Who's On First?
Had such a moment a couple of days ago while son was doing his Japanese homework. Part of it was a number of sentences with kanji underline and for those underlined kanji; the correct hiragana was to be written beneath it.
There was one, the kanji 父, and he asked me what the answer was. Not willing to give him a free pass, I pointed to myself and said, ‘me’. I look down and see him write under the kanji, 「み」 !
‘No, I did not mean 「み」, I meant, me! Like ‘me’, your father!
‘Huh?’ ‘Ah, Dad, I’m confused.’
‘That is the kanji for ‘father’, which is not pronounced as 「み」 !
‘Then what is it?’
[Exasperated] ‘Try 「ちち」.
In all fairness though, we don’t exactly speak High Japanese around here and he’s probably not heard the word「ちち」 used at all.
Comments
I am forgetting kanji by the hour, but try to learn a new one everyday too... I feel like if I am not in a class, kanji is hopeless... I can speak Japanese all day but that won't help my kanji skills
any tips?
Speaking for myself, constant, continued exposure was the key. First because I lived where I lived and on top of that, working in an all-Japanese environment at Large multinational automobile manufacturer 1 did wonders.
Being out of the Land of Wa makes kanji learning and retention, tough. We it I, I'd probbaly look at news websites and read an article once a day. Manga might be another, more interesting avenue to explore. Do you have a kanji dictionary? Having someting like the Nelson's Japanese-English kanji dictionary makes reading quicker: though theer's stuff like Babblefish and Google too.
Ah yes, the interactive stuff. Not around in my day ;-) Still have and ocassionaly use the Nelson's dictionary.
Bring to mind another 'my ears are playing tricks on me' episode. This was related to me by a Brit, who also worked in Japan for Large multinational automobile manufacturer 1.
There was this Japanese guy in London, whose hearing wasn't quite up to snuff yet, standing on a subway plaform. Now I don't remember such, but as the dors are about to close, there is an automated announcement of 'Mind the doors' . As this was played, even though the the car he was standing in front of was nearly empty, he thought he was hearing ' 満員だどう ' , did not board, and the train left without him.
Sortry for the font size- unintentional and an artifact of this sites' word processing limitations
Bimoji, eh? Just took a look and may see what it can do for my son. whose handwriting, both English and Japanese can only be described, and charitably at that, as horrendous.
I took 書道 for a number of years when I lived inthe Land of Wa. Never got a 級 or a 段, but wasn't interested in pursing such either. That was many, many years ago and I'm sure if I took a brush to hand now, I'd turn out crap.