Category Archives: Beginner

Beginner Lesson #2: Lesson Description + Signup Page

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早速、第2回目のレッスン！

Here are the lesson details for the second Skype Lesson. The opening are already filled but I still have 3 openings for the third lesson so leave a comment quickly if you are interested in participating in the lesson after this.

You must have a microphone and headphones to participate. Please do not use speakers because it will echo back into the mic and create a very annoying echo. Having a fast connection also helps with the latency.

Important: The lessons will be recorded and posted on this site. If you do not want to be recorded, please do not participate in the lesson.

Lesson 2: Negative State-of-Being and Referring to people

Overview
We will look deeper into topics briefly mentioned in the first lesson such as the negative state-of-being and the topic particle. We will also learn how to refer to people and more importantly, when not to. We will then take what we learned to get to know each other a little. Finally, we’ll take our first look at kanji (already!) and how they can help us learn vocabulary.

※This lesson will be recorded and posted on this site along with my notes.

Lesson Date and Time
Time: Sun 9:00 am, Tokyo Time (No DST) (convert time)
Date: April 23
Length: 30 min to 1 hour
Participants: cc, Jenny, Joshua, Jyosua

Prerequisites
1. You must have a microphone and headphones. Please do not speakers.
2. You must be familiar with the contents of the first lesson. (Review the notes and lesson recording)
3. Knowledge of hiragana.
4. Though useful, knowledge of katakana and kanji is not neccessary.

Lesson Preparation
I strongly recommend learning hiragana.
・Hiragana Link 1
・Hiragana Link 2

You should also become at least somewhat familiar with the following vocabulary and expressions before the lesson. You do not have to worry about the kanji for now.

Vocabulary

  1. さん – polite name suffix for names
  2. まあまあ – so-so
  3. とても – very
  4. あまり – not very (only used with negatives)
  5. 全然【ぜんぜん】 – not at all (mostly only used with negatives)
  6. 国【くに】- country
  7. 国籍【こくせき】- nationality
  8. 日本【にほん】- Japan
  9. 韓国【かんこく】- Korea
  10. 中国【ちゅうごく】- China
  11. アメリカ【あめりか】- America
  12. 日本人【にほんじん】- Japanese person
  13. 韓国人【かんこくじん】- Korean person
  14. 中国人【ちゅうごくじん】- Chinese person
  15. アメリカ人【あめりかじん】- American person
  16. 小学校【しょうがっこう】 – elementary school
  17. 中学校【ちゅうがっこう】 – middle school
  18. 高校【こうこう】 – high school
  19. 大学【だいがく】 – college
  20. 趣味【しゅみ】- interest; hobby

Expressions
1. Casual: [X]は、何（なに）？- What is [X]?
2. Polite: [X]は、何（なん）ですか？- What is [X]?

Lesson Notes
Rules for making negative state-of-being
1. Casual: Add じゃない
2. Polite: Add じゃないです

音読み【おんよみ】: Chinese pronunciation of Kanji
訓読み【くんよみ】: Japanese pronunciation of Kanji

Resources
Edict Kanji Dictionary

Beginner Lesson #1: Greetings and Proper Pronunciation

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Beginner Japanese Lesson #1: Greetings and Proper Pronunciation (length: 31:22) and original lesson details.

Here is a heavily edited recording for the first lesson (mostly to get rid of the annoying echo as much as possible) and my notes. You can subscribe to this podcast with iTunes from the following link:

Subscribe to this podcast with iTunes
There is a very annoying echo throughout the whole thing, I’m very sorry about that. I will look into having that fixed by the next lesson.

Details of the next beginner lesson will be posted afterwards in another post.

And, Rossine, I’m so sorry I never correctly learned your name! I finally got time to relax and have it down now but my mind was just too full with other things at the time.

Lesson Notes

In Japanese, we don’t say “hello”.
Instead, there are three greetings for morning, afternoon, night. Let’s first look at the greeting for afternoon and night.

３．こんにちは
４．こんばんは

The last 「は」 is pronounced as /wa/ in this expression because it is the topic particles (covered later).

The tone is very important for proper pronunciation.
Theoretically, there are two tones: high and low, and the movement between them whether it’s up or down. The changes are important and not the actual pitch.
The key is to use your ears and mimic the tones. (Try humming the sounds first)

If you don’t get most of your tones right, native speakers won’t correct you because there’s too much to correct. So you need to pay attention from the start.

Be careful especially of English words because we tend to be used to the English way of saying them.

・Long vowel sound
The long vowel sound is two distinct sounds blurred together.

1. /a/ →　 あ
2. /i/ →　い
3. /e/ →　え
4. /u/o/ →　う

There are several exceptions such as 「おお」 being the long vowel sound. （大きい、通る、and 遠い）

To split hairs, /ei/ is regarded as a long vowel but it’s really not. It’s actually pronounced “ay”. Just slur the /e/ and /i/ sound.

５．先生
６．学生

For the small や、ゆ、よ, the long vowel sound goes with the last vowel sound.

８．小学校
９．中学校
１１．教科書

Long vowel sound is important because if you don’t pronounce it right, you may say another completely different word.

おばあさん vs おばさん
ここ vs 高校（こうこう）
家（いえ） vs いいえ

・Politeness
In Japanese, there are roughly three levels of politeness: casual, polite, honorific/humble.
Which one to use mostly depends on age, social ranking, the type of relationship, length of acquantice, etc. In normal conversational Japanese, you only need to worry about casual and polite.

Of the three greetings, only “Good Morning” has a casual/polite distinction.

１．おはよう。
２．おはようございます。

・です
「です」 is polite ending for state-of-being. When said quickly, it sounds like “des”

Add 「か」, the question marker to make a polite question. That’s it! You don’t have to worry about subject agreement. In fact, you don’t need anything else.

To say, “How are you?” we use the adjective 「元気」（げんき） which means cheerful, happy, in a good condition.

Casual Version

元気？
うん、元気。

Polite Version

元気ですか？
はい、元気です。

We can use nouns too with 「です」.

学生ですか。
学校ですか。

We’ll learn more about state-of-being such as the negative and referring to others in the next lesson. We’ll also learn more about politeness levels as we go along.

Try using these greeting with your family and friends. It’s good for daily practice.

For those completely new to Japanese

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I hope you enjoyed my attempt at humor in the previous post about Japanese. As promised, here’s a more serious description of what Japanese is like to give you an idea of whether you really want to board this handbasket. If you are completely new to Japanese and don’t have the faintest clue what Japanese is all about, this post is for you.

So you want to learn Japanese

So you are interested in learning Japanese for some reason; you like manga/anime, you’re family is Japanese, you think Japanese men/women are hot, whatever. But you have no idea how Japanese works. How does the writing system work? What about all those Chinese characters? How should you go about studying it? Is Japanese impossible to master?

Relax. First of all, Japanese is no more difficult than learning any other language. However, I’m not saying that learning Japanese is easy by any means. Learning any foreign language basically means re-learning everything you know in a different language. Take all the knowledge from a typical 12-year education along with all cultural information that you are exposed to everyday, and you have a hefty job on your hands.

The writing system

First of all, you are going to need to master a completely different writing system which consists of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is a phonetic “alphabet” consisting of 46 characters and can be mastered in a few weeks. The same goes for katakana as well, because it is essentially the same thing but with different characters. Its main purpose in modern Japanese is to distinguish words that have been imported from a foreign language such as “Internet” or “email”. While things like extended vowel sounds, the small 「ゃ、ゅ、ょ、っ」, etc. might require a bit of time getting used to, mastering hiragana and katakana is not too difficult. And since they are both completely phonetic, you never have to wonder how to pronounce words like “sangfroid”.

The third aspect of the writing system is kanji, which is the Japanese word for Chinese characters. While every word in Japanese is pronounced with the phonetic sounds in hiragana and katakana, most words are written in kanji. You need to learn about 2,000 characters to be able to read most of Japanese. A lot of people panic upon hearing that they have to memorize 2,000 characters but I think it actually makes things easier in a sense. Let me explain.

The hardest part of learning a language is memorizing the 20,000 some words an average adult has accumulated in his or her native language. If you were learning English, this would mean you would have to memorize the spelling and definition of 20,000 separate words, many of which have similar spellings but are totally unrelated. With Japanese, if you learn how to read and recognize just 2,000 characters, it will help you learn a bulk of the Japanese vocabulary which are simply combinations of these characters. In fact, while studying vocabulary for both the GRE and the JLPT, I found that memorizing Japanese words was much easier than memorizing English words and easier to retain thanks to kanji.

Learning how to write all these words with the correct characters is, I must admit, a very, very difficult task. However, in the age of computers, you’ll find that you rarely have a chance to write by hand. And if you’re stuck, you always have hiragana to fall back on.

Japanese grammar

Every complete idea or thought in Japanese ends with an action. Everything else that comes before describes the who, what, where, etc. but everything concludes to the action. This means that you are going to need to change essentially the way you think in order to naturally express yourself in Japanese. The rest of the sentence is put together by particles that define what role each word is playing in the sentence. In English, sentence ordering often define the role each word is playing such as the sentence, “The boy hit the ball” vs “The ball hit the boy” However, in Japanese, because particles describe the role of each word and attach directly to the word that it applies to, sentence ordering is a lot less strict than English.

Another significant difference in Japanese is the large amount of information that is implied by context. For example, if I wanted to know whether you ate or not, the conversation might go like this.

Me: Ate?
You: Ate.

This is a difficult adjustment for English speakers and they often have a habit of constantly specifying the subject because it’s required for English. However, in Japanese, the subject is usually left out unless there is no way the listener could know what the subject is. This “less-is-more” philosophy of Japanese makes grammar a great deal easier in Japanese. This means that you never have to worry about singular-plural, gender, or subject agreement. Verb conjugation is relatively straightforward as well. All verbs are divided into two main categories with only two exception verbs (most of the time). Conjugation is also very consistent and systematic based on the two main categories so I think it’s fair to say that Japanese grammar is much easier than most romance languages.

Politeness levels

Japanese, unlike many languages, have different levels of politeness. While the borders are not nearly as clear-cut, you can roughly divide the levels of politeness into three levels: casual, polite, and honorific/humble. Casual speech is used for your peers and friends while polite language might be more appropriate based on age, social status, and level of intimacy. Honorific/humble forms are used for very formal situations. While polite conjugations are very straightforward and should present little difficulty, honorific/humble language is more difficult because you have to consider social status relative to your position in deciding whether to refer to someone as honorific or humble. For example, your own actions will require the humble form, while those of people above you will use the honorific form. But even people above you will be referred to in the humble form if you are addressing somebody who is above them.

However, the use of honorific and humble forms are quite limited in regular day-to-day conversations, confined mostly to the service industry such as restaurants and stores. In short, politeness levels are an important additional level to learn but is not too big an obstacle once you get the hang of several fairly simple conjugation rules for the polite forms.

Pronunciation

While the basic sounds are very easy, when you put them all together, you will most likely have some form of an accent. That’s because Japanese pronunciation is made up of high and low tones and you need to get the ordering of the pitches right in order to sound natural. The pitches are so important that sometimes Japanese people will look at you with a puzzled expression and finally say, “Oh, you’re saying that word!” and say essentially the same word you were saying all along.

You may be wondering, “Can I ever really sound like a Japanese?” It depends to some extent on how old you are and how good your ear is. If you are already an adult, you need to have good ears and skills at mimicking the way other people talk. So far, I know two people who started learning Japanese as an adult yet still have a perfect Japanese accent, so it’s definitely possible. One of them is a Harvard grad and the other a Rhodes scholar but don’t let that get you down.

Conclusion

As you can see from this broad overview, Japanese, just like any language, is very easy in some respects and difficult in others. The greatest difficulty for English speakers is bridging the large gap between English and Japanese and adjusting yourself to the way Japanese people think. And just like any language, because of the sheer volume of information you need to learn, mastering Japanese will, at times, seem like an impossible task and you will feel discouraged and frustrated along the way. However, if you persevere, I think you’ll find the effort well worth it.

If you’re interested in learning more about Japanese, I suggest you check out my guides to learning Japanese.

Learning (Training) Vocab Tips

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Memorizing Japanese vocabulary is much more difficult than many other languages not only because they usually bear no resemblance to English but also because you have to memorize the Kanji, the reading, and the definition. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of words in the language, and you’ve got a hefty job on your hands. While you need to spend a lot of time on grammar in the first 1-2 years, after that, it’s all about memorizing one word after another after another. In fact, I’d say over 80% of the total study time required for fluency would probably be for vocabulary.

So to give you a helping hand in such a monumental task, here are my tips for effectively transferring vocab from the dictionary into your long-term memory bank.

Memorizing for tests is not productive
Because we are so used to studying for tests, we often fall into the trap of thinking that memorizing for tests is an effective way to learn vocabulary. It is not. It is a convenient method for teachers to gauge mastery, but that does not mean it’s a good method to learn vocabulary.

The most common method of memorizing vocabulary is to take a set number of words and memorize them, commonly in the form of lists or index cards. This is a great method to prepare for a test, not for learning vocabulary in general.

Remember, doing well on tests is a means to an end, and a poor one at that. If you don’t restrict yourself to a set number of words, there is a much faster method for learning a great deal of vocabulary with a lot less headaches.

Language is trained not reasoned
Now, I’m no expert in psychology, but one thing I’m sure about is that learning a language is not a cognitive process. Rather, mastering a language requires training much in the same way as learning how to ride a bike. Just think about how you use words in your native language when you read, write, listen, or speak. The words you have memorized come to mind almost instinctually as you need them. That is the level you want to ultimately attain.

The key here is to simulate that process as closely as possible in Japanese by training yourself to think in the same fashion. In order to do this, you need some sort of online dictionary to look up words as quickly as possible. For when you can’t use a computer, an electronic dictionary will also work almost as well. Once you’ve got the necessary tool, read as much as possible and look up each word you don’t know. You are essentially simulating how your mind would have worked if you had known all the words with a couple seconds lag for each word lookup. Finally, read the sentence again with all the words in your short-term memory to reinforce the process you want to attain.

For instance, let’s say you are reading 「今は忙しいから・・・」 and you don’t know what 「忙しい」 means. Quickly look up the word in an online dictionary or a tool like rikaichan then continue reading the sentence. Continue with this process until you finish reading the sentence, then read over the sentence again and make sure you get the meaning of the sentence as a whole. Rinse and repeat.

The idea is that you want to take input in and throw it out as quickly as possible to test your memory again and again. I guarantee you that staring at an index card for 2 minutes trying with all your might to recall the definition will not help you remember it later. The key here is wearing down those neural paths with repetition, just like how we train our bodies to do physical activities.

The beauty of this method is that the most common and useful words naturally get retained quicker because you run into them more often. It is the most effective method of training yourself to understand the most amount of Japanese as quickly as possible. Plus, by comprehending the material, you get a much richer context that will help with recollection a great deal more than flimsy examples sentences on index cards.

Instant gratification is good!
We human beings tend to get bored very easily and boring is painful so you want to give yourself an advantage by making studying fun. The best way to do this is to pick material that is interesting in itself (hopefully with some recommendations from other people). Also, an electronic tool is key because having to tediously look up word after word in a paper dictionary is excruciatingly boring (especially if you need to look up the kanji first) and a complete waste of time. You want to mentally reward yourself as quickly as possible with the answer so that you don’t bore yourself to death, which ultimately results in the “I’m too lazy to study” syndrome that is all too common among students.

But what about my test?
If you apply this method early enough (don’t forget to use your vacations too), you should be so far ahead that you’ll likely already know a great majority of the words that’ll show up in your tests. The only thing left is to study the one or two words you have missed in the more conventional fashion. This worked for me and saved my college grades because I could focus on my other classes while hardly studying for my Japanese class! 🙂

List of common greetings/expressions

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In Japanese, there are a lot of set expressions that are used in various situations. When you arrive at your house, you say one thing yet when you enter someone else’s home, you say something else. Other situations include when you start and finish eating or when you’re leaving your house. I remember when I was learning Japanese, I wished that I had a handy list of such expressions. (I looked on google and couldn’t find such a list) So as a service to the Internet community, I’ll post such a list here.

Eating
Because I’m such a fan of eating, we’ll first discuss the expressions used before and after you eat.

１．いただきます
– Said before a meal. Literally means, “I will receive” using the humble form of the verb “to receive”.
２．ごちそうさまでした／ごちそうさま
– Said after a meal. Literally means, “It was a feast”. 「ごちそうさま」 is a less formal version.

Greetings
You really ought to know these already if you’ve spend any time studying Japanese.

１．おはようございます／おはよう
– Good Morning.
2.　こんにちは （The 「は」 is pronounced 「わ」）
– Good Day.
３.　こんばんは （The 「は」 is pronounced 「わ」）
– Good Evening.

Expressions for coming and going
Here are some more expressions to use when you are coming or going, usually from home.

１．行ってきます
– You say this when you go out. Literally it means, “I’ll go and then come.”
2.　いってらっしゃい
– You say this to the person leaving if you are staying behind.
３.　ただいま
– Used when you come back home.
４.　お帰り／お帰りなさい
– Welcome back. お帰り is a less formal version

Work-related
Here are two more expressions for work-related occasion.

１．お疲れ／お疲れ様／お疲れ様です
– Most often used as a parting expression after work. If the person is leaving, you can also say the past tense: お疲れ様でした. お疲れさん is also a possibility though mostly only used by middle-aged men.
2.　ご苦労様／ご苦労様です
– This expression is used when somebody has finished doing some work for you. Be careful with this one because it puts you in a higher position of having requested the work. You can also say ご苦労さん though again, this is used mostly by middle-aged men.

Other expressions
Here’s some more that I couldn’t fit into it’s own category.

１．お休み／お休みなさい
– Good night. お休み is a less formal version.
2.　お邪魔します
– When you enter somebody else’s home. Literally means, “I will intrude”.
3.　失礼します
– Polite way to indicate you are leaving. Also used before hanging up on the phone. Literally means, “I’m doing a discourtesy.

Being hungry or full

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Just like I promised, I’m going to go over some actual expressions and some grammar instead of single-word explanations. In this post, I would like to go over how to say whether you’re hungry or full, obviously something that’s going to be useful, especially if you want to ask someone out for a bite to eat. The reason I’m covering this is because just learning the Japanese word for “full” and “hungry” and attaching 「です」 is not going to work. (Well, it works for “full” but not “hungry”.)

How to say you’re full
Saying you’re full is the simple part. The word most commonly used here is the adjective 「いっぱい」, which, as you might expect, means “full” in Japanese. Unless it’s understood from the context, you’ll also need the word for stomach which is most commonly 「お腹」（おなか）. So to simply say you are full, you would most likely say something like the following.

１）お腹がいっぱいです。- Stomach is full. (polite)
２）お腹がいっぱい。- Stomach is full. (casual)

Here’s a sample conversation.

Aさん）お代わりはいらない？- You don’t need another helping?
Bさん） もうお腹がいっぱいだから、大丈夫です。- Stomach is full already so it’s ok.

As an aside, if you want to sound fancy, you can also use 「満腹」（まんぷく） instead of 「いっぱい」. It also has a nuance of being a little fuller than just full as shown by this next example.

１）食った食った！もう満腹。- Ate, ate! Already stuffed.

How to say you’re hungry
Here’s the part where things get interesting. Unlike the Japanese word for “full”, which is an adjective same as English, there is no adjective for the word “hungry”. Well, technically there is the word 「空腹」（くうふく） which means “hungry”, but it is not normally used.

Instead, the verb 「空く」（すく） is normally used to say that your stomach was “emptied”. This means that we must use the past tense of the verb to indicate that the emptying already happened. In this case, it would be either 「空いた」 for casual or 「空きました」 for the polite form. (reference for past-tense, reference for polite past-tense)

１）お腹が空いた。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)
２）お腹が空きました。- Stomach is emptied. (Got hungry)

You can also use the enduring-state form to say that your stomach is in the state of being emptied. The meaning is essentially the same but the nuance is different because the stomach already emptied and has stayed in that state. In other words, the hungriness has continued for a certain period. With the past tense, you get the sense that you just got hungry.

１）朝ご飯を食べなくて、お腹がすごく空いているよ。- I didn’t eat breakfast and I’m really hungry.

Finally, there is a more vulgar expression that is used for being hungry. It’s mostly for the rougher men-folk. Basically, instead of using 「お腹」 for stomach and 「空く」 for emptying, you use 「腹」（はら） and 「減る」（へる）. 「腹」 is simply a 「お腹」 without the honorific 「お」 and 「減る」 is another verb that simply means “to decrease”. The idea is basically the same as before.

１）いつ食べるの？俺、腹が減ったよ。- When eat? I’m hungry.

So let’s go back to what we were originally after, how to ask someone out for a bite to eat!

ボブ）　お腹空いた？どっか食べに行こうよ。
– You hungry? Let’s go somewhere to eat.

みき）　ごめん。もう食べたから、お腹いっぱいだよ。
– Sorry. I already ate so I’m not hungry.

一郎）　俺は腹が減ったんだけど。
– I’m hungry.

ボブ）　お前には聞いてないよ。
– I’m not asking you.

Main Vocabulary Covered
【お腹】（おなか） – (n) stomach
【腹】（はら） – (n) stomach (vulgar)
【いっぱい】 – (adj) full
【満腹】（まんぷく） – (adj) full stomach
【空く】（すく） – (v) to empty
【減る】（へる） – (v) to decrease

Going to Hanami

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Well, spring has arrived and the cherry blossoms have started blooming. The bloom this years has been quite late so it looks like this weekend is going to be the time to go see them. (At least for us Tokyo denizens) So let’s take a look at some expressions and vocabulary you might find useful for this time of year.

花見 – Hanami
Well, the first key word to remember is 花見（はなみ） which is the tradition of going out to parks or whatnot to see the cherry blossoms called 桜（さくら）. The cherry blossoms bloom only once a year so this is quite an event.

花見に行く
– Go to see cherry blossom.

You may be aware that 花見 is not just about taking a stroll in the park. It usually involves grabbing a spot to gather, chat, and drink alcohol. Famous parks like 上野公園（うえのこうえん） get so crowded this time of year that people often head out very early in the morning to grab a good spot for their group. Since the beginning of April is when most companies hire new graduates, the new hires are sometimes given the task of grabbing and holding a good spot for the rest of the employees should the company decided to do 花見. As an event, you can also “do” 花見 as seen below. In fact, either going or doing is acceptable.

花見をする
– Do Hanami.

Like many other festivals and traditions, you can also decide to attach the honorific 「お」 to the front of 「花見」 to get 「お花見」.

お花見へ行こう！
– Let’s go to Hanami!

お花見したい！
– Want to do Hanami!

While people usually go see 桜 during the day, other also like to go see them during the night in the backdrop of city lights called 「夜桜」（よざくら）

夜桜はとてもきれい。
– Cherry blossoms are very pretty at night.

You might want to check whether the cherry blossoms are actually blooming at the park you’re heading to by checking out a site like this one.

  1. つぼみ – buds
  2. 咲き始め（さきはじめ） – staring to bloom
  3. N分咲き – degree of bloom ranging from 1 (least) to 9 (most)
  4. 満開（まんかい） – full bloom

Personally, I’m thinking of checking out 井の頭公園. Apparently you can walk there from 吉祥寺, which is a cool little town for shopping accessible from the ＪＲ中央線. Why? Because this site lists it with the maximum 5 hearts as a romantic date spot!