June 6, 2005

Today's Vocabulary Word: 啓蟄

啓蟄　（けいちつ）　： "the day on which insects are said to come out of their holes in the earth (around March 6th)"

Posted by marxy at June 6, 2005 10:23 PM
Comments

Have you noticed that both 蛸 and 蛙 are regarded as 虫?

Posted by: dzima at June 7, 2005 12:28 PM

蝦、蟹、蛇 too.

Posted by: dzima at June 7, 2005 12:33 PM

Blame the Chinese.

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 12:56 PM

What about that most belligerent insect of them all, the dreaded 虹, niji !!!

Posted by: mmm at June 7, 2005 3:51 PM

Nice counterexample!

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 3:53 PM

i always liked this one.
蟲

Posted by: r. at June 7, 2005 5:41 PM


Jim Breen tells me that 蟲 is a "fart bug".

Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at June 7, 2005 6:32 PM


Surely he means "stink bug"?

Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at June 7, 2005 6:33 PM

蟲 is just the old form of 虫。

「へこき虫」 means "fart bug."

(By the way, Jim Breen's WWWJDIC is my hero.)

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 6:58 PM

屁放き means "farting" apparently.

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 6:58 PM

By the way, Jim Breen's WWWJDIC is my hero

I always take those long Mixi blog/community posts and chuck them on the "Translate Words in Japanese Text" bit.

A tadpole 蝌蚪 is also an insect.

Posted by: dzima at June 7, 2005 10:22 PM

The only problem about Jim Breen's WWJDIC is that the database contains a lot of extremely arcane and obscure phrases not used in everyday Japanese. It'd be nice if it had some sort of ranking feature for vocab items.

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 10:31 PM

And for the third-graders in the house:

屁 is the fart kanji.

Posted by: marxy at June 7, 2005 10:32 PM


屁 is the fart kanji.

That kanji suggests some rather disgusting Heisig-type stories.

Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at June 8, 2005 11:15 AM

How 'bout　蛮人? (does this mean indians are bug men?)

Posted by: Andy at June 8, 2005 12:10 PM

蛮 means "savage, barbarian". where are you getting "indian" from that?

Posted by: marxy at June 8, 2005 12:18 PM


Off-topic (my middle name) again, but this may interest regulars here:

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=2&id=339632

Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at June 8, 2005 5:11 PM

Of course they need to make cards like this. Foreign terrorism is a huge problem here in Japan.

Posted by: marxy at June 8, 2005 7:50 PM