日く

約 yaku - about
国 kuni/koku - city,homeland

あの ふたり　は そ くりで くべつ できない
ano futari wa so kuride kubetsu dekinai
those two look identical and i can't tell them apart

くつした に あな が ひらいている
kutsushita ni ana ga hiraiteiru (audio i have 'hiraiteru' sounds more like hiiteiru)
there are holes in my socks


pretty slow for 4 days. Time to reevaluate how much effort I'm putting into studying.

日はち

new words
市 , いち , ichi- market
市 , し , shi - city
者 , もの , mono- person
前 , まえ , mae - past, front
できる, dekiru - to be able

new sentences
そこ の かいだん を おりて ください
soko　no kaidan wo　orite kudasai (i'm not really sure where the words end or begin anymore)
go down the stairs please


しゅくだい は まだ おわって いません
shikudai wa mata owate imasen
i haven't finished my homework yet

learning full sentences seems to be a good strategy, now that i have some hirigana learned, learning a full sentence is not much more difficult than learning a single word, because I don't have to guess how the words should be put together.

日しち

I cut down the word count to 6, but added a sentence.
その sono - that(near speaker)
問題 mondai - the matter,problem,question (this one's a pain to draw)
的 mato - mark, target
です desu - be(polite)
について nitsuite - about
これ kore - this one

here's the sentence
keんこう が いちばん たいseつ だ
kenkou ga ichiban taisetsu da
your health is the most important thing.

I'm not even trying to tackle the kanji on this one. I plan to add more sentences a day at the expense of words, not sure how many. A whole sentence was suprisingly easy to learn, I may just pursue this route, thanks to the internet, I can find ALOT of whole sentences to use in different situations.

日roく

I read this article and found this site and decided that I need to just memorize whole sentences. I'm a proponent of figuring out things for one's self, but language learning is really just about imitation. The better you imitate, the better you speak the language(up to the skill of the original speaker).

new words
同 dou - similar
へ he - synonym for に, but with different connotations
東京　toukyou - Tokyo
時　toki/jii - time
中　chuu/neka - inside,middle,during
ば ba - means if/suppose when ending a sentence
くる kuru - come(closer to speaker)
もの mono - thing, person, (also what?)

catchup(aka: 日go)

wiktionary is my new and more reliable source for definitions, though i still get sounds from saiga-jp.

氏 し shi -- mr., family line
円　en(yen) -- yen(日本 currency) , circle
よう you -- comes after a verb to indicate desire for it to happen soon
この kono -- this
ため tame -- try, do for
まで made -- until, even
いう iiu -- tell
ます masu -- to increase, verb ending emphasizing politeness

I need to go back to drawing the words as I say them, and imagine their meaning, before I go to bed. and then repeating that the next morning. I retained much better then.

mikushi!

mixi...I must get an account there. Unfortunately, it's both invite only, and it requires you to have a cell phone number in Japan. Hopefully I can get some kind of prepaid phone for relatively cheap and make this happen. What I'll do once I'm in is another matter, but looking for local Japanese exchange students to trade language skills with seems like the best alternative prospect. The way I've come to understand it, mixi is significantly more popular than facebook, and I only know like 1 person younger than 35 that doesn't have a fb account.

random note, blood type is a big deal in japan? So I hear, it's like comparable to your zodiac sign or something. I don't even know what my blood type is...time to donate. I better make a hiveminder task so I actually do it.

day shi(4)

Last time I said short post, it was longer than the previous one.
I found a new resource which explains TONS about particles and connecting words.

人 ,hito - man,person,personality
年 ,two readings ,nen- age, and toshi - year
さん, san - three, numbers, calculations
なる, naru - grow, become, morph into, bear fruit
など, nado - equal
よ, ya - for joining elements of an incomplete list. EX: わたshi わ amerikajin よ student よ いsoがshi です(I am american and student and busy)
日本, nihon/nippon - Japan!
good place to stop!

I am going to skip a day to review and research other resources.

day san(3)

short post today, i have catching up to do, I didn't memorize these words well enough yesterday.
Up to hachi(8) words,
ある , aru -- a certain something, one thing?, to be alive, if a living thing, or to have if not living. one can "have" a pet, which is also alive, not sure how this works, that may be up to context and tone. i'm basically remembering this by associating the english words 'a' and 'alive' with possesion if not alive somehow falling in there.

いる, iru -- insert, exist, need. right now i'm remembering this by combining the long e sound from 'eexist' with a high pitched 'eeeeek!' type sound that you might make if someone gave you a shot(which is an alternate meaning). I think this can also mean 'the point' of a conversation, but i'm not really remembering that right now.

こと , koto -- fact,say/talk/tell,circumstances/current state,WORD! This is an awesome こと. One word that means fact,circumstances,say, and word seems ripe for overuse.

日, hi -- day, sun, abbreviation of Tokyo. mixing in kanji may seem confusing, but it was on my list, so, it's time to learn it.

ない , nai -- nothing,zero, etc. i've started counting from ない に ku instead of ichi に juu, in true coder style :-p. (I used に as a word indicating direction of movement: 0 に 9 , 1 に 10. I read that it can be used similarly to the word 'to' when denoting travel to a destination, i'm not sure if this is appropriate though)

も, mo -- lose, loss, mourn. seaweed,algae. apparently も can also mean one's own family? i'm going to assume it means loss most of the time, though I could see family being prevalent.

から , kara -- empty shell, from, because of, since. I see an empty carapace when i hear this word, that is like an empty void and the source of all things.

で , de -- appear,leave,pay. no tricks here as such i had some trouble remembering the meaning of this word, though i could write the hirigana and romanji without trouble.

I encountered one word that I could not find a meaning for and had to skip: れる
I couldn't find anything on any of the 7 sources that I use. Even something close I would have taken (ex: remember when I thought と meant only door, and commented on the Nihon obsession with doors? ).
If anyone knows the meaning of れる please let me know.

Something new besides Nihongo lesson reviews soon :-p

day に(ni,2)

Yesterday, I upped my words from san(3) to roku(6), I remembered that I knew how to count to juu(10) in Nihongo when I reached my first word of the day: ni(2,に).

ni, or に means two, and sometimes February, which makes alot of sense. Apparently, it can also be used to indicate direction of travel, similar to the english word 'to'. I find this to be a strange coincidence.

te, or て means hand or arm when used literally, and skill or ability in other contexts. It is easy for me to group all these things together.

to, or と I had some trouble with. The only translation that I was comfortable with was that of 'door', specifically a Japanese style door. Since it is so high up in frequency of use, I can't imagine that Japanese culture is that obsessed with doors. I'm assuming it is used frequently to refer to other kinds of portals, or to opportunities or barriers to opportunities, as a door can be either.

suru, or する means to rub,scrape,shave,scrub, and somewhat apart from these other things, print. I imagine that this is a very versitile word, but since my word frequency list was compiled from newspapers, perhaps する　は popular desu(deす).

ga or が is a particle that ends a sentence and denotes a question. As in something like 'anata wa と san deす ga?' I remember from a couple lessons at japanesepod101 that questions like the one above end in 'ka', at least that's how I heard it. Some sources I read grouped ga and ka together, as if they were different romaji of the same Nihongo. They are very similar sounding, so I'm going to keep this in the back of my mind for later.

da or だ is used to end a sentence to imply informality. It also seems to be possible to imply general apathy or violence with this word. Humorously, it is also considered masculine, and women frequently omit this word. Of this days words, I am by far the most uncertain about this one. I think I'll save speculation for later and simply remember that it's used to imply informality.

For now, I'm just going to stick with this and add more notes to my flash card if I discover alternate meanings.

*cough cough*

It's gotten a bit dusty since I was last here... partially due to the fact that I've taken up the habit of writing in a moleskine. I feel terribly trendy doing it, but it's oh so useful. I'll be typing up things that I write or have written from time to time.

I learned to solve the rubix cube in part due to a plain but inspiring status update (thanks Andy :-). It's a compulsion now, like bouncing your knee or squeezing a stress ball.

I like simple things. I have a simple idea. The word 'the' is roughly 6% of written English. The first 2000 most commonly occurring words are 90% of the English language. 2000 isn't that many things. At one point a few years ago, I could have with some difficulty named 2000 Magic: The Gathering cards, along with a general summary of their rules text and suggested use. If i learned 10 words/day of a foreign language, I think I would be close enough to get started on that language's wikipedia in a year.

So, I'm putting together some resources to help me learn my 10 words/day and learn Japanese.