What is it?

[BamaFan2989]

isn't the phrase "what is it" 'na wan desu ka?' or 'nan desu ka?'? or is that even close. also is it best to use hiragana or kanji on websites and stuff?

one last thing in hiragana, is the sound for "de" the same as "te"? and why are there two o's? thanks....

 

[SajberJohan]

Hoohoo

It's "Nan desuka" and u have to use both kanji and hiragana (and katakana) cuz the japanese language mixes them all ( u can probably do without kanji though). te and de isnt the same sound but it can sound the same when you speak. Two o's? There's only one o, and there's u which can sound like o (used when it's a long vowel) eg "gakkou" is spelled with o and u but pronounced "gakkoo" with o's.

Cheers

///Johan

 

[BamaFan2989]

is this desu? です？？？ because i saw it earlier and it looked like て except it had the two marks that said it could be pronounced differetly??? what is that in the desu that looks like the 'te' mark..... sorry if i am confusing

 

[SajberJohan]

"de" is written like "te" but with those two marks (and yes it's "desu")

 

[BamaFan2989]

is 'で' hiragana?

 

[SajberJohan]

Yupp, very much so.

 

[BamaFan2989]

what is nan desuka in hiragana? ななですか？ is that right???

 

[bentenmusume]

what is nan desuka in hiragana? ななですか？ is that right???

That says "nana desu ka". You wanted なんですか。 Typically, though, nan(i) is written in kanji so you would usually see 何ですか。

I would highly recommend buying yourself a good textbook, as it will save you a lot of time and trouble learning the basics of the language.

Also:

and why are there two o's? thanks....

I assume you're talking about お and を. The former is the hiragana for the vowel "o" (although what Johan said about う coming after an "o" vowel sound being pronounced by lengthening the "o" sound is correct)

The latter is used (almost) solely to write the direct object (or translocational) particle を, although I have a feeling that this won't mean anything to you at this point.

 

[BamaFan2989]

man i do need a textbook i will find one soon

 

[TwistedMac]

JBOX - your friend in Japan

i just bought the first and second grade kanji textbooks... all that's missing is a tiny bench and a mean teacher that yells at me for yanking the girls' pigtails!

can't wait for them to arrive. (not the bench and teacher.. the textbooks)

 

[Mike Cash]

I used textbooks from this series: Amazon.com: Learn Japanese: New College Text (Learn Japanese) volume 1 (9780824808594): John Young, Kimiko Nakajima-Okano: Books to get started with. As you can see from Amazon, it receives mixed reviews. I liked it. I have all four volumes, but only actually studied 1 and 2 all the way, and 3 halfway through.

You'll get out of it (or anything else) what you put into it. The important thing about using some organized, structured textbooks is that it helps minimize the gaping holes in your knowledge that is inevitible with hit-n-miss methods like online lessons and self-study from anime/manga. What you want to get from the textbooks is a good foundation to build upon, and this series is as good for that as any I know of.

Read the reviews, they all make valid points.

 

[BamaFan2989]

yeah i am going to find me a great textbook, but thanks guys for helping out and putting up with my multiple questions and whining. i am going to try to learn some more!