Learning Japanese

[Circular Logic]

Originally Posted by Komari

Thanks, Mystique.
I wonder what grade level reading the Shana novel series is. Any one know? Viz Media tore out my heart and smashed it into itty bitty pieces when they canceled their translations. :'(

High. It'll be tough going even if you're past JLPT 2. If you can take the time and effort to grind through it however, your Japanese will improve astronomically.

[Doraneko]

The problem of Shana is that it has too many obscure kanji terms created by the author that would leave even native Japanese scratching their heads. At least you can find an elaborated lexicon (in Japanese of course) on the web.

Once you have gotten used to them (which will probably take some time btw), Shana is not much different from other light novels. Just like other light novels, there are furigana for kanji outside the jouyou list. Japanese beginners and intermediate learners should find them very helpful.

I would recommend it if you have been regularly reading light novels in Japanese, regardless of your JLPT level. (I have some JLPT3 friends who can read most light novels incl. Shana with no difficulty). But if this is your first Japanese novel, then even a JLPT1 pass can't be of much help.

[Doughnuts]

Originally Posted by Raiga

Was wondering if it was an irregular. I thought only suru and kuru (and the negative of aru) were irregular (and desu, but the site I'm using treats that one separately). Don't think the lesson would have left it out, so I probably just forgot... oh well, thanks.

other than the -ta/-ta form, iku is treated like any other -ku verb, so it's only semi-irregular. Most teaching material won't teach it seperately, but will probably highlight it when discussing the -te form.

[ACGalaga]

Ok, here's another. I think it's correct, but I'd love to hear your opinions on my Japanese.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1397/4koma9panel.jpg

This 4koma only has one panel of Japanese. The rest is English.

Thanks

[Raiga]

How do you tell the difference between 五日 and 何時か in spoken Japanese? I mean, I know the answer would usually be "context," but since they both refer to time, is there any more specific way? How can you tell, for example, if someone's saying "I'll do this in five days" vs. "I'll do this sometime."

(odd, the encoding on 五日 is going weird... the 五 shows up fine in the post reply/edit field, but doesn't show up once I've submitted the reply... and I tried Unicode and all three of the Japanese encodings in the menu... even tried typing the five in Chinese... :\ )

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Raiga

How do you tell the difference between 五日 and 何時か in spoken Japanese? I mean, I know the answer would usually be "context," but since they both refer to time, is there any more specific way? How can you tell, for example, if someone's saying "I'll do this in five days" vs. "I'll do this sometime."

(odd, the encoding on 五日 is going weird... the 五 shows up fine in the post reply/edit field, but doesn't show up once I've submitted the reply... and I tried Unicode and all three of the Japanese encodings in the menu... even tried typing the five in Chinese... :\ )

五日 【いつか】 (n) five days, the fifth day (of the month), (P)
何時か 【いつか】 (adv) (uk) sometime, someday, one day, some time or other, the other day, in due course, in time

*snickers*
I read 何時か as 'nan ji ka' (what time is it?) - i've a feeling a few natives would read it that way too >.>

Itsuka = someday is an adverb, a definite one I tend to often use myself.
Meaning it's normally at the start of the sentence followed by a verb, for example
いつか、日本語で綺麗に小説を絶対読めますよ！
itsuka, nihongo de, kirei ni shousetsu wo zettai yomemasu yo!
Someday, I'll definitely be able to read a novel in Japanese well.

As for the counter '5 days', you'll hear it in context I'm afraid. xD
It'll be an answer when talking about time, planning, counting down something.

後何日？
五日です。
How many days left?
Five.

Originally Posted by ACGalaga

Ok, here's another. I think it's correct, but I'd love to hear your opinions on my Japanese.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1397/4koma9panel.jpg

This 4koma only has one panel of Japanese. The rest is English.

Thanks

My 'advice'
Either pick 'super' or 'mecha', but using both is kinda overkill xD
I don't know if you're making Alan deliberately bad in Japanese, otherwise I'd suggest you try 超元気だよ！(chou genki da yo)
Which could be just as amusing

[Doughnuts]

Originally Posted by Raiga

How do you tell the difference between 五日 and 何時か in spoken Japanese? I mean, I know the answer would usually be "context," but since they both refer to time, is there any more specific way? How can you tell, for example, if someone's saying "I'll do this in five days" vs. "I'll do this sometime."

(odd, the encoding on 五日 is going weird... the 五 shows up fine in the post reply/edit field, but doesn't show up once I've submitted the reply... and I tried Unicode and all three of the Japanese encodings in the menu... even tried typing the five in Chinese... :\ )

There's a small difference in pronunciation, involving the so called "pitch accent".

In a Tokyoan accent, 何時か is spoken with a high first syllable, with the rest low, and 五日 is the opposite, starting low, with a raised accent on the second syllable.

って私の辞典が言ってたぜ

[ACGalaga]

Originally Posted by Mystique

My 'advice'
Either pick 'super' or 'mecha', but using both is kinda overkill xD
I don't know if you're making Alan deliberately bad in Japanese, otherwise I'd suggest you try 超元気だよ！(chou genki da yo)
Which could be just as amusing

Cool! Thanks for the suggestion and feedback!

I think I'm going for the overkill aspect... (there's the high tension comment from the people in the bg) But, I'm going to run 超元気だよ by a few people and get some more thoughts.

[RandomGuy]

Originally Posted by ACGalaga

I'm not sure of all the uses for ヶ, but I also see it in town names. For example: 百合ケ丘 and 南ヶ丘. Here it is pronounced "GA" (Yurigaoka and minamigaoka). It roughly translates to "Lilly of the Hill" or "South of the Hill."

Not quite. "Ga" is an archaic possessive marker that functions more or less the same as the modern "no", which means you've got those translations reversed. "Yurigaoka" is "Lily Hill" and "Minamigaoka" means "Southern Hill".

FWIW, you might also see it as a plain old hiragana が, or (as sometimes happens in place names) only represented in the pronunciation, and not the official spelling.

[mendokusa]

はじめまして。
Nice to meet you.

僕は日本人です。（名古屋）
I'm japanese.(NAGAOYA)

僕はあなたがたの日本語の勉強を手伝いたいです。
I wanna help your learning japanese.

m(_ _)m

[Kylaran]

Originally Posted by Doraneko

The problem of Shana is that it has too many obscure kanji terms created by the author that would leave even native Japanese scratching their heads. At least you can find an elaborated lexicon (in Japanese of course) on the web.

Reading Nasu Kinoko's Kara no Kyoukai is probably the most exhausting endeavor I've ever attempted in Japanese aside from trying to learn some Edo-period Japanese on my own with just google and a dictionary. XD

Originally Posted by Mystique

I read 何時か as 'nan ji ka' (what time is it?) - i've a feeling a few natives would read it that way too >.>

I read it as nanjika too, and then I thought to myself: "Wait... These two don't sound alike." >.>;

And yes, as others have said, although the two sound the same, the grammatical usage will allow you to distinguish the difference between the two words. Just as in English, you can tell the difference between "two days" and "too late"; two being a noun and too being an adverb. (I actually had to think about that one for a while. I needed two homophones that were associated with time, and I'll admit that the latter might not carry the same nuanced difference associated with the Japanese. However, I think it's a decent example.)

めんど草さん、

お互いに英語と日本語を勉強しましょう。

[mendokusa]

(1)五日頑張れば（、）本を読むことができる。
itsu ka gannbare ba honn wo yomu koto ga dekiru.
(2)いつか（、）頑張れば本を読むことができる。
itsuka gannbare ba honn wo yomu koto ga dekiru.

(1) is limited for five days.
not five month,not five hour.
so,"日 ka" is accented most.
itsu(five)-ka(day)

(2) isn't limited.
"itsuka"is an adverb,so "い i" is accented most.
itsuka(sometime)

※"itsuka" is ”何時か”,but there is the pronunciation of both "itsuka" and "nannjika".
it's easy to read,so use "いつか" by many japanese.

[RandomGuy]

Originally Posted by mendokusa

はじめまして。
nice to meet you.

僕は日本人です。（名古屋）
i'm japanese.(nagaoya)

僕はあなたがたの日本語の勉強を手伝いたいです。
i wanna help your learning japanese.

M(_ _)m

ほんじゃあ、ニャーニャー言葉名古屋弁教えてくれへん？猫鳥山先生みたいにしゃべりたいねん！

In all seriousness, though, it's good to see more native speakers in the thread these days. We non-native types appreciate the help.

[mendokusa]

Originally Posted by RandomGuy

ほんじゃあ、ニャーニャー言葉名古屋弁教えてくれへん？猫鳥山先生みたいにしゃべりたいねん！

名古屋弁
nagoya slang

ほかる（ほうかる）＝捨てる
hokaru = suteru
(houkaru)

ゴミをほかっといて！（ゴミを捨てておいて！）
please throw away trash.

[RandomGuy]

Originally Posted by mendokusa

名古屋弁
nagoya slang

ほかる（ほうかる）＝捨てる
hokaru = suteru
(houkaru)

ゴミをほかっといて！（ゴミを捨てておいて！）
please throw away trash.

大阪弁とあまり変わらんな。
Not too different from Osaka dialect.

「ほかす」（または「ほる」）　＝　捨てる
"hokasu" (or "horu") = "suteru"

「それほかしといて。」
"Throw that away."

ちなみに、「ホルモン焼き」の由来は「放る物」や。
By the way, "Horumon-yaki" (a dish of grilled offal) comes from the phrase "the stuff you throw away" (horumon).

[mendokusa]

Originally Posted by RandomGuy

大阪弁とあまり変わらんな。
Not too different from Osaka dialect.

ほかの地域と比べて
大阪と名古屋は近いから、ひどく違っていることはない。
Compared with other area's dialect,
Osaka and Nagoya are near,so difference of their dialect aren't terrible.

えらい（えれえ） ＝　 疲れた、辛い
erai tukareta ,turai
(eree)

えれえなら座りゃあ（疲れたなら座って）
if became tired, sit down.

[Raiga]

Guys I think I broke my IME.

I input おおき and I got this.



(the order of things is messed up because I was playing around trying to fix it)

... isn't that kanji for おおい? Shouldn't it convert to 大き? Yet that's not even on the list...

Er, I don't see why it'd affect it, but I was using my Chinese IME earlier (to look up kanji that I knew the Chinese for, but didn't know the Japanese reading of).

[Circular Logic]

You may want to try 「大きな」 or 「大きい」

You're missing a い if you want to turn おおき into an -i adjective.

[Kylaran]

Originally Posted by raiga

... Isn't that kanji for おおい? Shouldn't it convert to 大き? Yet that's not even on the list...

大きい　= おおきい
多い、多き　＝　おおい、おおき

[Doraneko]

Originally Posted by Raiga

... isn't that kanji for おおい? Shouldn't it convert to 大き? Yet that's not even on the list...

My IME list for おおき is pretty much the same as yours, except the minor differences in word sequence.

AFAIK 大き does not exist as a standalone word. If you meant 大きい, IME should be able to do the conversion properly.

多き is a proper adjective which is more or less equal to 多い. The き adjectives are more common in archaic text and are mostly replaced by the い adjectives in modern text. Still, you may come across them from time to time.

eg. 素晴らしき船 (nice boat)