Saturday, January 22, 2022

Is it science, or is it art?

博. Thinking about 博物, 博覧会, 博識, 博士論文, somehow 博す and 博打—erudition and also gambling. (I guess a doctoral dissertaion always is a gamble.) 博愛.

Interesting thread on whether certain types of museum qualify as 美術館 or 博物館.

Life's been quiet for a while, and with COVID nobody's going anywhere, but I still study Japanese every day, mainly with Duolingo, jisho.org, the Imiwa? app, Henshall, NHK, etc. I'd like to pick up again, but the type is too small for my old eyes. Genki isn't quite challenging enough but would provide solid kanji and vocab practice...for when I meet my ホストファミリー. I'd like to pick up some more Japanese songs; maybe it's my years as a musician, but grammar and vocab from songs tend to stick with me. Eg, I always will associate 昴 with Meiko Kaji's "修羅の花", 古池 and 沈む with Buson, a thousand things with "地上の星", "アイドルール", "川の流れのように", "傘がない"...

Duo gives us some pretty heady sentences about economics, dictatorships, postwar reconstruction...so I can say all kinds of things I probably never will have to. Some users complain about apparent nonsense sentences, but I say, bring them on; we should be able to understand sentences that make no sense, as it's a different kind of challenge from reading material that fits into its context. We may never see a dog selling a hat, but we should be able to say we don't see one. NHK remains difficult; kanji always are a challenge, but I think I'm making some progress by giving in to Heisig's somewhat silly method of making up stories from the radicals. Some of them really insist that we do so: eg, I like to read 退屈, boredom, as what the radicals literally pictographically show: "It's good in the street, so I'm out the door." (The radicals in 退 are "good" and "street/way/path", and in 屈 they're "leaving" and "doorway". More or less.) I've read people refer to kanji as little friends, and sometimes they can be—though it certainly can be frustrating that a small change in radical can completely change the meaning, and that kanji derive from history more than from logic.

But progress is progress. A thing I love about Duolingo in particular is that I can not only study lots of languages, but also study languages in other languages, one of my favorite things to do—ie, cut English out of the equation entirely. One of the toughest things to do in language acquisition is stop first thinking of things in your native language and then translating them into your second. I consider it a feather in my student's cap when something occurs to me in some other language and it takes me a moment to figure out what it would be in English.

An issue with Duo is one common in testing, that with repetition the test-taker learns the item, rather than the principle. Some of the exmaples in Duo are so specific that to memorize the idiosyncrasies is the only way through.

And that funny feeling of being unable to read a thing but knowing what it says.

I still haven't done 書初め! Here we are, almost a month into the year. I still have my yearning to write a decent 浅き夢見じ 酔ひもせず; I did write each on newspaper and stick them on my wall, but I hesitate to insult good paper with rusty 字. (I miss studying extremely; if I ever were to get a tattoo, I think it would be of my 書 name.)

その国では体制を批判すると身の危険につながる。
If you criticize the regime in that country, you put yourself in jeopardy.

車を作るロボットを動かすコンピュータを作る工場です。
This is a factory that makes computers that control robots that make cars.

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