Learning through Translating: ブラックジャックによろしく episode 4: 夏雲

Re 63.

それ『が』よりおおくのひと教う道だ


教える:

Is the verb to teach. Here, however, it’s 教う here. As far as I can tell, it’s not inflected in a way I’m familiar with.

道【みち】means “way”;

多くの人: means many people…

First time checking a monolingual dictionary:

おしう 【教う】

⇒をしふ
But there’s nothing relevant at しふ.

Edit: I’ve changed the title. No doubt people will flock now (:partying_face:).

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Thank you, those are very helpful.

What seems important are the transitions (no transition, or a transition), more than the actual height (lower or higher pitch); and a word, in a different context, can have L and H switched, but the transition preserved.
There are also some rules at what kind of transitions are possible depending on the length.

That means the old kana spelling was をしふ (a ハ行下二段活用 verb; see kobun.weblio.jp entry)

If you look at Wikipedia 活用#日本語における活用 there is a table showing how old conjugations changed into the current day ones.

日本語動詞の活用の種類

文語ぶんご: written language; 口語こうご: spoken language; nowadays verbs are written as spoken.

The 下二段活用 conjugation (as it was the case of をしふ) become modern day 下一段活用 (lower ichidan, that is -eru) => おしえる

“おしう” is an archaism, the pronunciation of what was pre-reform spelled as をしふ.

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Alright so 教える = 教う then?

~ より( = yori) : When you describe something comparing with certain thing / time period / person.

I realise 〜より is generally used for comparisons. I’m not sure what is being compared here.

64.

そんな理屈『が』聞きたいんじゃありまけん

☆New Vocabulary☆
理屈【りくつ】theory, reason;

:speech_balloon: “I don’t want to hear that reason”

65.

先生『は』

:speech_balloon: Teacher or doctor or polite marker

あの患者さん『を』どう思ってるんですか?


:speech_balloon: “What are you thinking/what do you think about that patient?”

as a binary particle: A より B = B rather than A.
but as an adverb: より A = more A

So, より多く = more numerous, a larger amount

The kanji look similar, but it says …人をう…
救う(すくう)= “to save”.

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Ah ha! Good catch, I have yet to be let down by someone from Amsterdam.

Nu komt de aap uit de mouw
(I totally didn’t just google “Dutch expressions).

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Which makes much more sense (I was wondering why that archaic おしう was used…)

So 救う【すくう】to rescue, to save;
so

:speech_balloon: “There are more ways to help people”


One thing I have been wanting to do for a while is to identify the dictionaries consulted by Weblio when giving results:

① 研究社新和英中辞典

Kenkyūsha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary
(Not sure if this the right English translation, might want to get a confirmation on this one)

This one is listed the first and from what I can tell, provides the most complete definitions. Definitely one to keep in mind.

According to Wikipedia:

First published in 1918, Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (新和英大辞典, Shin wa-ei daijiten ) has long been the largest and most authoritative Japanese-English dictionary

② ハイパー英語辞典

Much more succinct (actually, all of the other dictionaries are more succinct)

③ JMDict

The project began in 1999 as an offshoot of the EDICT Japanese-English Electronic Dictionary project. It involved a major rebuild of the main files, with a more complex structure using XML.

★ Edict:

EDICT is a Japanese-English Dictionary file.

Rather, “That is the way to save more people”

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Does anyone know if there is an app or dictionary software which uses the Kenkyusha’s New English Japanese-English Dictionary database? I was thinking of buying the dictionary… but it’s 400$ so that’s too much for my budget.

Wikipedia says it exists on IOS:

6th edition[6]

  • Windows/Mac OS CD-ROM version (Kenkyusha’s New English Japanese-English Dictionary/研究社 新英和大辞典第6版) (JAN 4948022518003)

I think this is it:

…but I’d rather not buy a cd-rim (if only because my pc doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive and I don’t like that medium).

Ooohhh! I found the app… but…it’s 159.99$. If I were rich I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Of course, it’s available for free online so it’s not a “must buy” but since it’s the reference it just makes me want to buy it more.

Edit: I’ve updated the first message with new strips. Will start a new thread tomorrow as it’ll be a week and we’re getting close to 200 replies. Or should we finish the episode first?

66.

先生はあの患者さん助けたくないんですか…?!

:speech_balloon: “Doctor, don’t you want to help that patient?!”

Going on my instinct here, no analysis.


67.

輸血『と』腹膜透析『を』再開します

:speech_balloon: “Resume the blood transfusion and the peritoneum dialysis”


68.

あの患者『の』担当医…僕です…

:speech_balloon: “I’m the doctor in charge of that patient”


Participation

I just finished counting the participations for this thread


This is to take with a grain of salt since each “claim” is not created equal. It’d be more accurate to count how many characters per claim but I’m not willing to do that yet.

69.

7日7月

:speech_balloon: “7th of July”

輸血『と』腹膜透析『を』再開…

:speech_balloon: “Mister Kaneko’s blood transfusion and peritoneal dialysis resume”


70. ホラ先生ちゃんとそっち『の』シーツもって

☆シーツ a loanword of course, from “sheets” in English. I googled the word on Weblio for the etymology but couldn’t find anything. This is likely due to using a bilingual dictionary, which is more focused on the two languages.

Are you sure it isn’t 7月7日 ? :slight_smile:

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I’m checking out the dictionaries we’ve talked about, Kotobank, Goo and Sanseido.

☆Why is it called “goo”? It’s a weird name. I keep thinking about it and wondering where that comes from. Even the romaji “goo” is unusual.

Re: # 70:

ホラ先生ちゃんとそっち『の』シーツもって

☆New Vocabulary☆
ホラ: look out! (I think it’s generally written in katakana);
ちゃんと: adv. diligently;
そっち: that way;
もって: ⓐ with, by, by means of

:thought_balloon: Here, is she saying:
ちゃんと or ちゃん+と

:speech_balloon: “Look out sensei, you do the sheets this way”
Maybe?


:speaking_head: Discussion

I was thinking about something yesterday.

After episode 4 is done, I wanted to suggest changing our reading material entirely.

For me, the current reading is still challenging but it might be very easy for others.

Also, I was thinking of switching towards newspaper articles but not the simplified NHK ones necessarily. Proper native newspapers. From what I understand it’s the hardest thing to read at least kanji wise.

The advantage of using newspaper articles is that it’s short term time wise. This means that we can constantly have newcomers to participate since the reason of “I wasn’t there at the beginning so I’ll never participate” doesn’t apply.

Preference wise, I personally prefer reading non-fiction to fiction. Reading newspaper articles would allow us to learn about the language as well as learn about the world, essentially killing two birds with one stone.

At the moment I’m mostly the one claiming sentences anyway, I’d say about 2/3 of them so it’s more of an individual process than anything else (regarding the actual translations). The help from @Jonapedia and @ayamedori is precious and essential but it’d like their input to be shared with more people, it’s so important.

It’s not like we were going to translate all of the manga anyway. We’re starting to get sentences which require no translation as our level is improving. Normally, those sentences could be picked up by beginners but the new participation is non-existent with our current format so it doesn’t apply.

The disadvantages are as following from my point of view:

Using text instead of images means we could end up over relying on tool assisted translation. The temptation would be there to copy/paste a lot. As @YanagiPablo said, I too enjoy typing the text and found it allows more language involvement than just copy/pasting.

Could we last a week on a newspaper article? I think it’s possible but we’d have to be wary to pace ourselves less we end up being reported again for creating too many threads.

Let me know your thoughts.


A better Compromise?

I thought the best of both worlds could be a passage from a book.

71. まったくお医者さんってなんで看護婦まかせっきりなんだから!

:speech_balloon: “Truly, why don’t doctors just leave everything to nurses!”

(Not sure)


☆ New Vocabulary ☆

まったく: “really”, “truly”;
看護婦【かんごふ】female nurse;
なんで: why, what for;
まかせっきり: leave everything to someone else;


Grammar

って: I think this is the は function ayamadori was talking about that one time;


72. 治療『を』再開して間もくない

☆ New Vocabulary ☆

治療【ちりょう】medical treatment, cure;


An Exciting Exploration of a Japanese Dictionary

間【あいだ】span, period of time;
I actually knew this one but I wanted to use a JP-JP dictionary for the first time to get out of my comfort zone.

I decided on goo this time around. Let’s read what I found out.


The very first line I get is:

間で始まる言葉

間 is the particle I looked up followed by the grammatical particle で.
始まる言葉 means “beginning word”.
:thought_balloon: Here they might mean “main entry” by this expression since the first definition of a dictionary is usually the main one.

国語辞書 238
Is what I get next.
国語辞書【こくごじしょ】Japanese-language dictionary;
:thought_balloon: This could be because multi-lingual dictionaries are also supported by Goo. 238 probably refers to ‘entries’.

Here’s what I have next:

あい is the word in kana while 合い is the kanji representation.

合い can mean:

noun, abbreviation
ⓐ between-season wear, spring and autumn clothing, spring and fall clothing (also written as 間, see also: 合服)
suffix
ⓑ together
ⓒ condition, situation, state
ⓓ -ish

Here I think it refers to “a condition”. It’s telling us the main category of the word.

:cold_sweat: I don’t know what とも refers to here. 書く means to write. Maybe the kanji working of 間? No idea.

:cold_sweat: 合い着【あいぎ】means “between season gear”. Maybe it’s an example of how 間 can be used? No idea. 合い服 is a synonym of 合い着.

:cold_sweat: 略 means abbreviation. So 合い服 is an abbreviation of 合い着? How so? Don’t know.

:cold_sweat: 2名詞 means two nouns, so maybe the two entries we just saw with 合い服 and 合い着? Don’t know.

下に means “down”…

付く means to be attached…

接尾語 means a suffix…

用いる means to use…

So if someone could give me through this I’d be very happy because I’m very confused.

News articles are quite a step up from manga, but have the advantage that there are a lot of repetitive structures and no colloquial language or slang. I think it’d be an interesting change, and we could easily last a week on one article - especially news sites that don’t necessarily focus on reporting the latest breaking news can be pretty verbose, National Geographic for example has tons of multiple-page articles that could make a fun exercise.

Depends a lot on the book, you’d have to find a freely-accessible one that’s still relatively easy and preferably fun to read as well. Something like 君の名は would be a happy medium between manga and news I think, but I’m not sure if that site is even legal :speak_no_evil:

Thank you for your input, I have yet to be let down by someone from Amsterdam.

Could you guide me through goo when you have some time? I’m confused at the moment. The level of entry is quite high.