My practice sentences...

[zxuiji]

boku ga naratteiru (in case I got the conjugation wrong I meanrt learning) desu, too lazy to turn on my tablet so just kakatta (meant wrote here) in romaji, incidently shita I get the conjugation correct? Still not confident in conjugating verbs since I still can't tell which class they come under easily. Because it's mostly adjectives, verbs & grammar practice it's still hard to string a decent sentence together.

 

[Toritoribe]

naratteiru (in case I got the conjugation wrong I meanrt learning) desu

That's ungrammatical since "naratteiru" can't be connected to "desu".

kakatta (meant wrote here)

Wrong.

incidently shita I get the conjugation correct?

It depends on what you mean by "shita".

Still not confident in conjugating verbs since I still can't tell which class they come under easily.

You can check it in the dictionary quite easily.

Because it's mostly adjectives, verbs & grammar practice it's still hard to string a decent sentence together.

That's because your learning method is not effective.

 

[zxuiji]

Ah, forgot about the dictionary, thanks for reminding me, as far as shita goes isn't that the equivalent of "did" or am I misunderstanding something there? As far as the learning method goes I did say I will be switching to genki soon enough, I mean the Tae Kim course only has 164 modules so it will probebly only take me until september to finish it and get started on the genki course which should quicker since I'll already be familiar with most verbs and can focus on getting the hang of the conjugation. As far as that desu goes it only showed up recently on the Tae Kim course so I'm still trying to get the hang of when it is usable (which I'm sure that genki book will be of help with).

 

[Toritoribe]

I'll already be familiar with most verbs

Oh yeah?
Read the following posts. You did the same mistake 2.5 months ago, and got an explanation or even a machine conjugator you can get the correct conjugation form from. This shows that you didn't learn anything from that time. The only advise I can do is "Stop making those useless 'modules' and read Genki now, not 'soon' but right now."

My practice sentences... | Page 8 | Japan Forum
My practice sentences... | Page 9 | Japan Forum
My practice sentences... | Page 10 | Japan Forum

 

[raikado]

boku ga naratteiru (in case I got the conjugation wrong I meanrt learning) desu, too lazy to turn on my tablet so just kakatta (meant wrote here) in romaji, incidently shita I get the conjugation correct?

This is so wrong, in so many different ways that I cannot help but laugh just reading this. This is what 4 months of memrise got you.

If you followed Mike's advice and actually PUT EFFORT in understanding the Genki book, you would've known how to use "desu" by now and how to conjugate verbs.

incidently shita I get the conjugation correct?

Stop thinking that japanese is just english with different words because you get nonsensical stuff like the above. It does make me laugh when seeing it, but it's really sad after.

I don't understand why people still bother with you though. You are clearly not willing to put in the effort necessary to actually understand the lessons, and instead use that "memrise" app because it doesn't require much work but makes you feel like you actually learned something.

 

[OoTmaster]

This shows that you didn't learn anything from that time. The only advise I can do is "Stop making those useless 'modules' and read Genki now, not 'soon' but right now."

I also would suggest you start Genki right now instead of soon. It's a much better way to learn. Including Toritoribe's post here because he's a native speaker and the best resource I've found on this forum for help with Japanese, as he seems to be rather fluent in both Japanese (of course) and English (still not sure how he's so good here). If he's suggesting you start Genki now I can find no reason to contradict his suggestion. Genki is a wonderful series and it's about time you start getting your money's worth out of it.

 

[zxuiji]

I'm actually going faster than I thought I was in the TK course and now suspect I will be done with it by the end of the month. By "most verbs" I meant the base u/ru forms that'll most likely be used in the genki course, conjugation as I said before is still a weak point partly because I still can't tell the difference between an u verb ending in ru and a plain ru verb, also the te form is something read of in the TK guide but still don't fully understand it's usage, as for desu/deshita etc I do understand I still need practice to understand how to use it which is why I tend to attempt it when I think I'm right but need either conformation or correction. I know I'm not the easiest to deal with and I don't expect you to be nice about all the time it but I do hope that you all will continue to try and help me.

 

[zxuiji]

Question is the masu form only used at the end of sentences or anywhere it can conjugate?

 

[Toritoribe]

The polite form can be used in the middle of a sentence, for instance before some conjunction particles (e.g. 間違っていますけど、意味は分かります and 間違っているけど、意味は分かります are both valid.), but non-polite form is required for some cases (e.g., 間違っているかもしれない is valid, but 間違っていますかもしれない is not.), so you need to learn when polite forms can or can't be used.

 

[zxuiji]

Thanks, for now it's enough for me to know that I can use it in the middle of a sentence, judging by your examples would it be safe to assume that masu form cannot be used before any a sound or is ka a special case because of it being a question marker?

 

[Amylg05]

[Apologies in advance for the giant post...]

Umm, so right now I am pretty bored at work and have just read through the majority of the pages of this thread (in hope of learning something lol) and good lord...props to the guys who have continuously tried to help the OP. Anyway, I don't intend to come across as rude or anything here and I definitely don't presume to know a lot about Japanese or how to study it. But, I thought I would post what I started out doing and what I am currently and will continue to do as it might be of use to the OP and anyone else starting from scratch with Japanese. Maybe the OP will resonate more with a beginner learner and follow some advice...

1. Learnt hiragana / katakana
2. Watched through courses 1 - 3 of Japanese from Zero on YouTube, these were a really good starting point for me (I have just bought books 2 and 3)
3. Go through Tae Kim's guide, which is great because it has exercises with answers which can be toggled on and off
4. Get a copy of Genki I - in fairness I struggled at first to go through this book alone so I found a tutor who I met with once a week for a couple of months to go through it with, I understand this isn't possible for everyone but I am sure the guys here would be happy to help
5. Get Anki - it is free and very very good for learning vocabulary - the best deck I have found is the Japanese Core 2000 Vocab which teaches new words, how to use them in a sentence and kanji - after going through Genki and learning basic grammar Anki became even more invaluable as I could follow the sentence structure and could see the grammar I had learnt being used
6. Get the Hello Talk app - again, this is free and allows you to speak to native Japanese people who can correct your posts and messages, and you can meet some really nice people
7. Memrise - I find this very good for learning vocab and use this when I don't have as much time to sit down with Anki

Other apps and resources I have / do use:
* Japanese (app) - this is a dictionary app that I find amazing as it has all the conjugations for polite, casual, te forms etc and even shows example sentences, you can make lists to save useful words and phrases which I do then create Anki cards from and it has all the JLPT word lists
* Mirai Japanese (app) - I used this for a while at the very start and it was useful to a point, it does explain things quite well but it is a paid app and it out ran its use for me
* Learn Japanese - Kana, Kanji and Grammar - (app) - this is what I used to learn kana and it is useful for learning basic sentence structure, there is also a separate kanji version which is also very good
* Kanji Study - another kanji app that I like because it has both readings and all the various meanings, it has a 'drill' method for you to go through them, probably my favourite kanji app
* Tinycards - I think this is from the same people as Duolingo (which I don't really like) but this app is good if you have a spare couple of minutes to pass and is basically just flash cards to learn and memorise vocab
* YouTube - there's hundreds of videos and resources on here, although I can't vouch for the quality of a lot of them, JapanesePod101 is quite decent from what I have tried though (their website has a lot of free lessons)

Again sorry for the huge post, I hope this is helpful. And I know there is a sticky thread for learning resources so if this should be posted there and not here - sorry >_<

 

[Toritoribe]

Thanks, for now it's enough for me to know that I can use it in the middle of a sentence, judging by your examples would it be safe to assume that masu form cannot be used before any a sound or is ka a special case because of it being a question marker?

No, it's not that simple. The syllable right after ます have nothing to do with the difference. (In fact, there is no problem with 間違っていますから、意味が解りません. ) For instance, you can use both polite and non-polite form for the verb preceding けど since the politeness is provided by the main verb, but as for a conjunction が, you need to unify the politeness level of the main verb and the one preceding が, thus, it should be 間違っていますが、意味は分かります or 間違っているが、意味は分かる. You need to learn for each cases like this.

4. Get a copy of Genki I

Why a copy?

 

[Amylg05]

copy[/I]?

Ah, I didn't mean a copy as in an imitation, I meant it as in:

copy
ˈkɒpi/
noun
2. a single specimen of a particular book, record, or other publication or issue.
"the record has sold more than a million copies"

Sorry for using a dictionary definition, I am not trying to be patronising, I just didn't know how to explain my usage of the word otherwise! ^-^

 

[Toritoribe]

Ah, I see, copy as 部. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[zxuiji]

Ah okay thanks Toritoribe, so I simply noticed the wrong thing and should pay more attention to the extended rules of particles/conjugations once I get the hang of using their basics correctly, as far as the copy of Genki goes Amy I already have one, I simply found myself getting distracted too much by the memorisation of the words and their meanings which takes longer without a helpful app like memrise. As far as the TK course I went through a butload of modules yesterday in one of those bursts of interest so I now have just five left to complete and can most likely start on the genki course by this monday. Just as a reminder I'm not going to bother with the book until I've done at least 3-5 chapters worth in modules on the matching memrise course just so I can focus on the explanations instead of getting distracted by memorising (so, with some help from God in the interest department & oppotunity, next monday).

 

[zxuiji]

I forgot there were hirigana & katakana modules to complete so I will extend my expected ready date by one week, I currently in middle of katakana module so it seems like a reasonable deadline to start reading genki seriously.

 

[Mike Cash]

After five months of studying, over 130 modules of Memrise, and making all sorts of posts containing all sorts of Japanese characters....you just now decided that you can't start studying a 1-2-3-A-B-C beginner's textbook because you haven't learned hiragana and katakana yet?

Do you think you'll ever run out of excuses?

I've never in my life seen anybody talk so much about learning Japanese while doing so little to actually make progress.

 

[Toritoribe]

Seems like this thread has come to 勉強を始めたくない子供の言い訳の見本市 after all.

 

[zxuiji]

It's not that I hadn't already studied the kana it's just I chose not to ignore them when doing the memrise course since there is the odd one or two in each that I don't remember off-hand yet, reading them is no an issue, it's just the remembering them for writing that I have trouble with on some so I chose to go through those modules as a refresher. At the moment I'm in the mood for a lengthy review/study period on the genki memrise course so by tommorrow I should have gotten through about half of the 3rd module involving all the greeting stuff allowing me to focus more on what the text says (since I won't be trying to remember the kanji/kana phrases).

As for that sentence you gave toritoribe, if I translated that right in my head then you were saying something like "study of which starting very childish of excuse exhibition", not a great translation in terms of naturalness I know but if literal wise it's correct then I am at least progressing (even if I do need jisho to look up the ones I don't remember or am just plain not familiar with)

 

[OoTmaster]

As for that sentence you gave toritoribe, if I translated that right in my head then you were saying something like "study of which starting very childish of excuse exhibition", not a great translation in terms of naturalness I know but if literal wise it's correct then I am at least progressing (even if I do need jisho to look up the ones I don't remember or am just plain not familiar with)

Nope that doesn't even seem anywhere near to a correct complete translation to me.

Also have you started the Genki book yet? It will serve you much better than your current methods.

 

[zxuiji]

For my reference what was the correct literal translation then? As far genki goes I have already started the book but as I said before I kept getting side-tracked by the memorisation part which is why I am now doing the genki memrise course to help me memorise that more easily, the TK memrise course I had started before getting genki which is why I chose to finish that before starting the genki memrise course of which I have just now completed he katakana module and will start the next module which covers the stuff I was getting side-tracked by after a short break. When I have finished that module I'll continue from where I left off in the genki book which is page 47 containing the expression notes.

 

[Toritoribe]

Another exhibit is added...

exhibition of children's excuses who don't want to start learning

Your translation clearly shows that you haven't progressed for this 5 months at all, as Mike-san pointed out. Google Translate is far better than you.

 

[mdchachi]

Well to be fair, Google translate has been learning Japanese for many years now. I would expect it to work better than most students of five months.

 

[zxuiji]

Another exhibit is added...

exhibition of children's excuses who don't want to start learning

something like "study of which starting very childish of excuse exhibition", not a great translation in terms of naturalness I know but if literal wise

Do I have to start highlighting key points like literal for people to actually pay attention to it before responding? From what I can see, aside from "very childish", it was for the most part correct. For "childish" I got that from assumption based on context, as for "very" I got that from looking up tai on jisho then forgetting it was conjugated while looking at the possible meanings, everything else was correct as a literal translation, not a natural one like you produced.

Anyway I'll do a bit of reading before have breakfast at subway then I'll get started on finishing off the genki module before finally resuming my reading of the book itself today.

 

[Toritoribe]

My translation is a literal translation. You just even don't understand it.
So, you are saying "starting very childish" is almost the same as "don't want to start studying". Well, well...