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

I knew the word 描く like 20 levels before I finally got the lesson on it, and all that time I never realized the reading comes from 絵書く.

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WHAT!? That’s amazing!

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I just found out that なにわ from the beginning karuta poem なにわずにさくやこのはな is Osaka! I always wondered where this Naniwa bay was, but wasn’t thinking too hard about it. It’s awesome, because this poem was the thing that motivated me to finally learn Japanese.

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A week or so ago in class we finally finished covering most of the humble forms of verbs and that, like, changed my life in Japan.

Naturally, I went out that night to get some dinner and was taken aback by how much I understood that I didn’t understand before. For example, something as simple as “レシートでございます” made complete sense, whereas before the でございます held an unknown meaning.

Before I came to Japan I didn’t put such an emphasis on learning humble language/vocabulary since I thought I might never use it myself, but after learning a ton of humble alternatives I find my comprehension in daily life has gone way up. So the lesson is to learn some humble equivalents if you’re coming to Japan, ha. :slight_smile:

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If you use iOS you might have spotted the same word on the space bar - empty white!

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Obv I’m a newbie at this point so my mind blow may be trite but every time I see a ふ it makes me smile!

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Well I just had two in the space of 24 hours.

  1. That the ‘な’ in な-adjectives is essentially the copula だ.
  2. The the まで in 今まで is the particle まで.

Number 2 should have been obvious, but number 1 seriously made me sit and contemplate the meaning of life for a minute. o.o

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Just came across these lines while reading and thought, “Wait… I know what that means without thinking of the translation!”

“Perdón for the fast change. I didn’t have much warning.” “Shikata ga nai,” Naomi said, and Saba nodded ruefully.

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In addition, there is a Naniwa ward, but Namba uses the same Kanji as Naniwa did, 難波.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death poem also mentions Naniwa: 露とおち 露と消えにし わが身かな 難波のことも 夢のまた夢

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Aaaaah. I wanna get better at reading already… So many poems out there

I would point out that the Hyakunin Isshu (though the poem you mentioned actually isn’t part of it, that’s why it’s read first). And things like the one I mentioned above aren’t simple, I often can’t understand them without some kind of modern translation.

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I hear you, but lol I have problems deciphering English poems, so it’s not like I’m expecting it to be smooth sailing. Still, there’s something about it? The ritualized readings and chants give it a really great spiritual feeling, or something like it

I assume you’re definitely talking about Tanka poems now, since I assume you mean the chanting from Karuta. That is the traditional way, but I’m actually not sure if the others, such as Haiku have a form to chant / sing them in. The 懐風藻 (Kaifuso) which is one of the oldest collections of poems are actual 漢詩 and thus actually written in classical Chinese.

I wish I could find a place to play Karuta here, but the high level of entry from memorizing all the poems makes it rather unlikely.

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I had a second thought. I really like this death poem. It is claimed to be Akechi Mitsuhide but it’s been confirmed to not be his (We don’t even know for sure how he died). It’s written as a Kanshi

順逆無二門 大道徹心源 五十五年夢 覚来帰一元

Some info about it: 明智光秀の辞世の句なのですが、漢詩のため、教養のない私にはわけがわかりま... - Yahoo!知恵袋

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Just gonna leave this here

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It was indeed.

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!!! I was literally doing this lesson this morning and turned around to shout this at my brother. So cool.

Karuta is that lovely terrifying monster that I’d rather not approach. It’s so intense? Not only do you have to memorize all the poems, you have to memorize card placements (which could be moved) and listen to the speaker so closely (on each card!)(and there are dead cards??) to get to the card first. It’s kind of mindboggling to me that a manga series managed to revive an entire sport though. Like, how amazing is Yuki-sensei.

爰 Is ここ…

Football my ass, koichi. And here I thought all the radicals were accurate. What, is someone going to tell me that Chester the molester isn’t a real radical either?

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Holy shit, even if it isn’t, I still want one in WK. At-least i’ll be using it. :smiley:

Ya boi chester, he lives.

https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/chester

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