Turned out it was because somehow my settings had Korean, but not Japanese, but you got me started on the right track, thanks!
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The WK character is same as the top one in my photo. Thanks for all the historical info! Turns out the problem was I had Korean set as my 2nd choice language, and somehow Japanese wasn’t in there at all (??). Fortunately I knew that Korean also sometimes borrows Chinese characters.
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I meant that in the sense that 礻 is purely a radical and can’t be used as a kanji on its own, but I guess that’s also because I tend to mix up the concept of ‘radical’ and what you see in the names for the most common radicals. For example, 礻 is called the 示す偏 in Japanese and the 示字旁 in Chinese, both of which essentially mean ‘the 示 lateral element’. Because most radicals with such dedicated names are kanji fragments and not standalone kanji, I tend to equate ‘radical’ with these fragments (I think their collective name in Japanese is 偏旁冠脚) and to forget about the fact that kanji can be radicals as well. In Chinese, at the least, aside from when I was searching for an obscure kanji, usually in a paper dictionary – I haven’t used one in years! – I’ve never referred to a kanji as a 部首 (classifying radical), and they don’t qualify as 偏旁 either, so I’ve never thought of them as anything but kanji.
However, yes, you’re right: kanji can be radicals too. Guess I need to get that into my head. Old habits die hard.
この前ね、「寿司が大好きだ」と言う女の人と一緒にお寿司屋さんに行ったんだけど、その人、面白い人でねえ。「高田さん、今日わたし、ノーパンなんですよ」って、急に言い出すんだ。そこから先、俺は何食った覚えてない。
So the joke here has to be some sort of pun or garbled speech, right? What did she mean to say instead of ノーパン?
ノーパン is not wearing panties.
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Usually these sort of Hobonichi quotes revolve around garbled speech or puns; that’s what makes the joke funny. So I was wondering if that’s also the case here.
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Maybe she meant to say ノープラン, like “Today I’m going to order whatever I feel like” (rather than be inhibited by cost or her usual habit)?
Curious if there’s a sushi-based joke in there though.
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Clearly she’s not going to get any bread at the sushi place.
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The words like 中旬 defining a third of a month – are these used in the same vague sense as I might say “the beginning of March” or “late October”, not really thinking about which specific dates I mean, or are they actually understood to mean precisely like the 11th through the 20th like the pop-up definition on NHK Easy says?
Yes, if you check a monolingual dictionary, they are defined precisely as
上旬 - 1st to 10th
中旬 - 11th to 20th
下旬 - 21st to end of the month
There’s no ambiguity.
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10-day 旬 are a date system that dates back to Ancient China, before the seven-day week arrived in East Asia, if I’m not wrong, and the system has probably become increasingly rarely used precisely because everyone uses the seven-day week now. As such, I strongly doubt there’s any reason for the meaning of 旬 to have changed, because it hasn’t been made to adapt to modern units of time.
It does have a few other meanings though, one of which is ‘10 years’: as you can see though, the idea of ‘10’ is pretty well preserved.
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What’s the most common word for “extend” in sentences like “Japan Looks to Extend Covid-19 State of Emergency” or “He extended the deadline to Monday”?
延長 if you are referring to something that lasts several days but was made longer (such as the state of emergency)
延期 if you are referring to something that happens on a specific day but was postponed (such as the Olympics)
延びる／延ばす if you are being casual, not writing an article or such
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Hey everyone! I’m right now learning 生 as vocabulary word. Since it’s reading is different from the single Kanji one I’m a bit confused when to use which reading. Can someone help me out?
Just to be clear, WaniKani only teaches you one reading when you learn the kanji so as to not overwhelm you, not to imply that that reading is “the kanji reading”. The reading you learn in the lesson could be used when the kanji is alone as a word in a sentence, or it might only appear in compound words, but the main takeaway is that it’s just one possible reading. The reading in the kanji lesson is usually one that WaniKani thinks will be most generally helpful for reading words with this kanji, that’s all.
So with that out of the way, if you see 生 alone in a sentence, not as part of a compound, then it’s (probably) なま. Strictly speaking, it might be some other reading, but なま is overwhelmingly most likely in that scenario. せい, the reading you learned in the kanji lesson, is usually used in compound words.
It’s normal for kanji readings to be highly context-based. If you still have more questions, let me know.
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If someone asks you how to say the word raw in japanese, you would say なま
If someone asks you how to say Sun, you would say ひ, and for Sunday, you would say にちようび
Now, raw is written 生, Sun is written 日 and Sunday is written 日曜日
So you see, the way you say the word does not vary, but the character can be used in different words, and will often have 2 or 3 common ways to read it (not limited to this number).
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Oh right thank you! The description of the vocabulary word somehow threw me off and made me think that せい should be the kun’yomi and I somehow thought the exact same thing for なま. My brain just somehow stopped working idk this is really a lot to take in at times. This was really helpful to untangle the gyri of my brain.
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To be clear, 生 has about eighteen different kun’yomi, though you probably aren’t going to see more than four of them on a regular basis, and the okurigana endings will make it clear which one is correct. When there’s no okurigana, なま is the reading to use.
せい and しょう are the on’yomi, though.
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How and where does one learn about colloquial expressions?
For example, I came across the phrase やっぱ肉なんだなァ earlier, and while I kinda get what that says in a literal sense the implication of “I’m craving meat” didn’t come through until I discussed it with others. Turns out it’s not so much a grammar point I missed or anything of that sort, more that I’m just completely unaware of colloquial expressions. And it makes perfect sense that phrases have widely understood meanings aside from their literal meaning - the English “I could go for some noodles” doesn’t really make a lot of sense from a literal point of view either.
Is it just a matter of encountering a lot of them and gaining an understanding through context? Does plugging them into DeepL and/or Google Translate make sense? Are there places where I can get explanations for these phrases, either in English or in Japanese?