Current Events > Been playing Pokemon Gen 1 in its original Japanese. Here's what I've learned.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sorry, weekend break to avoid burning out (secretly snuck in cards tho). Will update later tonight when I'm not busy
---

So I just accidentally backspaced on a rather lengthy post I was writing here, so fuck it, I'll update later tonight. I've been busy with car troubles and studying vocab/grammar.

And by backspaced, I mean my mouse has a built-in forwards/backwards button and I accidentally bumped back with my thumb. I hate this stupid mouse.
---

YonicBoom posted...

So I just accidentally backspaced on a rather lengthy post I was writing here, so fuck it, I'll update later tonight. I've been busy with car troubles and studying vocab/grammar.

And by backspaced, I mean my mouse has a built-in forwards/backwards button and I accidentally bumped back with my thumb. I hate this stupid mouse.

Text Input Recover Extension if you are in Chrome, or Textarea Cache if you are in Firefox.
---

So let's just talk about Team Rocket's best guard in town, who is [inemuri] (nodding off) in front of Silph Co. which is...


[shirufu kanpani]
"Silph Co."

Sorta jelly they got the full "Company" but that's the magic of squishing lots of sounds into few characters.
In case you were wondering, the Silph Scope gets similar treatment:



[shirufu sukopu]

Speaking of things that are literally the same in both games...



[safari zon(e)]

That gets a free pass in my book since Safari is as loan as words come. Surely they have a word of their own for "zone" but meh.

Incoming: lazy pokemon names




[gosu]
[gosuto]

DEFINITELY not good compared to the English names.



[dogasu]
At least this gets some decent wordplay in, combining (poison) and the english word "Gas" which I rank as "equally clever" compared to Koffing.


So here's your Japanese lesson for the day: This guy is the Pokemon Fan Club's [Kaichou], "Chairman." Whenever you see a word ending in //Chou, there's a pretty decent chance you're looking at some kind of leader. You're likely familiar with the word honcho which is derived straight from //hanchou. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but many times you can just...

school/chou
village/chou
company/chou
city/chou

etc and come out with the equivalent leader. However, it's not always so easy, as the word Chou can also mean a metric SHIT TON of other things in various contexts. This is one reason why Kanji is excellent - no confusion between which chou you're talking about.
---

Awesome
---

Are the pokemon games completely without kanji? O_o
---

Most GameBoy and NES titles rarely use kanji, period, outside of title screens. In my experience anyhow.

Probably takes up too much room in the cartridge or due to the relatively small text becomes unreadable quickly.
---

---

This is pretty cool

Tag.
---

You say you memorized the Katakana and Hiragana easily but how do you know what they mean? Ive tried learning it and I can figure out the characters/sounds for, say chisu, but I wouldnt know it means cheese just from that.
---

@heatmon930 posted...

You say you memorized the Katakana and Hiragana easily but how do you know what they mean? Ive tried learning it and I can figure out the characters/sounds, for example chisu, but I wouldnt know it means cheese just from that.

That has nothing to do with what they mean though. It's just the same as any other language in that regard. What you're talking about is learning vocabulary, just get a frequency list of most common words and start learning, or pick up words from things that interest you.

I'm guessing that whenever TC sees a word he doesn't know the meaning of, he just looks it up on a site like http://jisho.org/ or any dictionary. Pretty simple really
---

bumping because I find this interesting

Sayoria posted...

Are the pokemon games completely without kanji? O_o

G5 onward started using kanji; I know in BW you could select whether you wanted to use kanji or just the "syllabic" characters.
---

I love reading these kinds of articles and threads, and don't know how I missed tracking this one for so long. It's nostalgia married to learning and I'm 100% here for it.

Thank you for your hard work.
---

This is pretty cool

GiftedACIII posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

YonicBoom posted...

1337toothbrush posted...

Probably because of how disingenuous it is.

I mean, I'm making this thread for the pleasure of those CE users who might be interested in reading it. The preface is hardly necessary but the simple fact is that I initially had no interest in Japanese, but every passing day makes it much more interesting. Don't like the thread? Don't read it.

If you could pull your pants down and stand against the wall, please, so that we can get to the paddling, that would be greatly appreciated.

That comic was originally mocking idiots who used that term.

No it isn't. The term was made up by the comic and it had nothing to do with how the term is used now.
---

M3sterybumper posted...

smoke_break posted...

Tag.

Super interesting topic TC
---

TC hasn't posted in over four weeks guys, why are you keeping this alive? If he wants to come back he can make another thread
---