My Hashi-sense is tingling… I feel some red font and post-editing drawing near…

When it comes as a suffix, it’s ちゅう or じゅう; when it’s の中 or the like, it’s なか. This is all just based on what I’ve seen, the general observable pattern. Betting there are many exceptions and whatnot.

Yeah, I hear what you mean about translating songs. It’d be hilarious to see a Japanese speaker make sense of something like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song :P I was just kinda reading along with the lyrics (in Japanese) as I listened, seeing how much I could understand, but even after wapping out a dictionary (online), I couldn’t really make sense of that bit, so I thought the English might give me a little more of an idea. Didn’t haha. English translations of ANYTHING in Japanese are usually sketchy at best, but they can still be useful for a general meaning.

Youtube just posted to Facebook: “Watch Japanese female idol group, AK47, perform live at 1:00 a.m. PT / 6:00 p.m. JST”.
I’m sure missingno15 is aware of this already, but just in case ;) Think that’s about 7pm GMT for anyone who cares.

This is more a “Japanese I don’t understand post”, but I couldn’t find that thread.

A song lyric goes like this: 「同じ班の女の子 二重パチリ 可愛いぞ」
Not sure what 二重パチリ means or how it can be 可愛いぞ haha. The 2 separate English translations say that the girl in question has “double-eyelids”: where the hell did they get “eyelids” from, and how would that be “cute”? :P

Related: one of the sites (Jpopasia) that I went to for the lyrics to the song (Omajinai Perori – Perfume) has the “Japanese” part comically wrong. It’s obvious somebody took the romaji lyrics from elsewhere, and an English translation, then put that translation into Google translate, and whatever came out they’ve labelled as the “Kanji version”.
For example, one line has the romaji “Doushimashou?!” (which is correct), the English translation “What should I do?!” (which is correct) and then the kanji “私はどうすればよいですか！” (which has Google Translate written all over it :P).

http://www.jpopasia.com/lyrics/16380/perfume/omajinai-perori.html – the song’s a bit of an acquired taste, but I think it’s more funny than anything haha (just since it’s Perfume’s first single/video, showing what they were like aged 13).

(Tried to post this last night, but it seems the TextFugu servers were having a spazz attack…)

The best place for mnemonics really is when you’re learning a word that has several seemingly unrelated kanji. Other than that, it’s best just to use either previous knowledge of readings or rote learning. The way I learned chikara was by the fact that it was probably the first word I learned that had 3 morae/syllables :D Made it stick out.

For the first while, actually actively learning readings can be useful, but once you’ve learned enough words, you get much better at both rote learning and “picking up” readings. That’s why I started out with TextFugu’s method but then gave up at around the 4-stroke mark. Now I just learn words as words. Once you learn enough words containing the same reading for a kanji, you just kinda “know” it, like for example: you learn　自信、自動的、自転車 and 自分 and without making a conscious effort to memorise readings, you now know that 自 can be pronounced じ (also し); so then when you see 自己, you can tell it’s probably going to be pronounced ” じ-something “.

@insanimal: Who says we don’t? :P