If anyone's interested, I was thinking about starting a whole bunch of Japanese lessons on here... I'm in Japanese 1 right now, but I intend to take it all 4 years of high school. I know everything I've been taught so far by heart (although it isn't that much yet, but yea, still something right?), and if any of you are interested (just reply) or have ideas, I'd be willing to start.
I've actually been looking for something like this, been trying to get my Grandma to teach me. Sure.
I'M IN HEAVEN!!! Teach me! Please, please, please! :D (I wanted to join this one website where tutorswho sgn up can teach Japanese to other people, but all the tutors are over 18, and i don't really like the idea of, y'know, talking to someone much older than m for my reasons. But I guess anyone under 18 wouldn't be a good teacher, huh?)
Quote from: Vaati on February 07, 2008, 03:28:52 PM
but all the tutors are over 18, and i don't really like the idea of, y'know, talking to someone much older than m for my reasons.
...Does Tacheon know this?
Are you aware that I'm 19?
I am hurt. :'(
I'm 19 too, in case you haven't noticed. Been that way for some time now.
Excuse me, I'm noticeably younger than 18 but I got an A+. I think I have some right to say I'll be a pretty good teacher. And as this got some pretty good reception... I say we start now.
==========Basic Pronounciation================
Ok, the basics. Once I can get some scans of hiragana up, or download hiragana that I can just type, I'll be writing in roomaji, romanized letters.. Also, in Japanese, when you have a double 'o' you write the second 'o' as a 'u'. When I'm doing it in roomaji (roumaji) I'll be using the 'u', so just keep in mind that it's an elongated 'o' sound.
The basic vowel sounds in Japanese are a, i, u, e, and o.
'a' sounds like "ah" "ah"
'i' sounds like "sleep" "ee"
'u' sounds like "mood" "oo"
'e' sounds like "eh" "eh"
'o' sounds like "obey" "oh"
If you mispronouce any of the sounds, like saying 'o' like 'toe' I'll have to pull Saber's patented Cyber-Strangle. It irks me when people's American accents totally slaughter the words. Sorry, just try not to do it.
Okay, hiragana are sets of sounds, or syllables. The first set are of course a, i, u, e, and o, but then you have ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se so, etc.... We'll get into that more later. Also, there's equal stress on each syllable most of time, but in certain cases different pitches make the words completely different. Such as:
haSHI (bridge)
HAshi (chopsticks)
HASHI (edge)
kaMI (paper)
KAmi (god)
Ame (rain)
aME (candy)
There are also skipping sounds, such as ippai (one cupful). You say ip-pai, making the double consonant separate but not too choppy.
=========Basic Words and Sentence Structure========
Watashi (I, me)
Anata (You. Don't use this too often, and especially to people you don't know, as it's kind of rude)
wa (this is the first particle you learn, and in hiragana is written as "ha". It makes something equal to something, or is. The kite IS red. I AM Rinku.
desu (at the end of almost every sentence that I've been though so far. It completes the thought. Hard to explain)
-san (An honorific, basically use this for everyone you're not best friends with.)
-sama (Even higher than -san)
-sensei (For teachers. As with the rest of the honorifics, just put the the name, preferably last name if you're going to be respectful, in front of the honorific suffix. So for instance, you could call me Rinku-sensei, although I don't really want you to. And some of you have seen me call Shikamaru/Sabertache Shika-san before.
kore (this)
sore (that)
are (that over there. Something far away)
There are variations of all three, discussed later on.
The first and most basic sentence structure is
Noun 1 wa Noun 2 desu.
Kore wa O desu.
This is O.
Kore means 'this' and wa+desu make "is". O is the sound or letter 'o'.
You can put in any words you want, but the direction word, such as kore, sore, are, watashi, or anata have to go in spot "noun 1" or 'A' as my sensei at school shortens the sentence formula to A wa B desu.
Watashi wa Rinku desu. I am Rinku.
I don't say Rinku-san, as you don't respect yourself. You respect others!
Watashi means 'I'. Rinku is the name Rinku. wa+desu make up the "is" or "am" part.
Understand? *feedback would be nice, and if you don't understand, I will elaborate*
So, I guess Kami from Dragonball Z would probably translate to God, rather than paper, right?
Unless they were playin JanKenPon (rock paper scissors, I think) then yes, most likely.
========More Vocabulary=============
ohayou (Informal good morning, as you can see, elongated 'o' sound at the end)
ohayou gozaimasu (formal good morning)
Konnichiwa (Used as a greeting during the afternoon. See, skipping sound example!)
Sayounara (If anyone dares mispronounce this like they hear it on TV, grrr! It means goodbye.)
hai (yes)
ee (It also means yes, but you mostly use this during phone conversations or something not formal. It sounds like eeehhhhh)
iie (elongated "ee" sound. It means no.)
konbanwa (good evening)
jaa ne (informal goodbye between friends)
-kun (a suffix mostly for boy's names. For someone beneath you, or say you had a cute little male cousin. So, Jon-kun.)
More pronounciation help:
The 'i' and 'u' sounds are very soft. So when you say "Konnichiwa! Watashi wa Rinku desu!" It sounds like "Kon-nichiwa! Watashi wa Rinku dess!"
Or "Hajimemashite!" 'mashite' is a verb ending to change tenses and whatnot. I don't know too much about 'shite' yet, but you would say the word as "Hajimemashteh"
I know a few suffixes, I know
kun
chan
san
senpaii
sempaii
niichan
And a couple others I think.
=======More Honorifics==========
Okay, -kun, I believe I explained that last post.
-chan is sort of like -kun, except used more towards girls. -chan came from -san; apparently when little kids in Japan try to say -san, it ends up sounding like -chan. So when little kids talk to each other you hear, "Emiko-chan!" "Daisuke-chan!" Instead of Emiko-san and Daisuke-san. (Try it out on your own, with an exaggerated cute anime girl voice. Closest thing to a three-year-old's.)
-senpai, or sempai (when you Japanese-ify words in English, or vice versa, n's become m's in English, v's become b's in Japanese, etc.)
Well that's used when you talk to an upperclassman.
-kohai is the opposite of -senpai, and is used to talk to underclassmen.
niichan means older brother- You probably heard this on Fullmetal Alchemist. Well, that was the first idea that came to mind. Anyway, this goes back to that "little kids can't pronounce -san" Niisan means older brother, so when little kids address their older brothers it probably sounds like niichan.
Isn't bozu also an honorific for like a little kid or something?
Quote from: Hi no Seijin on February 07, 2008, 04:19:40 PM
Are you aware that I'm 19?
I am hurt. :'(
Guys it seems you misread me.: that's on a whole different website other than TDC, and you talk directly, privately with that person, TDC is a forum where what you say to other people will be read by other people.
Yea, bozu means something like "little squirt" or "short stuff" etc.
A wa B desu.
This is basically the first and only real sentence structure I learned in the first semester of school. "Something is something else". You will learn to hate it, but it's useful.
Now if you're a guy, you can say boku instead of watashi for I.
So if I was a guy, I could say, Boku wa Rinku desu. I am Rinku. It means practically the same thing.
Another particle is ka. You just put it on the end of a sentence, and that makes it a question.
Watashi wa Rinku desuka? I am Rinku?
You could use this, for example, if you're having amnesia.
Japanese words tend to be long, and so are their sentences when you build them up. They like to shorten things, so if the subject you're talking about is know, you could just say, Rinku desu, and it would mean about the same thing. Another example of this:
"Anata wa nansai desuka?" *You can automatically tell that the person is talking about you, and it's a question since there's ka at the end* How old are you?
"Juuhassai desu." 18 years old. I could have said Watashi wa juuhassai desu, but you both know you're talking about you, so you don't have to. Also in the first sentence, that person could have just said "nansai desuka?" and it'd be the same thing.
=======Numbers==============
Japanese have different counters for different objects. To count people, you have to add the suffix -nin. Think Sannin, from Naruto. There are 3 of them, Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya, so, the Legendary Sannin (Three). Well right now we'll go over the basic numbers.
ichi (1)
ni (2)
san (3)
yon/shi* (4)
go (5)
roku (6)
nana/shichi* (7)
hachi (8)
kyuu/ku* (9)
juu (10)
hyaku (100)
You can see that 4, 7, and 9 have asterisks. The second way of saying the numbers, shi, shichi, and ku, are not to be used in some situations. That is because shi and shichi mean and are related to death, and ku means suffering. So you don't use it all the time! Use yon, nana, and kyuu!
We'll go back to numbers later.
=======What?===========
The word nani, or nan, is used for what, or when something is unknown. In the "nansai desuka" sample sentence above, -sai is the counter for age, and it has nan in front of it. Therefore you're asking "how old."
Kore wa nandesuka?
Kore means 'this' and nan means 'what'. You also have ka at the end, making it a question. So you're asking, "what is this?"
-mai is the counter for flat objects, like paper, or even pizza. So if you said, "nanmai", that would mean, "how many (flat objects)".
Zeruda no Denetsu wa nandesuka? What is The Legend of Zelda?
=============Possession============
The particle "no" is a possessive article. So if I said, Kore wa watashi no desu, that would mean, "This is mine".
You can keep putting 'no' at the end of subjects as much as you like. For example:
Watashi no haha no namae wa Emiko desu.
New words: haha means (your) mother. You don't actually call your mother 'haha', you call them 'okaasan', but that's another lesson.
namae means name.
So the sentence Watashi no haha no namae wa Emiko desu means My mother's name is Emiko.
Watashi no means my.
haha no means my mother's.
You could keep piling them on too. "Watashi no haha no otousan no imooto no inu no namae wa Inuyasha desu."
My mother's father's younger sister's dog's name is Inuyasha.
Otousan means father. You address your father with "otousan"
Imooto means younger sister. Inu, as most of you know, is dog.
I don't know if my high school has Japanese, but if it does, I'll take it. I'll also take German, too. Spanish doesn't seem a useful language anymore, besides simply being a language other than English, and French doesn't interest me enough. Italian seems like a fun language to learn, considering Italy's grand history. Russian and Chinese also seem nice to know today.
My high school only offers Spanish, Latin, French, and German, which I take now (I should start a topic that teaches German, what do you guys think?). But when I get into college, I'll take Japanese.
This is actually quite useful, I'll be getting a head start in Japanese! :D
Good for both of you. Also, since the school week begins in 4 hours, I won't be able to post a decent lesson until maybe even next weekend... *sigh*... I detest school so much. But I'll be picking up even more Japanese to pass on to the rest of you! Just wondering, but am I an okay teacher? I'm usually horrible at teaching, and and A+ in the class has no effect on my patience level... or explanatory skillz...
==========More Numbers============
In Japanese, when you say twenty, you have to say "two tens". Thirty and forty would be "three tens" and "four tens". 57 would be "five tens and seven" It's like that til you get to another counter- like 100 (hyaku) or 1000.
So if 20 is "two tens", and 2 is "ni", and 10 is "juu, Then 20 in Japanese would be ni juu.
30 is san juu. (san meaning three).
57 is go juu nana. (go is 5, and nana is 7.
132 is hyaku san juu ni. (100+three tens+2)
Hope that all makes sense. I have a funny vid relating to this, which I'll link to later.
===========Counting Age==============
When you count different things in Japanese, they have different suffixes. For example, when you count age, you use -sai. The base numbers change sometimes, but for age you're lucky because at least they sound similar.
For 1 year old, you'd think it would be ichisai, but it's issai. Another skipping sound example. Is-sai.
2 years old: nisai. (no changes)
3: sansai
4: yonsai
5: gosai
6: rokusai
7: nanasai
8: hassai (this is also changed. has-sai)
9: kyuusai (don't say "kusai". Kusai means smelly!)
10: juusai
11: juuissai (as you can see, you don't say juu ichi sai, you say juu issai)
It goes on and on like so until you hit 20. 20 is like a super-sweet-16 sort of age to the Japanese. 20 is completely different- instead of ni juu sai you say "hatachi".
21 isn't hatachi issai. It's back to normal, and it's ni juu issai.
I split the words up sometimes so you can see it clearer. When you write it normally it's all one big long word, and when you don't know any kanji and have to write it all out in hiragana, it takes FOREVER.
Don't delete this or anything! Even though it is technically a double post. But it's for a valid reason!
Okay, the whole week was spent learning Katakana at school. I've learned about half of them already and have been drilling myself so it comes as easy to me as Hiragana and English.
===============No L============
I completely forgot to mention this. Japanese don't have an 'l' sound, so when they japanese-ify foreign words l's become r's. Therefore r's in Japanese are the hardest sound for foreigners to make. R's are crosses between an 'l', an 'r', and a 'd'. Yes, a 'd', and it's sort of hard to explain it if you can't hear it for yourself.
A good example of adapting words: Rinku.
Rinku means Link in Japanese.
Ri = Li
N= N
Ku= K. The 'u' sound, as I've said before, is very soft and indistinguishable most of the time so it sounds like an exotic way of saying Link.
====I'll edit this post to add more later... Off to do dratted Bio homework....==========
Yeah. I knew that they couldn't say the "L" sound. In Death Note, L's name is "Eru". Much like Link's Japanese name "Rinku", they also added a "U". They also did the same with such Zelda characters as:
Ganondorf - Ganondorfu
Vaati - Gufuu
Reminds me of in A Christmas Story (No offense to anyone who's Asian), they go to a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese employees are singing "Deck the Halls" going "Deck the harrs with barrs of horry fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra!" And the manager goes "No, it's not "Fa ra ra ra, it's fa la la la la! Start over!" And the Chinese people just couldn't pronounce the "L"s.
Also, I have a question: I heard that they can't pronounce "V"s either. Is this correct?
Yes, that's right. So when you say "video" in Japanese, it sounds like and is written as "Bideo".
Interesting! :-\ (I'll just put a post here so you canpost more w/o having to double-post) ;)
Ok, I have been busy like no tomorrow all week and will remain that way until Sunday afternoon, so no big lesson yet, sorry...
============Family================
Kazoku - family, your family.
Gokazoku - someone else's family. The 'go' is used for respect.
Ojiisan- Grandfather, also can be used for old men.
Obaasan- Grandmother, also can be used for older women.
Ojisan- Shorter "ee" sound, means uncle.
Obasan- Shorter "ah" sound, means aunt.
Otousan - Father, formal.
Chichi - Your father, but you don't call him that. You call him otousan.
Okaasan - Mother, formal
Haha- Your mother, same as chichi.
Ani- Your older brother
Oniisan- What you call your older brother, or someone else's older brother
Ane- Your older sister
Oneesan- What you call your older sister, or someone else's older sister
Otouto- Your younger brother
Otouto-san - Someone else's younger brother. Don't bother respecting your own little brother with this. Asians are all about respecting the elders.
Imouto- Your younger sister
Imouto-san -Someone else's younger sister... same with otouto.
Itoko- cousin
Watashi no chichi no onamae wa Tarou desu.
Now since Chichi already means your own father, you can just drop "watashi no".
You should have noticed that all the respectful words begin with a different prefix, like 'o'. Onamae means someone else's name, and your respect that too.
Ok, from all that I've gone over so far, translate the following sentences in a post:
1) Haha wa sanjuuissai desu.
2) Anata no otoutosan no onamae wa nandesuka?
3) Imouto no namae wa Saria desu.
4) Watashi no ojiisan wa rokujuusai desuka?
Hmm...the first one begins with "mother"...Gah, I'm bad at this stuff. :-* But keep posting. :)
I learn a little from my two learning Japanese books and CDs. But I was really looking forward to it in high school. Unfortunatly Boone only offers what Vaati's offers. But Im going to take it in college too.
Sorry it's been a while... School sucks.
================Countries and Languages================
Since countries are all foreign words, they're written in katakana.
America = Amerika
Japan = Nihon
China = Chuugoku
Korea = Kankoku
Spain = Supein
France = Furansu
Germany = Doitsu (possibly my favorite one. It comes from the original word, Deutchland. Or however that's spelled)
Mexico = Mekishiko
Philippines = Firipin (My country!)
England = Igirisu
Of course, there's loads more I forgot, but disregard that for now.
To make a language, you just add "go" to the end of the country.
Nihon (Japan) + "go" = Nihon-go (Japanese)
Supein (Spain) + "go" = Supein-go (Spanish. No, it's not "mekishiko-go"!)
English is an exception. It's not "Amerika-go" or "Igirisu-go". It's Eigo. Think Eggo waffles.
Doitsu (Germany) + "go" = Doitsu-go (German)
And so on. Note that this doesn't mean ethnicity! It just means the language. To say someone is American, or Japanese, or German, you add "nin", which I've said before is the suffix for people or person.
So Nihon (Japan) + "jin" = Nihon-jin (Japanese person)
Amerika (America) + "jin" = Amerika-jin (American person)
Etcetera!
=============Verbs ====================
Basic verbs:
Hanashimasu = to speak
Tabemasu = to eat
Nomimasu = to drink
There are different verb suffixes to to make it negative or affirmative. To make a verb negative, use "masen" instead of "masu" (which sounds like masss! Remember your pronounciation!)
So Hanashimasen means don't speak, Tabemasen means don't eat, and Nomimasen means don't drink. Hanashimasu, tabemasu, and nomimasu are all affirmative.
We'll get into more complex sentences next time. I believe you have enough to chew on, but here's one example of an easier sentence.
Watashi wa omizu o nomimasu.
I drink water.
interesting stuff man :) i always wanted to speak a different language
==========More Complex Sentences==================
1) Watashi wa nihongo o hanashimasu.
I speak Japanese.
Watashi = I, nihon-go = Japanese (language), hanashi = speak, masu = affirmative verb ending.
Watashi wa nihongo o hanashimasen.
I don't speak Japanese.
hanashi = speak, masen = negative verb ending.
2) Watashi wa supageti o tabemasu.
I eat spaghetti.
Watashi = I, supageti = spaghetti, tabe= eat, masu = affirmative verb ending.
Watashi wa supageti o tabemasen.
I don't eat spaghetti.
tabe = eat, masen = negative verb ending
3) Watashi wa biiru o nomimashita.
I drank beer.
Watashi = I, biiru = beer, nomi = drink, mashita = past affirmative verb ending.
Watashi wa biiru o nomimasen deshita.
I didn't drink beer.
nomi = drink, masen deshita = past negative verb ending.
You can plug in anything as long as you put in the right verbs and nouns in the right spots.
I haven't been on the forums for a while, and now I don't know who anyone is cuz y'all insist on changing your names every 3 days!
======================================================
suki = like
daisuki = like very much, love
kirai = dislike
daikirai = dislike very much, hate.
Now if any of you know about DN Angel, when Wiz is pretending to be Daisuke he accidentally tells Risa/Riku 'daisuki' because he can't say Daisuke's name right. So Risa/Riku gets mad because she thinks he's telling her he loves her! Now I think the real way to say "I love you" is 'aishiteru'. I might be wrong. If you want to say it very formally, the only way I know for sure, it's
Watashi wa anata ga daisuki desu.
That's the type of sentences we'll be getting into today.
'ga' is a new particle. It's used after an object for adjectives and etcetera. I.... honestly don't know how to explain it very well technically... heh....
Literally it's "I is you love"
Watashi = I.
wa = particle
anata = you
ga = particle
daisuki = love
desu = the ending of the sentence.
Anata wa watashi ga daisuki desuka?
"You love me?"
Remember, the ending particle 'ka' after desu makes it a question instead. If I just said 'Anata wa watashi ga daisuki desu' it means 'You love me." Period.
1) Alex-san wa bideo geemu ga suki desu.
Alex likes video games.
2) Anata wa bideo geemu ga suki desuka?
You like video games?
So as long as you know what kind of words go where, just fill in the blanks!