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“Monkey, it is”. Or, “Monkey, I am.” It depends on the context, or, at least, that is what my daughter tells me. Let me explain…
I have wanted to learn Japanese since I started graduate school thirty years ago. I had been working at Japan House at the University of Illinois, as a teaching assistant for Japanese Tea Ceremony and Zen Aesthetics. I had met my wife, of Japanese ancestry, there, though she grew up in Chicago, and her parents grew up in California. I had studied Aikido and participated in a Kabuki production (I was dreadful). But at the start of graduate school, I simply could not fill in the holes in my mathematical knowledge, study Japanese, and hope to succeed. In the end, I dropped Japanese.
About three months ago, my daughter returned from a one year stay in Japan. She had been studying plankton at the Kyoto Center for Ecological Research on a fellowship, after graduating with a major in biology and Japanese. She has fallen in love with Japan, somewhat infectiously. Her younger sister is in her third year of Japanese, and her sister’s boyfriend in his first. My daughter’s encouragement, and my wife’s link to your site, make me think I can learn too.
So “Monkey, it is.” And the ability to read and write Hiragana (very slowly). These were my surprises to my daughter. Hers to me? “Well, Dad, depending on the context, you are really saying ‘Monkey, I am.’” “Oh,” I said, “good enough.”
Wow, that’s a cool story and a good reason to study. You’ve got lots of support and people to practice with!
Good luck!
Hello and welcome to TF :).
In Season 1 of TF we’re initially taught that です means it is. It techinally doesn’t mean it is. The best way to describe the meaning of desu is it makes a sentence present tense. This is what Koichi actually wrote on the page I’m referring too (Season 1, Chapter 6, Page 5) http://www.textfugu.com/season-1/japanese-grammar-with-yoda/6-5/
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“You know how to pronounce “desu” now, but what about it’s meaning? For our intents and purposes, we’re going to say that “desu” means “it is.”I’ll tell you a secret, though. It doesn’t technically mean it is (pretty hard to translate desu, actually), but “it is” will help you learn desu and learn how it’s used, especially now that you know how Yoda talks. Desu is going to come at the end of sentences or phrases, and is of “neutral” formality, meaning it can be used in all kinds of situations and is very versatile.”
———————————————-Continue to work through Season 1 and you will notice how new things you learn build on top of what you’ve just learnt. Knowing Hiragana definitely speeds up the process. I’d spend a good amount of time on that before learning the grammar.
Hey Raymond, welcome to TextFugu! I really enjoyed reading your story, are you a writer?
Good luck with your studies!
Welcome, Raymond! Love your story, and I’d love to hear more of them, too. ;D My experience is also that love of Japan is highly infectious … but maybe some of us just have immune systems that are weak against the Japan bug. ;)
Maybe you could say さるじゃありません。With so many things not being monkeys its a more versatile phrase!
Good luck!
Thank you all for your welcoming comments!
First, let me say, with some practice, that I am not a writer. I say with practice for the simple reason that I have, in fact, written a novel. If I recall correctly, the working title was “Simpler, Dumber, Badder.” The moment I decided to write this novel is etched upon my mind. It occurred in the Blue Coyote, in Maynard, Massachusetts, over a burger, cut in half, fries, and a beer, not cut in half, while looking into my wife’s brown, expectant eyes. She had just announced that she planned to complete NaNoWriMo, that is, National November Writing Month. And I had said, “Hmm, that could be fun. I’ll do it with you.”
Do not, ever, say these words, at least not in the context of NaNoWriMo. It seemed innocent enough. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. What, that’s a little over three pages a day. How hard could it be? I decided to set the novel, sort of a corporate conspiracy adventure, on Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands. Having lived and worked there for four years, and the experience being a little unusual, I thought I would have plenty of material. Instead, I could not leave the world of memory for the one of fiction. Three pages is a lot of words. A lot. And I found them to be, on rereading, laugh out loud bad. This disturbed my compatriots dutifully typing away on their own novel in the Concord Public Library.
I go on too long. Enough to say that I had much practice, as my friends asked after my progress that November, in saying that I am, in fact, not a writer.
Second, let me say that TextFugu is wonderful. My miss-understanding of です is wholly my own, probably to be often repeated, due to my simple understanding of this complex language. I look forward to learning more Japanese, and meeting all of you, over the next year or so.
You may not consider yourself a writer but you certainly have a way with prose, I don’t know what prose means but it sounds fancy.
Everyone has to start somewhere with Japanese or writing, you just need to keep going, writers that make it to be paid by people to write stuff are those who don’t give up, they produce enough mountains of questionable content, but they keep trying and working until they create something they feel is not bad. ( Of course its important they have someone to make them stop their futile striving for perfection and actually publish something)
This is actually the secret to everything whether writing, Japanese, or , Keep going with Japanese, keep going with writing, just keep going and one day you’ll suddenly realize you actually got good.
@ Raymond
If you need any help with your studies feel free to post a message. Lots of users come on the forums every day, myself included. You have people you know IRL who can help you too :)Your novel sounds interesting. I Google’d the name of the book but couldn’t find anything on it. If possible, I’d give it a read one day. Congrats on entering the NaNoWriMo. Sounds daunting having to write 50,000 words in 30 days.
@ Andrew
I agree with your logic.@Raymond: I love NaNoWriMo! I’ve only managed to “win” it once (the very first time I did it, a few years ago), but 50,000 words in 30 days just once is nothing to scoff at, I guess. ;) Even if it didn’t turn out to be a full novel for me…
@Raymond @Crystal: I’ve participated, or at least attempted to participate, in NaNoWriMo every year since 2006. Most of what brings me back every November is the awesome community of writers we have participating in Boston (we had an awesome community in Colorado too. I guess I’m lucky?). I gave up after 4k words in 2011 because it was either quit the novel or stop studying Japanese for a month. Not backsliding on Japanese seemed more important.
I really think having a good community is important to learning and/or trying new things. I haven’t been on these forums long, but so far the community seems pretty fantastic.
Yea, I was also told that です is *roughly* translated to “to be.” Therefore, depending on its context, could mean any form of the verb. (Someone please correct me if I’m incorrect.)
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