lan”. The same thing holds in English (e.g., “wo-man”, “ten”, “a-gain”, “A-me-ri-can”). ‘n’ never gets its own note.

An Indonesian or English song where the ‘n’ is forcibly separated would sound wacko. Try to imagine it… However enter the Japanese music world and a lone ‘n’ doesn’t seem weird at all… Two examples:

Anshinkan (Berryz Koubou): Nee itsu datte anshin shitai no yo (a-n-shi-n)
Aozora ga Itsumade mo Tsuzuku You na Mirai de Are! (Morning Musume): So donna toki mo jibun jishin shinjite GO (do-n-na, ji-bu-n, ji-shi-n, shi-n-ji-te)

Of course ん can also stick to the preceding sound like in normal speaking, so it all depends on the songwriter. In these following examples the ん isn’t separated:

Sakura Mankai (Morning Musume Sakura Gumi): aa sakura mankai, nee sakura mankai mune no naka (man-ka-i)
Lemon Iro to Milk Tea (Morning Musume): onnaji kuukan kuukan eiga no naka kansei kansei (on-na-ji, kuu-kan, kan-sei)

I’ve said that in speaking (conversation, speech, anything other than songs) the ん is normally attached. That is almost always the case. However, I’ve actually encountered the isolated case several times! Here’s one example from a casual talk:

Sugaya Risako: ma… zenbu… kawaiin desu kedo, atashi ga ichiban… (i-chi-ba-n)

Of course, you can deliberately separate the ん if you want to give a slow motion effect. However I don’t consider that normal speaking. Nevertheless, this is what Sayumi does on her radio show:

Michishige Sayumi: Mooningu Musume Michishige Sayumi no “Konya mo Usa-chan peace…” (ko-n-ya)

To finish, I offer the audio file that contains all the above examples:

n-sound.ogg (duration 1:01, 515 KB): MediaFire mirror; 3000mb mirror; Indonesian mirror

(Audio made using the open source audio editor Audacity. To play the audio file in Windows you might need to install the codecs from Illiminable.)

No, I’m not talking about the fruit…

In the Japanese language, なんか (nanka) is a filler that has no particular meaning. In casual speech, some people use it just about anywhere. It serves the same purpose as “like” in sentences such as “His brother is, like, very tall!”

Some examples from guidetojapanese.org:

今日は、なんか忙しいみたいよ。
Ima wa, nanka isogashii mitai yo.
-I guess he’s like busy today.

お母さんが、なんか明日まで戻らないんだってよ。
Okaasan ga, nanka ashita made tomaranain datte yo.
-Mom said she’s not coming back until like tomorrow.

Another example I picked from the novel “Wagahai wa Neko de aru“:

私は唐人の名なんかむずかしくて覚えられませんわ。
Watashi wa toujin no na nanka muzukashikute oboeraremasen wa.
- For me, Chinese names are like hard and I can’t remember them.
(My own translation, flame on for mistakes :))

OK, now to the main point of this post. Some time ago, I watched Morning Musume’s trip to Hong Kong. In the end of the trip every member gave their impressions, and Takahashi Ai spoke using nanka like all the time! Here’s the audio for your hearing pleasure:

takahashi-nanka.ogg (442 KB, 48 seconds): Mirror 1 (3000mb.com server); Mirror 2 (Indonesian server)

I won’t give any transcription nor translation. The point in hearing it is to get a feel about how it is slipped in (besides, uhm, I’m not skillful enough to comprehend her talk yet). Try to spot all 6 occurences.

Have you ever felt your “soul” being pulled from your body? I have… A couple of times, in fact, and they all happened when I was sleeping. Because I just experienced it some days ago, I’ll write about it.

Things started like usual. I decided to end my day and layed down on bed. While trying to sleep, I alternated between thinking random stuffs and reminding myself “If you keep thinking stuffs, you’ll never get to sleep. STOP THINKING NOW!”. After many minutes and countless of position change…

… (sleeping)

Then suddenly I regained my consciousness! I’m sure it was not a dream because I could vividly feel my body and the bed. However, I can’t say that I was 100% awake because obviously I was sleeping the instant before and I was still closing my eyes. (I couldn’t seem to open it!)

I was awoken because “I” was being pulled out of my body! It was very painful and frightening. Not to mention that a deafening noise resonated on me. Of course, I instinctly tried my best to resist the violence.

So, a pulling fight occured for some seconds. “I” oscillated between my physical self and the outer world. What I noticed is that the noise intensified as “I” became farther from my body.

Of course I was afraid about what will happen if I didn’t resist and just let myself being pulled. What if I couldn’t go back to my body? However, I also wanted to know what adventure awaits if I just let myself go. In the end, my cowardice defeated my curiosity (for the nth time). So I kept on resisting the pull… Eventually the pull abated and things became hazy…

…and then I was flying. Probably it’s more accurate to say “being bounced around”, because it was really hard to control myself. I bounced walls, going room to room, sometimes going outdoor. It felt like a really wild roller coaster. I almost couldn’t figure out which was up and which was down.

Has my soul gotten completely out of my body? No, I’m definitely sure this bouncing around is just a dream. While the previous stage felt really real, this experience felt completely contained in my mind. Even the places are imaginary, not on my room, not on my house. Gradually, my awareness became weaker and weaker and then I just forgot what happened next…

As I’ve said before, I’ve experienced this a couple of times. The first occurence is when I was in senior high school (I forget which grade). I still remember the event clearly. How could one not, for it is very real and painful.

Was I going to experience OBE? Will death be anything like that? Or was it all just a dream? Whatever it was, if one day I couldn’t wake up from my sleep (not dead, but in a coma), it is probably because I crossed the lines :).

There are many random books here in Purwokerto, and some days ago I found two books with absurd titles.

First up is a book on my cousin’s bookcase: Bahasa JEPANG Hanya 1 Hari (Japanese in only 1 day) by Yan Tirtobisono. I was like “Heh!!!” when reading the title. I’ve learned this language on my spare time for around 2 years and still can’t do nothing :)… (well, yeah, probably because I’m not working hard enough)

The book’s 256 pages contain set phrases in roomaji without any grammar explanation. More like a travel pamphlet for me. I know that the Indonesian mentality is wanting results instantly without much effort, but, 1 day?!? Give me a break…

The other one is from my brother’s room: Korea dalam 10 x 365 hari (Korean in 10 x 365 days) by HS. Maru Lis. We all know that 10 x 365 days means 3650 days which means around 10 years!!! I was like “What the?!? This is a complete opposite of the other book!”.

I knew the author must meant something else, so I peeked at the contents. It turned out to be a 365-days lesson, with each lesson teaching 10 words. More like a dictionary for me. Anyway, the title is one of the most serious abuse of mathematical notation that I’ve encountered.

These are the dumps for the past 1 month: this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. I managed to gather 228 new kanji and 999 new words, so now I know 1,314 kanji and 6,953 words. They say that you need to know around 2000 kanji for literacy, and by visiting random Wikipedia articles this seems very much true.

Anyway, for the kanji and vocabulary knowledge, I already passed JLPT level 2 which requires 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words. Of course our kanji and word set are probably different. The highest level of JLPT, level 1, requires 2,000 kanji and 10,000 words.

On previous Wikipedia dumps, I only hunted for new words with known kanji. For this time around, I also studied any new kanji that stands in the way!

Anyway, I managed to study all kanji in the Wikipedia page of Isaac Newton (timestamped 2006-12-5 08:25). Being able to read from top to bottom without occasional dictionary checks is very satisfying!

There are 83 new kanji:

巡任苛伸聖銘鎖預遺邦郷驚髪闇防革評諸造葬仰亘逸遂講跡軌幣座恐因就展創恒捕監廷弾刑刊墓如勤句叙哲唯務専射姪存双却碑磁粒析率略異系価績礎祖窓築楕殆偽政晩暦充烈熾献派涯混溶

And 162 words:

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