I live in rural Miyazaki. I was at a festival over the weekend and saw people walking around with arm bands. I was reading the kanji on them trying to figure out what it said. “警” and “察”. I had just recently learned these kanji on WaniKani and I was repeating “けい、さつ” trying to figure out what the kanji for warn and guess together could possibly mean.
The realization hit me when I saw someone wearing a uniform and not just plain clothes and I was like “oooooooh, police.” Ironically, the very next day WaniKani gave me the vocab word 警察
WK has given me vocabulary of what happened recently to me way more than I could count.
It gave me 告白, which I just did the day before.
It gave me 結婚, which as I was discussing with my mother on the phone.
It gave me 衛, which I was just taking note from the manga I read the night before.
And most recently, 裏 which I found on the documentation while working, 15 minutes ago. (this was Wednesday)
早晩 [そうばん] - sooner or later, eventually, in time
Another one of those where even though you know the kanji but the meaning eludes you. And once you find out the meaning… it somehow makes perfect sense
English doesn’t help much to trigger memory, and I don’t know Russian (tochka / точка). My mind always defaults to とうちか what’s that?. Luckily, images help (hopefully).
For me a pillbox is a familiar object, because there are still many of them scattered around the east of England where I grew up: left over from WW2, when we thought we would be invaded. They’re now in varying degrees of disrepair but typically small concrete square or hexagonal blocks able to hold a few soldiers. A bunker is a much larger, underground installation.
It was today I realized that おこのみやき is actually お好み焼き, and suddenly the dish name makes sense — how did I miss the written form in so many restaurants I’ve been to so far?
Humbling. A bit like realizing that breakfast is literally breaking a fast.
This reminded me there’s this subreddit for rating people that has the most insane (and frankly cruel) “rating guide” I’ve ever seen: Reddit - The heart of the internet
I remember hearing about it a while back and how they, like, ban people for rating too high. Utterly bizarre and depressing. Guess both languages have our own versions of this
おっちんとん - sitting down (children’s language, Kansai-ben)
I mentioned to my wife that maybe my son learned 座る at nursery school because he understands it well, but she said they use this to tell the kids to sit.
Saw this one in SAO progressive and it’s a perfect example why “knowing” Kanji doesn’t necessarily translate to being able to guess meaning and reading
