Monday, June 29th, 2009Yay! Welcome to your first day of Japanese
(Nihongo) Class! Now, you may be wondering why I might be spending my time do this? Well, it is simply because I like teaching and making people happy. I also can't stand when people misuse Nihongo for their fangirl/boy purposes. So there is your answer. Since this is going to require you
(anata) to look up words and I don't expect that you actually have a dictionary for Nihongo translations, I will list any sites that are good to use. There may be cases where even then the site does not have the correct vocabulary word
(tango) to use and in that case I will then give it to you.
Things to have:
Paper - You should probably keep a notebook or a binder
Pencil- You can use pen, but you will make mistakes
Printer - A printer might also be good to have in the future
Scanner - It will be great if you have a scanner for future use
Three things to remember:1. The Japanese
(Nihonjin) do not use plurals. "Flowers" = Flower
(Hana)2. The Japanese do not make strong use of pronouns. Once a topic is understood such as a person, it is omitted until there is a topic change. For example, if you are talking about a person such as Mr. Tanaka (Tanaka-San), you may use his name once in the beginning. After that it is understood who you are still talking about. Instead of: "Tanaka-san went to the store. He bought apples (ringo). He went back home."
You would just say, Tanaka-san went to the store. Bought apples. Went back home. 3. The Japanese make use of a very polite language. There are different word changes depending on how polite you intend to be.
There is casual, polite, and formal. For example, adding the word "san" to the end of a name is casual polite. Calling someone just by their name is a sigh of familiarity and is not used often besides family members, close friends, and significant relationships. The word
"desu" is another example of casual politeness. It used at the end of sentences in a way to make the sentence polite. There are many other examples of this that will later be shown.
*Note* Do
NOT use the word "Baka" loosely as how someone might just say "idiot."
This word can be very offensive. The only reason I call my significant someone a "baka" is because...well...you have to meet him. And I know I shouldn't, but it's become a habit.
*Beware* If you start using any Japanese that I teach you loosely without putting it into a proper sentence or by just trying to act "Kawaii" (a word I detest) this will happen:
Vocabulary Word (Tango) List 1On the chat box we will come up with a list of words together. After that, I will add a few words of my own that by Thursday, July 2, 2009 should be defined. You can find the words on this website here:
Dictionary (Jisho)1. Hai
2. Ie
3. II
4. E
5. Ki
6. Neko
7. Inu
8. Tori
9. Kami
10. Watashi
11. Ohayo’ Gozaimasu
12. Konnichi ha(wa) *A lesson to soon be understood*
13. Domo Arigato
14. Do’ Itashimashite
15. Momo
16. Ichigo
17. Ao
18. Ringo
19. Shiro
20. Midori
*Instructions* Have these words translated into English by Thursday. To help you remember some of the words, draw it out as a small picture. Visual understanding will help speech and memorization. I will help with pronunciation in the chat box and with a possible small video that I might make if time allows*
6/24/2009, 14:42
