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This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2006 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 1 . 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.
27 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #15 - Can you Guess Where I am From?”
Friday at 6:00 pm
How was this lesson?
Saturday at 2:05 am
Not many comment lol
Sunday at 1:43 pm
Why no か after どこからきました。 ??
Sunday at 5:39 pm
Usually we have a か on the end, but sometimes some people (especially girls!) just use their intonation to make it a question.
Monday at 12:29 pm
Interesting. In the 2+ years of studying, never had a tutor tell me that…hah, maybe because they were all male.
Monday at 4:45 pm
yeah, if you’re a dude, it’s best to keep the か.
a lot of guys learn japanese from female teachers or maybe from a japanese girlfriend. you’ll see it on this site or face-to-face. in a lot of the newer lessons we’ve been pointing out the differences between male and female speech-patterns.
so if you’re learning from men, that’s good. you’re probably already forming some good habits.
Monday at 10:48 pm
Thanks. I was just listening to the beginner lessons to get myself in the mindset to start studying again and was confused. Thanks for the clarification everyone.
Saturday at 11:55 pm
Konnichiwa
Anyone interested in Portuguese, visit this site for a Portuguese translation of this lesson.
http://aprenderjapones.blogs.sapo.pt/2008/02/01/
Doomo Arigatoo
Sunday at 6:26 am
Anatatachi ga daisuki desu yo! (i hope i said that right)
I LOVE YOU GUYS! Thank you, I’ve tried many Japanese teaching sites…THIS IS THE BEST ONE EVER! Thank you Pita-Sama I’d Like it to see you reply to my comment.
Sunday at 7:03 am
Anatatachi ga daisuki desu yo! (i hope i said that right)
I LOVE YOU GUYS! Thank you, I’ve tried many Japanese teaching sites…THIS IS THE BEST ONE EVER! Thank you Pita-Sama I’d Like it to see you reply to my comment.
(im sorry i posted twice but i for got to subscribe to the post so if you would please reply to this post instead of the other.)
THANK YOU!
Wednesday at 4:58 am
Hi. This is a REALLY old lesson, but I had a question.
In most of the scenarios, she uses the format “Nihon shussin desu.” In one scenario, however, she uses “Shusshin wa Nihon desu.” I understand the latter, but why is the first example lacking a “wa”? Shouldn’t it be “Nihon wa shusshin desu”, or “Watashi wa Nihon ga shusshin desu”?
Thanks! And just to slip it in, these podcasts are amazzzzzing.
Wednesday at 6:50 am
Hey Jack,
You’ll generally find that when speaking, Japanese only use as many parts of the sentence as are necessary. Especially when you’re talking about the subject, but ESPECIALLY when the subject is the first or second person pronoun, the subject is almost always dropped once it’s clear that everyone knows who is being talked about. I’d go so far as to say that it’s not just a matter of informal situations - even if you were in a somewhat polite situations, if you started every sentence about yourself with “watashi wa” people would find it unnecessary and tiresome pretty fast. In informal situations / with friends, they would tolerate it even less. Particles also often get dropped in informal situations, and you’ll come across more examples of this as you listen to more podcasts.
Sorry, just took a second look at this examples. “Shusshin wa Nihon desu” means “my homeland is Japan”. However, “Nihon shusshin desu” means “I am a native of Japan”, with the implied subject “watashi wa”. “Nihon wa shusshin desu” would mean “Japan is the place of origin” and doesn’t really say what you mean. What WAS probably dropped is the particle “no” - “Nihon no shusshin desu.” The possessive is appropriate here because Japan is the larger group from which you’re specifying. It’s the same when you say who you work for - “Toyota no kaishain desu”.
Wednesday at 6:53 am
Perhaps someone else can say whether “Nihon wa shusshin desu” is right or not… I’m reading it again and now I’m on the fence.
Wednesday at 8:23 am
“What WAS probably dropped is the particle “no” - “Nihon no shusshin desu.””
That makes perfect sense. Thanks a lot!
Monday at 6:12 am
I am going through the Beginner’s lessons and, at this point, I am starting to become confused at the list of kanji associated with the lesson, via the flashcards. For example, one of the kanji given is 聡. I can’t find anywhere in the lesson, or the ones before it, where it is used. Moreover, it does not appear to be 常用漢字 (jouyou kanji, or regular-use), so its introduction in a beginners lesson is doubly confusing.
Can anyone help me understand this?
Friday at 9:07 am
Hahaha! I wish I would have known about this before. I was talking to my friend Yuyo on Skype the other day. I thought I heard CRICKETS on his side of the mic. I looked it up in my dictionary and asked, but I asked if he had “kuriketto”.
“Nani?? Kuriketto? Wakaranain…”
Poor guy. But when we figured it out, it was so funny.
You guys simply rock!
I love this website. It’s so helpful and you guys are too funny. Thanks so much for this experience.
-Steph
Friday at 9:10 am
Oh also, this was a very good game. I like it.
Monday at 6:42 am
why did they use the katakana word サーモン、instead of the Japanese word さけ(鮭)for salmon?
Wednesday at 8:39 am
I don’t know where my knowledge fits! so here I’ll start with beginners lessons. Greatest way to learn while playing games.
Monday at 12:35 pm
i am somewhat confused right now i am trying to master all the kanji and kana as well as the language itself right now but i dont understand something about the kana. In this section the kana for the sound Ka in the word amerika is different than the kana in Kara. can someone tell my why please thank you very much
Monday at 2:11 pm
jesse-san,
ka in amerika is カ which is “katakana” and ka in “kara” is か which is “hiragana.”
Please check it out!
In Japanese there are two kinds of kana. Both of them are syllabic scripts, but the “katakana” is used for foreign origin words such as “amerika” which comes from “America.” Our recent lesson, All About #2 “Japanese Writing System” is just for you!
http://www.japanesepod101.com/2009/07/13/all-about-2-learn-the-japanese-writing-system/
Saturday at 11:58 am
Great lesson!
I was taking the content quiz and question #1 asked where Kelly was from. The choices were France, Italy, and Japan. She’s from Canada…I picked France just to pick something (thinking maybe there’s a Vancouver in France? you know us geographically challenged Americans) and the quiz told me that she was indeed from Canada. However that wasn’t an option…:???:
Monday at 10:19 am
Jenniferさん,
The questions and answers have been fixed
Thank you for pointing that out!!
Tuesday at 2:40 am
きました は 何 です か
what is kimashita ? i cant find a direct translation
Tuesday at 9:41 am
hayden bondさん,
きました is the polite way to say “came”.
Tuesday at 7:45 pm
私は王です。私は横浜出身です。野球はとても好きです。相撲も大好きです。
刺身は物凄いです。
また明日ね。
Friday at 6:29 am
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