Noob needs some help

[Eifer87]

Hey All!

After being away from Japanese for nearly 2 years (took it in high school, just now started taking it again in college), I'm finally starting to pick it back up. I tested into 2nd year Japanese, but I'm sort of struggling....our professor is teaching us about Distal Styles, Direct Styles, Verbal Styles, etc. I've searched my textbook, and I can't find ANYTHING mentioning direct styles, and I never really encountered these terms in high school...we just learned that "tabemasu" or "taberu" meant to eat, used it in a sentence, and then went from there. Does anyone know of any good websites that explain these terms? Or maybe someone would be willing to nudge me in the right direction by helping me out. Also, although I've been studying Japanese for 2 years, I have a very embarrassing and rather basic question....if I say "sushi wo taberu", does that mean "[I, you, etc.] eat sushi"....is there a difference between "eating" sushi and "eat" sushi....for example, say I friend asked me what I was eating...could I say "sushi wo tabemasu", or would that be translated as "I eat sushi" instead of "I'm eating sushi"....I should know these things, but my high school teacher wasn't the best at Japanese

 

[undrentide]

Hey All!

After being away from Japanese for nearly 2 years (took it in high school, just now started taking it again in college), I'm finally starting to pick it back up. I tested into 2nd year Japanese, but I'm sort of struggling....our professor is teaching us about Distal Styles, Direct Styles, Verbal Styles, etc. I've searched my textbook, and I can't find ANYTHING mentioning direct styles, and I never really encountered these terms in high school...we just learned that "tabemasu" or "taberu" meant to eat, used it in a sentence, and then went from there. Does anyone know of any good websites that explain these terms? Or maybe someone would be willing to nudge me in the right direction by helping me out. Also, although I've been studying Japanese for 2 years, I have a very embarrassing and rather basic question....if I say "sushi wo taberu", does that mean "[I, you, etc.] eat sushi"....is there a difference between "eating" sushi and "eat" sushi....for example, say I friend asked me what I was eating...could I say "sushi wo tabemasu", or would that be translated as "I eat sushi" instead of "I'm eating sushi"....I should know these things, but my high school teacher wasn't the best at Japanese

I don't know the terminology but taking your "eat sushi" sentences as example:

sushi wo taberu. (taberu is dictionary form. It could be either present or future, also generic statement.)
sushi wo tabemasu. (tabemasu is polite form of taberu)
sushi wo tabe te iru (te-form means the action is on-going, like present continuous in English)
sushi wo tabe te imasu (imasu is polite form of iru)

Hope this explanation give some clarification.

 

[Glenn]

I'm pretty sure "distal" = です・ます体 and "direct" = だ体. The only thing I could think "verbal styles" would refer to would be conjugation groups, i.e., godan/group I/consonant-stem/strong verbs versus ichidan/group II/vowel-stem/weak verbs versus the irregular verbs. I think I remembered all the different labels they go by (although I intentionally didn't split up the irregular verbs). But I think you should ask your teacher to clarify the terms.