Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Recent Wani Kani activity…
Speaking of Etoeto:
Viet said: “The time frame Koichi stated of an expected end of the year Alpha release has not changed. We are still on track for this date.”Also “TextFugu lifetime members will have access to the alpha and any subsequent versions of the site at no additional charge.”
I have no memory of Koichi stating an expectation of an end of 2015 alpha of eto eto. Also, I thought there already was an alpha of eto eto that was abandoned….This must be totally super alpha with sprinkles.
I’d avoid that kind of stuff in general until you have a much deeper understanding of the language and the culture. Just stick with the plain polite and casual (です and だ) forms without adding any of those masculine/feminine/macho/whatever little modifiers. Imagine a Japanese person who knows very little English trying to use slang mixed from today and 30 years ago with a thick accent, he’d sound like an idiot. Chances are you will too.
Are you sure you copied that right? If so, the correcter made a mistake. It should not be
行かなければいけません<b>ました</b>, but
行かなければいけません<b>でした</b>.
And it means “had to go”; in this case, when combined with 買いに…, it means “had to go eat”.The form is quite common, so you should get used to it. If you break it down, it takes the first verb （行く in this case) and makes it negative (行かない), then makes the negated verb conditional (行かなければ), then adds “can’t go” to the end (行かなければいけません). The the whole thing translates to “if I don’t do (the verb), it won’t go” or “It’s no good if I don’t do (the verb)” or “I have to do (the verb”). The でした just makes it past tense.
Some more examples using this construction:
食べなければいけません: have to eat
飲まなければいけません: have to drink
待たなければいけません: have to waitSome other constructions with the same meaning:
食べなければなりません in casual speech shortened to 食べなきゃない or 食べなきゃ
食べなくてはいけません in casual speech shortened to 食べなくちゃI don’t know the context that sentence was in, but there is nothing grammatically wrong with your original. Perhaps the ‘correction’ was just a suggestion.
Your original: “And because of that, I went to buy food.”
The correction: “And because of that, I had to go buy food.”In any case, you don’t seem to have misused だから at all, so congratulations on a successful first deployment.
I agree with you on just about everything you say.
I went through RTK a long time ago and am actually going through it again now after a long period of on-and-off (mostly off) studying.
I recommend RTK a lot. Being able to recognize kanji in vocab and associate them to some meaning is very helpful. I never did the core vocab series; I found it way too boring. There is a good site called Reading the Kanji which is a pretty good SRSish online tool for learning kanji readings and vocabulary. It does cost money for post LTPT-N5 vocab, but you can try it out for free and see if you like it.
The downside to RTK as it is, is that it is based on recognizing the English keyword. What I would actually like to do is to go through and add to each card an “exemplar” field for each card that would contain a Japanese word that contains that kanji and represents the main meaning of that kanji. Then, I would want to study [exemplar -> kanji] as opposed to [keyword -> kanji]. I think such a deck would prove more usefull for long term study. For example:
Front: （やく）目
Back: 役Also, I’m not sure if there is an add-on of Anki that already does this, but I’m trying to write one as an exercise in learning to code. I’d like to write an add-on that allows you to have multiple values for a specific field and when the card comes up for review, it would show you one (possibly randomly) of the values of that field. The would be good for cards like I mentioned above since you could have 役目、役場、or 大役 come up for the 役 card. It would also solve, to some degree, the problem I’ve always had with sentence decks since you could have multiple example sentences for a given vocabulary word.
I’m not sure what you are trying to say with your first sentence, but here are some guesses:
I read (present tense) everyday. – 私は毎日読みます。(polite) – 私は毎日読む。(casual)
I read (past tense) everyday. – 私は毎日読みました。(polite) – 私は毎日読んだ。(casual)I see a few problems with the second sentence, only some of which really have to do with Japanese, the other is with English.
The sentence you wrote in English (that is, the idea you are trying to convey in Japanese) doesn’t really make sense. You say you want to learn to speak the language in order to read it. Why not just learn to read it? I understand what you mean, but the haziness of the sentence makes it harder to translate into Japanese. So let’s first start with a more clear sentence: “The reason I want to <b>learn</b> Japanese is to become able to read Japanese books.”
There are a few errors in your sentence that lead to it not making sense. So much so that even the correction is not right. (It;s grammatically correct, but conveys a different meaning than what you intended.) Instead of trying to correct your sentence bit by bit (that would get confusing) let me give a few alternate sentences and rough-ish translations.
日本語の本を読みたいなので、日本語を勉強しています。- Since I want to read Japanese books, I’m studying Japanese.
日本語を勉強するわけというのは、日本語の本を読めるようになりたいのです。 – To speak of my reason for studying Japanese, it’s that I want to become able to read Japanese books.
日本語の本を読むために日本語を勉強しています。- In order to read Japanese books, I’m studying Japanese.
I always thought of ので as the て form of のです.
The first clause id a complete sentence that explains the second clause, which is also a complete sentence.お帰り
Cimmik is right about に but maybe a little off on おとうとさん.
おとうとさん would not be used to talk about one’s own brother; simply おとうと would be used for that.
Similarly, おとうさん would not be used to refer to one’s own father when speaking to somebody outside the family.So, the sentence could mean: “(Somebody) lent 10,000 yen to (somebody’s) younger brother.”
Where the two somebody’s could be the same person (as long as it’s not the speaker) or different people (as long as the second somebody isn’t the speaker).I’ll give you a rule of thumb, but don’t worry about it too much. Listen a lot, that will be a better guide then trying to remember any hard and fast rules.
The sounds “i” and “u” are often dropped at the end of words or when they occur between two unvoiced consonant sounds. Since hiragana, can’t be broken down into their constituent sounds, I’ll use romaji to explain.
ashita – a shi ta: the “i” part of “shi” occurs between a “sh” and a “t” both of which are unvoiced. In this case the “I” sound is silent. — ash*ta –
asakusa – a sa ku sa: the “u” part of “ku” is silent because “k” and “s” are both unvoiced sounds. — asak*sa –
tatsu – ta tsu – the “u” part of “tsu” is often silent since it follows and unvoiced “ts” sound at the end of a word. — tats* –
hachi – ha chi – the “i” part of “chi” is silent since it follows an unvoiced “ch” sound at the end of a word. — hach* –Keep in mind that these are not rules in Japanese. They are merely patterns in speech, similar to how “ed” is pronounced differently in English in the words “passed”, “calmed”, and “heated”.
You would not be wrong to pronounce 私たち with the “i” sounds present. In fact, in song lyrics you can often hear the vowels that might be omitted in speech as the rhythm of the song might cause that syllable to receive an atypical amount of stress.@ Joel – I didn’t know that all okurigana-having words used the kunyomi. Thanks for the new info. My point about “typically but not always” was talking about words like 愛する and 役に立つ. To a beginner, it might not be obvious that the する in 愛する is different from the ちる in 落ちる.
Although, come to think of it, I cant think of another reading for 愛 or 役 anyway…
Have you already imported that deck and forgot? If you try to import cards that already exist, Anki will skip them.
You probably wouldn’t say 京都 に 電車, as に is typically used with verbs and we are trying to describe the noun 電車.
You could switch に for へ though (which has more or less the same meaning) and keep the の: 京都への電車.
The difference being:
京都の電車 means “the Kyoto train”, and
京都への電車 means “the train headin’ to Kyoto”(I’m not sure if 京都にの電車 is okay…it seems like it should work, but it sounds wrong.)
And yeah, upwards inflection or panicked expression will certainly help.
Kun – Kunyomi – くんよみ – 訓読み – native Japanese readings
On – Onyomi – おんよみ – 音読み – sounds based on (possibly out of date) Chinese pronunciationたべる is the Japanese way to say “to eat”.
食 is a Chinese symbol used to represent the concepts of “eating” and “food”.
The Japanese people (a long time ago), decided to use that Chinese symbol in their own word.
So たべる be came 食べる. With 食 being pronounced た.
That is the native Japanese pronunciation, or kunyomi, for 食.
The kunyomi are typically (but not always) used in words where the the kanji is followed by hiragana.
Like 食べる たべる to eatThe Chinese pronunciation of that same character is something like “shi” (you will know better than me), but the Japanese (long ago, mind you) decided it sounded like しょく. So when they brought the character 食 into Japanese, they gave it that pronunciation as well. This reading (しょく) is not native to Japanese, and is therefore called onyomi. The onyomi are typically (but not always) used when two kanji are placed together in a single word. Like 食堂 しょくどう dining room
**A note to my would be detractors: I know hiragana came into the language after kanji (as they are in fact adapted from them).
I say keep it simple. 京都の電車は．．．？
