"fermented soybeans"
Translation:なっとう
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Now I've had 3 words in arow I need to translate, but have not been taught that word yet. Anyone else experience this?
Yes, it does this throughout the lessons. It still allows you to sound out the word though and you might remember it in the next few lessons, when that word comes up. Just think of it as learning for the future
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If it is underlined, you can tap on it to see the translation before making your choice. It will be Underlined the first Several Times a new word is shown to you.
So weird that "fermented soybeans" is near the very beginning of a language study. I just really needed to know "fermented soybeans" right away!!
yes you did actually need to know this because it's a very common food in japan
Can confirm, I work for a Japanese company and almost everyone eats natto regularly lol.
- 681
Actually, "fermented soybeans" is wrong. There is a food the Japanese love, and they call it なっとう but "fermented soybeans" is a description and not the food's name. A "hot dog" is called "hot dog" in other languages than English as well since this is this food's name. Nobody says "a long bread roll with a sausage inside". So the correct translation is natto.
You can of course translate "fermented soybeans" into Japanese. But this would be completely different.
Also there are lots of different ways to ferment soybeans and natto is only one of them.
Doesn't beat the Welsh course teaching you the word for "dragon" in like Lesson 2 or 3
Lol, right. I just accepted that like tea it's something far more common in Japan.
Is the character that goes after 'na' silent? It resembles 'tsu' but looks smaller.
The っ (小さいつ) is a geminate consonant that elongates the sound. It is distinct from stress, and may appear independently.
When it's lower case it just elongates the other sounds and you don't pronounce it, apparently
It is indeed a smaller tsu. Let use ゆっくり (slow) as example. It is translated as yukkuri (the double K is because of the っ) and you must pronounce it with a pause.
I agree, I really use DuoLingo for rehearsal, but I can see a lot of people having trouble with this "trial and error" way of "learning"...
Yeah.. teach me the thing then let me practice. Giving me multiple choice for spmething new (and some speak each answer) sometimes has me tap all the wrong before the correct, which confuses my brain.
Yes you sometimes haven't already seen the answers, but some of the options you already know, so process of elimination helps, even if you get it wrong, that's still learning.
And having to think of what each word is to eliminate things you know are wrong makes you think more than just picking the word you have memorized cuz then you basically ignore the rest of them. Looking at the options and going "no its not ろく cuz i know that means 6, and its not おちや cuz thats tea so maybe its...", for 4 choices is better than just hunting for なつとう, who cares if you get it wrong, they just ask again later..
When you first learned to talk you didn't know any words at all, but you kept running into them, and eventually knew them. And as you learn more japanese you will be able to kind of figure out through context in the phrases or similarities to other words.
Idk, everybody acts like they want it to give you like vocabulary and then a quiz, like how you studied in school, but most people barely remember the things we memorize that way in school, lol. That doesnt actually work that well. Everyone I know took 2 years foreign language and none of them are fluent from that, the 2 who are went to the country and were confused as heck with words they didn't know until they started to get it.
You have to think in terms of understanding it not being able to get questions right, language learning a skill, not just recalling facts, like history class. So trying to figure out the answer is just as useful, if not more than actually having an answer. If you focus too much on memorizing words and phrases you are missing the actual understanding of the language itself and won't end up fluent, but only able to answer a few basic questions, like after taking intro spanish in high school, lol.
You don't really think about it, but you learned your first language that way. Who cares if you get it wrong right now, there's no grades. Lol
People are getting confused so let me explain to you guys why the "っ" is there. When you have a smaller "っ" this means it will double the letter behind it; "なっとう" as in; "nattou" and "なとう" as in; natou. The "っ" is silent here and you don't pronounce it when saying nattou. Hope this makes sense everyone.
Teaching the word natto without context and translating it as "fermented soybeans" is like teaching the word ketchup and translating it as "tomato based sauce" and it is really confusing to people who don't already know what it is.
A popular dish in Japan, and generally considered an acquired taste for those who have not grown up eating it because it typically has strong flavor and scent. It's not easy to summarize beyond that, so here is the link to its Wikipedia article. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D
Why なつとう is incorrect answer? What am I missing?
EDIT: つ (tsu) and っ (ltsu) are different characters... Need a smaller one here.
- 1560
The う elongates the syllable that it follows - so essentially natto-o - but spelt nattou in romaji because that is romaji equivalents although you will find that different people spell Japanese words differently in romaji - probably nattou would be the most popular, but also nattoh and probably nattoo would be the least popular alternative.
It would've been very helpful to learn the double consonant thing sooner because I've been seeing it and confusing it for tsu....
- 891
The correct answer isnt available as an answer on this one. The Japanese section of this otherwise awesome app needs work. It would also be helpful to have romaji along side the english words we've yet to be taught the Japanese for so we can at least work it out phonetically from the hiragana we've learnt instead of guessing.
Check out tofugu, they have a hiragana guide and also katakana, which has little images and stuff for each one to help you remember.
- 942
I have written this word exactly three times and i keep on getting it wrong for some reason
It would be so helpfull to hear the words and sentenses in some point in every exersice! x___x
That sounds like a good excuse to accompany your studies with anime... For learning...
- 1560
Because it is not pronounced as an 'u' - it serves to elongate the sound of the last syllable.
Ana, is "u" the only vowel sound used like this? Would it work the same after "a" or "i"? (Sorry i do not yet know how to put the hiragana in these text).
- 1560
う is used to lengthen the sound of syllables ending in ’お’, so こ、そ、と、の etc. with syllables ending in ’あ’、’エ’、’ウ’ in katakana a long dash is used eg. party is written pa-ti (paati) - sorry, my Japanese keyboard is acting up and won't let me type this out properly, ケーキ - cake, プール - pool. In other cases though vowel sounds are lengthened by repeating that character eg. いい - good, ええ - yes. Consonants are doubled by using a small つ eg. あつかった - it was hot - here the small つ precedes the た doubling the 't' sound. Hope that answers your question. PS you need to look at keyboards in settings on your computer and add Japanese - then you should be able to switch back and forth between Japanese and English or whatever other languages you speak or are learning.
Hahaha isn't this a bit random? Do we need to know how to say fermented soybeans this early on? XD idk it made me laugh
- 681
My guess it that this should teach you 小さなつ (っ) and う after a syllable that ends on o. But unfortunately, they used a description instead of the foods name as the English version, so this is very confusing. This is as if you would translate yoghurt as "fermented milk"... It's not wrong, but it's not the translation either.
- 1560
I did an image search and tempeh and nattou are not alike at all. Nattou is not mashed or made into a 'cake' at all. Nattou are fermented soy beans and to look at they are small creamy-ish coloured beans and the fermenting process produces or makes them excrete a sort of sticky eggwhite-like substance. This is one of the things that puts a lot of people off eating them - nihonjin and gaijin alike. Also a lot of people say that nattou smells really bad. I like nattou - I've never noticed a smell - good or bad. Safe to say it is an acquired taste.
- 681
Ant this is why you should not translate it as "fermented soybeans". My example on the other post "fermented milk" can be cheese or yogurt or other milk products, where the milk sugar is changed into acid by bacteria (=> this process is the fermentation here).
- 1560
I had to look it up. Tenpeh is not Japanese food. Apparently it is Indonesian. Also it looks like Tenpeh is some kind of fermented soybean cake? Or fermented soybeans made into a cake-like shape. なっとう on the other hand is 和食 - traditional Japanese food and it is simply fermented soybeans eaten either by themselves or on hot 米.
Can anyone explain to me the use and reason for the tiny "tsu (つ) , and how to type it on the android keyboard please? I just wanna know how it world grammatically so i can understand it more.
- 546
"なっとう" cannot be separated, especially after a little "っ". Japanese can't pronounce the phoneme like this. It is meaningless.
