Singularity on the Plane

One essential aspect of learning a language is learning its vocabulary. In my Japanese study, this tranlates into learning kanji which are the building block of many words.

Most kanji are for things I am familiar with. Some examples are 人 (hito, person), 玉 (tama, ball), and 火 (hi, fire). Many are for common animals like 虫 (mushi, insect), 亀 (kame, turtle), and 猫 (neko, cat). Unexpectedly, I quite oftenly encounter kanji for an animal or plant that I have no knowledge about.

An example is 藤 (fuji, tou) which is the kanji for the plant genus Wisteria. It is found on many people’s name, such as 藤本美貴 (Fujimoto Miki), 後藤真希 (Gotou Maki), and 工藤新一 (Kudou Shin’ichi).

Using KANJIDIC or EDICT, I only get a brief description like “wisteria”. That is useless for someone with a shallow knowledge such as me, but enough as a pointer to get more information elsewhere. If I’m not online, my next stop is Stardict, which gives more detail such as “a climbing plant with purple or white flowers”. At least I could know that “Wisteria” is a plant, not something else like “hysteria”. My final stop is of course Wikipedia, which gives detailed descriptions and more importantly, images!

I’ll share some of the new living things I’ve discovered… Do you know them?

Wisteria

In Japanese, it is フジ (藤, fuji). And no, Mount Fuji is written differently. It is native to Japan and other countries including eastern US. It can climb by twisting itself along any available support. As I have written above, it is used on many people’s name. Anyone knows its Indonesian name?

Cicada

In Japanese, it is セミ (蝉, semi). I found it on Berryz Koubou’s song titled “Semi”. It is a family of insect that makes a lot of noise (but it’s different from Cricket). According to Wikipedia Indonesia, the Indonesian name is Tonggeret (never heard it before).

Chrysanthemum

In Japanese, it is キク (菊, kiku). I found it on an author’s name (菊池, Kikuchi) at the digital library Aozora Bunko. In Japan, this plant is a symbol of death and are only used for funerals (which means, don’t give it to your Japanese girlfriend). 菊花紋章 (kikukamonshou) is the name given to the position of Japanese emperor. By the way, I recently went to Moro department store and found a Chrysanthemum product. It is a Chinese product and how happy I was to see the character 菊 written on the box :). The Indonesian name is Seruni (never heard it before too).

Manchurian Violet

In Japanese, it is スミレ (菫, sumire). I also found it on a writer’s name (薄田泣菫, Sasakida Kyuukin, and please don’t ask me what “sasaki” means). Is it also “Violet” in Indonesia?

Japanese Royal Fern

In Japanese, it is ゼンマイ (薇, zenmai). I knew what a fern is, but I was curious whether this fern has a striking difference (nothing striking to a layman like me). Strangely, it is the kanji used in Rose (薔薇, bara), which is where I found it. In Indonesia, ferns are called paku or pakis.

If you want to be able to read people’s name, you’ll be sure to encounter lots of these exotic kanji. It’s almost like they’re forcing us to be a botanist or zoologist. You’ll also find these kanji in songs and literatures (e.g., novels), because writers want to look cool by using obscure characters.

As a closing, note that I use katakana to write the name of the plants and animal above. This is a modern practice, which originates from the scientific community. Even in the Japanese Wikipedia, the article for dog is titled イヌ (inu) despite its kanji 犬 being taught in grade 1 elementary school. It is probably a sensible decision, considering that there are countless living things on Earth.

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…)

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.)