Fledgling Romaji

Hello! Or I suppose kombonwa, since it is evening here. Well, I guess I'll just say it: I'm new to Japanese. I have learned a good bit of phrases, all the days of the week, and numbers up to 999,999 in Romaji. I know absolutely no Kanji, Katakana (sp?), or Harakana (?), but I plan to start writing after I can speak it fairly well.
I have a few, simple questions, and I would ask that they be answered in Romaji since it's the only text I know!
1. Can I simply say (Gakusei desu.) and mean (I am a student.)? Or do I need to write it as (Gakusei nan desu ka.)?
2. Why does shi (4?) have to become yon when I make jyuuyon and yonjyuu? Are there any other irregular numbers?
3. Does 'desu' really end every sentence except questions (ka) and negatives (arimasen)? I mean, the subject in this sentence: (Watashi wa gakusei desu.) is 'I', isn't it? Wouldn't it be (Watashi desu gakusei.)?
4. Where do you suggest I start with verbs? The guides I've seen on the internet just dive right into all these verb groups and conjugations; I mean i've done Spanish conjugations but nothing on this scale! Is there any 'light introduction' to verbs anywhere?
Thanks for reading, and I hope to learn more Japanese in the near future!
Dewa mata! (I hope that i'm not missing a politeness word somewhere! )

I strongly recommend learning hiragana and katakana first; it's important for you to become familiar with the sounds in Japanese so you can better speak it. Also, romaji is a crutch that you need to relieve yourself of as soon as possible.

1. Can I simply say (Gakusei desu.) and mean (I am a student.)? Or do I need to write it as (Gakusei nan desu ka.)?

When it is obvious that you're talking about yourself, you can omit "watashi wa" and simply say "gakusei desu".
If it is not clear to the person(s) you're talking to about whom you're talking, you'd better say "watashi wa gakusei desu" or the person(s) may ask you "dare ga (gakusei desuka)?" (Who (is a student)?)

2. Why does shi (4?) have to become yon when I make jyuuyon and yonjyuu? Are there any other irregular numbers?

ﾅｽl (four) has two pronounciation, Shi and Yon (yo).
Shi originally came from Chinese while yo/yon is the original Japanese.
Both are commonly used.
As for 14 and 40, you can say either juushi/juuyon, yonjuu/shijuu, though in case of 40, yonjuu is much more popular than shijuu.

There are several explanation/background which to use.
People prefer yon to shi because the latter has the same pronounciation of ﾅｽ竄ｬ (death), others prefer yon because shi could sound similar to ﾅｽﾂｵ shichi.

3. Does 'desu' really end every sentence except questions (ka) and negatives (arimasen)? I mean, the subject in this sentence: (Watashi wa gakusei desu.) is 'I', isn't it? Wouldn't it be (Watashi desu gakusei.)?

Desu and verbs basically comes at the end of a sentence.
Such a word order (Watashi desu gakusei) does not occur in Japanese.
If you are thinking Japanese language word by word and trying to apply it to English language, you should forget about it.

"Watashi wa" in "watashi wa gakusei desu" is the subject, but not always.
"Wa" is particle to mark topic, which is not necessarily the subject.
It might be easier for you to understand if you translate "wa" into "as for".

Thanks, both of you! Nice gaijin, I suppose I should start learning hiragana, since I've heard you can write Japanese completely in that script. Also, thanks for answering my questions undrentide.

I have a few more, if it doesn't trouble you.

1. In your reply, you typed "Dare ga gakusei desuka." What does 'dare' and 'ga' mean? Is 'ga' a particle? And is 'desuka' a shorthand version of 'desu ka' or is it another word entirely?

2. How should I approach writing in hiragana? Should I follow online guides, or is there a book that you find explains it better?

3. When you explained that 'wa' stands for 'as for', do you mean that 'Watashi wa gakusei desu.' means: 'As for I, I am a student.'?

Thanks for helping! Dewa mata! (Oh yea, is Dewa mata proper here? Or should I put a more honorific expression here? If so, what?)

Arachanox said:

1. In your reply, you typed "Dare ga gakusei desuka." What does 'dare' and 'ga' mean? Is 'ga' a particle? And is 'desuka' a shorthand version of 'desu ka' or is it another word entirely?

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Dare = "who"
ga = subject marker

When romanizing Japanese the placement of spaces is pretty free. In Japanese text there are no spaces (unless it's written in all hiragana, but even then sometimes there are no spaces), so where to break words isn't really set (when romanizing). You can see the same thing written many different ways: nani shitenno?, nani shite'nno?, nani shite'n no?, and that's not counting the different romanizations schemes.

Arachanox said:

3. When you explained that 'wa' stands for 'as for', do you mean that 'Watashi wa gakusei desu.' means: 'As for I, I am a student.'?

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Yes. But as soon as you can, drop that way of thinking about it. Aside from marking topics, it also serves as a contrastive marker, and it's confusing to think of it as "as for" every time you see it, especially in a sentence like Kare wa Tôkyô dewa kaimono wa shitandakedo, Tôkyôppoi mono wa nanimo kawanakatta. Granted, I may have gone a little overboard....

Arachanox said:

Thanks for helping! Dewa mata! (Oh yea, is Dewa mata proper here? Or should I put a more honorific expression here? If so, what?)

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It's fine.

Thanks Glenn for your help! It was useful, maybe except for the Romaji that I didn't understand!

I think I'll just post all my questions here instead of creating a new thread all the time. This forum is so helpful! Two questions for now:

1. When should I use the topic marker 'wa' and when should I use 'ga'?

2. Do the Hiragana letters stand for sounds or words? If I put Hiragana letters together, will they form a word out of multiple sounds, like English?

Dewa mata!

Arachanox said:

1. When should I use the topic marker 'wa' and when should I use 'ga'?

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This won't be the last time you ask this question. Be prepared for a long journey of not knowing, thinking you know, and then finding out that you don't know how to use these two. That said, the topic marker wa is used to mark old or known information and to refer to general things (like "the sun" or "turtles"). It's usage is sometimes likened to the English definite article "the." It's not the same, but this may help.

The subject marker ga is used to mark subjects in sentences and clauses. It's always used to mark the subject of relative clauses. Many times it gets the "focus" interpretation; i.e., it marks what comes before it as new information that answers a question. It can also just mark new information in a neutral way. The famous example given for how to use wa and ga is the "fairy tale" sentence: mukashi mukashi, ojiisan ga ita. Ojiisan wa... ("once upon a time there was an old man. The old man...").

Wa can also be a contrastive marker, in which it shows that something is being contrasted. For example, sakana wa tabenai ga, gyûniku wa taberu ("I don't eat fish, but I eat beef").

Also, ga can mark objects (well, what we would think of as objects). For example, when using -tai, ga can mark the object: gyûniku ga tabetai ("I want to eat beef"; o can also be used) or anata no koto ga suki da ("I like/love you"). I guess that's enough of an overview for now.

Arachanox said:

2. Do the Hiragana letters stand for sounds or words? If I put Hiragana letters together, will they form a word out of multiple sounds, like English?

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Since consonants can stand alone in Japanese (with the exception of the mora N), all of the kana have a (C)V structure. There are five kana for the five vowels, and everything after that is a consonant plus a vowel, with the exception of ん (mentioned earlier) and を, which was "wo" at one point but the "w" disappeared, leaving just "o."

Aside from the basic kana, some can be altered by adding ゛, which changes the voiceless consonant into a voiced one, like "t" → "d" or "s" → "z" (with some exceptions, one following), and the ha-gyô can also take ゜, which turns the "h" into "p." The voicing mark, ゛, turns the "h" into "b."

Also, the i-dan can take small ya-gyô kana to give palatalized sounds, like kya, cho (tyo), and nyu. Then there's the small tsu, which represents double consonants (yappari, ippon, kesshin → やっぱり, いっぽん, けっしん).

There are kana lessons at Teach Yourself Japanese, and also a hiranaga table and a katakana table. There is some linguistics terminology there, but you can just ignore it if you want. There should be sound files for each of the kana, too.

Wow, 'wa' and 'ga' sound really hard to differentiate. Well, I'll learn in time I suppose. Well thanks for your reply, I'm going to start writing the hiragana vowels now!

Watashi ga baka desu. (I am an idiot. Did I use ga right?)

Dewa mata!

Shocking news! (To a newcomer to Japanese).
I just read that 'desu', which I have been using at the end of my sentences, is in fact a polite version of the coupla 'da'! So, inevitably, here are my questions:

1. When I say a sentence such as 'Watashi ga gakusei desu.', should I in fact be using 'da' instead of 'desu'?

2. I have also recently learned the past tenses of this copula, 'datta' and the polite 'deshita'. Does this mean that if I type 'Watashi wa (Note me using 'ga' and 'wa'! ) gakusei deshita', that I am really saying politely, 'I was a student.'?

Thanks for reading, and I hope to learn more about Japanese! Such a helpful forum!

Dewa mata!

Arachanox said:

Watashi ga baka desu. (I am an idiot. Did I use ga right?)

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Depends what you want to say. If you just want to say that you're an idiot (I feel weird saying that...), watashi wa baka desu would be what you want to say. If you want to answer the question "who's an idiot?" watashi ga baka desu would be what you want to say. Using ga here puts emphasis on what comes before it, while wa puts emphasis on what comes after it.

Arachanox said:

1. When I say a sentence such as 'Watashi ga gakusei desu.', should I in fact be using 'da' instead of 'desu'?

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Depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to a friend or family member, or someone lower in social status than (or equal) you, you would most likely use da. If you're talking to a superior or someone you're not familiar with, you would desu.

Arachanox said:

2. I have also recently learned the past tenses of this copula, 'datta' and the polite 'deshita'. Does this mean that if I type 'Watashi wa (Note me using 'ga' and 'wa'! ) gakusei deshita', that I am really saying politely, 'I was a student.'?

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Yes.

ありがとうございます！

I have just started learning hiragana, but I typed 'Arigatou gozaimasu', so I'm not sure if it is right. Thanks anyway though!

I don't have any questions for right now...I have to copy some hiragana over and over. Practice practice!

Dewa mata!

Arachanox said:

ありがとうございます！
I have just started learning hiragana, but I typed 'Arigatou gozaimasu', so I'm not sure if it is right.

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It's perfect! Good luck with your studies!

Another question, if you guys don't mind:

1. What does 'de' mean? I'm watching some fansubbed Naruto and 'de' appears an awful lot.

Dewa mata!

で(de) is another particle. This page talks about some of its uses:
Verb-related particles - Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide

it's also a conjugation of desu. It's common for someone say "de?," essentially meaning "and?"

If I'm not uncertain, I think even sometimes the Japanese find it difficult to know quite exactly when to use wa & ga in certain situations, not the basic, "previously introduced topic" vs "newly introduced topic..." manner...

I as always, recommend a good coursework book, say Genki, or Minna no Nihongo, even Japanese for Everyone though a bit outdated is good...

If you're curious about particles (wa, ga, de, ni, e... etcetera), I'm fond of the book, A dictionary of Japanese Particles. I'll say this one thing about particles that is important to understand, that they are POST-postions, rather than prepositions, that is, they modify the words that they follow.

boku wa nihonogo wo benkyou shiteiru. (thanks, Glenn

wa first marks whom we are speaking of, wo (o) marks the "object" that is taken action on, in this case, "japanese" (nihongo).

benkyou is a noun meaning to study, and shite is the present progressive* form of suru (to do)... "benkyou shite" forms a unit that acts upon a particular thing, japanese.... (+ iru, is the plain form of imasu, an 'existance' verb used for living things)

as for me, i'm studying japanese....

*this is a pretty broad topic...

You're missing an iru in there: boku wa nihongo o benkyô shiteiru.

Glenn said:

You're missing an iru in there: boku wa nihongo o benkyô shiteiru.

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Thanks, Glenn... you're right, I looked this up previously, and searching for roumaji doesn't always yield the best results... I'm out of practice, and I appreciate your corrections when I make some mistakes.

you could say, boku wa nihongo o benkyou shite imasu? Could you not? Or is that overtly polite...

ps. I was waiting to start studying once I got all my reference books back from Japan, but the person in charge of shipping them to me (not my gf) flew off somewhere to Yokohama or somesuch... I suppose I'll have to knuckle down and just start studying daily again, for myself, and of course, so I don't make these types of errors.

You could, yes. It depends on who you're talking to and what sort of relationship you have as to whether it's overly polite or not, but I think it's better to err on the desu/masu side of things.