Semester 2 Week 3 Part B

Konnichiwa Minasan!

Read for this week's second lesson?

This lesson we will have a look at a new set of Kanji!

Kanji
*Marks the words and pronounciations that only apply when you use that particular pronounciation of the Kanji

Kanji	English (plus other meanings)	Japanese Pronounciation
安	Cheap (Peaceful, secure)	Yasu(i)
高	Expensive (High, Tall)	Taka(i)
長	Long (Chief, Principal)	Naga(i)
大	Big (Large, Great, Grand)	Oo(kii)
小	Small	Chi(sai)
細	Thin (Detail) *Fine	Hoso(i) *Komakai
太	Thick (Fat, Peaceful)	Futo(i)
軽	Light *Light, Easy	Karu(i) *Karoyaka
重	Heavy (Layer)	Omo(i)
赤	Red	Aka(i)
青	Blue	Ao(i)
白	White	Shiro(i)
黒	Black	Kuro(i)
黄	Yellow	Ki
色	Colour (Amarous)	Iro

Useful/Interesting Words

Han = Half Past

Jyugyou = Class

Fudan = Usually, Ordinary day

Kara = From

Made = To

Neko = Cat

Koneko = Kitten (the Ko makes it 'small')

Colours

There are 4 main colours, they are Red, Blue, White and Black

Saying 'I like colour car'.

'Colour' Karuma が Suki Desu

NOTE: If we do not use one of the 4 main colours, we must had の

Example: 'Colour' の Karuma が Suki Desu

Let's break down the sentence.

の = Particle, possessive meaning. In this case, the car possesses 'colour'

Karuma = Car

が = Particle, it marks the object of a like/dislike sentence

Suki = Like

Desu = Is/am/are/was etc. It ends the sentence.

END

That's all for today and the week! Lookout for the next lesson! We'll be going through how to use 'な' adjectives, how to give a reason for something etc.

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Semester 2 Week 3 Part A

Hello everyone,

Welcome to week 3. This lesson we're going to talk about adjectives.

Japanese has two types of adjectives.
1. True Adjective
2. Adjectival Noun (sometimes called Na な Adjectives)

True Adjectives

First we're going to look at True Adjectives

True Adjectives finish with Ai, ii, ui, oi

Changing True Adjectives to Present, Past, Negative, Affirmative

'i' = い	Present	Past
Affirmative	Remains the same.	Drop the last 'i'. Add 'Katta'
Negative	Drop the last 'i'. Add 'Kunai'	Drop the last 'i'. Add 'Kunakatta'

NOTE: いい (ii) = Good in English. いい is irregular. Do not follow the rules set in the above table.

'Good' = いい	Present	Past
Affirmative	いい Remains the same.	いい Becomes 'Yokatta'
Negative	いい Becomes 'Yokuna'	いい Becomes 'Yokunakatta'

Remember: Add 'desu' onto True Adjective sentences to be polite. It does not matter if True Adjective is past or present tense, just leave Desu.

Example sentence using True Adjective - 'Yasashii' which means Easy
Japanese: Nihongo wa yasashikunai desu
English: Japanese language is not easy.

Let's break it down...
1. Nihongo = Japanese (language)
2. wa = particle marking topic of sentence
3. Yasashikunai = 'Present Negative' (Is Not) form of Yasashi. Yasashi = Easy
4. Desu = 'is'

I'll leave you all with some True Adjectives.
Muzukashii = Difficult
Omoshiroi = Interesting/Funny
Tanoshii = Fun
Tsumaranai = Boring
Ookii = Big
Chisai = Small
Sukunanai = Few, little
Ooi = Many, a large number of

END

Remember when you're looking up Japanese adjectives you can tell if it's a True Adjective by seeing if it ends in Ai, ii, ui, oi. Adjectival Nouns otherwise called な Adjectives do not have these endings. We'll learn the rules on how to use Adjectival Nouns and how to join both True and な adjectives together.

I hope you all found this lesson enjoyable!

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Semester 2 Week 2 Part A

Konnichiwa minasan. O genki desu ka? (How are you?)

I hope that everyone enjoyed the last couple of sessions. I got a fair bit of feedback from people which liked it so for now I'll stick with a similar format.

Okay, so now we're onto week 2. Fortunately my tutors said they're fine with me staying in my new class. Yay! :D

Let's start off with some Kanji! Remember the parts in the brackets must be written in Hiragana as the Kanji only covers the part of the word outside of the brackets.
Kanji

1. 記 = Shiru(shimasu) = To Record
2. 誌 = Shi = Magazine
3. 起 = O(kimasu) = To Get Up, Arise
4. 寝 = Ne(masu) = To Sleep, lie down *(lie down means to do so without sleeping)
5. 部 = Bu = Part, Section
6. 屋 = Ya = House, Store (House in the sense that it is not your own)
7. 働 = Hatara(kimasu) = To Work, Operate
8. 走 = Hashi(rimasu) = To Run
9. 泣 = Na(kimasu) = To Cry
10. 笑 = Wara(imasu) = To Smile, Laugh
11.  歌 = Uta(imasu) = To Sing, Song

Nagara

Now onto something useful, the word Nagara. This is used when saying you are doing something at the same time as something else, For example, watching Tv while eating dinner. Think of Nagara as 'while' or 'at the same time as'. Nagara is used with a 'stem'. Remember from last weeks session, a 'stem' is where we remove the 'masu' of the verb. So for example, we get 'to watch' which is 'kimasu' and it becomes 'kinagara'. You can do this with any 'masu' word. Remember that 'masu' words are verbs. 
Examples of verb being changed: 
1. Yomimasu becoming Yominagara
2. Kikimasu becoming Kikinagara

Example Sentence

Here we learn how to use Nagara as part of a sentence.

In Japanese: Watashi wa terebi O minagara bangohan O tabemashita
In English:    I watched TV while eating dinner.
Lets break the sentence down into each word.
1. Watashi = I
2. Wa / は = particle which marks the 'topic' of the sentence, in this case 'I'.
3. Terebi = TV
4. O / を* = particle which marks the 'object/s' of the sentence, in this case TV.
5. Minagara = Mimasu converted to Minagara for the purpose of the sentence, See above for explanation.
6. Bangohan = Dinner
7. O / を* = Same as Above. Particle which marks the 'object/s' of the sentence, in this case Dinner.
8. tabemashita = Past tense of Tabemasu. Tabemasu means 'To Eat'.

* を is the Hiragana for the particle O. This is very different to the 'normal' Hiragana O which is お

The End

Well that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment.

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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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