slowly whittling down my oblivion list day by day 段段 - Feed Post by Jadore_Violet

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  JulesK_7

  Haha, me too. I currently have 1430 vocab to revise ;)

  March 20, 2015 at 12:37am
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  mog86uk

  Wow. I never noticed だんだん was 段々. 'Step-by-step'--that makes it easier to remember.
  
  In JCJP Practice, I think it's always written だんだん only in kana. どんどん still really doesn't have any kanji though (just is onomatopoeic of drum sound), but this has helped make it easier to tell those two questions apart. ^^

  March 20, 2015 at 12:41am
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  Arachkid

  Well, aside from the drumming sound, どんどん does mean rapidly, or quickly. That's why it sometimes get easy to mix up with だんだん. Wow - the computer here actually has a good IME with an English translation. When I typed in the term, one of the options for me to "tab" to was "increasingly" in English.

  March 20, 2015 at 8:00am
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  mog86uk

  @Arachkid Yeah, that's what I meant by mentioning about the drum sound.
  
  どんどん = rapidly (hence the drum beat sound symbolism for fast pace)
  だんだん = gradually (i.e. step-by-step; one step at a time; get there in the end kind of thing)
  
  That IME software you mentioned sounds interesting. Do you know the name of it?
  
  I've tried MS IME (windows 98 through to windows 10), Google Japanese Input, and ATOK. I don't remember any of them giving English translation built in though.

  March 20, 2015 at 11:09am
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  Arachkid

  No, but I'll try and take a look. It's a work computer at a Japanese school, so that's why it's there.

  March 20, 2015 at 3:30pm
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  Jadore_Violet

  I think i searched "gradually" on densjhi-jisho.org and found that kanji that way. if it is on this site too its probably berried deep in my oblivion list lol

  March 20, 2015 at 6:47pm