Asking questions about days, months, seasons.

xaeida · 20 May 2018

Konbawa,

I am teaching children Japanese and have a question if you could help please.
How would you ask something like:
- What day is it today?
- What month is it?
- What season is it?

I want to introduce students to the question word nan/nani at the same time as introducing them to time vocabulary. From what I can find online, I would ask
- Kyo wa nan yobi desu ka? However I can't work out what 'kyo' means.
- Nan gatsu desu ka? Is this translated correct?
- Translations for 'What season is it' vary, but tend to be more like 'what is a season'. I'm wondering if I am wording the sentence wrong grammatically for translation.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Arigato

Tennille

Toritoribe · 20 May 2018

xaeida said:
- Kyo wa nan yobi desu ka?

Your translation is correct, but note that the long vowel and short vowel are strictly distinguished in Japanese. "Kyo" and "yobi" are long vowels, thus, it should be written as "Kyō/Kyou" and "yōbi/youbi", respectively. See the following page in detail.
Hepburn romanization - Wikipedia

xaeida said:
However I can't work out what 'kyo' means.

"Kyō/Kyou" means "today".

xaeida said:
- Nan gatsu desu ka? Is this translated correct?

It works well in the context where what "it" refers to is obvious. If you want to make clear "What month is it now?", it's "Ima, nan gatsu desu ka?".

xaeida said:
- Translations for 'What season is it' vary, but tend to be more like 'what is a season'. I'm wondering if I am wording the sentence wrong grammatically for translation.

What season is it now?
Ima, kisetsu wa nan desu ka?

"Kisetsu wa nan desu ka?" works well in the same situation as #2.

Mike Cash · 20 May 2018

May I ask what you are doing toward learning Japanese yourself?

You're not going to do a good job by just googling translated phrases.

I think at the very least you need to familiarize yourself with the sound system of Japanese and be aware of the importance of things like elongated vowels. ("kyo" vs "kyou" for example).

WonkoTheSane · 21 May 2018

Mike Cash said:
May I ask what you are doing toward learning Japanese yourself?

You're not going to do a good job by just googling translated phrases.

I think at the very least you need to familiarize yourself with the sound system of Japanese and be aware of the importance of things like elongated vowels. ("kyo" vs "kyou" for example).

I'd say that's a pretty generous interpretation of what the least someone needs to do prior to teaching a language.

xaeida · 22 May 2018

Thank you for this, it was really helpful. In response to what I am doing to learning Japanese, I do know the sound system of Japanese and elongated vowels, as it is the first thing I taught my students. The previous Japanese teacher represented the sounds as a double 'oo' for the elongated sound you referred to.My keyboard doesn't have this particular accent, therefore when I type out activities for students I simply add the accent manually to the sounds.

I understand your concern regarding my Japanese qualifications, however I was put into this position as there was no other person available to teach it and since I also speak Farsi and Indonesian and therefore have a language training background, I was placed in the position to teach 7 year olds. I'm a classroom teacher, art-specialist trained, who now has to teach Japanese as well. Luckily I enjoy teaching and learning languages.
Thanks again for your help.

WonkoTheSane · 27 May 2018

xaeida said:
Thank you for this, it was really helpful. In response to what I am doing to learning Japanese, I do know the sound system of Japanese and elongated vowels, as it is the first thing I taught my students. The previous Japanese teacher represented the sounds as a double 'oo' for the elongated sound you referred to.My keyboard doesn't have this particular accent, therefore when I type out activities for students I simply add the accent manually to the sounds.

I understand your concern regarding my Japanese qualifications, however I was put into this position as there was no other person available to teach it and since I also speak Farsi and Indonesian and therefore have a language training background, I was placed in the position to teach 7 year olds. I'm a classroom teacher, art-specialist trained, who now has to teach Japanese as well. Luckily I enjoy teaching and learning languages.
Thanks again for your help.

You might consider installing whatever it is you need to in order to type Japanese. I don't remember the procedure, but it was easy and integrated quite well.

It sounds like you're in a position where you don't have much choice, so good luck moving forward! I wouldn't want to have to teach my best second language, much less one I don't know at all.

Asking questions about days, months, seasons.

xaeida

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Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう

WonkoTheSane

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xaeida

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WonkoTheSane

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