Semester 2 Week 2 Part B

Hello everyone,

Here is week two's second lesson. It's a little light on I'd say but here goes.

We mainly looked at the words for the days of the month and the months themselves.

So, let's look at an example of this.

Japanese: Watashi の tanjobi は roku gatsu futsuka * desu.
English: My birthday is on the 2nd of June.

Let's break down the sentence.
Watashi = I
の 'No' = Particle which turns the I into 'possessive' making it 'my'. So Watashi no = my
Tanjobi = Birthday
は 'Wa' = particle, marks the topic of the sentence. In this case, Birthday or "my birthday"
Roku = 6
Gatsu = The counter** for months
Futsuka = 2nd***, this is used for saying the 2nd day of the month.
Desu = Is/am/are etc. In this case it means 'Is'

* Here, if the number for the day of the month is over 10 you must place 'nichi' (the Kanji for nichi is 日). Nichi means 'Day'

**Counters - In the Japanese language, words called 'counters' are used for different things. There are counters for all sorts of things including months, people, general objects etc. So June in Japanese is known as Roku Gatsu (6 month)

***2nd - Another use for this is saying something like "I went to Brisbane for 2 days."

Days of the Month

1st	Tsuitachi	8th	Youka
2nd	Futsuka	9th	Kokonoka
3rd	Mikka	10th	Tooka
4th	Yokka	11th	Juuichi+nichi
5th	Itsuka	20th	Hatsuka
6th	Muika	14th	Juuyokka
7th	Nanoka	24th	Nijuuyokka

Here are what we call the 'irregular' days of the month. To say any day number not listed here we use the normal words for the Japanese numbers and add 日after. Examples....
'[number] + 日'
'Nijuuichi 日' = 21st
'Juusan 日' = 13th

Months
For the months themselves, we simple say the 'number' and add 'gatsu' after. Examples
Nichi Gatsu = January
Ni Gatsu = February
San Gatsu = March

Irregular months
NOTE: There are 3 months which are 'irregular'
When saying the 4th month, 7th month and 9th month we say...
4th month = Shi Gatsu
7th month = Shichi Gatsu
9th month = Ku Gatsu

Four & Seven - While we normally say Yon**** (4) and Nana**** (7) for the numbers 4 and 7. When saying the months we must use Shi and Shichi.

Nine - Normally nine is kyu however when saying the month we say Ku and drop the 'Y'

**** Japanese number system uses the what we call the Onyomi reading and the Kunyomi reading
Onyomi = The way of saying the number in Chinese
Kunyomi = The number in Japanese.
The Japanese for some reason mostly use the Chinese words (Onyomi) for numbers. However they do not use the Chinese words (Onyomi) in the cases of Shi (4) and Shichi (7) because they mean pain and death in Japanese so they prefer to use the Japanese (Kunyomi) words for 4 and 7 which is Yon and Nana. However, when saying the months, we must use the Chinese (Onyomi) words for 4 and 7 which is Shi and Shichi.

END
Well that's it for this week! I hope you found these lessons informative and useful.

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