Today I Learned...

Farcear

(Title stolen from Reddit.com.)

I feel this forum needs "generic discussion thread" for people to post anything that may not be deserving of an entire thread; even if only for my own ramblings.

Today I learned that Katakana can be confusing that Hiragana, e.g. ソン, シツ and マム.　It is interesting to track the relationship between some of the kana:
ウワフスヌタクケテチ.

Update: For what it's worth; I've now "done" all of the Katakana.

Konata

I learned that I have a serious amount of study to do before my exam in 2 weeks WAAAAAAH ;_;

>_<

funky penguin

I've learned that it's almost impossible to get unsalted, unroasted nuts in Japan. Or at least in Kanazawa......

Farcear

I learned that 「四」「七」「九」 change their pronunciation depending on their mood...

I also have a *lot* of Kanji work to do to catch up to this guy: 100,000 Kanji !!!

Farcear

I learned that numerals are *not* straight forward.

百＝ひゃく
二百＝にひゃく
三百＝さんびゃく

funky penguin

It's really only the 3, 6 and 8 that you have to worry about, and once you start regularly saying/reading them, you'll find that they ain't so bad!

just-joe

i learned people in osaka say ookini to mean thank you.

Farcear

I learned where Osaka is!

In light of the "AJATT" mantra, homepage is now google.co.jp (Very useful for that Katakana!)

Farcear

ALERT: Nazi Germany invades central Japan! Poised for strike against Tokyo!!!

http://imgur.com/67OJA


Today I learned... how to find Buddhist temples on a map. ^^

Farcear

Learning points:

1. Dropbox is one of the most useful services I've ever used. Can't recommend it highly enough!

2. Backup your HDD regularly!!!!! (See point #1)

3. Following a HDD failure (see points #1 and #2),　I've decided to take the plunge and install Windows 7 in 日本語 mode! I'm relatively tech-savvy and can navigate the OS without difficulty anyway. However, I have realised that...

4. 英語＋カタカナ＝日本語

Can you guess the following Win7 terms:

スタート
ドキュメント
シャットダウン
すべてのプログラム

hibby

Here are some phrases you will learn just by taking the subway every morning and evening:

ドアが閉まります doa ga shimarimasu - the doors are about to close;
ご注意ください go-chuui kudasai - please take care;
この電車は中百舌鳥行きです kono densha wa nakamozu-yuki desu - this train is going to Nakamozu*;
ご乗車ありがとうございました go-jousha arigatou gozaima****a - thank you for taking the train.

Not sure how useful they will be in everyday conversation!

(*And yes, Nakamozu really is written like that!)

[edited to add: Hey, that's funny, I wrote ありがとうございました　in Roman letters and the message board software censored the "offending" letters! Let's see:
dou itashima****e
****a ni mairimasu
denki wo ke****e kudasai]

Farcear

Today I learned... わかる！ (And how to remember positive/negative forms of some verbs ^.^)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgyh-5EQHjg


Also, I'm *really* liking www.memrise.com for just learning vocab in general. Even just 20 words a day is easy; and fun!

Gotta love mnemonic memory!