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I am using the Pimsleur program to help me learn. It seems to be fairly useful, though there are some things I hear on there that sound odd, and unfortunately the philosophy of the program allows for little actual explanation of why certain phrases mean certain things.
The Pimsleur program teaches the phrases “tabetaidesu” to mean “I want to eat”. But then, to ask someone if they want to eat it simply uses the present progressive “tabemasuka” rather than what I expected which would be “tabetaidesuka”. Although I can see it making sense since you can infer the meaning from context, I decided to look it up and found no reference to using the present progressive in this context, with all sources translating as “tabetaidesuka”. Is Pimsleur correct here? Can “tabemasuka” mean “do you want to eat”? And if so, is it actually preferable to “tabetaidesuka” or simply synonymous or perhaps less appropriate? Related: is “tabemasenka” also appropriate in this context? (again, Pimsleur seems to think so, though this time does explain why and it makes more sense).
Tangentially related: Pimsleur translates “sake” as “osake”, and says the adding of the “o” makes it polite. I looked this up too because it seemed odd to me that there would be a polite form of a common noun like that, and again found no reference to “osake” in this context. The Kodansha dictionary translates “sake” as “sake” OR “nihonshu”, and Wikipedia states that “nihonshu” means sake but “sake” simply means any alcoholic beverage. Can anyone clarify this please?
Thank you
AnonymousSake might seem like a normal noun, but words that earn a お or ご honorific prefix are usually things that are relevant deep in the culture or history. Just like お茶.
Nihonshu is a specific type of Japanese alcohol, sake is probably any type of Japanese alcohol.
Yeah the added O bit used to confuse the hell out of me before I realized it was an honorific, and even afterwards I, like you, thought it was tacked onto things that I wasn’t sure why it would be given special reverence.
As far as I’m aware, in general, it’s more common to just say sake, than osake. I would imagine the situation would determine when osake would be used instead.
As far as studying goes, just keep in mind that any noun beginning with O could be an honorific version, though this will be easy to distinguish when you are reading in kanji.
For practical purposes, go with monkey see monkey do. If you hear it being used with an O, use the O, if not, don’t. If you’re not sure, go ahead and use the O version to be safe, until people start looking at you weird. LOL
A prime example is oheya no kagi.
You wouldn’t think that room key would deserve an honorific, but that’s part of the vocab that I had from one of my courses. I still don’t know how often the O is actually used though, which is why immersion is important.
Sorry for ignoring your first question, but I’m not confident enough to actually give you an authoritative response.
This is going to be a pretty vauge answer but;
If I remember correctly, somewhere in Season 3 of Japanese-Pod 101, they talk about tai form (and possibly hoshii too) being used only to describe ones own desires, and that you can’t use them (tai form at least) for saying what others want. There are other ways to say what they have expressed that they want. Maybe it would be allowed if you were a telepath ;D
If I’m wrong, someone step in and set us straight, meanwhile I’ll have a little look for that lesson.
EDIT: I can’t believe I actually found it. The lesson is “beginner>season 5>Lesson8
http://www.japanesepod101.com/2010/04/19/beginner-lesson-s5-8-new-lesson/
I’m not realy qualified to explain the grammar because I don’t know it myself, I just know of it.
If you sign up for free, you get one week full access…
then just torrent it XD-
This reply was modified 12 years, 2 months ago by
Astralfox.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/desire
Tae Kim’s guide says you can use たい to ask if someone wants to do something.
Also, although Textfugu doesn’t answer that particular question, the example sentences include questions with たいですか.
I think using present progressive could technically work, since asking if you will eat is sorta the same as if you want to eat..
I think posting an entry in Lang 8 would help. Use that phrase and see if it gets corrected. :)
=^..^=That’s interesting. The japanese-pod 101 lesson only talks about making statements of what others want. If your directly asking what other people desire, then the “personal” たい and ほしい would make sense.
One thought I’m having is that it’d possible that asking 食べたいですか could be seen as too in-your-face direct – in Japanese it’s better to be indirect: 食べますか = shall we eat? 食べませんか is even more indirect – why don’t we eat? Then there’s 食べましょうか and 食べないでしょうか – there’s probably at least ten ways to ask any question, each more polite than the last.
Thanks for the help
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This reply was modified 12 years, 2 months ago by
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