Apparently ～なさい is used often in situations like a teacher telling a pupil do something or a mother and child; a little more stern than ～下さい, but not too aggressive. From what I remember, I think I’ve seen it used in public information notices, like “Keep off the grass” and the like, though don’t hold me to that :P

I guess you could think of it like ～下さい is a polite request whereas ～なさい is an instruction. And then there is “command form”, which is more of a… command.

Yeah, I had a feeling you meant 正すます, but as Joel says, 正します is the correct verb.

The people who do the audio for Core 6000 seem to lean more towards “nga”; since I’ve done so many of those flash cards, that’s the way I’ve come to say it too. It’s not really that difficult to do – just think of saying words like “ring” and “sing” – it’s like you’re holding that final “ng” sound, and then saying “a”. Also, even though the Core 6k people generally say it more like that, they seem use the other pronunciation for some words, so really, it shouldn’t matter what way you say it.

“On えい – it represents a long-E sound most of the time, but there are words where it’s pronounced as written; E-I. For example 丁寧 (ていねい) = “teinei”, not “teenee”.” – Not sure how correct that is. When I’ve heard the word, as far as I can remember it’s just been with standard long vowels. Some people seem to pronounce long vowels with hints of the “extension kana” coming in at the end.

In the end, pronunciation is most easily figured out just by listening to natives speak. If they pronounce it some way, then that’s a way it can be pronounced. If you hear lots of people pronounce it a different way, then maybe that is a more common/”standard” pronunciation. One thing I’ll say though, if you’re comparing the pronunciation between Koichi and actual native speakers, side with the natives – while he obviously has more experience than you in the language, he’s learned/learning it just like you, so he’s not going to be perfect in every respect, if you get me.

…and when he’s not in Japan, he’s busy with WaniKani :P How long before he abandons the WaniKani userbase and jumps ship to some *other* crazy new idea, eh!? I don’t think he’s really that bothered with TextFugu anymore, seems to have gotten bored with it. Doesn’t really post to Tofugu much either, it’s mostly John (and sometimes Hashi).

You know, there was a time I asked a question on the old forum, and Koichi responded with a recording of him pronouncing the stuff I wasn’t sure about. And then when he gave out funny taglines below the avatars of a few select users (one being me :3) with his fancy admin powers, everyone wanted one, and in a thread about it, there were many jokes to be had between Koichi and his users. It was a glorious day :D

Ugh, I waste time reminiscing too much :P

If you’re going to guess a particle, go for に, I’d say – so many different uses, you’re bound to get it right :D

Also: カメハメハァーーーーー！！

Always grinds my gears to see people romanising し as si, つ as tu and so on. It’s a stupid system, stop using it! :P The whole point of romaji is so that non-speakers can more easily read/pronounce Japanese words, which they’ll get wrong if they’re shown with this inferior romanisation. Fair enough, you can’t really represent らりるれろ accurately with English letters because the sound is not commonly found in English (arguably the “tt” in “butter” in some US accents is comparable, but it’s not standard) – I’d still say ra/ri/ru/re/ro is a lot closer than la/li/lu/le/lo, which just seems wrong to me.

Line 1: omie -> omae

Line 2: isshyo -> issho

Line 4: daisukidasu! -> daisukidayo!
kawai -> kawari
mitsuteimasu -> mitteimasu (that’s just a small tsu and the word runs onto the next line. I think that’s a typo on Koichi’s part anyway: as far as I can see it should just be みています, assuming the verb is 見る)

Line 6: kanojyo -> kanojo (I’m not actually sure which way TextFugu romanises it, but it makes more sense to me the

other way)

Line 7: yoi -> yori
atami ->atama
yosasuu -> yosasou

Line 9: okare -> okane

Line 10: jyoudanjyanaiyo -> joudanjanaiyo (again, differences in romanisation)
nu -> no

Last night at Japanese class, we were reading the last part of a story about Momotarou from a “Learn How to Read” book made for Japanese youngsters. At the end, there were a few questions about the passage, and our teacher was asking us for the answer. One question was something like “What was the old woman doing when the peach came down the river?” (yeah, it’s a strange story) – instead of just plainly answering “She was washing up”, how would I say something like “I’m not sure, was she maybe washing up?” or “I think she might have been washing up.” or “She was washing up, wasn’t she?”? And by “washing up”, I mean “washing her clothes in the river”. My first thought was to use something like “deshou ka?” (IME not working ¬_¬), but I can’t find any example sentences using that along the same lines. Probably something really simple that I’m forgetting.