Semester 2 Week 1 Part B

Okay, for the end of week one, we are going to cover what my tutors call 'masu stem' or simply just stem. And with this 'stem' we are going to learn a new sentence structure. I guess I haven't covered any sentence structures so far so this will be the first lol. I'll go back sometime and provide a few sentence structures and examples.

Here is a new particle that we will be using today.
は
This particle uses the hiragana symbol which is usually pronounced 'ha' but when used as a particle we say 'wa' instead. This particle is used to mark the topic of a sentence.

Example: Namae wa Rob desu.
Namae = Name
wa = Particle 'wa'

In this case the topic of the sentence was Name so it was 'marked' by は

Sentence Structure

The new sentence structure we will be introducing today is

'Person' は 'Destination/Place' に 'Purpose' に 'Come/Go'

How we use this will be explained partly through learning what 'Stem' is.

Before we move onto 'stem' we will deconstruct the sentence. Using this new sentence structure we're going to learn how to say "I went to the library to read a book.

In Japanese this sentence is "Watashi は Toshokan に Hon Yomi に Ikimasu"
So in terms of the sentence structure introduced above.
1. 'Watashi' is the 'person'
2. 'Toshokan' is the 'destination/place'
3. 'Hon Yomi' is the 'Purpose'
4. 'Ikimasu' is the 'Come/Go'

Here is each part of the sentence explained.
1. First we have 'Watashi' which means 'I'
2. Second we have は which marks the topic of the sentence which is 'I'
3. Third we have Toshokan which means Library
4. Fourth we have に which marks the location where this is taking place which is Library.
5. Fifth we have Hon which is 'Book'.
6. Sixth we have Yomi which is a 'stem'. This will be explained just below.
7. Seventh we have に which in this case refers to what the action is directed to. In this case we are saying that the action of 'going to the library' was directed at 'reading a book'.

'Stem'

So the above sentence includes two verbs 'to read' and 'to go'. Remembering that all verbs must go on the end of a sentence in Japanese. How do we include two verbs in the one sentence if a verb must be at the end? We make use of what we call 'Stem'.

Verbs can be referred or categorised as 'masu' words.
Stem is where we take a verb, for example, Yomimasu = To Read
We remove the 'masu' which leaves yomi. Yomi which is left is called the 'stem'

In the sentence we have 'Hon yomi'. Which basically translates to 'Book to read'. To get this, we had to get the verb 'Yomimasu' and subtract the masu from it because we cannot have a 'masu' word in the middle of the sentence. Now we can use yomimasu in the sentence as 'yomi' to say 'to read'.

We can do this with other 'masu' words for example.
Tabemasu = To Eat
Nomimasu = To Drink
Kikimasu = To Listen (This is when we are talking about 'something', such as music. this is not used when talking about listening to a person.)

In each case we would remove the masu leaving the stem. Example: Tabe, Nomi, Kiki
You could then put them in front of words such as
Ongaku kiki (music listen)
Piza Tabe (pizza eat)
Sake Nomi ('Sake' was traditionally 'Rice Wine' but now can refer to any alcoholic drink. Nomi = drink)

The End

That's it for today and for week 1. Look out for my week 2 post which the first part will be uploaded in a few days. Thank you for reading and again, if you can give me feedback that would be great.

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