The dangers of language acquisition
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 10:52 pmReading along in 1Q84, come to this sentence 'Very few people were as good at kicking/refusing (unknown kanji+ round) as Aomame.' Try to find unknown kanji in the wordtank. Try five different possible radicals. Nothing. Kanji that are so obscure as not to appear in the Wordtank usually get furigana'd, but not this time. Huh. Shall ask P, the young Hong Kong student at work, who'll know if anyone does.
Trouble is, obscure kanji looks vaguely familiar. Blood on top of happy, is what I make of it. Have met it before-- have met it before in this book, remember having trouble with it before. Something clicks. I look up 'testicle' in the English function and get, yes, 睾丸. What a good thing I didn't ask P after all. (And the radical, it turns out, is 'eye'. On its side. With a dot on top. Ohhhkay.)
Trouble is, obscure kanji looks vaguely familiar. Blood on top of happy, is what I make of it. Have met it before-- have met it before in this book, remember having trouble with it before. Something clicks. I look up 'testicle' in the English function and get, yes, 睾丸. What a good thing I didn't ask P after all. (And the radical, it turns out, is 'eye'. On its side. With a dot on top. Ohhhkay.)
