Roy Huggins Says Stuff » Learning Japanese

What’s Your Yearly Dinosaur?

Roy Huggins — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:31:50 +0000

I was hanging out after lunch with some 5th graders today. One of them is really into dinosaurs. He kept trying to drag my attention away to talk about them.

To try to keep the others involved, I asked another boy, in Japanese, if he liked dinosaurs. Now, the Japanese word for “dinosaur” is “kyoryu”. But I messed up and said “kyuryo”. That means “salary”. The kid rolled with it nicely. First he kindly corrected me, then he said (in Japanese), “My dinosaur is $1,000 per month.”

Awesome.

Honcho = 班長

Roy Huggins — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:41:31 +0000

You probably know that we borrowed the word “Typhoon” from Japanese. But I’ve been learning that we’ve actually borrowed quite a random assortment of words from Japanese.

For example, “honcho” from “head honcho” comes from the Japanese word 班長 (hanchou) which means “group leader/boss”. Apparently English speaking POWs in WWII were put into (quite brutal) workgroups by their Japanese captors and one Japanese word they never forgot was 班長.

I imagine many words we imported from Japanese were learned that way.

I Passed!

Roy Huggins — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:20:00 +0000

So I finally passed the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level 2! It basically means I qualify for a lot of bilingual jobs (but not interpreting — that’s well above my level.) I have more details on the joint blog I share with my wife (she passed, too!) I studied for this one for a long, long time so I’m stoked to be done with it.

おかげさまで合格しました！

My Tough Day

Roy Huggins — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:51:50 +0000

Electra and I found an awesome site called Lang-8 that acts as a special journaing site. You make posts in a foreign language that you are studying. Then native speakers correct your writing. It’s pretty addictive. We’ve been correcting lots of English and are amazed at how quickly the Japanese members jump in to correct our stuff. I decided that since I never write anything here, I should cross-post so my friends at home can see what I’m writing about.

The Japanese is pre-corrections. So it contains (numerous) errors.

—–
Today was a little rough. It was blizzarding in Sapporo. Despite a cough and a runny nose, I walked from the subway station to the clinic through the strong wind. But I wasn’t able to make an appointment. However, the nurses were very helpful. They recommend a clinic near my house.

However, I did have another issue besides the cold. So they also recommended Hokkaido University Hospital. The problem is, Hokkaido University campus is close to the clinic, but the university hospital is far away. So I left for the campus. The campus is beautiful. It’s especially beautiful with the snow piled up. But the wind (and my cold)¹ were really rough, so I never made it to the hospital. Halfway across campus, I decided to go back home.

Now I’m taking it easy. This is much better, I think.

—-

今日はちょっと大変でした。札幌に吹雪きました。せきとはなみずが出たのに、地下鉄駅から病院まで強い風に通りました。でも、病院に予約をできませんでした。しかし、病院で、看護師がよく手伝いました。家の近い病院を勧めました。

でも、風邪以外の希望としましたから、北海道大学病院も勧めました。問題は、北海道大学の構内は病院の近いですけど、大学の病院は遠かったです。そして、構内へ行きました。構内は美しい。特別に、雪が積もって美しかったです。でも、風（と風邪）は大変でしたから、大学病院に着きませんでした。構内を通る途中、家に戻ると決めました。

今のんびりしています。これの方がいいと思います。

This is a pun. In Japanese, the word for “wind” and the word for “cold” (sickness) sound the same.