Japanese class update

[readsalot]

So far I'm doing pretty well on quizzes (though I haven't yet seen the results of Tuesday's vocabulary test). The current chapter has, among other things, rules for and examples of transitive and intransitive verbs, which in Japanese are often separate words. That use the same kanji. Just to confuse you. For example, 起きる(okiru, to sleep, intransitive) and 起こす (okosu, to sleep, transitive). That was a relatively easy pair, because okiru was one of the first verbs I learned, more than a year ago. Then there's 集まる(atsumaru, to gather, intransitive) and　集める (atsumeru, to gather, transitive); both new in this chapter. Anyway, all of this meant that the new vocabulary for this chapter, instead of being mostly nouns, was mostly verbs. However, I think that I knew all of the ones on the quiz, so that was good.

Homework log: 1 hour last night, 3 hours tonight. Less than I thought it was going to be--that was three sections of homework (though I cheated and did part of the first section over the weekend) and 5 sheets of kanji practice (for the thirty new kanji in this chapter). Kanji quiz on Tuesday. But that shouldn't be too hard--for the first time, kanji quizzes involve reading but no writing. That makes it a lot easier, especially when the quiz puts the kanji in a sentence.

Comments

[psychohist.livejournal.com]

I have to ask: what does "to sleep" take as an object when used as a transitive verb? Is it throwing a sleep spell at someone?

Ack

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

Ok, now I know just how tired I was last night, because okiru/okosu is "to wake up", not "to sleep". However, "to sleep" does have a transitive version--it translates as "to put to bed" (and also apparently, "to ferment", at least according to the online dictionary I use.)

It's a fun dictionary to browse through--apparently turning over in bed is the same thing as betrayal. (I did a search based on the kanji for "to sleep" to find all the words that use it.)