Re: Himitsu no Akko-chan 88

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:33:25 -0500, The Wanderer
<inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On 11/28/2005 09:43 PM, Abraham Evangelista wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:05:54 -0500, The Wanderer
>> <inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/27/2005 08:08 PM, Abraham Evangelista wrote:
>
>>>> 1 - kagami no kuni no puresento. Present from the land of
>>>> mirrors.
>>>
>>> Any reason you omitted/altered the punctuation, even in the romaji?
>>> Although the Japanese usage of punctuation does not always
>>> translate directly over to the corresponding English, I find that
>>> it can sometimes be helpful in understanding the intent of the
>>> original.
>>
>> No particular reason. Probably oversight on my part. My reading is
>> definately the weak point in my japanese skills, and just looking up
>> kagami took more time than I'd care to admit.
>
>Reading is probably my strongest point, in terms of Japanese (although I
>consider myself still fairly weak even there), but writing - or, rather,
>expressing myself at all - is my biggest problem.

Composition is almost always more difficult than interpretation. At
this point, with the aid of the visual cues, I've very few problems
with raw Anime. (leaving aside technical terms, and heavily accented
speech.)

But simple gradschool level questions that I'm asked in class can
leave me flustered if they require an answer quickly. But it's not
normally the grammar that gets me... the Devil is in the vocabulary.
(or my lack there of.)

>I can *usually* manage
>to parse out roughly what something means, especially when it's
>encapsulated the way an episode title is, but there are still rather
>more holes in my understanding (grammar, etc.) than I'd like.

Dictionary of basic Japanese Grammar.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789004546?v=glance
Dictionary of intermediate Japanese Grammar.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789007758?v=glance

I've found these books to be extraordinarily helpful in learning to
understand the language. But they don't help my composition in the
slightest. :-)

>>>> 4 - Shippo na yuukaishiken. The Kidnapping of Shippo.
>>>
>>> I think you'll find that that's "Shippona" - the "na" is in
>>> katakana, so presumably it's part of the name.
>>>
>>> "The Shippona Kidnapping Case!?" - from what I can see, it appears
>>> that "shiken" is used much as we would use "case" to refer to an
>>> investigation.
>>
>> What got me was the Kai in kana. I figured it was some sort of
>> adjectival or verbal construct that I hadn't seen yet. I only
>> figured out what Yuukaishiken was after reading Galen's summary and
>> checking the Breen jdic for kidnapping. :-)
>
>Happens that that's the same dictionary I'm using, just almost certainly
>with a different interface. I've seen enough weird kana/kanji things in
>the course of translating text from various RPGs that I don't really
>blink an eye at things like this; you'd be surprised how often something
>which does have a kanji is written without it.

Well in RPGs (well at least on older systems) display fonts were the
limiting factor. ISTR that in the bad old days, that early japanese
computer systems could only display katakana...

<grumble>
But there's no excuse in printed material!!
</grumble>

>
>I had to fall back on the summary for context fairly often myself.
>
>>> Attempting to continue (and realizing in short order the probable
>>> reason why you left off there):
>>>
>>> 6:
>>> "Saitou-sensei no konyakusha!?"
>>> "Saitou-sensei's fiancee!?"
>>> (I had a fair amount of trouble with that one, since I was
>>> attempting to interpret the first two kanji as words rather than as
>>> a name... I can't guarantee that the reading I've given is correct,
>>> but the rest is.)
>>
>> Right about here, I ran out of steam, (And break time) and returned
>> to my homework. :-) Seeing all those kanji I didn't recognize just
>> kinda knocked the wind out of me!
>
>Whereas I deal with unfamiliar kanji all the time, so it didn't really
>bother me that much. What *I* usually have the most problems with is
>kanji I can't see clearly enough - low resolution or bad images, which
>crop up 'way more often than I'd like.

Amen to that. How am I supposed to do a radical search when I can't
even make out the radicals? (Or is it just that my eyes are always
drawn to the other obvious "features" of a megami poster scan...)

>
><snip another dozen episode titles>
>>> ...and that's as far as the titles in the image you linked to go;
>>> if you want more, I'll need something to work from.
>>
>> Either you know many more kanji than I do, or you've got a better
>> input and search system than the one I'm using. In either case, I am
>> in awe of your l33+ 5k!11z.
>
>Almost certainly, a better input and search system; I would probably be
>surprised if the total number of kanji I "know" (as in, can identify on
>sight without looking them up) came to more than a few dozen.
>
>I make routine, habitual and extensive use of kdrill, which is intended
>as a kanji drill program but also includes a very nice (if still
>limited) search tool; the best feature is probably its radical search
>capability, which is how I managed to identify most of those kanji.
>There are a few tricks I've learned to work around the program's
>limitations, but it's still quite powerful at its base. I feed it with a
>local copy of edict (updated whenever I see there's been a new release),
>although in theory you could use any dictionary in the same format.

Kdrill? I'll have to try that. Sensei has been complaining that I
never seem to memorize the Kanji we're assigned... Maybe a drilling
program would help.

Normally I use Jquicktrans (fed by the same edict), entering the kanji
into the drawing pad in the ms IMEI. This wasn't terribly efficient
when I was working with my old desktop, but it's wonderful now that
I've got a tablet pc.

Sadly, last weekend I managed to lose my stylus, making handwriting
input impossible until the replacement arrives, so I was forced to
fall back onto radical lookup, at which (in 4chan speak) I FAIL.

I've got a Kanji lookup dictionary which serves me pretty well for at
least the joyou stuff, but it's SKIP method, which doesn't help my
generally poor recognition of radicals.

>
>> Can I call you aniki? :-)
>
><grin> If you want. I'm nowhere near fluent - in fact, overall I'd
>probably still rate my skills as being pretty crappy - but I'm many
>miles ahead of where I was a few years ago, and despite slow progress I
>*am* still getting better.

Self Study?
--
Kyzoku ni naritai...
Abraham Evangelista
.

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