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Japanese - The Basics

01-10-2004 00:52

wiseass

1,414 posts

Okay okay okay okay. My name is Rachel. I'm going to teach you inferior mortals some Japanese.

First. I want to let you know that Japanese is a hard language to learn.

Rule number one! Japanese put the VERB at the END! so, go ahead and get comfortable with putting verbs at the end. Go Ahead. Say "I sushi ate" or "You moron are" and so on and so forth.

Now it gets hard, Let's say you want to say "I ate sushi"
The word for 'I' is Watashi. But teenage males use Boku instead

The word for "Sushi" is just plain Sushi.

The word for "ate" is Tabeta

It seems like it should be "Watashi Sushi Tabeta" right?

WRONG!

It is Watashi WA Sushi O Tabeta

You're probably thinking... WTH is Wa And O? They're markers. They're Subject and Object markers. Without them, Japanese wouldn't know If you ate the sushi, or if the Sushi ate you. Wa always fallows the subject, and o always fallows the object.

Questions?

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Reactions
07-10-2004 23:36 wiseass
1,414 posts	unchi... is a naughty word. It means like... shit.
07-10-2004 23:45 wiseass
1,414 posts	and a wakazashi is a short sword.
08-10-2004 00:14 wiseass
1,414 posts	Here's another lesson on Japanese. This is the part I got really confused with... dun Dun DUN!!! CONJUGATION! In case you don't know what conjugation is, it's like past-tense and all that jazz. The verb we willbe working with is "to eat" which is "taberu" to say "I eat sushi", you change the "ru" to a "te" "I eat sushi" "Watashi wa sushi o tabeTE" if you want to make it past-tense, or in other words, "I ate sushi" you change the "ru" to "ta." "Watashi wa sushi o tabeta" If you want to say that I DON'T eat sushi, you change the "ru" to a "nai" "Watashi wa sushi o tabenai" Then, if you want to say you DIDN'T eat sushi, you change the "ru" to a katta "watashi wa sushi o tabekatta." *just to let you know, this is the "casual" verb conjugation. I'll tell you the polite way when I'm in the mood. I know, I'm mean. the conjugations for taberu, are pretty simple, the tough ones are like... let's say... "to speak." It's pretty much the same, only there's an extra step involved, as you will see later. To speak is "hanasu." as you can see, there is no "ru" to replace stuff with. That's what makes this one difficult. So, you do something really weird... you change the "su" in hanaSU to a "sa" so it becomes hanaSA. now you can do all the conjuating. hanasate hanasata hanasanai hanasakatta. The "sa" thing only woks for the casuual way of verb conjugatin...
08-10-2004 00:15 wiseass
1,414 posts	i mean conjugation! Woah my first smiley!
08-10-2004 02:46 bogler
185 posts	let's congradulate her with all the smilies! * offtopic : Let's not... A simple thank you usually suffices, plus a smiley overload annoys me andro Culture/Languages Moderator
09-10-2004 05:20 bogler
185 posts	bogler's my brother. just so you know.
09-10-2004 05:24 wiseass
1,414 posts	sorry about that. Bogler is MY brother. He left his thingymajig unattended.
09-10-2004 05:38 DontSleep
340 posts	what is muramasa?
09-10-2004 06:12 wiseass
1,414 posts	I don't know exactly what the word means, but I know it was this sword making school... thing.
10-10-2004 13:17 salaam
15,547 posts	ah can some one tell me that where do u use hira- and when katakana? so hmm I'm thinking of learning japanese...at least the writing
12-10-2004 02:25 wiseass
1,414 posts	Sorry I couldn't answer sooner. You use katakana for words that DO NOT have japanese origin. You use hiragana for words that DO have japanese origin.
12-10-2004 13:15 salaam
15,547 posts	hmm I see. Thx. So if I wanna be able to read japanese text, I have to know hiragana, katakana and 2000 kanjis hmm at the moment I can remember 23 chinese characters.. and I guess that they have another meaning in japanese...?
16-10-2004 01:26 wiseass
1,414 posts	Alright. You see, um... Kanji's are the same thing as the Chinese characters. Same meaning... different way of saying it. Let's take the Kanji for "Big" In Chinese, this kanji is "Da" but in Japanese, it's "Okii"
16-10-2004 01:28 wiseass
1,414 posts	Alright. You see, um... Kanji's are the same thing as the Chinese characters. Same meaning... different way of saying it. Let's take the Kanji for "Big" In Chinese, this kanji is "Da" but in Japanese, it's "Okii"
16-10-2004 10:39 salaam
15,547 posts	yeah I know that they are Chinese characters. But I thought that they might mean sth different in japanese...at least in some cases
16-10-2004 23:27 wiseass
1,414 posts	no... not really.
17-10-2004 10:03 salaam
15,547 posts	I have started to learn hiragana btw.. interesting.
17-10-2004 10:18 salaam
15,547 posts	so it'd be nice if you could put some japanese text here (in english letters) so I could practice writing... and it can be longer than couple of lines thanks.
21-10-2004 12:06 DontSleep
340 posts	how do u say "take him away!" in japanese? ( its weird i kno )
23-10-2004 02:36 wiseass
1,414 posts	click here for kana!
23-10-2004 02:37 Cyd
11,162 posts	Hi Rachel...
23-10-2004 02:38 wiseass
1,414 posts	Kare o Tolate kudasai.
23-10-2004 04:47 wiseass
1,414 posts	Hi Cyd
24-10-2004 02:29 wiseass
1,414 posts	Actually, I think it's Kare o asoko ni toratte kudasai
03-12-2004 23:52 wiseass
1,414 posts	Why isn't anyone responding to this anymore?