Japan has a lot to offer, but there is the rare occasion when knowing the phrase “I don’t like it,” can come in handy! Japan has so very much to offer, and chances are you’re going to like a lot of what you see and taste.
However, we figured that you should be prepared just in case. So today, we do a complete 180 and introduce ways and degrees of like and dislike. For those of you who haven’t tried all Japanese cuisine has to offer, we strongly recommend you itune in!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 at 5:04 am and is filed under Beginner Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
25 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #12 - I Don’t Like It!”
Joey says:
January 22nd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
I have a few questions about this lesson.
1. Since you can say “totemo suki” and that means really like, could you say “totemo kirai” and have that mean really hate?
Also could you say “kirai dewa arimasen” and have that mean that you barely dis-like something?
2. In lesson 11 you use ‘ga’ before ’suki’ like: “watashi wa amerika ryouri ga suki desu”, but in this lesson you don’t use ‘ga’, you have a ‘wa’ infront of “suki”, like in the first line of the conversation, “Toufu wa suki desu ka?” which you say is “do you like tofu?” but in lesson 11 you say “Nihon ga suki desu ka?” which you say is “Do you like Japan?”. So whats the difference between ‘ga’ and ‘wa’ before suki?
3. Lastly, how would I add “watashi” and “anata” in the dialog in this lesson’s notes. Plus, would you usualy add “watashi” or “anata” in every day sentances like these or would you normaly leave them out?
Thank-You in advance for all of your help!
Peter says:
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:11 am
Joey-san,
Thank you for listening and for your post!
In regards to your question:
1) Hmmm….tough question! I did some polling around the office and the common consensus is that you should go with dai kirai・だいきらい・大嫌い. For some reason it seems a bit unnatural for Japanese people to say totemo kirai, so we recommend you go with dai kirai.
1b) Kirai dewa arimasen, would mean, “I don’t dislike something,” which in a certain sense would mean that you think it is not bad. It would be the same as saying, “I don’t dislike it.” On a interesting note, that is actually what my wife said to me the first time I asked her, “What do you think of me?” She replied, “Well, I don’t dislike you (Kirai dewa arimasen.) We wound up married.
2) Yes, wa and ga. You are very sharp! Very, very sharp. I was wondering when this question was coming, as I caught it myself.
Hmmm…there have been books written on this subject, and so far none have really helped! Actually in lesson #11 when asking the question, we probably would have been better off using wa when asking,” Nihon wa suki desu ka?” However, this is such a confusing topic, even for us. We’ll have more, lots more about this in the learning center to come. Please hang on a minute. In the meantime an ok rule of thumb is to put the thing you like in front of the ga suki or ga kirai, e.g., (watashi wa) sushi ga suki (desu). Everything in parentheses is dropped when speaking to friends!!!!!! We’ll get to this in later lessons.
3) “Watashi” and “Anata” Similiar to the supplemental material provided in #11, they would go in the beginning as in the examples given at the end of the PDF notes in #11. In everyday conversation these would be dropped. As long as the two speaking people know who they are speaking to and about. It is quite a foreign concept for English speakers as the subject in our sentences is the starting point for everything! But in Japanese so much is inferred. Well cover a lot more of this.
Joey-san! Thank you for your inquisitive questions and picking up on the little details. Theses questions show to us that you are serious about Japanese, that you’re very sharp, and that you have a bright future with this language. Please keep the questions coming, we’ll do everything in our power to help. Please keep the emails and posts coming.
Joey says:
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
doumo arigatou gozaimasu Peter-san!
These answers have cleared up a lot for me, and thank-you for the compliments too 
I will be looking foreward towards the lessons that cover more on these topics.
Thank-you again!
Peter says:
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Joey-san,
Again, our pleasure. Anything we can do to help, just let us know.
Ganbatte kudasai!
Qtoo says:
April 5th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Konnichiwa!
Well.. i started these lesson’s a bit later than most ppl but i were wondering is the link for the audio track dead? sorry my bad english i live in finland so i hope you understand 
Im really excited in learning new language..
So keep up the good work
Jonas says:
April 5th, 2006 at 8:12 am
Qtoo-san: I think our host, libsyn, is stuggeling with dns problems, so this is the reason the older lessons are inaccessable. The guys over there are aware of the problem and working hard to resolve the issue.
Sorry for any inconvenience this might cause. Please bear with us a little longer.
Jonas
Thomas says:
April 20th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Isn’t “じゃありません” (ja arimasen) commonly used when speaking, instead of “dewa arimasen”?
And isn’t “anata” only used when referring to someone that has a lower status than yourself or for people that know eachother very well?
Kat says:
May 18th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Hi there!
It looks like the kanji close up link is also pointing to the review lesson link for this subject, instead of its separate file!! 
polo says:
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:36 pm
hi there i just wanna know how to write dishes cooked food in japanies and what is ga in nani ga ……?
John C. Briggs says:
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Poloさん,
Let me try
りょうり, ryouri (n,vs) cooking; cookery; cuisine
The が ga in なに が is a subject marking partilcle.
ジョン
curt says:
March 8th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
my girl friend told me to figure this one out!
it probably sounds stupid that im asking you this but i have tried to figure this out by myself with no success as of yet.
can you please tell me in english the meaning to:
watashi wa curt ga suki desu?
Henry Charlton says:
October 16th, 2007 at 2:41 am
In the vocabulary questions, a few are phrased like: パスタが有名な国はどこですか。
Why are “wa” and “ga” used like this? Isn’t the topic of the sentence “pasta” and the grammatical subject “famous country”? Shouldn’t the particles be the other way round? Am I missing something?
Paul says:
October 30th, 2007 at 2:05 am
Henry, my reading is that given that it’s a question whose answer is the name of a country, famous country is the topic. Pasta is the subject of the subordinate clause (pasta of a famous country) but not the main subject of the question, which is the name of the famous country. Subjects of subordinate clauses use “ga”.
Shane says:
December 30th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I am a late disciple of japanesepod101 and I have a question, a year after this episode was released.
My question is simply, does totemo suki dewa arimasen (とてもすきではありません) mean “I don’t really like it” or “I really don’t like it”?
maxiewawa says:
December 30th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Phew, that’s a very fine distinction, I’m not sure Japanese makes it.
maxiewawa says:
December 31st, 2007 at 3:44 pm
In Japanese, there is no way of making the distinction between “I don’t really like it” and “I really don’t like it”. I’m not sure there is much of a difference in English either!
Shane says:
December 31st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
“I really don’t like it” is harsher than “I don’t really like it”. The former is more like I hate it, whereas the second is more like saying it isn’t something you particular like.
Paul says:
December 31st, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Of course Shane is right, Maxie. The difference between don’t really and really don’t is huge. One says you very much dislike something, the other says you don’t like it a lot. Chances are you’d eat something you don’t really like just to be polite but you wouldn’t eat it if you really didn’t like it.
Shane, I can’t answer your question with certainty but I reckon with totemo at the start it means you really don’t like it. Maybe to approach those meanings in Japanese you could use zenzen (not at all) and amari (not much). Both are used with negatives.
Shane says:
January 1st, 2008 at 1:00 am
OK, cool. Thanks Paul.
But I always thought zenzen meant totally and could be used for positive and negative (blame Haruhi Suzumiya).
Paul says:
January 1st, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Well, it’s often used with the negative of the verb “understand” as in “zenzen wakarimasen”, which you could literally translate as “I totally don’t understand” or more elegantly as “I don’t understand at all”. But I have heard it used in positive sentences with the meaning of “totally”.
Dana says:
April 6th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
haha i was about to ask the same question Joey-san asked about the “ga” and the “wa” i hope things will clear up in the next lessons thanks alot Peter-san 
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Category: Beginner Lessons |
Grammar: de wa arimasen | Function: expressing dislikes | Topic: food | Politeness Level: Polite
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