The best way for me to really get something is to “understand all its aspects,” as Chancellor Palpatine would say.(2) This includes Japanese, so I will begin writing short articles that will act as guides to both myself and any readers as I dissect and tinker with the finer elements of the Japanese I am learning from Pimsleur. Plus, when I teach something and verbally explain any observations I have, I tend to remember it a hell of a lot better; it has a way of… concreting the material into my mind.
I’ve already completed level 1 of 5, and almost all of level 2, however it’s been a while so I’ve forgotten much of what I’ve learned and have decided to start over from level 2. I will not be including the entire 30-minute lesson, but rather the 10+ phrases and such that the lesson teaches in such a way that it helps me remember them for good. At this point, I already understand very basic and elementary Japanese, but have a long ways to go, or as we would say in Japan, 「まだまだです。」\mada-mada desu.\
So for starters, as I took the 30-minute lesson, I came across a few exemplary words that I had forgotten:
緑茶、「りょくちゃ」、\ryoku-cha\, ‘green tea’
何か飲むもの、「なにかのむもの」、\nani-ka nomumono\, ‘something to drink’
Let’s begin with the first one there: ‘green tea.’ Now, I grew up with a Japanese mother and as such, learned tidbits of the language and customs. One such word I learned as a kid was the word for ‘green,’ which is pronounced, 「みどり」、 \midori.\ So, any time I hear the word ‘green’ in Japanese context, I immediately think, \midori.\ Or since this is green tea, I also think of matcha, which is a Japanese word, of course (抹茶). Now I need to figure out the difference.
So I looked up the kanji in Shirabe Jisho (excellent resource) for the part of the word that is pronounced \ryoku\ and sure enough, it’s the same kanji that is pronounced \midori!\:
I had a bit of a eureka moment there because of course! \Midori\ is the kunyomi (the Japanese pronunciation) and \ryoku\ is the onyomi (Chinese pronunciation) used mostly in compound words where multiple kanji are strung together. Which much also mean that the kunyomi and onyomi for ‘tea’ is the same, right?
Sure enough, it is.
Therefore, it’s a compound word and uses the onyomi. Okay. Now, let’s tinker with the kanji of 緑. Every kanji has what are called “radicals,” elements or building blocks of simpler characters that make up a denser, more complex one.
In this case, from left to right, it’s essentially combining the characters for ‘thread’ and ‘water’ with the ヨ (\yo\) radical thrown in, which… I do not see how that pertains to green, but okay.
As for 「何か飲むもの」, well… I also took two Japanese classes in high school, so this does add up except for one thing: we would say \nomimono\ as opposed to \nomumono,\ since we used the Genki textbooks. I’ll have to ask my mother about that one, though it may be just a dialect thing.
Edit: I asked her and she said they’re “extremely similar.” So I guess I’m free to use them interchangeably.
Now the phrases you are taught in this lesson are:
朝
午後
明日の朝
明日の午後
昨日の朝
昨日の午後
知っています
知りません
もう一週間
そこで
まだです
Number one is 朝 (\asa\), meaning ‘morning.’ While I already knew the word, the kanji I haven’t memorized yet, but from the look of it, the left radical consists of a ten (十), a sun (日), and another ten, and the right radical is a moon (月). Okay… but this kanji can also mean ‘dynasty,’ which makes a little bit more sense, since the sun is often associated with the day, and the moon the month. Almost like whoever created this character wanted to use thousand (千), but it took away from the symmetry, not to mention the top of the bottom “thousand” would be hugging the bottom of the sun. Weird sentence… the left radical also looks remarkably similar to the kanji for ‘car:’ 車. But it’s not the same.
Number two is 午後 (\gogo\), meaning ‘afternoon.’ Like with number one, I know the word, but not really the kanji. I was taught that it’s also used to say “PM” when referring to what time it is, though I’ve also been told that it doesn’t get used for that purpose very often as the Japanese typically prefer to say something like, “Four in the afternoon,” as opposed to, “4pm.” Regardless, let’s dissect the kanji. The first one, 午, means ‘noon,’ and consists of two radicals: ノ and 干す (ほす). The first one usually indicates a sliding or slashing motion, and the second one that makes the most sense is the verb ‘to air’ or ‘to dry.’ So the kanji 午 is essentially like slashing the air in half, which makes perfect sense for ‘noon.’ The other one, 後, means ‘behind’ or ‘back.’ I happen to know some of how this is used in its standalone, kunyomi form, which is pronounced \ato\. One phrase that Pimsleur teaches is 「その後」, meaning ‘after that,’ or literally, “that behind.” The radicals consist of the going-man on the left, thread/small on the top-right, and late/winter on the bottom-right. So the creator of this character perhaps thought that behind-ness had something to do with going through a small winter? That doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, but okay.
Numbers three and four consist of one and two, both preceded by 「明日の」, meaning ‘tomorrow morning’ and ‘tomorrow afternoon,’ respectively. Five and six do the exact same with 「昨日の」, meaning ‘yesterday’ and you fill in the blanks. I always got 明日 and 昨日 mixed up when it came to reading. Their pronunciations, \ashita\ and \kinō\ respectively, are plenty different enough that I didn’t mistake that all that much. So let’s take a closer look. I think 明日 actually makes plenty of sense, now that I study it visually. It’s a sequence of a sun, then moon, then another sun. Tomorrow! Perfect. I should have noticed this years ago. The other one, 昨日, is a little bit trickier. The first kanji, 昨, means ‘previous’ just like 前 or 先. It also sort of looks like a sun is getting dashed or swished off to the left from another sun, sort of like ‘yesterday?’ I guess? Also when looking at examples of how it’s used in Shirabe Jisho, it seems to only be used when referring to units of time, specifically, days and seasons. This makes sense, because to say “last week” in Japanese, you say, 「先週、」or literally, “previous week.” Or “last year,” 「前年。」Note that neither of those use 昨.
Number seven and eight are rather peculiar. They mean ‘know’ and ‘don’t know’ respectively, specifically when referring to one’s familiarity with something or someone like, “I know him,” but number seven is in -teru form, the Japanese equivalent of present-continuous, so by saying, 「知っています、」you’re literally saying, “I’m knowing.” However, the negative form uses just plain negative, no -teiru form, so 「知りません。」Why does one use continuous form and not the other? Maybe the scope of continuous-form words in Japanese is wider than in English? Come to think of it, this applies to the way you’d say, “I have something,” in Japanese: 「何か持っています、」which also uses -teru form. So I suppose you would, in addition to ING-words, use -teru form for the English equivalent of, “I currently have,” or, “I currently know,” more or less. Oh, and the kanji, 知, is interesting too. The right radical is a mouth (口), and the left one (矢) is an… arrow? Or dart? Whose kanji in and of itself looks like you’re slashing the sky? That’s what it means according to Shirabe Jisho, and when typing it out on a PC, it also does give you the option to type an arrow if you want (→). It… sort of makes sense. 知 can also mean ‘wisdom,’ so I suppose firing an arrow from one’s mouth is sort of like wisdom, since it… can be rather piercing, or convicting. Huh.
Number nine is pretty straightforward; it just means ‘one more week.’ Now, I know what each of the three kanji in 「もう一週間」means (「もう」just means ‘more’ or ‘already’). The first just means ‘one,’ so you could substitute that kanji with any other that means a number and as far as I know, without uniquely-pronouncing “counters,” as they’re called, like, say, 「一本」(\ippon\) and 「二本」(\nihon\). The second one, 週, means ‘week.’ This, I knew already (when hearing it), but I wouldn’t always recognize it visually. So to dissect it (and thankfully, its kunyomi and onyomi are the same), it consists of the walking radical (⻌) and the circumference radical (周), which itself is essentially… good luck in a box? Which itself is essentially a mouth (maybe celebration?) beneath the dirt, all inside a box? So a week is defined as a walking box of good luck? That makes no sense to me. Maybe weeks had a connection to Chinese culture back in the day, though that also raises the question: how did they define a week in terms of numbers of days when they didn’t have the Gregorian calendar? I’m confusing myself here. In any event, it’s official: a week is a walking box of good luck. Now the third kanji, 間, I’ve seen used elsewhere as a counter for units of time, but only one: hours (ie.:「時間」). Its radicals consist of a gate (門) and the sun (日), meaning ‘interval’ or ‘space (in between).’ Intervals of time (and space)? Sure, I can buy that. Or 「ええ、買える。」I wonder if it gets used in musical terminology too, which uses the word ‘interval’ when referring to the distance between notes. Now for a long time, I thought this was the counter for months too, but apparently it’s not. No wonder I kept getting that wrong! Because the counter for months is 「ヶ月、」(\ka-getsu\), which sounds a lot like saying, 「間月、」(\kan-getsu\), which is probably wrong, too, if those kanji were strung together like that. Putting that (間月) in Google Translate (Shirabe Jisho had no results) came up with “intermonth,” an English word I’ve never heard before. And I was right about the pronunciation; it’s actually 「まつき」(\matsuki\). I’m sure it is very rarely used, except by mistake when meaning to use 「ヶ月。」
Number ten is also pretty straightforward; it just means ‘there’ followed by the particle で, indicating that “there” is where an action took place.
Number eleven is… also pretty straightforward. 「まだ」means ‘not yet,’ so adding the 「です」there just makes it a complete sentence.
Whew! That took a while to write out, way longer than I had expected. I don’t think writing an article for every single Pimsleur lesson is sustainable, so I’ll have to reconsider doing this at all, though it did help me retain the information. Maybe flash-cards aren’t such a bad idea, after all…
Sources:
“Lesson 1 of Pimsleur’s Japanese 2,” Pimsleur Language Programs
Lucas, G., 2005, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Lucasfilm Ltd.
All references to scripture use the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
No AI was used in the making of this article. Cheers.