Because the phone’s still talking to the network all the time, to let your provider know it still exists. It’s always a good idea to talk to your provider before you go overseas to find out what might happen – even if you weren’t planning to use the phone, what would have happened if someone had called you? Or sent a text message? I had no issues with my phone, because the one I had at the time wasn’t 3G capable, so it couldn’t pick up a signal at all. =) Of course, because of that, the battery would run flat in a few hours if I didn’t turn it off anyway, and the only charger I had on me that’d work at 110V required me to take the battery out to charge it. When I went to America, I got an international prepaid SIM card.

It’s also worth letting your bank know you’re going overseas so they don’t think your card has been stolen if you wind up needing to use it while you’re away. They can also tell you about charges and things.

Lastly, you know you can edit posts you’ve made, rather than posting twice in a row? The edit link is right above the post, next to the post number (but is only there for a certain amount of time). =)

Omitting the い from the -ている form is pretty common in casual speech. It flows off the tongue a bit better. For example, there’s an anime currently airing named あの夏で待ってる.

Yeah, I guess “sensei” was kind of a bad example, since it’s become a reasonably common word in English, where it’s pronounced more like “sensay”. Not sure if “they” is a good equivalent either, though. Giving any English word as a pronunciation guide is tricky, since we all pronounce things differently depending on where we come from.

Basically, the え sound is like the e in “met”. ええ is exactly the same sound, just twice as long. おねえさん (older sister) is of the few long e words written ええ. The えい in せんせい is pronounced exactly the same as the ええ in おねえさん. As is the えい in ゆうめい (famous).

Another way to play down compliments is いいえ、まだまだです – “no, I still (have a lot to learn)”.

If you want a slightly more succinct version of missingno’s suggestion, you could try すみませんが、私は日本語があまり上手じゃないんです. If you want to ask them to speak slower, ちょっとゆっくり言ってください.

Edit: We had to record our self-introductions for class this session – when I played mine back, I thought I sounded like a complete twonk too, so you shouldn’t feel too alone in that regard. =) The thing is, thinking that you sound like twonk will give you the impetus to improve – if you always think you sound awesome, you’ll never improve even if you’re actually terrible. =D I can’t really speak for the use of 俺. From what I’ve learnt around the place, it probably comes across as a bit arrogant, but I couldn’t say for sure whether that’s actually true.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 11 months ago by  Joel.

I think I’m with missingno, here – if you’re not sure whether it’s 痛いかったら or 痛かつたら, then we probably need to see it for ourselves. I will say, however, that 痛かったら (which falls right between your two guesses) means “if it’s painful”. 悲鳴をあげる is an expression meaning “to scream” or “to grumble”.

車
くるま

クリス: バルバドス

マーク: Perhaps “だ。” with the full stop.

In any case, I’m from Sydney, Australia. I’ve noticed there’s a few of us around…