Handy Japanese

[willuknight]

A: kore, tabemasu ka? [ do you eat this? ]
B: iie, tabemasen [ incorrect, I don't ]

I'm pretty sure that "iie, tabemasen " something along the lines of

: "No, i did not eat that"

I think:
Tabe is the root verb of Tabemasu and means eat.
Masen is a verb ending and indicates thats the oppisite (I think)

Anyway if someone said to you:

A: Nihongo desu ka ?

and you replyed with:

B: iie, tabemasen

they would think you were a baka-gaijin

 

[Scrivener]

This reminds me of a story I heard (might not be true) about a gaijin in Japan who went into a shop in Japan and bought two bottles of beer. (biiru NIHON)

For some reason the lady said "nihon dake desu ka" (only two bottles?), but he thought by "nihon dake" she meant "I only sell to Japanese people". (Nihon also means "Japanese")

So he got into a big argument with her and started yelling "I am a human being", but he forgot the word for "human being" (ningen) and instead said "ninjin" (a carrot).

So he was standing in the shop yelling at this poor woman "I am a carrot, I am a carrot!".

 

[PaulTB]

I'm pretty sure that "iie, tabemasen " something along the lines of

: "No, i did not eat that"

I think:
Tabe is the root verb of Tabemasu and means eat.
Masen is a verb ending and indicates thats the oppisite (I think)

The opposite of 'eat' is not 'did not eat'.

This reminds me of a story I heard (might not be true)

Probably about as 'true' as the story that finishes "wrong hole".

 

[willuknight]

well what is the opposite of eat ?

Scrivener> nice joke LOL (lit.)

 

[rakuten]

LOL PaulTB Probably another "urban legend"...

I think:
Tabe is the root verb of Tabemasu and means eat.
Masen is a verb ending and indicates thats the oppisite (I think)

"tabe-" is the stem of the verb "taberu" (to eat)
while "-masu", "-masen", "-nai", "-ro", "-you" etc. are inflections

my opinion on learning Japanese is that its something i want to do, however I'm unable to devote that much time or money to it as i have a lot of other things going on. Therefore I'm focusing on learning the spoken language and culture, rather then the written.

That's good, keep that in mind. But honestly, what are you doing on the bus, or while waiting for the train?

Print these out, there's always time to learn, even on the toilet
I leave the choice up to you, in the end it's all the same:
the Hiragana and Katakana Characters Explained (includes full kana charts)


And as already said, it shouldn't take you very long to learn both kana. Concentrating on the spoken language is fine, but when you go to Japan for the first time, practically an illiterate, it might be frustrating if you can't read even a single letter - not to mention the quest for the next toilet. Err...is that sign for the men's or the women's lavatory? If it's urgent, your a** won't let you argue It happened to a friend - and luckily (accidentally) he chose the right one.
But he was really pissed and wished he had learned better before...

So take 5 min. and learn these as well:
男 = man
女 = woman

If you're really that busy, you'd have more time to learn Japanese when you'd spend less time elsewhere, i.e. in this forum - only a suggestion though...

Learning Japanese is not like learning French or German, it requires much more time and motivation to master the language, as it is entirely different from Roman or Celtic languages.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[PaulTB]

well what is the opposite of eat ?

Do not eat.

"Do you eat fish?" "Yes I do eat fish" / "No I do not eat fish." ○
"Do you eat fish?" "Yes I do eat fish" / "No I did not eat fish." ﾃ

LOL PaulTB Probably another "urban legend"...

Wrong Hole!
A Texas business man, while in Japan for some business meetings and a few rounds of golf, arrived in Tokyo a day earlier than expected. Feeling lonely that evening, he employed the services of a beautiful young Japanese girl to be his companion for the evening. Although the Japanese girl spoke very little English and the businessman spoke no Japanese, their passion roared and in the heat of the moment she began yelling "Gama Su!, Gama Su!"[*]. Hearing this, the Texan knew he had pleased his female Japanese friend and soon afterwards went to sleep.
The next day while playing golf with his Japanese business colleagues, one of his Japanese partners holed his shot from 170 yards away! Everyone went crazy and began yelling excitedly in Japanese. Wanting to impress his friends, the Texan joined in and began yelling, "Gama Su! Gama Su!"

Suddenly everyone became quiet. After a moment of silence, one of the Japanese turned to him and asked "Wrong hole? What do you mean wrong hole?"

[*] N.B. Not correct Japanese.

 

[rakuten]

That was funny! LOL


KNOW IT ALL

It was the first day of school and a new student, the son of a Japanese businessman, Toshiba, entered the fourth grade.

The teacher greeted the class and said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history." Who said "Give me Liberty, or give me death?"
She saw only a sea of blank faces, except for that of Toshiba, who had his hand up. "Patrick Henry, 1775," said the boy.
"Now," said the teacher, "who said 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth?"
Again, no response except from Toshiba: "Abraham Lincoln, 1863."
The teacher snapped at the class, "You should be ashamed. Toshiba, who is new to our country, knows more about it than you do."

As she turned to write something on the blackboard, she heard a loud whisper: "Damned Japanese."
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Toshiba put his hand up. "Lee Iacocca, 1982," he said.
At that point, feeling completely disgusted by Toshiba's classroom superiority, a student in the back sighed, "I'm gonna throw up."
Teacher says "Who said that?".
Again, Toshiba raises his hand and says "George Bush to Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."
Now furious, another student yells, "Oh yeah? Well, suck my...."
Once again, it's Toshiba with the answer, "Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997."

 

[willuknight]

Thanks a lot rakuten for those links.

When i say i'm busy, i include my leisure time in that

I spend about 1 or 2 hours watching anime a day, and about 5-7 hours surfing (when i can) I guess I'm just a procrastinator by heart. I'll definitely take a look at those links though, thanks again.

So should i just try and remember all the symbols in the bottom table ?

And then you put them together to make words ?

konnichiwa



/EDIT crap.... image tags don't work here....*kicks forums

etc. (stopped cos i couldn't find the symbol for Chi)

Also is the a list somewhere of the shortcuts (Alt+####) for kana for windows ?

 

[rakuten]

My advice:
Get a book where the vocabulary is listed in both romaji and kana. Learn hiragana and katakana, and DO write the characters. Only by looking at them you won't remember much, unless you have a photographic memory. Learn the words and try to memorize how they are written in romaji, then try to write them down in kana. No sweet without sweat, this is all about repeating, repeating and repeating. Going slow but step by step is easier, I think. By the time you get used to hiragana/katakana, you can drop the romaji and learn directly the hiragana/katakana form. Study hard, but at your own pace!
:haihai:

>should i just try and remember all the symbols in the bottom table ?
>And then you put them together to make words ?
Start with a/i/u/e/o, then ka/ki/ku/ke/ko, or whatever is easier for you. You need a goal, i.e. learn one character per day so that at the end of the month you can fill all the balloons in your anime dreams with kana! Do one character a day and repeat the ones you already learnt. And try to write some simple words in kana, then compare with your book. It's easier to remember something if it makes sense. A plain 'su' (す) doesn't make sense and therefore the plain character is hard to remember. Write kana combinations like suki (すき), kirei (きれい) etc.

Use memory hooks!

Oh and 'konnichi wa' is written ko-n-ni-chi ha (not ko-ni-chi wa): こ-ん-に-ち は

こんにちは willuknightくん!

Note: 'konnichi wa' and 'konban wa' are written with the hiragana は(ha), not わ(wa)! This is an exception, remember it well! It's pronounced 'wa' therefore in romaji it's also written 'wa'.

こんにちは！
こんばんは！

The same for 'kyou wa...' (きょう は), 'watashi wa...' (わたし は) etc.

 

[Scrivener]

Willuknight, you will save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you get a good textbook.

You can learn all the kana in one weekend if you try. There's only 100 or so. They are ordered not alphabetically but "a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa". You can remember this by the mnemonic "A Kana Syllabary, Think Now How Much You Really Want (to learn it)". Knowing this order makes it much easier to use dictionaries, etc. (Syllabary means one collection of kana syllables.)

Get a textbook with a CD. Then look over the lesson, and when you are surfing on the net, put the lesson on the CD player and set it to "repeat". Then you will hear it 500 times and it will get stuck in your mind.

 

[Mike Cash]

This reminds me of a story I heard (might not be true) about a gaijin in Japan who went into a shop in Japan and bought two bottles of beer. (biiru NIHON)

For some reason the lady said "nihon dake desu ka" (only two bottles?), but he thought by "nihon dake" she meant "I only sell to Japanese people". (Nihon also means "Japanese")

So he got into a big argument with her and started yelling "I am a human being", but he forgot the word for "human being" (ningen) and instead said "ninjin" (a carrot).

So he was standing in the shop yelling at this poor woman "I am a carrot, I am a carrot!".

That reminds me of a fellow I used to work with. This was at the first Japanese trucking company I drove for. I had turned out alright, so they decided to take a chance on the next foreigner who came along, a fellow from Tunisia whose Japanese was close to nonexistant. Since he spoke pretty fair English, they put him with me to train him.

Anyway, since he couldn't write up his own daily trip sheet (which is what they look at when figuring up our pay) he took it home for his wife to write up for him each day. Then he would bring it to work the next day and turn it in.

At that company, only the driver got paid variably depending on the run. Anybody who went with him as an assistant only got a flat rate for the day, no matter where they went or what they did for the day. In other words, it really didn't matter if you wrote the destination or not, if you were an assistant.

One evening he was instructing his wife to fill out the form for him and told her "Write the juusho"....

"Where did you go?"
"It doesn't matter. Just write the juusho."
"I can't write it if you don't tell me where you went."
"Just write it! It doesn't matter where I went. Write the juusho!"
"How can I write the juusho if you don't tell me where it was?"
etc etc etc etc etc

He told me this turned into quite a heated screaming match. All because he got confused on the difference between "joshu" and "juusho".