AnimeSuki Forums

Wandering A.I. · 2003-11-06, 19:24

>so that's what I've "learned" from just the first post. But... is it correct?

watashi can be used by either sex, it's more polite/distant than boku as well. I use watashi at class and boku with friends, but I'm still learning, so whatever. ^^

Technically desu is a contracted (from de arimasu) copula (in present, polite form) which basically means two things are equal. Google it if you really care, but you can just translate it as "is". It's not a verb per se, but verbs come at the end of a sentence in Japanese which is why your guess for wa is wrong. Like said above, in anime you'll hear da a lot more often which is the regular, not as polite/distant, form.

ka is the question particple, wa is the topic marker. So anata wa in isolation is probably better translated as "as for you..." or "concerning you..." since it isn't necessarily the subject, but can be. Uh, I don't want to explain the whole topic/subject marker bit. Try this page ^^:
http://japaneseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa051301a.htm

*shudders at the horror of so much Japanese in roomaji above*

Wandering A.I. · 2003-11-06, 19:26

Oops, if I had refreshed and seen zalas' post I wouldn't have had to do anything. ^^ Also...

>Seriously though, if you're really interested in Japanese, pick up a book, or better yet attend classes.

I completely agree.

zalas · 2003-11-06, 19:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by gravitation

yeah watashi = i and is conisdered to be female
boku wa = i and is considered to be more male, yeah i think that it is for kids and ore is the male one for guys ^_^

Actually watashi is neutral
Atashi/watakushi is feminine
boku and ore are both masculine forms. I think the reason Chise was laughing might be because ore is more 'macho-ish' and/or egotistical and you probably would end up using ore in everyday informal speech. An extreme case of this (and probably in jest) is that in Revery Earth (the manga), one of the male characters refers to himself as 'ore-sama' since -sama denotes prestige and is usually used when you are talking/referring to someone of much higher stature than yourself. (Fans will do this sometimes of their favorite creators) It has about the equivalent level of 'lord'.

zalas · 2003-11-06, 19:31

Can someone merge these Japanese threads -.-. We don't need like 10 million separate threads on Japanese.

p3psi · 2003-11-06, 19:33

p3psi's first offical japanese lesson for you guys

I dont want to seem like im taking over Gravy's thread here, but for those of you who want me to teach virtually straight out of my old Japanese I textbook, chapter by chapter, you can follow my posts here, and get reinforcement from Gravy's and who ever else posts lessons here.

ok here, i found a hiragana alphabet with sound, http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/kana.html

there's a quiz at the bottom of the page, but i havent tried it yet.

here's katakana with sound
http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/katakana_chart.html

These links will show you stroke order, i.e. how to write them.
hiragana- http://www.genki-online.com/kyozai/hiragana.html
katakana- http://www.genki-online.com/kyozai/katakana.html

GO PRACTICE NOW!!!!11!!!, I will give you one week to study, just get most of them down pat, reading vocab words and sentences will reninforce you when we start the lessons.

Make sure you read out loud AND write each one.

Dont worry about kanji now, we will start kanji later.

Like i said before, ill be posting only in hiragana and katakana from now on, and only list romanji for hard pronounciations.

I dont know about Gravy and the other guys, but i think it would be benifical to you to speak and learn how to read japanese.

I will try to post my new lessons every week.
I will try to break each lesson into parts that you need to work on each day.

I just read Gravies post below, And im just wondering, how many people will actually take the effort in learning japanese from me? cuz I dont want to be wasting my time if you guys dont really want to put forth the effort.

Shii · 2003-11-06, 19:35

I think this one ought to be closed... if you learned any Japanese from this, when you went to Japan you'd have to relearn it the right way.

hamiko_san · 2003-11-06, 19:40

10 things more, you never know.

gravitation · 2003-11-06, 19:42

ermm i wont be posting much in here coz nobody is really trying to learn but for the small few that are i will post stuff still ^_^

hamiko_san · 2003-11-06, 19:43

10 things more, you never know.

Shii · 2003-11-06, 19:44

Uh... it wasn't a review... and zalas' post wasn't a review either. Our "commentaries" are merely pointing out proper grammar. You wouldn't want to speak Engrish, right?

You can help people learn Japanese by deleting this thread...

Akkarael · 2003-11-06, 22:01

I'll learn! (or try, at least!) I love languages, and having weekly lessons seems like a nice way to keep on track.

I came across the following site for hiragana and katakana (yet another one) - you don't need to login to get to the worksheets, and they won't help you memorize the kana, but I found it helpful to trace the shapes like this for your initial writing practice.

http://i33www.ira.uka.de/~bgarz/niho...eet/index.html

Also, I'm curious - how important is stroke order? Do your teachers place a lot of emphasis on it?

The first link you mentioned, p3psi, also has links to dakuon, handakuon, and youon? What are those? Should I memorize them as well?

Shii · 2003-11-06, 22:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akkarael

The first link you mentioned, p3psi, also has links to dakuon, handakuon, and youon? What are those? Should I memorize them as well?

Those are subdivisions of hiragana.

gravitation · 2003-11-06, 22:05

stroke order is important, ya see im not sure why but the japanese are really big when it comes to handwriting...handwriting is important! ^_^

p3psi · 2003-11-06, 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akkarael

The first link you mentioned, p3psi, also has links to dakuon, handakuon, and youon? What are those? Should I memorize them as well?

yes yes yes, they are part of the alphabet, but not really extra memorization, its just that the pronouciation changes
For example,
は-is "ha"
ば-is "ba"
ぱ-is "pa"
か-is "ka"
が-is "ga"

also, this little "yo" after "ki" is suppose to be on the same level with "ki". not a subscript, but it is suppose to be smaller than "ki"
きょis "kyo"
this seems its going to be a problem for me writing in japanese in posts, if anyone knows how to fix that yo from floating in the middle, let me know.
you also use the same rules with its katakana counterpart

ive been looking through that link you posted, and thats a good idea to write these out. because you want to practice reading and writeing them of course.

gravitation · 2003-11-07, 03:54

we can go over the whole alphabet and its pronounciation today...im going to skool soon so i cant do it yet, but when i get bak i will bye xxx ^_^

Megane · 2003-11-07, 09:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by gravitation

yeah watashi = i and is conisdered to be female
boku wa = i and is considered to be more male, yeah i think that it is for kids and ore is the male one for guys ^_^

At the bottom of this page on 100 Most Essential Words in Anime, there is a section about pronouns (words like "I", "you", etc.), which I thought was pretty good. It touches on the difficulties surrounding pronouns in Japanese, mainly about the formalities involved.

Taiir · 2003-11-08, 02:09

Hello everyone, I'm new here but I noticed this thread and thought I'd throw in a contribution. For people looking for a good way to learn on their own, I'd have to recomend a piece of software called "human Japanese." I got my copy bundled in with a 4 cd set called "Instant Immersion Japanese" that I picked up at Best Buy for about $20. The first 2 cd's of the set were pretty useless, but the third one is gold. After the basics, it focuses on sentence structure, building more and more complex sentences by moving thru the vaious 'particles' that comprise and identify the pieces of Japanese speech. Also, it instructs hiragana and katakana (no kanji, unfortunately). Also, all Japanese text can be clicked to hear what it's supposed to sound like (between that, and watching too much anime, my pronounciation is getting pretty good

) This may just be the way that I learn, but I'm doing better with this software than any other method I've tried. Also, for people looking for an incredible little Japanese word processor, I'd recommend JWPce. It's open-source, and thus freeware

I got my copy from

http://www.translationtown.com/tt/co...ware/jwpce.asp

I've still barely touched the full functionality of this software, which includes a full set of kanji lookup tools!

Well, that's all I've got, hope I didn't ramble too much and could be of some help to someone!

Archuka · 2003-11-08, 16:28

If you think you want something more than what this thread can offer, I suggest you visit http://www.japanese-online.com

The lessons there are awesome. Every lesson is made of a piece of text that is shown in both Japanese and English next to each other so you can easily compare them to each other. After the text there is the grammar part, which goes trough the grammar used in the text. Finally all lessons have a few drills where you have to type in a word to a sentence or something similar. You can also listen to the text in Japanese so you know the pronounciation. At some point the lessons switch to hiragana and katakana which makes things a bit slower though.

zalas · 2003-11-08, 16:49

Well, the official JWPCE site is at http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/japanese.html

For more electronic Japanese information, you should try JIM BREEN's site:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html

There's also a nice online Japanese to Japanese dictionary at:
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/

Finally, web EIJIROU is very useful for sample translations:
http://www.alc.co.jp/

[^_^x] · 2003-11-08, 18:14

I think its stupid when people who dont know japanese integrated with english.

such as adding "ne?" at the end of sentences or other words that do not fit into the grammar. Mixing of languages is fmurdering of the beauty of a language. The only reason foreign words should be used are for names and places. "Otakus" adding 1 or 2 japanese words they learned from anime is just stupid and worse when used incorrectly.

2003-11-06, 19:33	Link #45
p3psi Oscar winning black actor Join Date: Nov 2003	p3psi's first offical japanese lesson for you guys I dont want to seem like im taking over Gravy's thread here, but for those of you who want me to teach virtually straight out of my old Japanese I textbook, chapter by chapter, you can follow my posts here, and get reinforcement from Gravy's and who ever else posts lessons here. ok here, i found a hiragana alphabet with sound, http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/kana.html there's a quiz at the bottom of the page, but i havent tried it yet. here's katakana with sound http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/katakana_chart.html These links will show you stroke order, i.e. how to write them. hiragana- http://www.genki-online.com/kyozai/hiragana.html katakana- http://www.genki-online.com/kyozai/katakana.html GO PRACTICE NOW!!!!11!!!, I will give you one week to study, just get most of them down pat, reading vocab words and sentences will reninforce you when we start the lessons. Make sure you read out loud AND write each one. Dont worry about kanji now, we will start kanji later. Like i said before, ill be posting only in hiragana and katakana from now on, and only list romanji for hard pronounciations. I dont know about Gravy and the other guys, but i think it would be benifical to you to speak and learn how to read japanese. I will try to post my new lessons every week. I will try to break each lesson into parts that you need to work on each day. I just read Gravies post below, And im just wondering, how many people will actually take the effort in learning japanese from me? cuz I dont want to be wasting my time if you guys dont really want to put forth the effort. Last edited by p3psi; 2003-11-06 at 20:01.

2003-11-06, 19:35	Link #46
Shii Afflicted by the vanities Fansubber Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Fish-shape Paumanok Age: 36	I think this one ought to be closed... if you learned any Japanese from this, when you went to Japan you'd have to relearn it the right way. __________________ Learn to define and spell moé Shii (formerly known as ashibaka)

2003-11-06, 19:40	Link #47
hamiko_san September Jellyfish Join Date: Nov 2003	10 things more, you never know. Last edited by hamiko_san; 2007-12-25 at 16:00.

2003-11-06, 19:43	Link #49
hamiko_san September Jellyfish Join Date: Nov 2003	10 things more, you never know. Last edited by hamiko_san; 2007-12-25 at 15:59.

2003-11-06, 19:44	Link #50
Shii Afflicted by the vanities Fansubber Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Fish-shape Paumanok Age: 36	Uh... it wasn't a review... and zalas' post wasn't a review either. Our "commentaries" are merely pointing out proper grammar. You wouldn't want to speak Engrish, right? You can help people learn Japanese by deleting this thread... __________________ Learn to define and spell moé Shii (formerly known as ashibaka)

2003-11-06, 19:24	Link #41
Wandering A.I. エッチだ! しかたない Join Date: Jul 2003	>so that's what I've "learned" from just the first post. But... is it correct? watashi can be used by either sex, it's more polite/distant than boku as well. I use watashi at class and boku with friends, but I'm still learning, so whatever. ^^ Technically desu is a contracted (from de arimasu) copula (in present, polite form) which basically means two things are equal. Google it if you really care, but you can just translate it as "is". It's not a verb per se, but verbs come at the end of a sentence in Japanese which is why your guess for wa is wrong. Like said above, in anime you'll hear da a lot more often which is the regular, not as polite/distant, form. ka is the question particple, wa is the topic marker. So anata wa in isolation is probably better translated as "as for you..." or "concerning you..." since it isn't necessarily the subject, but can be. Uh, I don't want to explain the whole topic/subject marker bit. Try this page ^^: http://japaneseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa051301a.htm shudders at the horror of so much Japanese in roomaji above

2003-11-06, 19:26	Link #42
Wandering A.I. エッチだ! しかたない Join Date: Jul 2003	Oops, if I had refreshed and seen zalas' post I wouldn't have had to do anything. ^^ Also... >Seriously though, if you're really interested in Japanese, pick up a book, or better yet attend classes. I completely agree.

2003-11-06, 19:31	Link #44
zalas tsubasa o sagashite Join Date: Jul 2003	Can someone merge these Japanese threads -.-. We don't need like 10 million separate threads on Japanese.

2003-11-06, 19:42	Link #48
gravitation Don't use animesuki now.. Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: London, UK Age: 34	ermm i wont be posting much in here coz nobody is really trying to learn but for the small few that are i will post stuff still ^_^

2003-11-06, 22:01	Link #51
Akkarael Onigiri Join Date: Nov 2003	I'll learn! (or try, at least!) I love languages, and having weekly lessons seems like a nice way to keep on track. I came across the following site for hiragana and katakana (yet another one) - you don't need to login to get to the worksheets, and they won't help you memorize the kana, but I found it helpful to trace the shapes like this for your initial writing practice. http://i33www.ira.uka.de/~bgarz/niho...eet/index.html Also, I'm curious - how important is stroke order? Do your teachers place a lot of emphasis on it? The first link you mentioned, p3psi, also has links to dakuon, handakuon, and youon? What are those? Should I memorize them as well?

2003-11-06, 22:05	Link #53
gravitation Don't use animesuki now.. Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: London, UK Age: 34	stroke order is important, ya see im not sure why but the japanese are really big when it comes to handwriting...handwriting is important! ^_^

2003-11-07, 03:54	Link #55
gravitation Don't use animesuki now.. Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: London, UK Age: 34	we can go over the whole alphabet and its pronounciation today...im going to skool soon so i cant do it yet, but when i get bak i will bye xxx ^_^

2003-11-08, 02:09	Link #57
Taiir Inactive Member Join Date: Nov 2003	Hello everyone, I'm new here but I noticed this thread and thought I'd throw in a contribution. For people looking for a good way to learn on their own, I'd have to recomend a piece of software called "human Japanese." I got my copy bundled in with a 4 cd set called "Instant Immersion Japanese" that I picked up at Best Buy for about $20. The first 2 cd's of the set were pretty useless, but the third one is gold. After the basics, it focuses on sentence structure, building more and more complex sentences by moving thru the vaious 'particles' that comprise and identify the pieces of Japanese speech. Also, it instructs hiragana and katakana (no kanji, unfortunately). Also, all Japanese text can be clicked to hear what it's supposed to sound like (between that, and watching too much anime, my pronounciation is getting pretty good ) This may just be the way that I learn, but I'm doing better with this software than any other method I've tried. Also, for people looking for an incredible little Japanese word processor, I'd recommend JWPce. It's open-source, and thus freeware I got my copy from http://www.translationtown.com/tt/co...ware/jwpce.asp I've still barely touched the full functionality of this software, which includes a full set of kanji lookup tools! Well, that's all I've got, hope I didn't ramble too much and could be of some help to someone!

2003-11-08, 16:28	Link #58
Archuka A territory most absolute Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Finland Age: 37	If you think you want something more than what this thread can offer, I suggest you visit http://www.japanese-online.com The lessons there are awesome. Every lesson is made of a piece of text that is shown in both Japanese and English next to each other so you can easily compare them to each other. After the text there is the grammar part, which goes trough the grammar used in the text. Finally all lessons have a few drills where you have to type in a word to a sentence or something similar. You can also listen to the text in Japanese so you know the pronounciation. At some point the lessons switch to hiragana and katakana which makes things a bit slower though.

2003-11-08, 16:49	Link #59
zalas tsubasa o sagashite Join Date: Jul 2003	Well, the official JWPCE site is at http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/japanese.html For more electronic Japanese information, you should try JIM BREEN's site: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html There's also a nice online Japanese to Japanese dictionary at: http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ Finally, web EIJIROU is very useful for sample translations: http://www.alc.co.jp/

2003-11-08, 18:14	Link #60
[^_^x] Member Join Date: Nov 2003	I think its stupid when people who dont know japanese integrated with english. such as adding "ne?" at the end of sentences or other words that do not fit into the grammar. Mixing of languages is fmurdering of the beauty of a language. The only reason foreign words should be used are for names and places. "Otakus" adding 1 or 2 japanese words they learned from anime is just stupid and worse when used incorrectly.