One Way to Reduce My Language Learning Inefficiencies, Maybe?

From the Smithsonian Blog: Seeing Pictures of Home Can Make It Harder to Speak a Foreign Language

"If you’ve ever attempted to move to a foreign country and learn to speak the local language, you’re aware that successfully doing so is an enormous challenge.

But in our age of widely distributed Wi-Fi hotspots, free Skype video calls from one hemisphere to another and favorite TV shows available anywhere in the world over the web, speaking a foreign language may be more difficult than ever. 

That’s because, as new research shows, merely seeing faces and images that you associate with home could make speaking in a foreign tongue more difficult. In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Columbia University and Singapore Management University found that for Chinese students who’d recently moved to the U.S., seeing several different types of China-related visual cues measurably reduced their fluency in English."

水無月 みなづき June

So in school they teach you that 六月・ろくがつ　is June, but at the library in one of my schools the display board clearly says that it's 水無月. I saw it just today as I walked past on the way to class.

Ha, I thought. How silly. June is the rainy season. That kanji literally means water-none-month! PREPOSTEROUS! Go home, library display board. You are clearly drunk.

But I was intrigued so I later googled 水無月　意味　由来 and good ol' Gogen Yurai Jiten 語源由来辞典 pops up with this:

「水の無い月と書くが、水が無いわけではない。水無月の「無」は、神無月の「な」と同じく「の」にあたる連体助詞「な」で、「水の月」という意味である。」
"The kanji is written "Month Without Water", but this does not necessarily mean "Without Water". The “without" 「無」 in "Month Without Water" is like the "without" 「無」 in "Month Without God", an "attributive particle" similar to "of" 「の」, making the meaning "Month of Water"."

OK, library display board. I apologize. 

Where does the 丸 in boys' names come from?

I'd noticed that 丸 is attached to some boys' names, or boy animals, or manly object, especially in folklore. I just assumed it was a marker to indicate boydom or something. However, while watching 世界のみんなに聞いてみた today, I learned that the 丸 apparently comes from お丸. Let me paste the definition of お丸 from gogen-allguide.com below for you:

おまるとは、幼児や病人が用いる、持ち運びのできる便器。

 Yes. The　丸 comes from a Japanese word for bedpan or chamber pot. Why on earth would you attach that to your child's name?  Or a really cool sword? Or a beloved dog?

The custom didn't stem from angry parents who bitterly called their babies "Stinky Poo Pot" though. It seems that the act of adding 丸 to your child's name kept him safe from monsters, who apparently, like humans, curl their lips in disgust and turn tail at the thought of chamber pots and the contents within. Not a bad strategy.