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1. “become” is about as close as I can get in English. 日本語が上手になりたい！
2. It means two things are positively correlated as one goes up the other goes up. The older I get, the dumber I get. I don’t know any alternatives.
3. Use the adverbial form of an adjective. For い adjectives, drop the い and add く. For な adjectives, slap a に after the stem instead of な.
4. 物 is for physical objects, 事 is for ideas and such. More or less anyway.
5. I’m not sure I can answer the question. It seems to be asking “What gets harder as it turns into H?” It’s either a typo or over my head. Does the H stand for hydrogen? Is it some play on a kanji that looks similar to H? (廿、日、工) You also might consider rewording question 5; is sounds a little more philosophical than you may have intended.Bump. Same Problem. Had to switch back to firefox at work.
@Eddie: You are right. Mnemonics (of all kinds) are like brain scaffolding. They are quick and cheap to build and they help you during the slower process of long term memory construction. The eventual goal is to see written Japanese (or hear spoken) and understand it immediately and respond; not to take it in, translate it into English in your head, formulate a response to that English (also in English), translate that back to Japanese and then respond. It takes an incredible amount of time and is actually physically tiring. But! That skill takes a long time to develop.
In terms of kanji, you eventually want to recognize a kanji and know its meaning(s) and reading(s) straight away. The method Heisig proposes that you first look at a kanji and recognize the primitives, remember their “meaning”, remember the story, remember the “meaning” of the kanji. Seems like a lot more work, just like building tons of scaffolding is a lot of work. But it makes the entire building process easier in the long run.
@Ian – The radicals are linked for the kanji with fewer strokes. It is presumably just a matter of time for that feature to be added to the rest of them as well.
Overall I like the new kanji/radical layout. For the vocab page, I think it would be nice if each kanji in the vocabulary word was a link to that knaji’s page. The “Via” link is nice but it only links to a single kanji.
Also, on all three of those pages (radicals/kanji/vocab), I think there should be links to the Anki decks. And while I’m on that topic, it would be nice if there were some way to see what was in the decks before downloading them (a Google doc perhaps) and manipulate the info in them to create your own card types etc. (I think there is info for creating decks from spreadsheets in the forums.)
I’d also like to see a page for particles. They could be listed in the order they were introduced with a quick explanation of the uses, maybe one or two examples and links back to the section in which they were discussed. You could have a similar type page for verb conjugations.
The download section would be a good thing to bring back too. If I loose my hiragana chart that I’ve printed from your site, its a bit difficult to relocate later. Which brings me to my last point. As, Mark mentioned, the site is a bit hard to navigate. For example, to get from the dashboard to Season 3, Chapter 4, Section 5, I have to perform 4 clicks. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it adds up if I have to do that every time I log in. I’d say doing one or both of the following would be a good idea. First, the easy one, put the links to the seasons back in the header to people don’t have to navigate to the TOC, have drop-down menus for each season that list the chapters and a second drop-down for the sections. You could have the titles for each section display on mouse over (or just have them there, static in the drop-down menu). That way, you could navigate to any section of any chapter of any season with one click from the dashboard. The second way to solve the problem would be some sort of internal bookmark system. Not sure how to implement that exactly but with a hard-copy text, I can put little sticky note on pages and always find my way right back to points of interest. It would be really handy to be able to do the same with Textfugu.
I like the changes even if it seems like all I did was say what I thought was missing. Keep up the good work fellas.
@Maxim – No that is not standard as far as I know. I’ve never heard it. Can you be more specific on where you found it? Which practice section? Tell Koichi about it.
Very helpful missing…..
Warm Words
温い（ぬるい） lukewarm (I’ve only ever seen used with liquids)
暖かい（あたたかい） warm (weather/space)
温かい（あたたかい） warm (to the touch/objects)
暑い（あつい）hot (weather/space)
熱い（あつい）hot (to the touch/objects)
温めた（あたためた）heated up (in the microwave etc) (objects)
涼しくなくなった（すずしくなくなった）warmed (from cool) cola left in the sun etc …similar to 温いCool Words
冷えている（ひえている）chilled/refrigerated (objects)
冷めていた（さめていた）cooled off (from a high temp) (objects)
寒い（さむい） cold (weather/space)
冷たい（つめたい） cold (to the touch/objects)
涼しい（すずしい）refreshing/cool (anything)
さわやか（な）about the same as 涼しいI asked about とか on lang-8.
これらの文の中で、どれがいいですか。
１．彼は狩りとか釣りとかに興味があります。
２．彼は狩りとか釣りに興味があります。
３．彼は狩りとか釣りとか興味があります。Results:
Correct sentence is No.1, but I think many people use No.2.
And a few people use No.3.
All sentences can be understood.２．彼は狩りとか釣りに興味があります。
これが一番いいと思います。私は２．がいいと思いますよ。
３．は明らかに文法が間違っていますし（「に」がない）、会話でもおかしく聞こえると思います。
１．は「とか」をつけすぎて、くどいです。狩りと釣り、他にもあるの？って思います。
「とか」をたくさん使うのは最近のはやりの言葉ですね。年配の人は不快に思うかもしれません。That’s one vote for とか after the last item in the list and two against it. Seems like it might just be a matter of preference. You do need the particle afterwards regardless.
As far as helping someone do something, I found these examples. Looks like するのを手伝う which makes sense.
私は母が夕食後皿を洗うのを手伝おう。
I’ll help my mother wash the dishes after supper.私は彼が机を運ぶのを手伝った。
I helped him carry his desk.私は彼が通りを横断するのを手伝った。
I helped him walk across the street.その日から私たちは彼が日本語を学ぶのを手伝ってやった。
From that day on we helped him learn Japanese.“She wants to try to help rehabilitate dancers and athletes and the like.”
What I wrote in Lang-8:
（彼女は）ダンサーとかアスリートとか回復に興味があります。
This carries the same meaning and was left unchanged by Lang-8 friends, but isn’t exactly what I wanted to say.Questions:
1. How to I say “help somebody do something” – I helped my dad fix the car.
2. I know とか helps you give the sort of ‘etc etc’ feel, but how do you use particles with it? (I think you just leave them out, but I could be wrong…)THNX in advance.
The blind leading the blind is a bad analogy. Blind people can’t be taught or coached to see better either by visually impaired people or by those with standard (or even superior) vision. It’s getting advice and assistance from someone who has had success. Certainly there are people who have had more success, and if they are offering the same service for the same price (none), more power to them.
I don’t understand the need for the snide comments. Missing is offering to help you for free to gain practice in tutoring and teaching. If he sucks at it, at worst you lose an hour or two of your time. Even then though, if you are helping him become a better teacher you are helping all of his potential future students. He’s offering the language-learning equivalent of free haircuts from stylists in training. His Japanese may not be perfect but he has demonstrated a level above that of most of the users of this site (this is speculation, but reasonable, I think), as this is a site for beginners in the language. He has also made contributions to the forum that show a general willingness and interest in helping others learn.
I would say ～がどこですか or ～がどこにありますか.
You could use 見つかる like Mister said…seems a bit much for me. You could also say something like….
すみません。～を探（さが）していますが、見（み）つけられません。 Also a bit much.-Zombie Thread-
I really had to dig to find this thing…so many introductions.
Anyway, I’m back to work after the new year and it’s snowing like crazy. I have to walk home too…bummer. To those of you planning on moving to Japan (for more that a year) I suggest on getting started on getting your Japanese licence as soon as possible. You can use your international licence for a year and once it expires. Getting a new one is a royal pain.
In other news, I’ll be moving back to the US in August. Still planning on keeping up the Japanese though. In fact the plan is to take the JLPT N3 in December. Maybe the N2 if the study books for the N3 go super easy. I just started on those today; 日本語総まとめ. Day one down.
So I’m thinking of picking up Spanish again when I go back too. I studied it for three years in high school but I don’t remember much. Should be easy compared to Japanese. It’s funny though, when I try to use any Spanish, I keep defaulting to Japanese grammar. Espanol wo hablaitai!!
Anyway, the reason for the Spanish (aside from general interest) is that, when I go back to the States, I’ll be moving in with my girlfriend in the (dun dun dun) South (God help me). North Carolina to be specific. I figure, teaching in the south, there is some probability that a few of my students, or their parents, may not have the best English so I can try to meet them half way.Why am I blogging in the forums?..the students don’t come back till next week. Bored bored bored.
Well, the schools in jolly ol’ Japan don’t get a Christmas break but I do get the 29th through the 3rd off for 正月. I’ll be throwing a Christmas party at my house on the 25th (since it’s a Sunday) with the JETs in the area and my Japanese friends. That should be fun although there is much preparation left to be done.
I probably won’t be doing to much studying since my girlfriend is visiting from the States. We are talking about going to either Kobe or Izumo for New Year’s.By the way, it’s getting to be resolution time. For me, redo RTK1 at break-neck pace; 200 a day with the anki settings modified to space the cards out more since I’ve already gone through it once. Should get through in under 2 weeks. Then starting on RTK3. At 50 a day, it should take about 20 days. All the while sticking with reading practice + vocab building separately. My Japanese study has gone slack and I’m kicking it back into gear.
Also, I have to start saving money since I’m moving back to the States in August with no home and no job.
@Dormoxx – I agree with Mister completely. Do RTK, get the readings naturally from vocab. Where you get the vocab is up to you. If you already have a bit of a foundation you may want to jump into native materials. If not, try the ultimate lists on this site or the Core (kore/2000/6000/whatever) shared decks on anki. Personally I use the site Reading the Kanji that Yggbert mentioned above. The downsides are that it costs money (10 USD a year I think) and that the SRS algorithm seems inferior to anki (also the site is a little slow). The positives are that it presents the vocab in an order that is a mix between frequency of use and groupings of words that use the same kanji so you get familiar with them faster. It also presents the vocab in sentences which give you context and examples of usage. And there are lots of pretty colors. You can try out the JLPT N5 list for free.
Yggbert is pretty much right.
The short version is that です means “to be” and いる/ある means “there is/are”.That is a dog. – それは犬です。
That dog is mine. – その犬は私のです。
The dog’s name is Baxter. – 犬の名前はBaxterです。There is a dog over there. – 犬があそこにいる。
There can be be combinations of the two as well.
The dog that is over there is mine. – あそこにいる犬は私のです。Where it gets confusing is the rather haphazard use of です to take the place of other verbs. (similar to the verb “do” in English)
For example, if asked
What do bears eat? – くまは何を食べますか？
You could answer
They eat fish. – 魚をたべます。
But you could also say
魚です。 – Which would translate directly to “It is fish.” or “It’s a fish.”です can replace いる/ある too.
What is on the desk? – 机の上に何がありますか？
The full answer in English would be
There is a book. – 本があります。
But an answer that is just as good (although in English not grammatically correct) is
A book. – 本です。 Now, the です here does not mean “a” it actually doesn’t mean much of anything but is is kind of a place holder for ある.Just like in English if you ask
Who likes hamburgers?
You can answer – I do. where “do” replaces “like hamburgers”Maybe that makes things worse…sorry.
