Japanese Learning: How I personally look things up...
…the post wherein I feel like I am unlocking my dirty little secrets. lol
WAIT... ADVICE DISCLAIMER: I'm at an intermediate level so usually my advice is for beginners and fellow intermediates presented with a "let's swap study ideas" intent. I'm not a teacher or a tutor. My advice is not about the language itself, it's a series of suggestions on how to study via my own experiences. So, if you're here to learn Japanese, it ain't gonna happen. These are just study method suggestions.
---------------------------------------------
Over a year ago… possibly even longer ago than that I said I was working on a Japanese learning blog post. I started, and then kept moving from topic to topic, and it just kept getting longer and longer and I've been getting distracted intermittently, so we are going to do this in installments! This is the first one. I wanted to start with something quick and immediately useful… no prerequisite, no set up, just "here's what I do" and GO!
For the sake of not reinventing the wheel, I'm going to assume you already know how and when to use a dictionary and kanji radical look up. I rarely use a word dictionary, but kanji radical look up gets used quite frequently. So… skip that for now. Below are the ways I dig up meaning when I run across something new and wonder "what does it mean" or "how is it used." Most of the time a regular dictionary or lookup can't tell you the nuance of meaning and give you real world usage examples… if it does it's likely highly sanitized and overly general (thus, not very useful).
This is where the awesomeness of the internet comes in...
- Google search: [word] 意味
link: http://www.google.com
… (usually pops a useful yahoo japan answers result)
** example to try yourself: エポックメイキング 意味
- Google search: [word] 英語
link: http://www.google.com
… (usually pops a useful weblio result)
** example to try yourself: とろける 英語
- Google image search: [word]
link: http://www.google.com/imghp
… (hit or miss, but sometimes can give you a general "feel" for the word, this one is especially good for slang terms or elements of culture where a variety of visuals might be handy)
** example to try yourself: ドヤ顔
- Japanese wikipedia search: [word]
link: http://ja.wikipedia.org/
… (doesn't always return a useful result, but always worth a try, beginners have the bonus option of switching over to the English page once they locate the term on japanese wiki… BUT it's not always a one-to-one page/cultural meaning match, so be careful)
** example to try yourself: 屋久杉
Ok onto the nitty gritty details of what I usually do…
I sometimes just start with a basic google search, just the word or phrase by itself, and see what pops up; to see how people (native speakers online) are using it. Sometimes it's a good idea to try to reduce it down to a simple form if you know it (like for example, reduce a verb to it's dictionary form first, and if I'm having a hard time I can also try other verb forms if I know them and see what pops up).
Bonus: just like in English, google will correct you if you mistype or they think you meant something else "did you mean…" which is sometimes awesommmmeeee sauuuceeee.
Once you have isolated your word/verb/short phrase (…you should even look up katakana words that you think you already know because sometimes they end up having a different connotation in Japanese than they do in English; パンツ is a famous example) do that funky google search, white boy〜♫
Here is an example I looked up recently: エポックメイキング (epoch making) … so, I know what those words mean in English myself, but I have a hunch that there might be something more going on, especially seeing as they are being used together in a way that isn't normal in native English (suspicious!), and I want to make sure I'm not just guessing at it, so I hop on over to google and do a search for: エポックメイキング 意味 (imi) … imi means "meaning" in Japanese. Adding 意味 will narrow down my search to show where people have asked specifically, in Japanese, "what does epoch making mean?" Try it, and you will see what I mean in the first search result.
"BUT THE ANSWER IS IN JAPANESE TOO." Yeaaa, it is. If you already know some basic Japanese, finding an explanation of the new word you want to learn about in japanese is actually quite helpful. You want your brain to build new Japanese language thoughts whenever possible (do not feel bad if you can't, but keep trying, you will pick up on new words and phrases and grammar even if you don't realize it), rather than translating into english thoughts which might be how you started off, but aim to change that as you move forward; This will pay off in the long run, I promise you.
I do basically the same for the other first couple methods I listed in the beginning. I am usually quite happy to see a "weblio" link when I search for [word] 英語 because they tend to give several example sentences using the word or phrase, which is helpful (more nuanced than a dictionary lookup). From there you can go back and do the plain or 意味 google search again to see where it's being used in a broader context. If you don't know a lot of Japanese yet, try skipping straight to the 英語 search method (and then after you get the gist of what it means go back and do the 意味 search, because why not?). Get that learn on.
For science-y words, or political terms... etc (things that aren't slang) wikipedia usually can return a solid, helpful result. For slang and obscure concepts, or "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT COULD BE!" words and phrases try a hail mary google image search and see if there's a pattern among the images.
Try theドヤ顔 example and you will get the idea of what I mean. You are looking for the commonality between the top 10~20 images. That will give you at least a first step/peek toward understanding what it might mean, or a clue as to how you can fine tune your search. Make sure you click on some images to see how the word or phrase was used in the source that went with the image.
There you go… a quick and dirty primer on how I bend google to my will.
But then you stop me and say "What about online translating software?" - Only people who don't want to really learn Japanese use them (and it's not just because they are an easy way out so your brain won't absorb it as having learned something… though that is part of it, they are also often wrong (like dr noonien soong *snort*) and thus you will be learning ridiculous errors using them). I actually have already written a whole post on the machination diabolique of auto-translators, but I will save that for another day.
For now, I wanted to give you something that is useful rather than a complaint.
Oh oh oh… and one last side note; If you don't already know about this: http://nihongo.j-talk.com/ now you do. On the bottom select "Furigana" from the first box, and "Hiragana" from the second box… pop in your kanji you want to know the "reading" of and hit "translate now." HOW USEFUL IS THAT? You are welcome. (note that they say that converter is not 100% accurate, so be careful when using the tool and double check it whenever possible, for me it has only failed one time out of many).
