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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:
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