tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256975584126037314.post3579007599340322931..comments2023-06-08T17:12:22.929+09:00Comments on girl & kat: In defense of tomorrowElizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03204560837191984544noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256975584126037314.post-15884923914293505222011-11-24T00:59:30.038+09:002011-11-24T00:59:30.038+09:00Wow -- that's really interesting. I've nev...Wow -- that's really interesting. I've never seen western country names written in Kanji before -- we always write them in Katakana. <br /><br />"Bright day" is a cheerful outlook. I will try and remember that when my alarm clock goes off tomorrow.Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03204560837191984544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256975584126037314.post-89930674319465424972011-11-23T16:55:24.840+09:002011-11-23T16:55:24.840+09:00Re: garbling of ひらがな
What you're experiencing ...Re: garbling of ひらがな<br />What you're experiencing is mojibake (changing characters): because not all programs recognize Japanese characters, they come out garbled in some browsers. This is a problem even today for some company and university websites.<br /><br />The character "rai" means "to come"; so rai-nen and rai-getsu mean "coming year" and "coming month".<br /><br />"Rai-nichi" means "coming to Japan." The Japanese use some one-kanji abbreviations for countries, a tradition kept from when kanji (and not katakana) were used for phonetically writing down country names. In this case, 日 is shorthand for 日本。<br />For example, the character 米 (bei, or "rice") is used to represent the US.<br />They used to write 亜米利加 for "a-me-ri-ka". (The character 亜, or "a", is not used since it's also used in "Asia.") Often times, you see 米国 in the newspapers to mean "America," 国 meaning "nation."<br />Other prominent examples are 伊太利亜 (I-ta-ri-a, abbreviation 伊) and 独逸 (Do-itsu, abbreviation 独) and 仏蘭西 (Fu-ran-su, abbreviation 仏).<br /><br />The word 明日 literally is written "bright day." Tomorrow is a bright day!<br />The word for the day after tomorrow is 明後日 (asatte, or myougonichi), written "bright day that comes later."Astrobassballhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12780800573093314141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256975584126037314.post-36459495558725663832011-11-19T11:23:48.495+09:002011-11-19T11:23:48.495+09:00Hmm.... must be language settings on your browser....Hmm.... must be language settings on your browser... I didn't think that might be a problem! Still random squares and letters sounds pretty accurate!<br /><br />Japanese is fun, but I don't find it easy. I actually really enjoy the writing system and grammar parts though because they are interesting, whereas learning vocabulary is necessary but just a slog! So, in some ways, it's better than a European language where most of it comes down to work memorisation, since the grammatical routes are closer to English.Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03204560837191984544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256975584126037314.post-46664034493093606662011-11-19T07:13:00.369+09:002011-11-19T07:13:00.369+09:00I don't know how the hiragana appear on your s...I don't know how the hiragana appear on your screen, but on mine they are little squares containing random numbers and letters. All the more confusing. I bow to your brain-power in mastering a language of such complexity expressed in kanji rather than script. (This from someone who attempted Ancient Greek - at least that has recognisable letters.)Amazing.Janhttp://literaryteapot.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com