Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Archive
post-mortem on my first try writing japanese:
so, when i met my dear friend jake, i think the very first day i met him, i helped him cut his very long hair. he followed a tutorial where he put his hair in a tall ponytail, and i just cut straight through with some scissors. it worked great! today, years later, i repeated the procedure on myself (alone...it would have been a lot easier with a friend). it worked great, again! you could probably follow this plot even without understanding the japanese.
私がジェイクの髪を切った
this is the first sentence of japanese i've written myself with a dictionary and my grammar notes. it took me a long time and the end result is identical to google translate's english->japanese for "i cut jake's hair", which, on one hand, cool, i must be on the right track, but on the other hand, no one can tell i put a lot of work into those words.
i am not sure if 私が is necessary, i think it's not, but without it the sentence doesn't seem to imply i was the one who cut jake's hair. with the context of the art i guess it's obvious, but what if the art wasn't there? does it matter?
additionally i wasn't sure if it would be a complete sentence without a だ particle. i tried looking it up, but all i found was articles explaining のだ and のです.
transcript (intended, not necessarily actual, i am an extreme beginner):
大切な人の思い出 - "memories with someone important" / memories of a loved one
私がジェイクの髪を切った - "i cut jake's hair" jake stylized as jeiku, he'd probably chose a different name for japanese but i can't ask him right now
がくん がくん - onomatopoeia, "drastic, jerking motions", don't know what to do for hair brushing!! japanese has LOTS of onomatopoeia
すか すか - onomatopoeia, "cutting cleanly with a sharp blade", cutting hair with scissors, it kinda sounds like the noise it makes to cut hair with scissors
やった！ - "i did it!" i have no idea if people actually say yatta or if that's just an anime thing. i learned this word from a trivia section on the homestar runner wiki when i was like 12
so, when i met my dear friend jake, i think the very first day i met him, i helped him cut his very long hair. he followed a tutorial where he put his hair in a tall ponytail, and i just cut straight through with some scissors. it worked great! today, years later, i repeated the procedure on myself (alone...it would have been a lot easier with a friend). it worked great, again! you could probably follow this plot even without understanding the japanese.
私がジェイクの髪を切った
this is the first sentence of japanese i've written myself with a dictionary and my grammar notes. it took me a long time and the end result is identical to google translate's english->japanese for "i cut jake's hair", which, on one hand, cool, i must be on the right track, but on the other hand, no one can tell i put a lot of work into those words.
i am not sure if 私が is necessary, i think it's not, but without it the sentence doesn't seem to imply i was the one who cut jake's hair. with the context of the art i guess it's obvious, but what if the art wasn't there? does it matter?
additionally i wasn't sure if it would be a complete sentence without a だ particle. i tried looking it up, but all i found was articles explaining のだ and のです.
transcript (intended, not necessarily actual, i am an extreme beginner):
大切な人の思い出 - "memories with someone important" / memories of a loved one
私がジェイクの髪を切った - "i cut jake's hair" jake stylized as jeiku, he'd probably chose a different name for japanese but i can't ask him right now
がくん がくん - onomatopoeia, "drastic, jerking motions", don't know what to do for hair brushing!! japanese has LOTS of onomatopoeia
すか すか - onomatopoeia, "cutting cleanly with a sharp blade", cutting hair with scissors, it kinda sounds like the noise it makes to cut hair with scissors
やった！ - "i did it!" i have no idea if people actually say yatta or if that's just an anime thing. i learned this word from a trivia section on the homestar runner wiki when i was like 12