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Probably someday, yeah. Have you tried the Tofugu 4500 Sentences thingy? It is, admittedly, not cheap…
http://store.tofugu.com/shop/4500-japanese-sentences
Another option is to come up with your own sentences. =)
Not really my area of expertise, I’m afraid. Google-sensei might be able to provide some helpful pointers, though…
Yeah, I’m thinking TextFugu has goofed here. My kanji dictionary has レツ for 列 (along with a pair of kun’yomi readings I’m not sure I’ve seen before), and レイ／たと（える） for 例.
You don’t get a huge amount of grammar in the early seasons, so it’s possible you may not be up to reading a lot of things. Your best bet could be to make anki decks or flash cards and use them to reinforce what you know.
If you do feel up for a challenge, though, you could try reading stories intended for small children. Here’s one example:
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/0_6/index.htmlYou may find yourself spending a lot of time with a dictionary to read these, though – there’s probably a lot more vocab than you’ve learnt so far. Acutally, glancing at one or two, there may even be vocab that I’ve not even learnt. =P It’s also got audio recordings of the stories.
You only use “yarimasu” in casual situations. Also slang (it can be used in Japanese in the same sense as the “do” in “do me” in English).
It’s a bit more polite in some dialects, though, like the Yamagata dialect, for example.
Yes, but you can also think of it as meaning “of”.
AのB = “A’s B” or “the B of A”. Basically the way that you use nouns to modify other nouns. When you’re using an adjective to modify a noun, you can just stick them straight together – あかい ほん = a red book. When you’re using a noun to modify another noun, though, you need to join them with の. わたし の ほん = my book. Which book is it? A red book. My book. In both cases, the “book” is being modified by the words that come before.
にほんご の べんきょう = study of Japanese
にほんご の せんせい = a teacher of Japanese
にほんじん の せんせい = a teacher who is a Japanese person
かぜ の たに の ナウシカ = Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind
ながのけん の まつもとし = Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture.And so forth.
よし、きめました！ = Good, it’s decided! (Or I’ve decided, depending on context)
よく わらいました。 = (I) laughed often.
にほんご の べんきょう を はじめます。 I’ll start studying Japanese (べんきょう = study)
Oyogimasu = I swim, I will swim.
To say “I am swimming” (at this current point in time), you need to use the continuative form, which is the te-form of the verb plus imasu (or iru in plain form). Not entirely sure if you’ve learnt the te-form yet, but for oyogimasu it’s oyoide.
Oyoideimasu = I am swimming
“Tsukimasu” doesn’t mean “forget” – you sure you’ve got the right verb there?
Interestingly enough, your second question is also covered by the same grammar point. For instantaneous verbs (i.e. verbs that happen once and leave a changed state behind, like getting married, or forgetting), the te-imasu form means “is in the resultant state”
Kekkon shimashita = I was married (i.e. the ceremony was last week or whatever, but whether I’m still married is unclear)
Kekkon shiteimasu = I am married (i.e. the ceremony was last week or whatever, and I’m still married)
Kekkon shimasu = I will be marriedAye, “standard” Japanese is Kanto dialect. Tokyo dialect, to be specific.
There’s a reasonable difference between the two, but speakers of either will probably be able to understand the other. Biggest differences are the copula だ in standard Japanese becomes や in Kansai, and S sounds often become H sounds. So for example, そうだ becomes ほうや. Google-sensei can probably furnish you with a more extensive explanation. One of the fun differences is a variation in the pitch accent, so while in one dialect, “HA-shi” is “chopsticks” and “ha-SHI” is “bridge”, in the other dialect, it’s precisely the other way around. Never can remember which is which, sadly.
There’s also a few words unique to the Kansai dialect. Here’s a fairly extensive list: https://www.nihongoresources.com/language/dialects/kansaiben/wordlist.html
Pretty much every prefecture has its own dialect – most would be able to understand standard Japanese just fine, though. When you get into the furthest reaches of Okinawa or Hokkaido, though, the dialectical differences start to get pretty significant (both used to have their own languages until comparatively recently). I’ve been learning Osaka dialect myself. And Hiroshima dialect, in which だ becomes じゃ, and から becomes け, so だから becomes じゃけ, which sounds like something else altogether…
を is always pronounced “o” when it’s functioning as a particle, and it always functions as a particle in modern Japanese. Made for some fun times in dictation tests at uni when we’d have to distinguish between “benkyo-o o suru” and “benkyo-o suru” by ear, and we’d lose a mark if we got it wrong. =P
千円 is “sen en” as you observed, but when ん is followed by あ-line characters, you’ll tend to find that native speakers don’t quite complete the ん sound, because it makes it easier to transition to the next mouth position. The upshot is that “sen en” comes out as something closer to “sei-en”. 円, by the way, is always pronounced “en” when referring to the currency – the “yen” that we use in English is a result of some… rather curious etymology.
Aye, they work. The one concern to keep in mind is the slight ambiguity of “I am going” in English – it’s got about three meanings:
- “I’m going to the park” = I am moving myself to the park
- “I’m going shopping” = I am moving myself somewhere in order to do shopping
- “I’m going to learn English” = I will, in the future, learn EnglishYeah, it means “genius”. It’s just not used in sentences like that. =)
Also means “years old” and “cubic shaku” (a shaku is a unit of linear distance which is about a foot long).
An advantage of knowing kanji meanings is that they help you to work out meanings of words you’ve never seen before. For example, suppose you encounter the word 空気 for the first time, but you happen to know that 空 means “sky” and 気 means “air”. You’d probably guess, then, that 空気 means “atmosphere” – and you’d be correct.
Honestly, so long as you’re actually learning the material, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going. However, if squishing chapter seven in your brain makes chapter one fall out, you’re probably going too fast. You kinda need to give it some time to sink in. =)
Welcome! =)
“Hairu” is the plain form of the verb, while “hairimasu” is the polite form. You’ll learn about the plain forms later on. =)
