Weeb-go

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Weeb-go

Post by Starprintsky » Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:09 am

So here's a thing I wrote for someone, trying to make dialects more decipherable. It's certainly not introductory material, but might be of use/interest and I've already got it handy.

---

So, three most important things for dialects, at least from what I gather:

1) Use of the abbreviated form of the old negative ending, ぬ. This is just ん.
2) Use of the alternative verb for "present (living thing)" - おる instead of いる.
3) Use of alternatives to だ - や、じゃ、even ちゃ

---

1) Alternative negatives:

You simply replace ない with ん in a lot of dialects. So something like 食べない becomes 食べん. Meaning is unchanged (although speaking in a dialect at all will always carry implications in a language like this, where almost all TV is presented in "neutral" dialect and basically everyone can also speak "neutral" blah blah)

You hear this a lot, sometimes it doesn't even feel dialecty. 分からん - I don't understand.
Biggest thing to watch out for here are the ones that transform irregularly. Off the top of my head, する becomes しない when negative, but in old language, it's せぬ. So, some dialects use せん to mean しない.
You also find some words are given a bit extra to sound more negative and not weird. Like, I'm pretty sure the "dialect negative" of 見る is 見らん moreso than 見ん, despite the latter being what the pattern would imply (e.g. it's 食べん, not 食べらん)

Osaka dialect uses a different negative ending, that one with へん - no idea where this comes from or how precisely its used, though I think mostly you just replace ん with へん

---

2) Alternative verb for present:

You hear people saying おる instead of いる(居る) in dialects. Fine, might not come up that much, you might think. You also hear it in polite Japanese - しております etc.

But actually, している is of course "doing". いる shows up in that sort of present tense, and then all the dialects that replace いる with おる now get a completely different grammatical flavour according to how they decide they want to implemen this:

"Doing" can now be, probably among many others:
しておる <--- just replace iru with oru
しとる <--- replace te-oru with toru because it's quicker to say
しおる <--- conjunctive form "shi" instead of "shite", with oru
しちょっ <--- replace teo with cho in that weird way of Japanese "abbreviation", drop the ru

That last example is an important one, because dealing with る is actually another differentiating point between dialects. For example, "neutral" Japanese is mostly the same as Tokyo dialect, but Tokyo dialect likes to replace る with ん.
何やってんだろう?! <---- the ru in yatteru is replaced with n
どうすうんの? <---- dou suru no can become dou sun no or dou suun no by replacing ru with n
etc.

The dialect I'm most familiar with (Miyazaki-ben) replaces る with silence. It's the one that does stuff like しちょ in the example above.
ある often becomes あっ, for example.

---

3): Alternative couplas (だ):

I don't know what can be said about these, except they are a common marker for dialects (also often used to mark "old person talk" in dialogue). Simply, だ gets replaced with alternatives like や、じゃ、ちゃ. Things built off of だ change similarly - じゃろう instead of だろう.

Miyazaki-ben, that I'm most familiar with, actually uses all three, seemingly with a pattern actually:

誰や? (誰だ?) <---- や seems to be used to replace the questioning type of だ
行くちゃろう? (行くだろう?) <---- ちゃ or じゃ are typically used to replace だ in だろう
じゃっけん (だが) <---- じゃ is used to replace だ in most basic grammar. This also features the replacement of contrastive が with けん, another miyazaki-ben thing

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:29 am

Neato! I recognize a lot of that stuff from kansai-ben (which is the only nonstandard dialect I can distinguish). The alternative copula thing I definitely thought was "don't-give-a-shit" talk, from context, it usually felt like it was expressing contempt.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Starprintsky » Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:35 pm

A fun one. "Precum" is literally "patience juice".

EDIT: Wait, I can't confirm what "jiru" actually means but patience is definitely in there >>

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by catonkeyboard » Mon Sep 07, 2020 12:44 am

Starprintsky wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:35 pm A fun one. "Precum" is literally "patience juice".
*Nods tantricly*
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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:02 am

I was rewatching Hunter x Hunter, and actually paid attention to the Japanese in this scene:

Image

and turns out Hisoka is saying 僕がキルアをやるのはありかい (Am I allowed to YARU Killua?)

And, uh, やる can certainly mean kill, but it could just as easily have been 犯る (to have sex (securities fraud) with). And together with that hand gesture, and Hisoka's character in general, I feel like this was definitely a double entendre.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Juri » Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:33 am

Let's commit securities fraud together
Image

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Skeletor » Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:30 pm

Wack off
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Starprintsky » Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:31 pm

Ashenai wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:02 am 犯る
Oh huh, didn't know this could be used for やる

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Khaos » Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:48 pm

Skeletor wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:30 pmWack off
Wack on

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Sep 11, 2020 1:22 am

I get the sinking feeling I posted this before but I was thinking about it again.

Sudoku is etymologically Japanese, 数独 (suudoku) which can be literally translated as "number loneliness" reflecting the fact that each digit has to be isolated from its other copies.
Naturally, in Japan, they call it ナンバープレイス (the Japanese transliteration of the English phrase "number place").

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by KingRamz » Fri Sep 11, 2020 3:16 am

Starprintsky wrote:I get the sinking feeling I posted this before but I was thinking about it again.

Sudoku is etymologically Japanese, 数独 (suudoku) which can be literally translated as "number loneliness" reflecting the fact that each digit has to be isolated from its other copies.
Naturally, in Japan, they call it ナンバープレイス (the Japanese transliteration of the English phrase "number place").
Kinda like how in the US we call cut, fried potatoes "French fries," but in France they call them "Disgusting oily American starch-sticks"

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Sep 11, 2020 3:23 am

man, i love disgusting oily american starch sticks

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Skeletor » Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:10 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 3:23 am man, i love disgusting oily americans
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Doug » Mon Sep 14, 2020 7:09 pm

Man, I love oil, said the American
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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Khaos » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:12 pm

sometimes i'll pat down my americans with a paper towel

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:25 pm

In Japanese, the type of oil you go to war for is 石油, literally stone-oil. 石 is stone, 油 is oil or fat.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:26 pm

Also, I keep confusing stone 石 with right (the opposite of left), which is 右. Some kanji are really annoying.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Doug » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:29 pm

Made of Stone - The Stone Roses
It's your turn in Cthulhu Wars
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars

http://devilsbiscuit.com/

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm

I also think it's funny that the kanji for the first three numbers are 一 (one), 二 (two) and 三 (three), just to lull new Japanese learners into a false sense of security. None of the numbers after 3 are at all guessable, or look remotely like you'd imagine them to.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Rylinks » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:31 pm

a square has four sides

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:32 pm

and legs inside it

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Rylinks » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:36 pm

apparently four did used to be four lines but that was too hard to read

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:37 pm

also noteworthy is that the 口 kanji and radical isn't really seen as a square by Japanese people. It's really supposed to be a circle, except kanji mostly use straight lines. I've read that it looked rounder in ancient Chinese script.

Hence why the sun is 日. That's a circle with a sunspot (seriously).

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Doug » Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:37 pm

Ashenai wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 8:30 pm I also think it's funny that the kanji for the first three numbers are 一 (one), 二 (two) and 三 (three), just to lull new Japanese learners into a false sense of security. None of the numbers after 3 are at all guessable, or look remotely like you'd imagine them to.
But in the past in China, four was indeed written with four horizontal lines. It drifted away from that because in vertical writing, putting more than four lines starts to get one character confused with the next
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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Shiny Days » Wed Oct 14, 2020 5:10 am

ok so, i will cop to ahead of time to at the very least being not educated, from which we can infer many things. and like, ok, it's entirely possible that i'm not the best at learning, and like, you know, sometimes what i'm trying to learn is extremely difficult, and so i should give credence to the people who are more educated than me, perhaps, probably, most likely, who have figured out the thing and are trying to teach the thing and have come up with what they believe to be a good way to teach thing, but, like, man

so like learning html, right. imagine that we spent two weeks, the first two weeks, learning about half of a bracket (<). not a whole bracket. not anything useful or anything that you'd ever use. just half the bracket. because i guess you have to know that. for some reason. so you spend two weeks learning about half the bracket and then it's like ok that was whatever, but meat and potatoes now, right? no. now you have to go to some other website to memorize every single html tag entirely on your own. but not the whole thing! because you're being sold lessons here. just remember anchor image html body etc. entirely on your own. that's only like 20 plus things. but make sure you memorize them! because they're important

ok now we've got through that, stuff that's not useful and memorizing the stuff we were hoping to learn. well, now, we're gonna teach you / get you to memorize some stuff. not that other stuff that you had to memorize on your own by reading a list, new stuff. and, hey, it turns out how people memorize stuff effectively is by getting useless junk to also memorize. so like how do you remember bracket? well, you could just remember bracket, but that's not how people learn. so how about instead of that you remember that you don't need a broken bottle. you need a bracket. broken, bracket. easy. ok, so broken / bracket then the tag that you memorized, on your own, and now you need ref. o ffices have conference rooms and a roof. roof plus conference is a rooference. so just remember office rooferance to get reference and then turn reference into href (because it's hot).

alright, well, fantastic. now i'm memorizing like sixteen things just to get to <a href but at least we're close right, like, i'm learning the thing, right? so what's the next thing. well, remember two weeks ago when you were learning half of an equal sign. now we're gonna stack them on top of each other to create this new thing isn't going to mean or be related to the other thing in any way. am i being fucked with? is this what's going on

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Starprintsky » Wed Oct 14, 2020 10:20 am

Were you reading kanji damage? lol

I think mnemonics are a terrible way to approach learning. Well, they are sometimes nifty as a trick to remember the ones that you tend to blank on, but to come up against 2500 kanji or even just 50 hiragana and think "the best way to learn this will be to remember 50 or god forbid 2500 little stories" is just batshit to me.

I assume that's more what you're talking about. When it comes to breaking down kanji into radicals, that's still extremely useful. 25 strokes in a character is just like "what are these people doing to themselves" but "oh yeah instead of writing abcd we write:

a c
b d

and our word turns into one character" is just like, oh, that's quaint. And now sometimes you can even infer meaning purely from what letters go in the word, bonus! (I guess all compound words do that for free too welp)

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:02 pm

Arti is doing wanikani at my suggestion! I gotta say, the mnemonics are working extremely well for me.

The goal is obviously to eventually get to a point where you look at 愛 and you know what it is, you don't have to consciously spot 心 in the middle part or remember the little story that goes with it. Because what does 夂 or 冬 have to do with 愛? Nothing, not a goddamn thing.

But I think you guys are confusing the process of learning a kanji with the end result of knowing a kanji. Learning the stories and doing the exercises naturally leads to a state where you no longer need the story as a crutch. They are used when the kanji is unfamiliar, and are no longer necessary once you know it. Back when I was learning hiragana, I learned む (mu) by imagining it as the head of a cow (moo). I no longer see or think of a cow when I look at む, I just see mu. But that was the process that imprinted it into my brain.

Speaking of arti's half a bracket (<): remember when you were a kid and you were taught that in an expression like 3 < 5, you should imagine the < as a duck's bill or a crocodile's mouth, and the duck or crocodile wants to eat the bigger number? Well, I bet you no longer think of that when you see 3 < 5. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a useful mnemonic for learning it. It gave a good grounding for understanding, a scaffolding for memorization. Once memorization is done, the scaffolding is no longer needed. But it is foolish for someone who's done with the process to look back at people working on the scaffolding and going like "lol, why are you bothering with crocodiles and ducks, that's just more stuff to remember".

I've tried other methods of learning kanji, and the wanikani mnemonics thing is working the best for me, BY FAR. If it doesn't work for you, then I guess try a different method. But here's the truth as I see it, arti: if you can't handle memorizing the wanikani radicals at Level 1, you will not find a way to learn kanji, no matter what you try.

I think becoming a conoisseur of learning methods is easy, and doing the work is hard. If you want to learn, then at some point you will need to stop trying to critique the learning method, and you will have to submit to it instead, and do what it asks of you.

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Rylinks » Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:06 pm

i totally still think of that when i see 3 < 5

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Rylinks » Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:07 pm

i remember the quadratic formula with the pop goes the weasel song too

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Re: Weeb-go

Post by Ashenai » Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:21 pm

Oh also, arti, hiragana is super important and should be the first step in learning Japanese. It not only makes learning everything else easier, but you also do need it for reading Japanese, since about half of any Japanese text is going to be in hiragana.

I would go so far as to say that it's a mistake to focus on kanji if you're not perfect in hiragana yet. Learning hiragana is less than 1% of the effort of learning kanji, and it's 50% of the Japanese you see.

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