Konnichiwa Minasan! As my tutors say at the beginning of class. It means 'Hello Everyone.'
Nooo, the start of semester 2 has come and I'm so not ready to leave my holidays behind. :(
Let's see, what happened this week? Well I swapped Japanese classes around which one of the tutors wasn't so happy with. Hopefully I'll get to stay in my new class. Turned out most people didn't do much studying over the holidays so I'm not the only one.
We learnt some new verbs, kanji, irregular particles and some new words in general. We also learnt that not doing any studying over the holidays really takes its toll. Here's the kanji we learnt...
You'll notice that part of the word is in brackets. Kanji in writing doesn't always represent the whole word, in fact a lot of them only represent part of the word and require the rest of the word to be written in Hiragana or Katakana. So basically we are unncessarily replacing Hiragana and Katakana which was too much to learn to begin with, with Kanji but we still need to use Hiragana and Katakana to finish the word... You've gotta wonder why the Japanese didn't just stick to Kanji or Hiragana really.
1.
行 = I(kimasu) = To Go
2.
帰 = Kae(rimasu) = To Go Home
3.
入 = Hai(imasu) = To Enter
4.
会 = A(imasu) = To Meet
5.
末 = Sue = End
6.
家 = Ie/Ya = House *Can also be pronounced as 'Uchi' which means Home. Used when referring to your own house. I've found Ie to be more common over Ya when saying house. I'm not sure if there's a specific time Ya must be used instead.
7.
晩 = Ban = Evening
8.
朝 = Asa = Morning
9.
町 = Machi = Town
10.
借 = Ka(imasu) = To Borrow
11.
通 = Kayo(imasu) = To Pass Through
12.
起 = O(kimasu) = To Get Up
13.
終 = O(warimasu) = To End *Notice this is different to End which is a noun. This is a Verb.
14.
始 = Ma(imasu) = To Begin
15.
間 = Aida = Between *This can also be used stating a 'period of time' in other words, the 'duration'.
Notice that the words ending with "masu" are verbs. Verbs always appear at the end of a sentence.
We also learnt that the particles に 'Ni' and で 'De' have additional uses to what we have been taught in the past.
で
In the past we learnt that で 'De' marked the location that the action was taking place.
Example: 'Toshokan で Benkyou Shimashita'
Toshokan = Library
で = Particle which is marking Library as the location at which the action is taking place.
Benkyou = Study
Shimasu = To Do (in this case it was Shimashita which means 'Did' which is the past tense)
So what we are saying is 'Studied in the Library'. You could say this for example if someone asked you what you did yesterday afternoon etc.
Now we learnt that で can Mark...
1. Tool/Vehicle/Means of action
2. Marks the 'person' in a sentence who attended. Example "Person attended the concert" The Person in the sentence would be marked by で.
3. It also marks group words such as family, class, everyone. It automatically includes you in these groups.
に
'Ni' which we learnt in the past marked the 'location' in the sentence. Example: She went to the market. 'market' would be the 'location' which would be marked by に.
We now learnt that に can mark the 'location' being 'Entered'. Example: Using the verb we learnt the Kanji for "To Enter". She entered the market. Market would be marked by に. While we learnt earlier that で marks the 'location' the action took place. When using the action word "To Enter" we mark the location being entered with に NOT で.
The End
This is my first time going in depth to explain parts of the Japanese language. If you don't understand anything let me know in the comments and I'll get back to you. The more feedback I get the more clear I can make my future posts.
Well, that's all for today. I'll leave you with a useful word we learnt, 'Kondo' which can mean either 'This Time' or 'Next Time' depending on context.
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