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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Semester 2 Week 1 Part A

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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