There’s one part here where Peter translated the アメリカのニューヨーク line as just New York, leaving the “America” word out. While it’s common knowledge that New York is located in America, I believe this will baffle and may not be obvious to Japanese beginners since the pronunciation is different to a certain extent.

Also Peter mentioned that the listeners can find out more 歌舞伎町 by checking out the website - however not a single piece of information can be found, not even on the lecture notes.

Is there something I need to download to view these files, or do I just click and listen?

There are errors on the .pdf lesson guide: it’s Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Auckland, New Zealand, not San Paulo or Oakland. It’s probably easy to make that mistake though since an ‘n’ is pronounced in ‘Sao Paulo’ and Auckland and Oakland, CA probably have the same katakana.

Great site! I’m trying to relearn the Japanese that I’ve forgotten from high school, and these 15-minute chunks are perfect.

Davidさん、
True. The sentence should be
doko kara kimashita ka.
However, questions can be formed in Japanese speech by using a rising intonation at the end of the sentence.
doko kara kimashita (rising intonation).
Also, the fact that the sentence begins with “where” pretty much guarentees that this is a question.
As Peterさん says very often, “In Japanese, much is implied, much is assumed”.
I don’t think this would happen in a book. This is more about speech.
ジョン

Davidさん、
どういたしまして　douitashimashite.
ジョン

Amanda さん,
The particle ね is often heard at the end of a phrase in spoken Japanese. It sommehow expresses “the speaker’s request for confirmation or agreement from the hearer about some shared knowledge” (quoted from A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar). It cannot be easily translated into English but it will soon become familiar to you if you follow these podcasts.
Indeed, Japanese have no articles such as “the” or “a”. The “reason” for that is… well some languages use them, others don’t ! (as far as I know, Russian or classical Latin, among others, are in this case).

Hey, you know the whole Nipon versus Nihon thing . . . well me and my father were watching the spanish news and they were talking about the Japanese governement ” El gobierno Nipon,” and then I asked my dad what Nipon meant and he said that it meant that it meant “From Japan,” then I heard the lesson, I wa wondering if you could clear this out for, but besides that, i have to say, that these lessons are wonerful, thanks!

I have to ask, how would you convert “Great Falls” to katakana/romaji? The part that trips me up is the “LLS”. If I were to say where I’m from, I’d need some help. Amerika no Gareito Faruso? I’m sure it would be easier to say the next largest city (Washinguton Di Shi), but that’s 20 miles away.

いいえ バージニア　です
(no, it’s Virginia)

アメリカのバージニア洲のグレートフォールズ

Thank you for your help.
For some reason you have to add the www in front of alc.co.jp for it to work. (I had to look it up using google).

ローリチバロンです

lololol

somebody should fix that. hahahaha. oh, i guess that’ll be me. thanks for pointing that out!

marky

angelaさん、 welcome aboard!

our new years resolution is tidying up the “kindness” like that.

while you’re here, be sure to check out the recent lessons and the forum to get in touch with the most active part of the community!

どうぞ宜しくお願いします！
dozo yoshiku onegai shimasu!

marky

oops i made a mistake with the kanji on the first polite question.
I meant どこから来ました。

Thanks!

Hi, thanks again for this podcast. I have a question though,
if I were to say a specified anwser like Toronto or something would this be correct?

Kanada no Ontario no Toronto desu.

thanks

the best language site Thanks alot!!!