日本語 (Japanese Practice)

[zmatt]

Thanks for the link.

[Joeldi]

When you say that in Anime, the speech is unnatural, is that because there's some sort of unwritten "It's animated, so let's write unnaturally" law/language, or do you just mean that Shounen shows will tend to be the equivalent of Totally Radical, and Moe, and probably Shoujo shows will use more cutesy language, but there will be more realistic, or more serious, or maybe simply more adult oriented shows that do use natural speech patterns?

他の質問がある～　昨日、ペンパルにEメールを出したら、間違って、「勉強しないで、動詞＋て、動詞＋て」　の代わりに 「勉強しなくてetc」と使っちゃった。　意味は大きく違うか　耳は合わせないしか？

Incidentally, is　耳は合わせない an actual phrase? I know 口は合わせない　is, and applying that to other body parts made sense to me...

[zmatt]

The second, I doubt there are any unwritten rules between Anime writers about how people should talk, but just like in the entertainment industry in America, there are conventions and phrases the predominately appear in Anime.

[tastelikecoke]

I self-studied JLPT4 recently. Now I'm planning to tackle on JLPT3. I want to use the http://www.jlpt-kanji.com site but I think it's broken. It's supposed to list the vocabularies by level, but some words are obviously out-of-place like 一緒 being listed as level 4 vocabulary.

I'm not sure if I already posted in this thread, but let me introduce myself. こんにちは。TASTELIKECOKEです。名前はひみつです。日本語は難しい。
Oops, I posted here already. But anyway (I have a feeling these are full of errors).
ひらがなはべんきょうするです。IMEはインストールよ。　何がつぎのステープは？

[wbarnes]

おはようございます。

私はﾊﾞｰﾝｽﾞｳｨﾘｱﾑだけど、Willてください。

今、私葉HCCで一年生日本語の学生です。せんこうは日本語とてつがくです。来年、UW-ﾀｺﾏで学生です。

ありがとうございます。

[wbarnes]

あの、すみません。きよめずでらはえいごでなんといいますか。

[cntrational]

After going through the thread, I'm surprised nobody seems to have even heard of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.

http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications ... anji_1.htm

The page contains a sample pdf of the first 500 kanji. The introduction explains the idea better than I could. Try it out.

Now I'll just go prepare rebuttals to people who don't know how mnemonics work.

[Molgaard]

みんなさんHello.

僕の名前はシモンで２４歳のイギリス人です。２００９年まで３年くらい東京に住んでました。その頃にシモンの日本語はほとんどぺらぺらだったけど、帰国してから日本語を使うチャンスが全然なくて、どんどん忘れちゃってます。もったいないんだからここで練習できるかなっと思ってます。お互いに手伝って頑張りましょう。

[Kizyr]

みんなさんHello.

僕の名前はシモンで２４歳のイギリス人です。２００９年まで３年くらい東京に住んでました。その頃にシモンの日本語はほとんどぺらぺらだったけど、帰国してから日本語を使うチャンスが全然なくて、どんどん忘れちゃってます。もったいないんだからここで練習できるかなっと思ってます。お互いに手伝って頑張りましょう。

こんにちは！よろしくね。
僕も、数年前の留学の頃の後で、日本語がどんどん下手になっちゃう気がする。まだ勉強しているけど、使うチャンスもないのは大変だ。

ところで、東京のどこで住んでいたか？KF

[agelessdrifter]

こんいちわ。私は日本語を二ヶ月勉強しています。

That's about as far as I can usefully get in this introduction in Japanese, I think. I've been using Rosetta Stone and am nearing the end of the Level One disk. I feel like I've learned quite a lot -- I can read and write kana pretty well, but my vocabulary and grammar comprehension are still pretty limited. I am trying to branch out from the program (though I will of course continue using it) to expedite and expand my learning. So I came here looking for an opportunity to practice, but there isn't much that I know how to say that would be of use in a conversation, I guess. I just today discovered how to write in 日本語 on my computer. どうぞよろしく。

[agelessdrifter]

I'm confused about something:

I'm not all the way through the unit yet, but it seems to me that in this unit of rosetta stone, I am being shown how to say "all the ____ are ____", "some of the ____ are ______" and "all of the ____ are not ______ " or "not all of the ______ are _______"

The thing that is confusing me is this: If I'm interpreting this correctly (for those of you not familiar with rosetta stone, it does not offer explanations of any kind -- you just learn by associating phrases with photos, basically), to say "some of the ______ are _______", one says 　

「何＿＿＿　＿_＿＿です。」 for example, "some plates are plastic" -> 「何枚お皿プラスチックです。」

Which makes a certain amount of sense, but then the question becomes: how does one say "some plates are plastic?" vs "how many plates are plastic?"

Or maybe I'm just off base with the whole thing.


Also, is there a quick way to switch between hirigana and katakana with windows 7 IME? Or a way to establish a keyboard shortcut? I've got a shortcut set up to quick-switch to japanese, but dunno about quick-switching between the character sets.


edit: I suppose one could say "not all of the plates are not plastic?" but that seems awkward.

[Soiidus]

Rosetta Stone is only good in addition to other programs, Byki is good for beating phrases into your head, personally, I find Rosetta Stone quite confusing. I think its better to find a formal class. Even still, anyone have any tips for learning? (With out a formal teacher?) I have friends that speak it, although I feel quite awkward saying things wrong, ha ha.

Oh and about katakana switching, on my computer, when you hold shift it changes.

[Joeldi]

It's been a while, so this might be full of holes, but I think it would be something like

お皿の中でプラスチックなのいくつですか？

"Of all the plates, how many are plastic ones?"

Or

プラスチックな皿がいくつですか？

"How many plastic plates are there?"

[Kizyr]

I'm confused about something:
I'm not all the way through the unit yet, but it seems to me that in this unit of rosetta stone, I am being shown how to say "all the ____ are ____", "some of the ____ are ______" and "all of the ____ are not ______ " or "not all of the ______ are _______"

I'll refrain from making any extended commentary about Rosetta Stone's approach. I'll just note that the approach was developed for Romance languages and has a very unclean transition to everything else, so some of the ways that you may learn things through it may make very little sense from a practical standpoint. It also seems to hate teaching grammar.

Anyway, distinguishing between "all" vs. "some" may be easy, and the positive ("are") vs. negative ("aren't") should also be easy. Though when you start combining them, some ways sound very clunky and others more natural (much like "Not all of the plates are plastic" and "Some of the plates aren't plastic" have similar meanings, but different things you're trying to emphasize).

"some of the ______ are _______", one says 　
「何＿＿＿　＿_＿＿です。」
Or maybe I'm just off base with the whole thing.

Here're a few ways that sound more like something I'd say...
ある皿がプラスチックです。 (There're some [ある] plates that are plastic)
プラスチックな皿が何枚あります。 (There are some [何枚あります] plastic plates)
皿の何枚がプラスチックです。 (Some plates [皿の何枚] are plastic)
Or using 'all' instead of 'some'
すべての皿がプラスチックです。 (All [すべての -or- ぜんぶの] plates are plastic)
(The second sentence isn't really an 'all' vs 'some' distinction now that I think about it)
皿のみんながプラスチックです。 (All plates [皿のみんな] are plastic)
If you wanted to make any of them negatives, then you could change です→じゃない & あります→ありません.

Though, honestly, I don't usually think of an all vs. some dichotomy, and I don't think it's a useful way to teach this concept. Looking over it, some of those sentences still seem a little unnatural, like I'd rarely see a situation where I'd want to convey that kind of information in just that way. (And important note: word order, except for the verb at the end, is not very critical; what's more important are the particles after each word. I don't think that Rosetta Stone conveys that concept well with the picture-to-phrase method.)

Anyway...

Which makes a certain amount of sense, but then the question becomes: how does one say "some plates are plastic?" vs "how many plates are plastic?"

I'd use that third way of saying it above:
皿の何枚がプラスチックです。 (Some plates [皿の何枚] are plastic)
and ask
皿の何枚がプラスチックですか？ (How many plates [皿の何枚] are plastic?)

Alternatively:
プラスチックな皿が何枚ありますか。 (How many [何枚ありますか] plastic plates are there?)
プラスチックな皿がいくつですか？ (How many [いくつですか] plastic plates are there?)*

* STOLEN FROM JOELDI. YEAH I ADMIT IT!

Also, is there a quick way to switch between hirigana and katakana with windows 7 IME? Or a way to establish a keyboard shortcut? I've got a shortcut set up to quick-switch to japanese, but dunno about quick-switching between the character sets.

I'm not entirely certain this will work (on a Vista computer where I can't mess with many settings), but try this:
Language Bar Settings -> General Tab -> Highlight Japanese/Keyboard/Microsoft IME and click Properties
Properties -> Editing Tab -> click "Advanced" beside "Key Template"
Scroll down to the settings for the カタカナ and ひらがな keys, and modify those to be another keyboard shortcut.

Let me know if this works. Like I said, I can't try it out on this computer at the moment. KF

[agelessdrifter]

Thanks, that worked for the keyboard shortcuts. It's still a little wonky (Alt-shift puts it into romanji mode, from there, alt-caps takes it to hirigana, and from there [but only from there] I can switch into katakana with alt-tab, and then I can go back to romanji or hirigana with alt-caps. Good enough.)

There seems to be a lot of hate for Rosetta Stone. I feel like it's doing ok by me, at least for now. I won't be able to say whether it was entirely worthwhile till I'm done with module three, though (I'm only just now starting module 2 and I admit it's starting to feel a bit stagnant, but it looks like it will pick up in future lessons).

But what about it is so terrible? A lot of people seem to dislike that it doesn't explain things explicitly, but isn't simulating total immersion the whole idea?

[Wozzo]

If you didn't have the differences between you're and your explained explicitly at school would you know the difference? How long would it have taken you to spot where 'a' is used and where 'an' is used?

I imagine Rosetta Stone could be far more useful in learning languages that are very closely related to English such as French, German etc. But Japanese is a vastly different language with different components such as particles, completely different word order, verb conjugation, adjective conjugation, etc.

I use Rosetta Stone to practicing my listening but haven't found I've learnt anything from the other lessons and doubt I'd have been able to learn how to conjugate verbs effectively and use particles properly from using Rosetta Stone alone.

[Wozzo]

みなさんこんにちは
僕はウォーレン(Warren)です。いま福島県に住んでいる。知ってるの？中学生に英語を教えている。まだ日本語がへただから勉強をしている。

[Wozzo]

I self-studied JLPT4 recently. Now I'm planning to tackle on JLPT3. I want to use the http://www.jlpt-kanji.com site but I think it's broken. It's supposed to list the vocabularies by level, but some words are obviously out-of-place like 一緒 being listed as level 4 vocabulary.

isshou is level 4 vocabulary. The kanji used in it is level 2 though. There are some simple words that use complicated kanji. The word will be a low level while the kanji is a much higher level as in this case. In the JLPT test they will just write this word in Hiragana as いっしょう until you get to level 2. You should also note that the levels have changed as of last year. All of the levels have essentially moved down one.
JLPT4 -> N5
JLPT3 -> N4
JLPT2 -> N3
With N2 and N1 being just uber hard for walking kanji dictionaries as far as I can tell.
がんばって

[xkcdfan]

とにかくプラスチックなお皿を使う人は馬鹿なのでしょ？　どうしてそんあ質問を？

[kobachi]

Thanks, that worked for the keyboard shortcuts. It's still a little wonky (Alt-shift puts it into romanji mode, from there, alt-caps takes it to hirigana, and from there [but only from there] I can switch into katakana with alt-tab, and then I can go back to romanji or hirigana with alt-caps. Good enough.

Remove your english keyboard, leaving only the Japanese IME. Switch between Romaji and IME with Alt-` (the tilde button, to the left of the '1' key).

Also, the word is 'romaji', not 'romanji'.

[B++]

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[allentheheffel]

One side note: "dewa mata" is ではまた (は, not わ, since it's a particle). However, "konnichiwa" is either こんにちは or こんにちわ (the latter--what you put there--is more frequently used now).

>> Hate to nitpick, but わ is not correct in konnichiwa. Some (young or uneducated) people might think it is, and some people use it to be cute, but it is not a form with any scholarly recognition. It's the kind of thing people get made fun of for on variety television shows.

Good luck studying Japanese!

P.S. 晩ご飯　is better than 晩御飯 . This "go" is not written in Kanji 99% of the time.

毎日は、九時半に起きます。十時に日本語のクラスへ行きます。十一時に昼御飯を食べます。昼御飯はスパゲッティをいちばんでし。しゅうきつは勉強する。

[Centauri]

みんな、はじめまして！　僕の名まえは　イアン　です。　シドニーに　住んで　います。　僕は　九年生　です。　たくさん　かんじを　よみません。
日本語は　とても　たのしい　かもく。　そして、大好き　ですよ。あしたに、　日本語の　テストを　します。　だから、　僕は　ちょっと　しんけい　です。

I'm open to any corrections, and I think there may be a few there which I need. I did say I can't read many kanji, and I only use the ones I know how to handwrite, use and pronounce. I'm in year 9 in Sydney, and it's my second year of learning Japanese (how do you write that, by the way*). I think my first couple of lines says it all.

* Is it: "二年から　日本語を　はじまりました。"? Alternatively, do you have to manage two verbs in a sentence (Two years ago, I started learning Japanese)?

[Mapar]

　たくさん　かんじを　よみません。

I'm absolutely no expert, but I think you should write "よめません" or "よむことができません" instead of "よみません" here. That's how you express the idea of "not being able to do X" as opposed to "doing X".
I'd translate "I started learning Japanese two years ago" as "二年前、日本語を始めました", but don't take my word for that either :p


そう、僕はまだ紹介しません。　「マッティアス」と申します。　数学の一年生で十七歳のベルギー人です。　六ヶ月前、日本語の勉強を始めました。　よろしくお願いします。

[Kizyr]

All of the levels have essentially moved down one.
JLPT4 -> N5
JLPT3 -> N4
JLPT2 -> N3
With N2 and N1 being just uber hard for walking kanji dictionaries as far as I can tell.
がんばって

I missed this earlier but I have to offer a correction. There were 4 levels, now there are 5; the new level was put in between 2 and 3 (which formerly had a really huge gap between them). So really it's:

JLPT4 = N5
JLPT3 = N4
N3 is all-new
JLPT2 = N2
JLPT1 = N1

N2 and N1 are very difficult, but I don't think it's because of the kanji use. The reading/writing sections were relatively easy; the listening section was what tripped me up the most (I still passed, just did poorly on listening). KF

[v1nsai]

I typed こども into the app store on my iPad and found a couple of children's books, and have been reading one called いろいろおばけ but after a semester of Japanese I I can still barely read a childrens popup book >_< I've been tripping over (literally) the first sentence in the book and I was wondering if someone could offer a better translation for this:

ごはんをのこすとパパがね、ちゃんとたべないと
マンマおばけがたべにやってくるぞっていう。

one day while eating with dad I left some food, dad said eat well or the ghost Manma will come something about food I can't find ぞっていう in any dictionary

I'm hoping this is written in very improper Japanese or something because this cute little children's sticker book has gone far over my head

[Kizyr]

after a semester of Japanese I I can still barely read a childrens popup book >_< I've been tripping over (literally) the first sentence in the book and I was wondering if someone could offer a better translation for this.

Don't sweat it too much if it's hard to get. It's not that it's improper Japanese so much as the language is more colloquial and put together like sentence fragments. When you're starting out, you're still at the stage of needing to take apart a sentence and piece it back together to understand (which works for properly-written and properly-formatted Japanese, but really makes it difficult to understand something when there's even one word out of place). I'll try to dissect it here:

ごはんをのこすと (ご飯　を　残す　と)
"I left some food" (the 'と' is like the kid setting up the context/environment for the rest of the phrase)

パパがね
"And dad's like..." (like he's adding in some more info for context, just saying that his dad is there so you understand the rest of the sentence is what his dad said)

ちゃんとたべないと (ちゃんと　食べない　と)
"(If...) you don't eat properly"

マンマおばけ が たべにやってくる
"(then...) the manma ghost will come to eat you" (the 'you' is implied)
A [verb stem]-ni-[other verb] construction is common to join verbs. So, "たべ" (from たべる/eat) + "に" + "やってくる" (equivalent to いってくる/go to/come to) = たべにやってくる (come to eat).

ぞ
The 'ぞ' ending emphasizes the sentence, making it sound more like an assertion or commanding.

っていう。
The っていう ending is the same as "と　いう" ("he said").

Does that help a bit? Do you think you might be able to translate what it says given this info? KF

[v1nsai]

Don't sweat it too much if it's hard to get. It's not that it's improper Japanese so much as the language is more colloquial and put together like sentence fragments. When you're starting out, you're still at the stage of needing to take apart a sentence and piece it back together to understand (which works for properly-written and properly-formatted Japanese, but really makes it difficult to understand something when there's even one word out of place). I'll try to dissect it here:

Awesome thanks that's exactly what I needed just some help with the grammar, the と particle is used for a lot more than I've seen so far. The Wikipedia article on Japanese particles is pretty deep, but could be completely false for all I know, what do you think about their explanation of the と particle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_particles

[Joeldi]

So I'm attempting to read one of those Penguin Parallel texts in Japanese, and it's going very slowly, but ok. I need to look up every third word, but I'm definitely getting the gist of things.

I've just noticed a few characters with a big bold commas to the right of them (where the furigana normally goes). Googled briefly but couldn't find anything about them. The guy's talking about pretty sad stuff, so it might be meant to represent a tear-drop. I'll put the sentences here when I get home to IME land.

Anyone know what they are / mean?

[Kizyr]

So I'm attempting to read one of those Penguin Parallel texts in Japanese, and it's going very slowly, but ok. I need to look up every third word, but I'm definitely getting the gist of things.

I've just noticed a few characters with a big bold commas to the right of them (where the furigana normally goes). Googled briefly but couldn't find anything about them. The guy's talking about pretty sad stuff, so it might be meant to represent a tear-drop. I'll put the sentences here when I get home to IME land.

Anyone know what they are / mean?

The comma marks are there for emphasis, sort of like boldface+italics (picture them being said with each syllable being enunciated/accented separately). Rather common in modern fiction literature. KF

[Daimon]

.................

[Mapar]

日本語で言いたいは欲するが何もは言わない。

What are you trying to say here? I think there are a couple grammar errors in here as well: the も particle is never followed by は, and adjective+は is wrong too. You have to nominalise things before you can slap a は on them. Anyway, take my words with a grain of salt since I'm not that experienced myself.

Anyway, if you wanted to say something like 'when I want to say something in Japanese, I don't manage to speak.', you might want to phrase it like this: 日本語で会話したい時に、何も言えない。　(confirmation pl0x)

EDIT: Regarding the ます形: I use this form most of the time, in main clauses at least. Of course, there are constructions where one is required to use the plain form, but when I do have the choice I tend to go for ます just to be on the safe side.
Well, I do occasionally slip up in speech, though I tend to get ahead of myself when I'm talking, not just in Japanese, but in any language...

[Daimon]

.................

[Joeldi]

I apologise for the lack of kana in this post. I'm at work with no IME.

Doesn't anyone else prefer your る　た　ない　なかった だ　じゃない　じゃなかった, (らなかま)ない &c?

I definitely prefer plain form. It's faster and rolls off the tongue much better. I don't know what I've used throughout the thread, but I suspect if I'm talking to internet randoms, I'd use it every time.

On the other hand, most of the people I practice Japanese with, I worry about being not being polite enough to. I'll make a point of using polite form, and correct myself if I throw a TA or a RU in there.

On the subject of being grammatically correct, say I'm ending with an い adjective. Of course, I'll, if I want to be correct, put です after it. Is that counted as being polite, not being polite, or you're pretty much forced to be polite in that case.

It's perfectly correct to omit the DESU completely, though iirc, informal feminine speech tends to omit it, and informal masculine speech tends to end in DA. If you're being polite/formal, that's when you need to use DESU

Also, I never got the difference in の and 事 in nominalising things.

This gets me too. I like the sound of NO, but no-one's ever explained if I'm actually using it correctly, so I try to stick to KOTO. I think NO can also be a generic noun, as well as a nominaliser, confusing my brain further.

I feel strange telling you all this, because your level of Kanji seems to be much better than mine.

[Mapar]

Also, I never got the difference in の and 事 in nominalising things.

This gets me too. I like the sound of NO, but no-one's ever explained if I'm actually using it correctly, so I try to stick to KOTO. I think NO can also be a generic noun, as well as a nominaliser, confusing my brain further.

I feel strange telling you all this, because your level of Kanji seems to be much better than mine.

I've had it explained to me as follows (and my grammar book seems to agree):
- "no" is for things you have some emotional attachment to
- "koto" is for more abstract things or things you do not feel close to.
They are often interchangeable, but the connotation is somewhat different. It would for example be a little weird to say "the fact that my mother died" as "母が死んだ事 etc".

I also have no idea about 中 and て-form + いる, because from what I have seen, they're doing the exact same thing. Also, I've seen, and only on 一段 verbs, that they just do てる instead of ている. And for 五段 verbs, the te form seemed to be って, which is what I used for 一段 until I noticed NO ONE else was doing it like that.

EDIT: I missed this before.

The て　form is interesting. In 一段 verbs, it's pretty much root+て. The rules for 五段 are a little more complicated. I suppose you know how to form the past tense of a 五段 verb? If you do, the て form is obtained by removing the た and replacing it by a て. So you only get　って when the 連体形 of a 五段　verb ends in る、つ　or う. It's true that て+いる gets contracted into てる　all the time.


I've been studying Japanese for about a year now (home+classes, but the classes are too easy). I try to 'create' some sort of artificial immersion-like thing by doing as much as I can in Japanese, and I've been exchanging e-mails with a Japanese friend of my mother's for a while now. I still suck at writing kanji though... You're definitely better at that than I am.


Aand EDIT: one more thing, you defended your use of 何もはby saying that も was not a particle. I'll grant that, but は is still not allowed because it can't follow question words and their か/も forms. At least, that's how I think it works. Confirmation, anyone?

[Daimon]

.................

[Joeldi]

I've been 'learning' Japanese on and off since ~1999 and barely know anything. I'm pretty sure you're a hard worker.

[Daimon]

.................

[Mapar]

There's a weird quirk about my Japanese. I learned て-form BEFORE I had all the past tense 五段 conjugations in my head.(There was this fun little mnuemonic[sp] and the third line was うつる　って) So, even though I can almost do it without going through these steps now, I go convert it to て-form, then change the て/で to た/だ. The only time that's ever been a problem to me is when I needed to do negative て-form for something. Even now, I have no idea how to do it.
-snip-
I've been studying Japanese, and not counting Kana, since 2月17日 of this year. I think that's the same day that I learned to count. After the first day, I could pretty much count to 9,999 even if it did take a while to think of what the number was. Now, it's 9,999,999, but anything using 万 in 4 digits will take a bit. Over the summer, I want to study 8 hours a day, six days a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to. I'm not exactly a hard worker. (I even barely went over my Kanji list the last three days. )

I've had it explained to me as follows (and my grammar book seems to agree):
- "no" is for things you have some emotional attachment to
- "koto" is for more abstract things or things you do not feel close to.
They are often interchangeable, but the connotation is somewhat different. It would for example be a little weird to say "the fact that my mother died" as "母が死んだ事 etc".

When I read it, I think of it as, "Mother's death thing." (Or The thing of mother died) just as I see 言う事 and read, "Talk things." Of course, talk things could possibly mean words, and I guess they don't want to say 言葉.

As for a certain homonym, take 漢字 and 感じ. In every case I've heard one of these spoken, and it's the only word for ages I could recognise, I seem to instantly be able to tell which one they're using. Is it just me, or does the ん in 感じ have more emphasis?

Wow, you started in february? Impressive... I'm a lazy ass and the only things I study formally are grammar and vocabulary. You just reminded me that I should get crackin' on those kanji again. I have the books, so what's holding me back ;P

Anyway, about the negative て-form: there are actually two, and while I sort of feel which one is right in which situation, I can't really put my finger on the difference. One is simply formed by taking the negative and considering it an adjective. 働かない->働かなくて
The other one is formed by slapping で onto the negative form　働かない->働かないで

The first one is the 'true' conjunctive form used to link phrases. I suspect the で in the second form is actually the て-form of だ, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, that one's used in requests and to represent the idea of 'without X', where X is a verb action. The form 働かず is similar, but rarer.

[Daimon]

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