• writtenmoon •

🌱I’ve been reading キノの旅 and started a reading journal where I summarize what I just read in Japanese. I try to use the new words I highlighted and it makes them stick better than flashcards. I actually haven’t studied any flashcards for 4 months and don’t miss them. I might go back eventually, but I found that I was spending time on flashcards that I could’ve been using for reading.

🌱I’ve had a lightbulb moment recently where active study works better for me - so I turned a passive activity like reading into a more active one where I read out loud and write in my reading journal. As I get back into studying after a 6-month break, I want to incorporate more active study methods like writing, shadowing, speaking, doing crossword puzzles, etc.

🌱I’ve also started working with a language coach and it was such an amazing experience! We talked about challenges with studying languages with AuDHD, monotropism and a bunch of other stuff. It was so nice to talk to someone about a shared interest because I can’t really do that with anyone in my real life. We also talked about how to incorporate more Russian into my life since I want to reactivate it and start immersing in it and writing in it more again.

The word "unicorne" was first reanalyzed as "une icorne"

The definite article was then added, making it "l'icorne"

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

Read. A lot.( ˘•ω•˘ )

It’s unfortunately the only way since in Japanese whether or not to use a kanji generally comes down to style more than concrete rules. But you’re generally safe to use kanji for most nouns and verbs. You’ll pick up on what most people would not write in kanji with more exposure to written Japanese.

As a base of things that you shouldn’t use kanji for (at least in modern Japanese):

Particles

Greetings - In formal writings you can include the kanji, but it feels too rigid for regular conversation. Even in formal writings こんにちは, if written, does not use kanji

いる and ある - You might sometimes see 居る and 有る in formal writings, but even then it’s on the rare side.

The こ・そ・あ・ど sets

Things that are a hassle to write. Which is pretty ambiguous, but for example きれい is usually written in hiragana because 綺麗 is just a monster to write for a quick comment and 御 like in 御茶 and 朝御飯 looks overly formal so is skipped (so you’d see お茶 and 朝ご飯 more often) 

to cite a pretty unusual example, i believe there’s a short story by hiromi kawakami where a talking bear requests that people address him with あなた but specifically while thinking of the word in kanji, i.e., 貴方. whether or not this one is a gender thing is totally beyond me though lol 🐻

My textbook gives the example:

その話が本当だとしたら、うれしいです。

But I could also use なら here, right?

The other example is:

飛行機で行くとしたら、いくらぐらいかかりますか。

Could I use なら here too? I feel like the answer's either no or technically yes but it's not very natural. The textbook suggests you could use "行く場合は" instead.

I also tried to write my own example:

ね、えみちゃんは振られたことになったそうだ。それとしたら、おそらく日中泣き通する。

let's do なら first because this is the one that i personally feel is not made very clear by textbooks and such.

なら = "if, as you say..."

sometimes なら is called "assertive" なら, but personally i don't feel like that's a very helpful qualifier...for me, i like to think of it as a conditional based on assumptions. the gist is often something like, "assuming what you say is true/will happen..."

so, we can see now why なら doesn't exactly fit with the example from your textbook:

その話が本当なら、うれしいです。 = if that story is true (as you say it is/as it seems to be), then i'm glad.

i don't think this sentence is grammatically incorrect or unavailable; however, it means something different than what i believe your textbook is going for. so let's go to 〜としたら to see the other option.

〜としたら = "if it were the case..."

there's waaaaay more to be said on the 〜たら form than i'm going to write in this post (rest assured i've written about it extensively elsewhere LOL), but i'll say that anything to do with 〜たら has the potential to be "unreal," meaning you can use this form to talk about things that haven't actually happened.

the phrase 〜とする means kind of like "to assume" (in this case), so in that sense it is similar to なら. however, the assumption that comes from 〜とする is often an imaginary one:

Xなら = if X is in fact true (as the evidence suggests)

Xとする = imagining for a moment that X were true...

see the difference? 〜とする has the ability to deal in "unreal"-ness, which なら doesn't.

so, if we tack a conditional ending onto 〜とする, we get this kind of sentence:

その話が本当だとしたら、うれしいです。 = if that story were true (assuming for a moment that it is, though really i don't know), i would be glad.

hopefully the nuance comes out with my translation here. using 〜としたら puts the conditional squarely in the realm of unrealness, i.e., things that can't be confirmed (at the time of speaking) to be true or false.

examining the 例文

so, probably at this point we can make a judgment on op's practice sentence. our goal here (i believe) is to get a sentence that means, "it sounds like emi got dumped. if that's true, she was probably crying all day." here's the original that was proposed:

ねえ、えみちゃんはフラれたそうだ。それ❓だとしたら❓、おそらく一日中泣き通していた。 = it sounds like emi got dumped. ❓if that were true❓, she would probably have been crying all day.

what do you guys think? for my part, i think なら is our better option here! that's because of the first sentence: since there's a 〜そうだ ("i heard") clause, we have evidence that the situation is actually true. that means we don't have to relegate ourselves to unrealness or imaginging that the situation might be true.

ねえ、えみちゃんはフラれたらしい。それなら、おそらく一日中泣き通していた。 = it sounds like emi got dumped. if that's true (which it seems to be), she was probably crying all day.

by using なら, we can show we're relying on external evidence to make this if-then claim.

on the other hand, we might find 〜としたら in a situation more like this:

えみちゃんは最近元気なさそうだよね。フラれたとしたら、こんなうっとうしい感じでもするでしょ？ = emi has seemed kind of down lately. maybe if she had been broken up with, she would be feeling as depressed as this?

in a case like the above, we don't have much good evidence to suggest emi has actually been dumped; rather, we're speculating on the cause of her bad mood. so, we can use 〜としたら to talk about that unreal situation, i.e., a situation that can't be confirmed.

It is somehow already November??! and I promised myself that in Nov I'd get back into language learning consistently again (since work - tutoring for uni - is done and I'll have time). I also promised myself that I would start learning Thai (because Jeff Satur and the Thai alphabet are both beautiful and amazing).

I won't have time for a lot of intense learning, since I am still working on my dissertation and it is my priority, so I've decided to kinda combine two langblr challenges I've seen! First is @/langvillage 's one sentence club and second, so I don't have to expend energy thinking of what to write, is @/spraakhexe2 's 30 day language challenge.

I have changed some of spraakhexe2's prompts because I don't think I have the ability or time for the more complicated ones lol, and my goal really is to just write one sentence every day.

The prompts are under the cut.

This is mostly just to keep myself accountable lmao, but anyone is free to do it as well lol (if you do, and esp if you're handwriting please tag me or smth, I'd love to see it!)