Biggest Realizations / Mind Blows You've Experienced Learning Japanese: Emoji means what?!?!

Funny, because it is illogical, but you can say similar phrases in English and not be looked at weird. In Dutch you wouldn’t say it like that, either, though.

I don’t know, “waar is die XXX nou weer naartoe” is definitely a pretty common phrase and does imply movement in the same way “where’d the XXX go” does, so I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say you wouldn’t say it like that in Dutch. Might also be a regional thing though.

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Oh yeah, I was thinking of literally using the verb ‘gaan’, only :sweat_smile:

Learning 楓 (かえで) was a minor mind blowing experience. I had just finished Stein’s;Gate Zero and one of Mayuri’s friends is called Kaede.

seem really weird to me. But again I don’t speak Dutsch so it could explain why. If I had to try…

waar is die = where is the
XXX = XXX :smirk:
nou weer = nowhere
naartoe = near the toe.

Is my Dutsch good?
sorry If that was offensive

This is more like ‘now again’. (Also those XXX’s gave me some weird ideas as well, one X would have sufficed :joy: )

It’s along the lines of “where’d that thing go this time”, but I like your translation just fine :joy:

I… see what you mean. Oh well, too late to go back now!

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I just encountered 左様なら - さようなら - in kanji for the first time, and it means something like “when it is the state of separating” :exploding_head:

omg it all makes sense :dizzy_face:

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Where did you see it has something to do with separating when broken into the parts? I believe it’s just 左様 “like this”, “the way things are” etc… So 左様なら is like “if it has to be like this”.

The 左 is ateji, btw, if that’s what you were thinking of. It was originally 然様 (still read as さよう).

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OMG hahaha I was thinking of 差 instead of 左 when I wrote this :woman_facepalming:
Well, (almost) the same lower part does not yield the same meaning… sorry for the confusion!

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鶏 is pronounced にわとり, which sounds like 庭 + 鳥

A chicken is just a garden bird. Who knew?

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If you’re looking for more of those mind blows, I can recommend this thread:

You have been warned :joy_cat: :exploding_head:

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Woah! I am totally behind :joy: Didn’t know this thread existed until now.

Thanks for the heads up!

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Because of homonymes, learning Japanese without learning kanji is very hard as many complex words in japanese are contracted using on’yomi into compound words.

I find talking with my tutor that when I don’t recognize some word that I should know, when I see the kanji it immediately comes back to me as my memory does the backtracking refreshement as I remember the meaning and reading through kanjis.

After learning kanji, I can guess-create some words, that are then understood correctly by native speakers as I form them by just bashing suitable kanjis together if I have some concept I want to convey but don’t know a word for it.

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Yup! This is exactly why I don’t understand the “I’m learning/fairly decent in Japanese but I don’t bother with kanji” crowd. I know kanji look intimidating but you’re seriously making things much harder on yourself by skipping them.

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I’m actually surprised to hear this as well. I’ve heard that phrase loads where I live (deep inaka Tohoku), and since it’s absolutely a phrase in English I never questioned that it wouldn’t be normal in other places. Interesting that there’s any sort of similarity at all between Kansai-ben and the local dialect of an old samurai region in the mountains.

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and they probably aren’t anywhere near as “decent” as they think they are. because i can’t imagine getting your vocabulary past like a preschool level without being able to read words that have kanji.

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what’s mindblowing about it?

If people are learning solely by listening / conversing, then kanji wouldn’t play into it at all, but they’d still be able to know plenty of “beyond preschool” words.

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i have yet to see anyone with a large vocabulary in japanese who can’t read, other than people who have lived there for a long period of time. and even then it’s often not really a large vocabulary it’s more like a vocabulary that’s good enough to have casual conversations in day to day life.