Singularity on the Plane

A song from Kusumi Koharu’s 1st album, Mitsuboshi (lyrics). Here she stars as the anime character Tsukishima Kirari. The anime name is Kirarin Revolution, and it is about a girl who can’t sing but strives hard to be a singer (she has a romantic motive to be a singer, but I won’t tell much further).

Well, I don’t watch the anime and not a fan of Koharu. However I got the album cover (with kanji lyrics!) and so thought it would be a cool romanization excercise.

The song itself is quite nice.

So, 5 new kanji:

暖匂斯溢飽

The stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 20.04
• New words in this song: 14
• New “average new words/song”: 19.81

And 14 words:

(more…)

This is from track 3 of Morning Musume’s 7th album, “Rainbow 7″ (lyrics). A really fun and energizing song, with trumpets and harmonica!

There are 4 new kanji:

眩吹繋輝

The stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 20.54
• New words in this song: 8
• New “average new words/song”: 20.04

And the words:

This is from Matsuura Aya’s single (lyrics). I think I first heard it on a Hello! Project concert. Nice song.

There are only 2 new kanji:

縺眺

The new word stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 21.13
• New words in this song: 7
• New “average new words/song”: 20.54

And the words themselves:

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:

(more…)

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:

(more…)

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:

(more…)

This is Morning Musume’s 15th single. An energetic song (oh, with some rap!) and one of my favorites.

12 new kanji:

普迷宙悟途符宇簡訪嘩喧叶

Song stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 21.14
• New words in this song: 21
• New “average new words/song”: 21.13

And the words themselves:

(more…)

This is from Matsuura Aya’s 19th single (lyrics). Aya’s songs are usually very nice to hear, and this one is no exception.

There are 6 new kanji:

針激還傷故噛

The obligatory song stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 21.57
• New words in this song: 12
• New “average new words/song”: 21.14

Here are the words themselves:

(more…)

Aozora Bunko is a website that contains copyright-expired Japanese books. Some time ago, I hunted in its main page. For this word dump, the source is from the library card page of “Wagahai wa Neko de aru”. It is one of main works of the famous writer Natsume Soseki.

So, will I continue by reading the book itself? I’ve downloaded the file, but now I think I’ll tackle easier (kanji-wise) learning materials first.

There are 27 new kanji:

摩慶虞凍聚筑享峰瘍幹帝江永歳備誌没瀬眠職潰柴枕鞭卓圧坊

And 43 new words:

(more…)