Friday, 11 August 2023

Memory of Dictionary. Translated by Google

 

 Dictionary  


1.
Iwanami Shoten Ikugo
Honrai English-Japanese Chinese Dictionary, New Enlarged Edition
by Hidezaburo Saito
Minoru Toyoda Enlargement
1936, 1st edition,
1957, 16th edition


2.
Iwanami Shoten
Iwanami Hideka Dictionary New Edition
Co-authored by Shimamura Morisuke, Doi Mitsuchi, Tanaka Kikuo,
1936, 1st edition,
1958, 1st edition, 1st edition,
1974, 1st edition, volume 18                            


3.
Kenkyusha
Simplified English Dictionary
Miki Ichikawa Preface / Edited by Kenkyusha Dictionary Department
1938 First Edition
1953 36th Edition


4.
Kaneko
Study's English and Single Language Acceleration Method
Sasaki Takamasa
1954 first edition
1956 13th edition

 



Memorandum  

Memorandum
I'm not sure if I started learning English when I was in the third grade of elementary school. It all started when I naturally started reading her older sister's books that were in her house. 

I particularly like pronunciation, and when I was in fifth grade, I had free time to read after school lunch. I used to take it with me and read it. There was a mouth chart for pronunciation on the back cover, and I imitated it. I remember well that my homeroom teacher came around and looked at my book, but I just passed it.


For 3. 
I didn't learn anything from
"Kenkyusha Simple English-English Dictionary" , but I used its successor "Kenkyusha English-English Dictionary" for a while later. This dictionary was published in 1938, 1938, and it shows deep insight everywhere in the "Introduction" by Professor Miki Ichikawa, the "Purpose of Compilation", "Explanation of Contents" and "Main Text" by Kenkyusha Dictionary Department. there is In a nutshell, he seems to have avoided compromise as much as possible in order to create an English dictionary that would be good for the Japanese. Introduced "vowel notation" in the "Introduction", "explanation in Japanese language" in the "Purpose of Compilation", so-called "double interpretation" explanation, "selection of basic words" method and "sense of words" in "explanation of content"


"The principle was to use words within the range of basic words, but if there is a risk of distorting the explanation, do not forcibly adhere to this principle and freely use words that exceed the range of basic words. It was there.” The "diaphragm commentary" also incorporates the indication of "nasalization" and "devoicing". 

In particular, it is important to clearly indicate "devoicing", but it seems that the concept itself was not widely understood by beginners at the time, but beyond that, the editorial department seems to have given priority to accuracy. 
The version I have is the 36th edition from 1953, so I think the learners appreciated this accuracy even though it was a little difficult to understand.

By the way, later in my life, I learned that Mr. Miki Ichikawa was in the same class as Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

For 4.
I learned a little about Takamasa Sasaki's "Training in Translating Japanese to English" when I was in high school, but it was too difficult for me and I gave up halfway through. His teacher's old books are now classified as rare books, and this "English Vocabulary Quick Learning Method" is also expensive on Amazon. It may be said that he raised so many youths. The title of this book is ``quick learning method,'' but at the end of the ``foreword,'' Professor Sasaki said, ``Even if it is such a modest book, it takes a lot of hard work to complete it. At the stage of organizing, engraving, and proofreading the manuscript, we had the help of more than a dozen people." , which covers up to Collocation . Especially in the "Key Derivatives List", the Vevb-Person-Thing and Place-Person classifications are excellent, and I feel the professor's deep insight.

For 2. 
I bought "Iwanami English-Japanese Dictionary New Edition", which
Kikuo Tanaka devoted his life to , when I entered high school. All the Iwanami dictionaries at the time had the same cloth coating, and it was easy to get hurt while using them. I destroyed the covers of this dictionary, "Iwanami Kokugo Jiten" and "Iwanami Chinese Dictionary" and used only the text for a while. But it is nothing to brag about. When I was a research student at Wako, I was talking about dictionaries with Mr. Yasuyuki Kawasaki, and when I asked him, "What kind of dictionary did you use?" I wonder if it's about." When I saw the teacher's appearance, I could understand it naturally. For Sensei, who had memorized the movements of the nobles of the Heian period on a monthly basis, for example, when it came to yusoku kojitsu, instead of looking up a dictionary, he read a series of lawsuit kojitsu. It was a highly academic world that I could hardly imagine. The Iwanami English-Japanese Dictionary New Edition was, as Professor Tanaka stated in the introduction, to carefully read the OED and the Oxford English Dictionary and create a condensed version in Japan. Sensei devoted his life to it. As a high school student, it was strange that a modern Japanese translation would not come out right away, but later I realized the magnitude of this work. I don't think there are any documents yet. Because you have to spend your life on it. I still appreciate the value of this dictionary when trying to confirm historical changes in the meaning of words.

In 1981, the Iwanami New English Dictionary, which is regarded as the successor to this dictionary and was edited by Fumio Nakajima and Kinshiro Oshitari, was published. , he wrote that he had carefully examined the OED, identified more than 100 inadequacies, and sent them to the OED editorial department. It can be imagined that OED continues to fascinate many researchers around the world. I don't own this large dictionary, but I use its abbreviation, SHORTER OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 1956, on a daily basis.

For 1.
Finally, 
I would like to touch on "Jukugo Honrai English-Japanese-Chinese Dictionary New and Expanded Edition"
by Shuzaburo Saito and Minoru Toyoda, published in 1936 by Iwanami Shoten . This dictionary overlaps with several memories.

I probably bought this dictionary by 1964, when I was in my second year of high school. It seems that he got the information that it was an excellent dictionary from somewhere. At the Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School, which I attended, a school trip to Kyoto and Nara was held in early spring when the second year was almost over. I had a lot of free time, and my visit with a friend to see the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University left a particularly strong impression on me. I've forgotten now if my friend was like that, but at the time I was longing for Kyoto University's Faculty of Science. In the end, I wasn't able to go to school there, but I still have fond memories of those days.

When I returned from a school trip, I found a pile of booklets on the porch of my house. When I asked her mother, she told me that one of her seniors in the same high school, who passed the mathematics department of Tokyo University of Education, brought me the Z-kai materials she used to study for the entrance exam. I found out It's a small town, so I became friends with him even though I was an upperclassman. I think it was around the second year of junior high school. When I was talking to him at school, he suddenly said, "Light is like a particle." All I could do was answer, "Really?" The existence of the photon Photon may be close to common sense now, but he taught me these new findings well. After graduating from university, he became a mathematics teacher at a metropolitan high school. As I sat down, he said, "You caused a little controversy on the final exam." I asked, "What did you do?" I just said, "Is that so?" "Yes," I said only, trying not to laugh. He was always like that, so it didn't surprise him in the slightest, but maybe that's not usually the case. I was probably one of his closest peers.

Maybe it was because of his favor, but I also joined Z-kai. I think I took three subjects in English and mathematics, but I forgot the details. I think I quit early on because I didn't find English and Japanese very appealing, but I was still interested in mathematics, and tried to solve problems, but I could hardly solve them. Along with the next question, a booklet containing the comments from the previous question and the top scorers will be sent to you, and there are several people who have gotten close to perfect scores. Along with the commentary, there was a discourse of such an excellent person, and recently there was also an amazing story such as making a problem by himself and sending it to Z Kai. I think this is no good, and I think I probably quit in less than half a year.

This booklet had good information. That was the usage of this "Jukugo Hontai English-Japanese Chinese Dictionary New Expanded Edition". According to the pamphlet, ``If you draw a red line where you have read this dictionary, and if it fills up to one-third of the dictionary, then there is no doubt about your ability.'' Simple I thought this was a good idea, so I implemented it immediately. I wouldn't have gone as far as one-third, but would I have gone one-tenth? However, I didn't really get a real sense of it, so I think it ended there. However, as I read the dictionary, I gradually came to realize the peculiarity of this dictionary. This is because he described in detail what is now called collocation, the connection between words. At the beginning of "PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION" by the author, Professor Saito declares as follows.

"Word are nothing in themselves, and everything in combination."
"A verb without its construction is no verb."

This conviction of Sensei, which is the fundamental foundation of modern English or the language as a whole, was made by Sensei in 'June, the 4th year of Taisho,' or 1915, when Preface was written. It's an amazing insight.

The Z-kai will continue for me. I think it was in the 1990's. My wife was working, but to borrow the words of Mr. Shinobu Ono of Wako when I was young, I was truly a “diversified business” and I was doing whatever I could, so one day I was told by the newspaper that I was giving advice to Z-kai. When I saw the advertisement for recruitment, I applied immediately, partly because I felt nostalgic. Interviews and preparatory school-like mock classes were held in Tokyo, and there may have even been writing. Up until then, I had experienced teaching at two preparatory schools, albeit for a short period of time. A few days later, I received a phone call informing me that I had passed the Z-kai question creator. Hearing that, I paused for a moment and then naturally declined, saying, "No, that's fine." It must have been Sunday, and my wife was listening to it by my side, and I was disappointed, saying, "Why didn't you accept it?" Now, I wonder if that kind of experience was interesting, but perhaps that difficult math problem of a distant day came and went in an instant. I wondered what would happen if I made such a difficult question.

Solving puzzles is certainly fun. Ancient Chinese with no punctuation that I couldn't make sense of even after looking at it all day was like a kind of puzzle. However, I do not dare to use such time for young people who have precious time. Only those who want to can do it. Is it because I thought that creating questions for that purpose was not suitable for me? Thus ended the long relationship with the Z-kai. In later years, I occasionally heard that some people who were good at mathematics in high school had moved away from modern mathematics after college. Mathematics is broad. Although I am weak, I still like mathematics the most. why. Because it gives you a clear way to go into the unknown.

I will add one incident that is nostalgic for me.

Languages ​​change. Then there must be before and after the change. What is it that is changing?
Without substance, there is no change. Then there must be an entity of language.
If there is substance, there must be a boundary between where there is no substance.
I want to clarify the boundaries.

At some point I came to think so.

I was completely unfamiliar with linguistically philosophical statements.
I wanted to write clearly. For that purpose, there was only mathematics with a history of 5000 years. Boundary of Word was completed in this way. It was because mathematics was supposed to surpass natural language, if only in part.


BOUNDARY OF WORDS


TANAKA Akio
12 August 2023
Hills West Tokyo

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