Friday, January 15, 2010

Successive Approximation and Creating a Coherent Japanese Phrase

Thanks, everybody who helped with this.
(This is a followup/update of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Kanji, Romanji, and This Writer " (January 11, 2010).)

A little checking, and I found a pronunciation (romanized, anyway) for 凄い Google Translate.

Sure enough, 凄い is "sugoi" - now, I need to see if I'm using it correctly.

(later)

Well, that's interesting:

When I put "great manga writer" through Google Translate, I got "偉大な漫画家" (without quotes in both cases, BTW.)

And 偉大な漫画家 is romanized as idai na manga ka. I recognized "manga ka" as fairly common usage.

Interestingly, "great welldigger" comes through as "大きな井戸掘り職人" - or "ōkina ido hori shokunin".

I think I'm getting to where I want, by successive approximation.

(still later)

"Ido ka" probably, maybe, possibly, is a phrase that means something in the neighborhood of "water-well - ka" or "water well artist/writer/creator" with overtones of the id (id, ego, superego, and all that) and latitude (緯度 / ido)."

Confused? Well, so am I

The point is that when I run "great ido ka" through Google Translate, out comes "大きな井戸カー / ōkina ido kā" - which may, or may not, be what I'm looking for.

Interesting: 井 seems to mean "well" - whether that's "I'm feeling well" or "water well" - more checking is called for.

Ah! 井 means "well" and the "well" is a noun. I think I've got it. Maybe.

Oi. "water well" comes out as "井戸 / ido"- 井戸!!

Okay: I got these nouns in Japanese:

noun

1. 井
2. 井泉
3. 井戸
4. 鉱泉

Which get translated as these nouns in English:

noun

1. Well
2. Spring wells
3. Well
4. Spring

Yeah: I think I'm getting close.

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