Gakuu – Learn Real Japanese

Carnivorous Girls and Herbivorous Boys

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by

Michael
in , , ,

Are traditional gender identities changing? It seems like it might be the case if we examine buzzwords from Japan. Popular a couple of years ago, the so-called 肉食女子 and 草食男子 – carnivorous girls and herbivorous boys – paint a very different picture to the traditional idea of assertive men and shy women.

Image source and personality test!

Here’s a short audio clip explaining the terms. It’s recorded at quite a relaxed pace and voiced very clearly, but contains quite a few compound kanji terms and difficult expressions. Give it a listen and see if you can understand the content. A translation and script is below.

Carnivorous Girls

The original Japanese:

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Comments

4 responses to “Carnivorous Girls and Herbivorous Boys”

  1. pony Avatar
    pony

    I`d like to see some sort of follow up to the listening, for example a quiz (in Japanese) or some comprehension questions or something. Also some hints as to how to read those difficult kanji compounds would be good.

    Reply
    1. Gakuranman Avatar
      Gakuranman

      Thanks for the suggestions Pony! Quizzes could be something good to consider for the future :).

      As for tips on reading difficult kanji compounds, I’m afraid it really boils down to exposure and familiarity. The more vocabulary you know, the better you get at guessing more complex compound words and distinguishing where to stop and start reading from. That said, you can often find the beginning and end of words by checking for the particles that separate them. Also, the readings for compound kanji are, for the most part, using the on-yomi Chinese reading. There are exceptions, but usually you can take an educated guess with the on-yomi :).

      Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    The audio clip is the perfect speed. Slow enough that you can easily catch words and grammatical structures you already know, as well as comfortably follow the text, but fast enough that it sounds natural and close to the speed of normal Japanese speech, I think. :)

    Reply
    1. Gakuranman Avatar
      Gakuranman

      Thanks! We’ve got a lot more audio recorded and ready to upload to add to existing lessons too. Just a few problems with the audio plugin at the moment. Keep an eye out in the future though!

      Reply

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