#nihonjinnoshiranainihongo

[qaantar-japanese]

Continuing on the topic of counting on fingers, many Europeans start with the thumb and work their way across the hand. That means “4″ is all digits out except the pinkie. Both students from France (フランス) and Italy (イタリア) demonstrate with no problem.

Nagiko-sensei tries, but says it’s pretty hard (つらい, tsurai, painful or heart-breaking). And her hand is trembling with the effort (ぷるぷる, purupuru). I have similar troubles with it... I can’t pull down my pinkie without my ring finger also scrunching up. Hmmm!

[qaantar-japanese]

The topic of using fingers to count came up in the classroom. The schematic in the top panel shows how the Chinese use fingers to count. But in the bottom right, Nagiko-sensei says to be careful, because 9 (with a crooked finger) is a gesture (ジェスチャー) that means 泥棒 (dorobou, thief). Whoops!

[qaantar-japanese]

The end of Chapter 5 of Shiranai has a quiz on 国事 (kokuji). Most kanji that the Japanese use came from China, but kokuji are kanji that originated in Japan. The quiz shows four of them. The third one is very interesting, as it’s a kanji for milligram (瓱).

It’s also interesting because I can’t seem to type it into the normal way that I generate Japanese script. Even just trying to type “miri” only comes up with the character for millimeter...

[qaantar-japanese]

Nagiko-sensei asks one of her students what kind of music he listens to, and he responds that he really likes the band Kabutomushi (カブトムシ).

The teacher says she’s not familiar with that band, which the student finds surprising, since the band is pretty famous. He lists off some of their songs レット　イット　ビー (Let It Be) and イエスタデイ (Yesterday).

So now Nagiko-sensei understands, he’s talking about the Beatles. The student has translated the word ‘beetles’ into Japanese (kabutomushi), instead of using the name that the Japanese use, ビートルズ (Bi-toruzu).

[qaantar-japanese]

Chapter 5 of Shiranai had a section about writing letters (you know, those things that people made using paper and pens, before email). The chapter covers standard greeting and closing statements. One of the standard types of greetings when in a hurry is 前略 (zenryaku, pardon the haste). In this case, 略 refers to omission (or leaving something out).

At the of this section, the teacher encourages the students to try writing their own letters: 皆さんも書いてみましょう (minasan mo kaite mimashou, Everybody, let’s also try writing).

One of the students starts with something that SOUNDS like zenryaku. The teacher politely asks the student not to leave out every part of the letter (全部は略さないで, zenbu wa ryakusanaide, please don’t leave out every part).

Yes, when writing ‘zenryaku,’ the student used wrong ‘zen’ (全, which means everything), instead of 前 (before). So in effect the student has opened by saying “I’m leaving everything out.” 

[qaantar-japanese]

Continuing with challenges that students face when learning to write Japanese vertically, Nagiko-sensei says that sometimes students write furigana on everything (those are the little kana next to the kanji that show the pronunciation).

Here again, the student says that the teacher does it, but again, the teacher replies that she doesn’t need the furigana to be able to read it. Typically, Japanese people will only write out the furigana for very rare or uncommon words (certainly not for 今日).

[qaantar-japanese]

Continuing with common mistakes that students make while learning to write Japanese vertically, Nagiko-sensei notes that students enter in spaces (スペース) unnecessarily. 

The student says that sensei also does it to make reading sentences easier, but she replies that can read it just fine without the spaces (and normally, one would write without such spacing).

[qaantar-japanese]

Continuing the topic of common mistakes with vertical Japanese writing, Nagiko-sensei says that students sometimes put punctuation (句読点, kutouten) in the exact middle of the box (such as the 。 and 　、 in the comic panel).

Punctuation should go in the upper right quadrant of the square -- that is, it’s closer to the kana that comes before it, just like if you were writing horizontally.

In this case, the student notes that in Taiwan they write punctuation in the middle (I assume when writing Chinese). But such is not the case for Japanese.