The phrase in the subject line is the first ヒント in the video 大人の漢字クイズ「読めない。」第一回.

I think that it means "reminiscent of 加藤茶", or maybe "sounds like 加藤茶" or some such. Is this correct?

Two questions:

1. How does one look up something like -っぽい in the dictionary? I imagine that it is a suffix, but I couldn't find it. (BTW, I also had no luck looking for　つぽい .)

2. It took me a long while to figure out that 加藤茶 was actually a proper name. Are there any tricks to speed this up? (BTW, how common is 茶 as a given name???)

PS. I don't know if it's meant to be humorous/tongue-in-cheek, but in any case, I really like the background music in these 大人の漢字クイズ videos. Any info on it would be much appreciated.

～っぽい　has the meaning of ~ish. For example, 子供っぽい would be something like childish.

To look up grammar patterns, I strongly recommend using proper dictionaries meant for such. Dictionary of basic/intermediate/advanced japanese grammar is the best one I've used, these bring up SO many grammar patterns and give really thorough explanations and examples.

gfb345 Wrote:2. It took me a long while to figure out that 加藤茶 was actually a proper name. Are there any tricks to speed this up?

You can use the Rikaichan extension along with the ENAMDICT dictionary file for this. When you hover over a word that doesn't show up in the main dictionary (JMDICT, I think) and think it might be a proper noun, just hit the enter key to check if it's listed in ENAMDICT.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

As a Chrome user, I keep forgetting about Rikaichan. It would not have been as handy as usual in this particular case because the text in question was in a video (so hovering over it would not have meant anything to Rikaichan), and it was written vertically to boot. But it's good to keep Rikaichan in mind for more common situations.

It's interesting to learn that っぽい would not appear in the dictionary. It looks like I'll have to re-learn quite a bit about dictionary usage when it comes to Japanese, even for kana-based dictionaries.

Speaking of the DoBJG (and so on), someone made an Anki deck (see shared decks in Anki) of 8555 cards or something, all the sentences from those books. Very handy for when you're referencing the book's notes and want to SRS examples.

gfb345 Wrote:Thanks for all the suggestions!

As a Chrome user, I keep forgetting about Rikaichan. It would not have been as handy as usual in this particular case because the text in question was in a video (so hovering over it would not have meant anything to Rikaichan), and it was written vertically to boot. But it's good to keep Rikaichan in mind for more common situations.

It's interesting to learn that っぽい would not appear in the dictionary. It looks like I'll have to re-learn quite a bit about dictionary usage when it comes to Japanese, even for kana-based dictionaries.

Rikaichan was ported to Google Chrome.
It's called "rikaikun".

I'm using it right now........ :-)

chamcham Wrote:Rikaichan was ported to Google Chrome.
It's called "rikaikun".

This turned out to be doubly good news. Not only I got rikaikun for Chrome, but learned that Chrome's OS X port now supports extensions (it didn't last time I checked several weeks ago). The only wrinkle is that the proper names dictionary that one can add to rikaichan is not yet available for rikaikun (though I saw that it's high in the to-do list for future releases). But even its basic mode is such an all-around useful tool, I'm happy to have it. Thanks!!

nest0r Wrote:Speaking of the DoBJG (and so on), someone made an Anki deck (see shared decks in Anki) of 8555 cards or something, all the sentences from those books. Very handy for when you're referencing the book's notes and want to SRS examples.

That's very good to know. Thanks. I've had my eye on getting those books for a while. It looks like it's getting to be time.

gfb345 Wrote:2. It took me a long while to figure out that 加藤茶 was actually a proper name. Are there any tricks to speed this up? (BTW, how common is 茶 as a given name???)

Well, you get used to names so as you build experience, you begin to recognize patterns. Some kanji are also common in proper names. (藤 is a dead giveaway).