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I’m meeting with the Japanese exchange student within the next couple of days to practice my Japanese – I’m planning on running a club in my school to teach the basics of the language, but the club manager at my school wants me to practice conversations first.
I’ve been studying for nearly a year straight every day now. I’m on season 8 of Textfugu and I plan on teaching maybe up to the end of season 2. Very, very simple stuff. While I would never doubt my skill in these areas, and even though I’m fairly confident in my abilities, I still feel really nervous about speaking to him, his English is obviously much better than my Japanese. I can speak fairly well to my friends, but the idea of talking to a native speaker puts me on edge. I don’t even know why I’m overreacting so much, but I’m almost sick to my stomach, does anyone else get this? How did you get over it?
I’ve realized recently that I’m fairly good with grammar but don’t know very many useful common phrases – you know, like 仕方がない, things like that that wouldn’t really make sense with only the grammar rules I’ve learned. Things that would be useful in everyday conversation. I’m even blanking on which grammar I know – I’m blanking on how to say stuff “Which city are you from?”, etc. tl;dr basically pretty stressed out.
I’d be really grateful if someone would pass along some useful phrases, maybe help with some introductory topics, etc.
Thank you very, very much in advance.
Well, are there any phrases that you are looking for specifically?
I’m not exactly sure – even a url to a list or something would help, maybe introductions, general commonplace phrases, stuff like that. I can’t really find anything of the sort on tofugu or textfugu.
http://www.linguanaut.com/english_japanese.htm
Something like this I suppose!
That seems a fairly comprehensive list – not sure I could suggest anything to add to it, unless you wanted to talk about hobbies, say, or things you like. Just a few observations, though:
How are you? Ogenki desuka? お元気ですか？
For the love of all that’s good and polite, don’t ask this unless you know them very well. In English, “how are you?” is a small talk “I’m alive and I can see you’re alive too” type question, but in Japanese, it’s very personal.
Good bye! Sayonara! さようなら！
This is fairly formal and/or a long-term goodbye, so I wouldn’t really use it with someone you know well.
I’m (twenty, thirty…) years old. Watshi wa (20, 30) sai desu. 私は（２０，３０）才です。
Fun fact: ２０歳 (= twenty years old) is not read as にじゅうさい but as はたち. It’s one of Japanese’s weird freaky off-the-wall counter exceptions. There’s some historical reason for that (to do with the fact that 20 is the age of adulthood in Japan) but I don’t know the specifics.
Good luck! Ganbatte ne! がんばってね！
Actually, this means “keep it up!” You don’t wish people “good luck” in Japanese, you wish them “word hard”.
Bless you (when sneezing) Odaiji ni. お大事に。
This means something like “take care of yourself”. You’d also use it when someone tells you of something that’s ailing them (after first making appropriate sympathetic comments, of course).
If you’re not confident with your Japanese skills, would it really be appropriate to be teaching other people? I don’t mean this personally, but if I were to join a Japanese language club at school, if not a native with teaching experience I’d at least like to have someone who knows what they’re doing, is confident and knowledgeable and who has good pronunciation (so that I’m not learning how to say things wrong). It’s great that you’re taking the initiative to start something like this, but are you the right person for the job is what I’m wondering.
When I started Uni, I met up with a student from Japan; that didn’t exactly go well… It was a real eye-opener, showing me just how much I sucked at the language XD Before that I thought “Hey, I’m not doing too badly, maybe this will go all right” – TextFugu maybe gives you a little *too* much confidence, throwing about terms like “intermediate” when you’re really still a complete novice (even by the end of the content there now, I know). The guy was *really* nice and we’d talked over Facebook somewhat before the semester started but I just couldn’t face him again afterwards. I’m shy and a bit awkward at the best of times but this was pretty painful, I honestly felt slightly queasy and exhausted afterwards; I can laugh about it now though, thankfully :P Still feel bad that I never really talked to him at all afterwards – we never met up again and I probably didn’t message him on FB for most of the year (he had many, many, many other friends at uni though, so that’s ok, I guess haha).
Not intending to put you off, just giving an honest account of my experience XD You could do much better than I did, no way of knowing till you give it a go :D
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