Lesson 23 of 40
Vocabulary Sprint w05 — getting about, and four words to recognise but not use
about 12 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Split a welded verb into its two halves, and say what the second half contributes.
- Recognise 汽車, 飛行場, オートバイ and ガソリンスタンド, and say what is used instead.
Words this lesson teaches
- 乗り換える
- changes trains or buses — 乗る plus 換える, ride plus swap
- 降り出す
- starts to rain or snow — 降る plus 出す, and 出す is the starting
- 引っ越す
- moves house — 引く plus 越す, pull plus cross over
- 泊まる
- stays the night somewhere — sounds exactly like 止まる, to come to a stop
- 訪ねる
- calls on someone, visits — sounds exactly like 尋ねる, to ask
- 滑る
- slips, slides — of a wet floor, and of a student who fails an entrance exam
- 逃げる
- runs away, escapes — takes から for what you flee
- 連れる
- takes a person along — almost always met as 連れて行く or 連れて来る
- 交通
- traffic, transport — the word on a sign, not in a complaint about the traffic
- 途中
- on the way, part-way through — of a journey and of a job alike
- 乗り物
- a vehicle — literally a riding-thing, and it covers all of them
- 汽車
- a steam train — read it, but say 電車; 汽 is steam
- 飛行場
- an airfield — an airport is 空港; 場 is the place where a thing is done
- 駐車場
- a car park — 駐車 is parking a car and 場 is the place for it, so the word builds itself
- 港
- a harbour, a port
- オートバイ
- a motorbike — built in Japan from auto and bike, so no English speaker says it
- エスカレーター
- an escalator
- ガソリン
- petrol — from the American word, and the only word Japanese uses
- ガソリンスタンド
- a petrol station — assembled in Japan; English says petrol station or gas station
What it explains
The second verb is the grammar
A welded verb behaves entirely like its second half. 乗り換える is an る-verb because 換える is one; 引っ越す is an す-verb because 越す is one; 降り出す conjugates like 出す. So you never have to learn how a compound bends — you already know, if you can see where the seam is. This also tells you what to do with a compound you have never met: split it, recognise the second half, and you have its shape and half its meaning before you look anything up.
泊まる and 訪ねる, and why this keeps happening
泊まる is とまる and so is 止まる. 訪ねる is たずねる and so is 尋ねる, to ask — which is awkward, because visiting someone and asking someone are things you do in the same conversation. This is the third pair after w02's 直る and 治る and w03's 建てる and 立てる, and the repetition is the lesson: Japanese has around a hundred syllables and tens of thousands of words, so collisions are not accidents to be memorised one at a time but a standing condition of the language. What follows is practical. In speech, the sentence resolves it, because you do not stay at a person or visit a question. In writing, the kanji resolves it, which is one more reason the characters are worth the trouble.
The scene itself is in the app.
Lesson one of this track is free to read in full. From lesson two on, the story, the audio and the review are part of a free account.