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I’ve done N3. Not sure I’d call myself fluent, though that could just be me. =)
Welcome!
So, I went to Japan almost five years ago now, before I started learning Japanese, but I managed just fine without a tour guide. Granted, knowing Japanese might have helped in a few situations, and it quite probably would have enhanced things, but don’t worry too much about your Japanese knowledge holding you back. At least as a tourist, in any case – working with Japanese people might be a different matter. =)
Take me with you? I can… uh… carry things? =)
So, back in the depths of pre-history, Japan already had its own spoken language, but no written language (that’s what makes it pre-history, you see). They had their own words for things like trees, rocks, people, et cetera. When Buddhist scholars arrived from China, they brough with them the Chinese writing system, as well as words for more esoteric concepts like government, taxation, humankind, and so forth. This imported writing system was applied to the existing Japanese spoken language, becoming kanji (and later, hiragana, and even later on, katakana).
Which brings us to on’yomi and kun’yomi. The kun’yomi are the native readings that were given to the kanji when they were brought over to Japan, while the on’yomi are the Chinese readings that were imported along with the kanji. Some kanji have no kun’yomi, and interestingly enough, there’s even a handful of kanji with no on’yomi.
Typically, you’ll use the kun’yomi when a character is standing on its own (for example, 話 on its own is read as はなし) or with okurigana, hiragana tacked on the ends of verbs and adjectives to indicate conjugation and whatnot (for example, 話 as part of 話す is read as はな – this will typically be written in kanji dictionaries as something like はな・す or はな(す) to indicate which bit is the kanji’s reading and which bit is okurigana). You’ll use the on’yomi when a character is in a compound word along with other kanji (for example, 話 in 電話 is read as わ).
This is not a hard-and-fast rule – there’s about a thousand and one exceptions – but once you start to get a lot of vocab under your belt, you’ll start to get a feel for which reading goes where. I can generally intuit the reading of a word I’ve never seen before, if I know the kanji (and sometimes I can even intuit the readings of kanji I’ve never seen before). I kinda think the more nature-oriented a word is, the more likely it is to use kun’yomi (for example, 川口, river mouth, uses the kun’yomi for both characters: かわぐち).
My suggestion is not to try to learn the readings in isolation – learn vocab, and the readings should come to you as a result.
Don’t want to pop into a thread to just say “I dunno”, but… I dunno. =P
In all seriousness, though, I studied Nakama at uni, and yeah, I guess TextFugu does roughly cover Nakama 1. I actually started on TextFugu AFTER we’d already started on Nakama, as a form of self-study to make sure things got hammered in place. I also studied from Japanese for Busy People for good measure.
If you want to try skipping to Genki 2, then sure, give it a try. I don’t expect you’ll be too lost, though it’s possible it may use some kanji or vocab you’ve not learnt before. Figure you can just ask questions here to fill in the gaps.
Could it be you’re specifically confused about the kun’yomi and on’yomi of numbers? Think you’re getting confused about counter words rather than readings. When you count things in Japanese, you have to use a counter word. English has a few, but they’re not as ubiquitous – for example “ten head of cattle”, “sixteen pairs of pants”, “ninety-nine bottles of beer”.
What you’re talking about is やっつ. The つ counter is a special one that uses the kun’yomi for the numbers one to ten. (It does, supposedly, continue past ten, but it’s essentially never used.) It’s essentially used to count generic “things”. “Eight of those, please” sort of thing.
To count non-generic things, you need to use a specific counter word, and (aside from 一人, 二人 and the weird freaky readings that go with 日) all of the specific counters use on’yomi… so far as I can recall. For example, dogs and cats use 匹 (ひき). Eight of them would be 八匹 (はっぴき – yes, some of the numbers do weird things to the counters’ readings).
Wikipedia’s article on this subject is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word
Xすぎる = too X. So 高すぎる = too expensive. They were just giving you what you asked for. =P Incidentally, the past tense of 高い is 高かった – you drop the い.
しめる is transitive – (someone) closes (something) – while しまる is intransitive – (something) closes all on its very own. You’ll encounter transitive/intransitive pairs basically all the time in Japanese, so it’s important to know the difference. If you want to say that something is closed (i.e. that it’s in a state of having been closed), you use しまっていました. Not sure what the め is doing in there, though – typo?
では is a hair more formal than じゃ. My gut says では tends to be used more in writing, while じゃ (or possibly even じゃないです rather than じゃありません) tends to be used more in speech, but I can’t remember where I learnt that, and I can’t find anything to corroborrate it, sooo…
P.S. Couldn’t help but notice you’ve made a few typos, there. 気を付けてね.
In general, you’ll tend to find that Japanese grammar comes out backwards to what you’d expect in English. Because the verb usually comes last, it pushes everything else further up in the sentence. Basically the way to think of it is that particles define the function in the sentence of the word that comes immediately before them. So long as the particle stays with the right word, you can reassemble the words all you like and the sentence will still mean the same thing – with the caveat that if some bits get too far apart, it starts getting tricky to keep track of what’s going on. In this sentence, for example, と = with, so ボビーさんと = “with Bobby-san”. を = direct object. And so forth.
As for みに, (verb stem)+に+行く = go (somewhere) for the purpose of (verbing). It’s one of the many uses for に. So, 食べに行く = go to eat, 買いに行く = go to buy, 見に行く = go to see. Et cetera. Other motion verbs can be used in place of 行く.
～たらいい gets a special mention in the grammar dictionary, actually. I’ma check it when I get home.
As for 私だったら, 私 is a noun, not a verb, so the state of being “I” is what’s preceding the main clause.
ようこそ！その文法はちょっと正しくないですが、がんばてください！
Another point of confusion might be, if by “medicine” you mean medical science, then the word for that would be 医学 (いがく), not 薬.
Oh, hah. I didn’t even notice that. =P
I’ve never heard of ～たら being limited to strictly chronological cases.
Really? That is literally the defining characteristic of ～たら. And I mean “literally” literally, here.
七 is a weird one in that its readings tends to be fairly interchangeable. 四 as well, to a slightly lesser extent.
Why not buy the game yourself? =)
Wouldn’t know about any Anki decks, I’m afraid. Maybe ask Google-sensei.
It’s there, just often fairly hard to make out. You’re basically extending the お sound for an extra beat. If the object ends with おう and the verb starts with お, then you’re getting four お-sounds in a row…
What makes things heaps of fun is when you’re doing dictation tests at uni and the lecturer says 勉強をする, because 勉強する makes just as much sense, only you lose a mark if she says the を and you don’t write it down. Bitter? Me? Noooo. =P
