Most recent Japanese word you've learned?

Is this not one of the cases when kanji is kind of forced to convey the meaning better? I keep persistently writing it as タバコ :smiley: .

推理小説 - detective novel

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茶髪 ちゃぱつ brunette or brown haired

I’d been learning the kanji 君 for buddy, knowing pretty immediately that it was the honorific too… but I didn’t expect that it would be a vocab word all by itself meaning “you” (きみ). I’d heard this word plenty of times, but didn’t know it was the same kanji! That just hit me a certain kinda way, and I smiled.

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白騎士 - しろきし

It means white knight, I learnt it because I wanted to call a friend out for being a white knight haha :rofl:.

I learnt the first Kanji already しろ which is white and the on’yomi is はく. At first I thought the last Kanji was 土 but upon further inspection the placement of the middle is a little bit higher on dirt and wider on samurai. Turns out that 士 means “Samurai” and is read as "し. Very very similar to dirt, one to watch out for!

So if white 白 is the “しろ” and samurai is the 士 ”し” to me it makes sense for 騎 to be “ki”, turns out that’s correct! 騎 = Horse “き”.

A samurai on a horse is a knight 騎士 and 白 is just the colour of the knight, so we have white knight!

That’s the train of thought I did in my head anyway :durtle_noice:

A side note, I do remember the Kanji and reading for 白 and 士 but I don’t really remember the Kanji for 騎, but I’m sure i’ll learn it properly when I get to that level, I can always say white knight by typing “shirokishi” and finding the correct combination of Kanji :slight_smile:.

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The trick is that kanji containing 奇 always (with two exceptions) have き as on’yomi, and 馬 is “horse”, so there’s your reading and your meaning.

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If I’m being honest I’m not entirely confident in my understanding of what you mean

So 馬 alone is horse without needing 奇 to be alongside it? That’s interesting that all Kanji (besides two) that use 奇 are “Ki” as On’yomi, definitely something I’ll have to know for the future.
(for now I’m still struggling to remember vocab like “少ない” and "太い” haha :sweat_smile:)

Thanks for the help :smile: I appreciate it!

Now I’m curious why it’s 白騎士 instead of 白馬士? :thinking:

Also I’ll have to come back and like your post later haha:
image

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Mostly because 騎 means “equestrian” rather than just straight “horse”.

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消音しょうおん- mute/silence
Extinguishing sound/noise. Pretty straightforward.

A character in an anime I watched was on their phone talking to someone. The camera panned to the screen of their smartphone and there was a button that had ‘消音’ on it. It was kind of obvious without even looking it up that it meant ‘mute’.

A quick Jisho search tells me this term is mainly used regarding devices/systems/machines, which matches the context that I found the word in. Not sure if it’s used in everyday conversation though. i.e テレビを消音してください。(Please mute the TV)

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This sort of phrase brings up a few results on Google, but I think it’s more common to say something like(テレビの)音を切る・消す. I think noun phrases like 消音 tend to be more common in interfaces because they’re shorter.

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レラックス

i stared at it and tried to sound it out and tried it with l instead of r and the font was not very clear so i wasn’t sure if the middle character was a ツ, シ, or ッ, which just made it more confusing…

…then i realised that i was trying too hard, and just had to relax:wink:

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有刺鉄線 ゆうしてっせん barbed wire

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I just learned 手作り from WK, but what was interesting is that I very recently received a gift from my family in the form of a saké subscription and the subscription I was signed up for was called the Tezukuri package. Now I understand why!

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Nice! Isn’t it great when stuff like that happens?

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It’s what keeps me going. Otherwise it’s all academic and theoretical and makes it feel pointless. But when I can actually use the language, it makes it all worthwhile! There’s a Japanese store near me and I go in every so often just to browse and see how much more I can understand on the packaged products. I also have a Zojirushi thermos and there’s a warning label on it. I have this idea that one day I’ll actually be able to read the entire thing. Since I see it every single day when I have my coffee, it’s a constant motivator, especially when a new section becomes more clear to me. It’s kind of silly, but, hey, whatever works!

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#justkatakanathings :smiley:
My brain still often refuses to process katakana whenever I see it. I just look at the word, my brain goes “nope” and I continue with the rest of the text. マジ!

I think that’s awesome! I kind of feel that way about anime and just spoken Japanese. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to “just” understand it effortlessly :D.

Today’s word is 生まれ変わり - rebirth

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Haha well I definitely can’t effortlessly read Japanese! But theoretically with enough exposure that’s what would eventually happen. The foreign language I read most easily is German and it’s definitely not effortless but it’s much much more automatic than when I started doing it.

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Well, my word is 悲鳴 ひめい shriek or scream, and I came accross it on a webnovel.

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This phrase:

十把一絡げ

じゅっぱひとからげ

Making sweeping generalizations

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正々堂々:Fair and square. Not sure i’d have much use for the word, but eh.

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民間放送局 - radio/tv broadcast station (although 民間 sounds funny)

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