Using Perapera-kun to read Japanese wikipedia

Hello there, today I'm a bit busy so I thought I'd give a brief example of how Perapera-kun (mentioned in my previous post) can be extremely useful for learning to read Japanese.

Anyway, for some reason I ended up on the Japanese wikipedia page for house mouse.

From the page:

ハツカネズミ（二十日鼠、廿日鼠、house mouse）は、ネズミ目（齧歯目）ネズミ科 ハツカネズミ属の1種。学名は Mus musculus。

Chock full of vocab I've never used or heard before! If you'd eventually like to converse at an adult level, basic education like biology terms are probably necessary to learn sooner or later. Anyway, let's break it down:

ハツカネズミ, the term for house mouse, which literally means 20-day mouse.

二十日鼠/廿日鼠 (ハツカネズミ, the two ways to write in kanji). Note that because the title of the article is not in kanji, it is not standard practice to write this animal's name in kanji (as is often the case with animal and plant names).

ネズミ目 (ネズミもく), Order Rodentia (remember that whole Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species stuff in your high school bio classes?).

齧歯目 (げっしもく）, rat-like, rodent.

ネズミ科　（ネズミか）, mouse Family.

ハツカネズミ属　(ハツカネズミぞく）, house-mouse Genus.

一種 (いっしゅ), one kind of.

学名 (がくめい), scientific name, Latin name.

So, using Perapera-kun to parse the words over, we can readily translate in our heads:

The house mouse is one type of house-mouse that belongs to the mouse Family and rodent Order. Its scientific name is Mus musculus.

Anyway, you get the idea. Basically perapera-kun saves you a ton of time looking up kanji, readings, and definitions. Trust me, it goes a long way to being able to read Japanese web-pages.

By the way, if you wondering why they're called 20-day mice in Japanese, read wikipedia's explanation:

妊娠期間が20日程度であることから「はつかねずみ」の名が付いたとされる。

(Practice using perapera-kun if you don't understand!)

じゃね