Hi everyone! Seems I’m the first today…
It’s not really in response to the new lesson, which, I have to admit, I haven’t yet looked at - I read the comments from yesterday’s lesson and found:

“another thing is that we were still wondering if you need romaji for a separate informal version. Please give us any suggestion and lots of complaints!
Takase” oh, NOOOO! What do you mean “if you need..” I’m totally completely utterly lost with out it! PLEAAASE Takase, don’t do this no no no don’t take the romaji away … can’t be that I’m the only one so dumb… oh my… promise that I will study faster… (however, I have a daytime job…)

Another thing: I’m right now living in Italy, and when I open the ipod stuff, it proposes me to “write the 1st review” ( I mean, in italian). Is that what Gevorg was telling us about a couple of days ago, when he was writing sth in french? Does this mean there’s no review of this FANTASTIC PODCAST in italian? I’ll write one subito, of course.

BTW: I’m using Mac - of course!
Tanti saluti

Penelope-san, thanks for posting! Wow, Italy! Ciao! Which part? How’s the weather, and what are you doing there? Sounds so great!
About the romaji, we would NEVER take that away, as even I still check it out. We’re just adjusting some things. Please keep the input coming.
Did you say itunes review. Yep, that’s what Gevorg was talking about. Wow, an Italian Itunes review!!!! We don’t have one of those, and you know how we love itunes reviews!!!!!! If you have the time, that would be great!
Thank you again, and keep the great posts coming! Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu!

Sakura! Hey there. Great to see you back on the board!

Penelope-san.
No..it is impossible…I am the only dumb one here. I have been trying to teach myself Japanese since I was 12 years old (Ummm! *COUGH*) and I still can’t get past ‘Konnichiwa, o-genki deus ka’
Steve

Penelope-san,
try this and see if you find it useful in your studies of Hiragana and Katakana:

http://www.davidhallgren.se/nihon/kanaPractice.asp?Hiragana=true

(Link to my own website, I hope that’s alright with the admins…)

David-san, ようこそ！Welcome, it’s great to have you!! Thanks for the great post and the itunes review! Our first Swedish itunes review and our first Italian itunes review, tomorrow is going to be a great day at the office! Thanks guys for making that possible! We should also mention that this week we’ve had a ton of itunes reviews, and it has kept us in great spirits all week! Thanks!!
Physics, wow that is great and a very nice home page! Thanks for sharing that with the community! I am sure it will come in handy. Also, we received your email, so please expect a reply soon.

Steve-san, oh yes, this is a gem. お疲れさま！

David-san,

Thank you for answering JP-san’s question last night regarding my post. I had signed off already.

I like your site, very well done. I might want to peek at the kanji section and the genki section, if you don’t mind. We don’t use the Genki books in class (although I wish we did, our books are 20+ years old!), but I use them for when I am studying at home.

Today’s podcast made me laugh out loud. Good thing no one was in the car with me on the drive in, however I’m sure other drivers thought I was very odd.

haha a lesson close to my heart.
I was ALWAYS making up stories *cough* * lies* about why I hadn’t done my homework or why I couldn’t hang out with those.. annoying people..

Great site david!

You’re very welcome Nate-San ^^ !

By the way, does anybody here like J-Pop ? I loooooooooove J-Pop !!
I really like 島谷ひとみ、hitomi、and 浜崎あゆみ。 (Shimatani Hitomi, hitomi and Hamasaki Ayumi).
I just got Hamasaki Ayumi’s CD and DVD for my birthday last week ^^. Yay !

Hi there, I’ve done it:

Questo podcast è fantastico per chiunque vuole imparare il giapponese o vuole/deve mettere piede in giappone (o vuole semplicemente “fare colpo” qui in italia ). Ogni giorno una lezione di circa 10 minuti con concetti chiari, parole e frase utili in contesti concreti (al ristorante, alla stazione). Tutte le parole vengono spezzettati in bocconcini palatabili, ripetuti in diversi frasi semplici, il tutto in una atmosfera di gioiosa amicizia tra scherzi e risate. Peter, Sakura, Natsuko e gli altri sono simpaticissimi e vi faranno parlare in giapponese in poche battute. In più, c’è la “sbob” della lezione pronto sul ipod in inglese, romanj e giapponese.

Which means: guys you’re great and your podcast is fantastic Italians put everything in more words than necessary

THANKS for keeping the romanji :grin that makes my day .
Steve, that’s so sweet of you to say (albeit not very encouraging… ), at least I’m not alone!
David, nice website! The hiragana practice page is great, thanX so much! I will certainly use it. I can guess some of the swedish stuff on your homepage - really funny.

I’m living in Cagliari, that’s on the southern tip of Sardinia. It’s an island just south of Corsica, north-west of Sicily. We’re much closer to africa than to the rest of italy!
In fact, people here refer to the mainland as “il continente” (the continent) which had me wondering a lot in the beginning (like: “oh, you’ve gone to the continent lately… terrible weather, don’t you think?” and me wondering what continent the heck… America?? Wasn’t I clearly speaking of ROME?? My italian so bad ?)

The island is smaller than Sicily, with only 1.5 mio habitants, most of whom concentrate on the North-eastern border (La Maddalena) and in Cagliari. Today we had beautiful weather, about 60 ° F (=16°C) and the meditteranean sea was light blue-green, because we have “Maestral” winds from north.
Yep, we had lunch outside in the sun. Pasta, of course
No, you don’t take baths in the sea right now, except if you wear neopren or fish scales , but traditionally I take the first bath around easter - that’s a very quick bath, though (literally: cool). But it’s a good time to go sailing now, few boats around and a nice breeze.

Greetings to all of you from Sardinia (hey, if you happen to look it up on a map: it’s sometimes missing, yeah, incredible, but really funny!)
Penelope

Saru

I can send them to you - if you send me your email address - as a zip file.
Its a little under 17mgs.

My email: michael_cassidy@condenast.com

David-san,

Great website! I will use it for sure! I really like being able to select a customized subset to be tested on. I know some of the hiragana very well, but there are others that I really need to be drilled on. Thanks for posting your site!

I find this guy a lot easier to understand than Kaze.

My favourite part of the dialogues is always the Japanese word for ‘huh’:

eeeeEEEEEEE?? (with a raising inflection)

ps what is the first thing we hear in the jingle? 日本語。。。でございます

I noticed that the file that should be beginner lesson 30 is there twice, and once labeled as chuukyuu lesson one, and the real chuukyuu lesson is missing! Please fix it!

penelope-san, thank you for the Italian review! Arigatou gozaimasu! Oh, and your description of Cagliari just melted me away. Aa, nante suteki nano! Got me in this dreamy mood today Thanks!

David-san, thank you for listening and for your review in the Swedish iTMS!サイト、とてもかっこいいし便利ですね。The kanji keyword test is challenging and fun! これからも宜しくお願いしますね！

…I noticed that the file that should be beginner lesson 30 is there twice, and once labeled as chuukyuu lesson one, and the real chuukyuu lesson is missing! Please fix it!

Justin, thanks for spotting the mistake. The problem is fixed and the correct audio track should now show up for Intermediate Lesson #1.

It’s great knowing that we don’t need to hire a dedicated QA/QC (testing) team and that we can always count on our devoted fans to let us know when we make a blooper.

Thanks for your understanding and continued support.

You guys rock!

Tech Guy

All the best

David-san, you site is awesome. It’s very a clean design and super functional. I’ll be using this alot in the future.

Today’s podcast was great (as usual). I really really wish we could get by with just saying I’ve got something to do in the States. That’s no good enough for some people. Some people just seem to want to know your whole schedule sometimes. Whew, I can’t tell you how helpful “yoji ga arimasu” would be.

Does ごしゅじん work for both husband and wife?

My wife is taller than me so that won’t work.
Anyone know of the equivilent of spouse?

Husband.
Related to speaker is Shujin.　主人　・　しゅじん
Related to someone else is Go-shujin.　ご主人　・　ごしゅじん
Wife.
Related to speaker is Kanai. / tsuma. 家内　・　かない　/　妻　・　つま
Related to someone else is Okusan.　奥さん　・　おくさん

Well until about 1920 women would lose their US citicenship if they married a non-citizen.

Anyway, what I was looking for was ‘general’ terms like spouse and siblings as oppose to wife, husband, brother, and sisters.

I’ve ranked my brain but I don’t remember learning them.

I’ve don’t remember ‘tsuma’ for wife; thanks for a new word.

Michael D. Cassidy-san.

I forgot to add:

Parents.
Related to speaker is: Ryoushin. 両親　・　りょうしん　
Related to someone else is: Go-ryoushin.　ご両親　・　ごりょうしん

Steve

Very cool! EVEN the words for cousins, nieces and nephews - I’ve many of others.

Hi, i’m totally new here (and to the Japanese language sort of), how do I get a hold of the first podcasts because these later ones sound kind of hard..
So any help would be greatly appreciated!
arigatou gozaimasu

Just to expand a bit on what Jonas said, the masu stem form of the verb is called (in English at least) the conjunctive form. This form is very useful since you can attach certain other verbs or contructions to it to get all sorts of nifty shades of meaning. Jonas already explained a good one:

+ に

which means “to B in order to do A.” So, 勉強（べんきょう）しに図書館（としょかん）に来（き）ました, is “I came to the library to study. B can be any kind of motion verb like 行（い）く, 来（く）る, 参（まい）る, etc.

Another good one is:

+ 始（はじ）める
or
+ 終（お）わる

Which means to start or stop doing something, respectively. So, ４年間（ねんかん）前（まえ）、日本語（にほんご）を勉強（べんきょう）し始（はじ）めました, is “I started studying Japanese 4 years ago.” And, 明日（あした）、車（くるま）を直（なお）し終（お）わります, is “I’ll finish fixing the car tomorrow.”

I know there’s a difference between 直す and 治す, but I can’t remember which is which. Help please?

Jason-san,

I am not 100% sure, but I believe 治す has the connotation of “healing” (regarding health), whereas 直す is more like “correct, fix, repair”, etc. Also, I don’t believe 治す is commonly affixed to the stem of a verb like 直す is (if it can be at all).