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Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com. If someone asks you this question and an answer doesn’t pop into your head…..be scared! Today we continue you our look at Class 1 Japanese verbs! If you studied class 2 and class 3 Japanese verbs with us, you don’t want to miss today’s lesson!
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 6:08 am 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.
66 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #47 - What Day Is It Today?”
Wednesday at 6:08 am
皆さん, Today’s location is Singapooru・シンガポール
Hello to all our listeners in Singapore! よろしくおねがいします!
Wednesday at 6:15 am
The format for the Lesson Notes looks awesome - Thank you!
Wednesday at 6:22 am
I agree with Saru, the format is great.
Wednesday at 6:31 am
LoL - very funny episode and some great voice acting too!
I will definitely use this: こうさんです!
and very much loving ”りこんのはんたいはなんですか。”
That’s some prime comedy there (makes it easier to remember).
Wednesday at 7:16 am
Hi everyone,
The design of the lesson notes is nice. However I will really miss the furigana. Having the hiragana and the japanese versions side by side do not make it for me because what is great with the furigana is that the pronunciation of the kanji being located just above is far better to let the visual memory work.
Sorry for this complaints. Your are doing a great job and I should probably not forget that it is for free. Thanks again,
Hervé.
Wednesday at 7:22 am
Hi again,
I forgot to point out that the space between the speech turns was really convenient for me to take notes.
Hervé.
Wednesday at 7:54 am
Another great lesson. Great to learn Hantai and Kousan.
I am not too keen on the new lay out. I much prefer it when you use furigana above the Kanji, I find this a much better way of learning Kanji..and it seemed to complement the Kanji Close Up really well.
Sorry…should not be negative as you guys do a great job.
I have to agree with Peter-san..what a great script, very funny
O-genki de
Steve
Wednesday at 8:13 am
I just heard the informal mp3….Hahahahaha! that was so funny at the end when Natsuko said やっときづいたか Which I believe translates as something like ‘At long last’ So I suppose in this case it is her saying to herself ‘At long last he’s got it’
Wednesday at 8:19 am
Natsuko-san is great, isn’t she
Your translation is quite good. Just wanted to add that “ki ga tsuku” (or shortened down to kiduku) means “to notice”, so another valid tranlation is “he noticed at last”. Wether or not you would say it like that in english is another question though.
note: romaji “du” is a “tsu” with the 2 dots (tenten)
Wednesday at 8:25 am
Thank you Jonas-san
Sorry Natsuko-san.
??::???::???::???:
I am sorry…I noticed I did not add -san at the end of Natsuko…
So is づ pronounced as ‘du’ or ‘zu’ I never really understand…and to be honest it is one of the times when Romaji is not very helpful. I noticed you wrote down ‘Kiduku’ きづく so I guess it is pronounced ‘du’….Aaaaaargh!!!!!!!!
Wednesday at 8:53 am
steve-san - it’s pronounced “zu”, not “du”… the reason some romaji writers use “du” is because there are two “zu”’s ず and づ, they need something to distinguish them when typing. However, it is also possible to pronounce both D and Z… for example as in the above you could pronounce it Kidzuku, but never Kiduku.
As always, my advice is to always ignore what romaji tells you, and stick with kana and actual pronunciation that you hear
Wednesday at 8:56 am
I would say that the “du” romanization of づ is more systematic but “zu” is a better representation of what it sounds like. You cant say that it is pronounced “du” or “zu”, you still need to know what sounds these are in Japanese. The reason you use “du” us this:
たちつてと = ta ti tu te to or ta chi tsu te to
だぢづでど = da di du de do or da ji zu de do
I prefer the left one, as Jonas, but I recommend to loose romazi as soon as possible
Another reason for du is that zu is ambiguous between ず and づ
Wednesday at 9:05 am
David Hallgren-san and RobGillon-san
Thanks for the information. Oh! believe me, I try never to use Romaji. I use it here for the sake of simplicity when typing (in other words I am very lazy) It is just that I learnt that づ is pronounced ‘zu’ but I have seen some Romaji that as it as ‘du’ which lead to the confusion.
Has for: たちつてと I have learnt it as:
たちつてと ta chi tsu te to
だぢづでど da ji zu de do
Wednesday at 9:36 am
Steve-san - you are correct in what you have learned. I have never heard that ちつぢ have been romanised as ti, tu and di, and when you listen to them pronounced out loud, you’ll notice that it’s definately wrong.
Wednesday at 11:45 am
Well, it’s not really wrong per se. That’s an older romanization system (whose name I can’t remember now). The same system does し as si. When you come up with a system for putting non-roman characters into roman letters, there are usually at least several ways to go about it. You can go for consistency, faithfulness to the way it’s written, faithfulness to the way it’s pronounced, or some combination. So no valid romanization system is really wrong. They’re just different.
I definitely agree, though, that everybody who’s learning should try to stay away from rouma-ji as much as possible, and stick with kana (and eventually kanji). The way I learned them was just plain, boring repitition. We would learn several new characters per day in class, and later I would fill a page writting all the characters we knew so far over and over. It’s not exactly the most exciting way to do it, but it works.
There is a really easy way to switch between English and Japanese input in Windows. If you already have Japanese input installed and working, go to Regional and Language options, click on the Languages tab, then click on the Details button. At the top, set your default input language to “Japanese - Microsoft IME ***” where *** is all the stuff that comes after IME. Then OK out of all the open windows. Now, when you start Windows, your language will automatically be set to Japanese. The great thing about the Japanese IME is that it has several modes, and it defaults to direct input (no conversion from what you type into Japanese). This means you can type in English without changing your language back and forth between Japanese and English (which is how I’m typing this post right now). You can switch between direct input and hiragana input by simply pressing Alt+` (this is the little accent mark next to the 1 key on US keyboards and has ~ above it. I’m not sure about non-US keyboards). So Windows users can’t use the lazy excuse for using rouma-ji now.
Hehe.
Wednesday at 11:53 am
For the curious, IME stands for Input Method Editor. It’s basically a little program that sits on your computer and coverts roman characters into another character set like Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Greek, etc. They’re wonderful because they let you use other languages without having to have a specific keyboard for that language. ^_^
Wednesday at 11:58 am
Oh, I forgot to mention that those steps for setting the default input language are for Windows XP. It may be slightly different for other versions, but I don’t have access to Win9x or 2000 to see for sure.
Wednesday at 12:01 pm
Jason-san - I take your point. The other romanisation system you’re thinking of is Kunrei-shiki (or Nihon-shiki), though at times, it can seem like a totally different language, for example, it would take me ages to figure out that Huzi-san is meant to be Mt. Fuji! Anyway, enough talk about romanisation!
Wednesday at 12:34 pm
Great podcast today! Very funny.
ネイト
Wednesday at 12:48 pm
haha awesome lesson (as if I have to say it)!
Natsuko-san! I love your name, I just learned the “summer” character last night so “summer child” is just so awesome!
I love the new lesson layout. I do miss the furigana a bit as when I read the kanji version then look to the hiragana version I can’t tell what syllables belong to what kanji sometimes. (I can look in kanji close up though
)
Wednesday at 12:53 pm
Ps. Take-san is the ultimate japanese straight-man! I mean the straight-man like in a comedy duo. not like.. straight.. man..
Wednesday at 12:57 pm
ps II. This podcast reminds me of a previous one:
Iru no hantai nan desu ka? neko!
( I need to get hiragana input on this thing!!):???:
Wednesday at 2:02 pm
takase san,
the new lesson notes format is great. とても便利。
Marvin
Wednesday at 2:17 pm
The si, ti, tu is the system I learned.
What is good is that it makes you realize that romanji is not real and pushes you to use kana faster.
My MAC recognize both ti and chi as ち。
MAC good.
Wednesday at 2:55 pm
I’m continually amazed at the new tech things you keep adding! And every day I can’t wait to hear the new episode! I’m learning so much! Thank you.
I have a question: how come you don’t put the informal audio file on the iTunes download? Maybe it keeps it less cluttered? I would like to be able to download the informal to my iPod.
Thanks, again for everything!
Wednesday at 2:58 pm
I wouldn’t mind being able to get the informals from iTunes either.
Wednesday at 3:08 pm
on the tsu dzu zu du, chi di zi ji question:
how would you write “dougall” in katakana? or “dude”? or “deep”? or “demon”? or “lazy”?
or do they just not have those sounds in spoken japanese? like the “u” sound in “hurt”. or the “v” in “love” (hmm I chose love and hurt as my words.. freudian slip?
)
(I remember we tried to teach a guy from japan how to say “pervert”. paabaat was as close as we got
.. don’t ask why we were teaching him that..
Wednesday at 3:13 pm
Liz and Jason,
If I remember correctly this question has been asked a lot in other comments
(the informal mp3 in itunes thing).
I don’t mean to speak for the JPOD team, but I think the response was that the informal is a bonus track only, and that they can’t really PROMOTE them as PROPER japanese lesson. It would be kind of.. irresponsible(?) A word kind of like that but not as strong. haha
does this make sense? jpod member will hopefully clarify
Wednesday at 3:32 pm
Since it’s used mostly for foreign derived words now, sometimes new characters get invented to handle new sounds. I personally think of these as “extended” katakana as opposed to the “standard” katakana which have hiragana equivalents. For example, there is no “jay” sound in standard katakana. So my first name is written ジェイソン. Extended katakana tend to combine a normal sized character and a smaller character in order to get some of these foreign sounds. You could write demon as ディーモン and deep as ディープ. Note that you can’t just invent new katakana on your own. Leave that to the native speakers.
Normally v sounds get changed to b. So love -> ラブ. But there was a v sound added by adding tenten to ウ, though my sensei said it’s not widely accepted. Then love -> ラヴ.
Here is a chart from the MS IME that shows all the rouma-ji to kana coversions. For example: to get デ with the small ィ, you type “dhi”.
http://www.fresh-hope.com/jason/ImeJPCL170.htm
Wednesday at 3:34 pm
Oh, and a lot of times they’ll aproximate sounds they don’t have directly. Like lazy would probably be written as レイジー
Wednesday at 3:50 pm
ah thanks jason-san! Yes now that I think about it I have seen the ‘U’ sound with a tenten. U”ery CleU”er.
Wednesday at 7:38 pm
For those trying to get informal into iPod, I use netscape and just right click on informal track, choose ’save target link as’, then after downloading is complete I click ’show file location’ and just drag track into my playlist in iTunes. It is simpler than it sounds. I enjoy listening to informal track not so much to use the informal, but to learn to listen and understand it.
I miss the furigana, but love the new format.
Wednesday at 9:43 pm
皆さんこんいちは
Yes indeed, the new format looks great, it is easier to trackdown the Kana equivalent while reading the Kanji. Great Job!!! すごい!
いっぱいようじおあります!!!(is いっぱい acceptable for this statement?). How about this, ようじがいっぱいです, is this form acceptable? Is ippai ok to be used? if not, what’s the most appropriate adjective?
またあとで
じゃンポール
Wednesday at 9:55 pm
ごめんなさい
I was trying to say: I have a lot to do in the office, a lot of business to take care of.
I’m very busy this week that I can’t listen to the podcast in 10-15 minutes straight! I’m too envious with the people here, they catch up with all the lessons. (I wanna cry–>
; there it goes)
Regards
JP
Wednesday at 10:11 pm
泣(な)かないで下(くだ)さい、JPさん。私達(わたしたち)は応援(おうえん)してあげますから。
Wednesday at 10:45 pm
Hi Jason San,
nakanaide kudasai JP san watashitachi wa ouen shite arimasukara.
I would very much appreciate if you could include an explanation. Sorry, Very Beginner Here! hehe
Regards,
JP
Wednesday at 10:59 pm
Again today`s episode was also a great one…
And the word which i found intresting was…記念日(きねんび)…
Natsuko San, I hope I can use for wishing others too…like
きねんび おめでとうございます ?
Can I ?
Can we come up with some more おめでとうs
like….
1. When a friend clears his exams….
2. When a person gets an award for something….
3. When a person gets a promotion….
4. When a person(CEO) bags a project…and we as an employee
want to congratulate him on that success…
I am asking this since, I have gone thru these situations….
and everytime i wanted to say some officila things….but
had no right words/patterns for those expressions….
May be someone friend from our community can point out
to some link or do…
Prem
Wednesday at 11:03 pm
sorry i mistyped the last word as do….instead of so…
to some link or so…
Wednesday at 11:07 pm
Ah, sorry.
泣(な)かないで下(くだ)さい = please don’t cry
The negative, non-post form of a verb + で + 下(くだ)さい = “please don’t do (verb)”
私達(わたしたち) = we
応援(おうえん)する = to cheer for/encourage.
あげる = to give.
Without getting too into detail now (giving and recieving in Japanese is a bit complicated), when used in a construction like this, 応援してあげます the あげます here means we’ll 応援する for you as a favor to you/for your benefit. I could have just said 応援します and it would mean essentially the same thing, but it looses some of it’s friendliness like that. So, in all we have:
“Don’t cry, JP-san. We’ll cheer you on!”
Wednesday at 11:29 pm
Prem-san, I’m not Natsuko-san, but maybe I can help.
1. If by “clear” you mean “passed”, you could say:
試験(しけん)の合格(ごうかく)おめでとうございます。
試験 = test, exam
合格 = success, passing (an exam). You can also use it as a verb 合格する to mean to succeed, to pass.
2. Maybe:
ご褒美(ほうび)おめでとうございます。
ご褒美 = reward, prize
3. I’m not sure what word they use for a business promotion. But basically you could use that word + おめでとう
4. You could probably say:
御成功(*せいこう)おめでとうございます。
Wednesday at 11:30 pm
In my post to JP-san, that should be “non-past” not “non-post.” DOH!
Wednesday at 11:40 pm
Ah! The last part of my post to Prem-san was cut off. This should go at the end:
成功(せいこう) = a general term for success
*御 = this character can be read either お or ご. As you may already know, you can make many nouns and ajectives more polite by adding お or ご at the beginning of the word. However, a word can only take one or the other, not both. I’m not sure which ones goes with 成功 so I left it in kanji. I’m guessing ご but I’m not positive about that.
Wednesday at 11:40 pm
なつこです!
Thank you again for all the posts!
Steve-san, please feel free to call me Natsuko!
jay-san, thank you for the comments about my name! Yes, I was born in summer so my parents simply named me 夏子. I really like the idea myself.
Prem Keswani-san,
Yes, you can use おめでとう and おめでとうございます in various occasions. I will definitely say おめでとうございます in all the occasions from 1 to 4 you gave. It’s a really nice word, so please try and use it whenever you want to congratulate somebody!
Thursday at 12:00 am
Thanks a lot Jason San..
夏子さんありがとうございます。
With inputs from you guys, I can
unhesitatingly use these sentences..:)
Thanks…
Prem
Thursday at 12:12 am
Funny lesson
you make my day 
Jay, Jonas: thanX very much for your advice. I checked the Heising-webpage…hmm, that sounds logical!
Tanti saluti
Thursday at 12:27 am
JP-san,
The sense that I get from 用事(じょうじ) is that it’s more like “personal errand” or “plans” rather than “business work.” I would personally use the word 仕事(しごと) instead. I think it would be better to do something like (and I’m not a native speaker, so take this for what it’s worth
):
仕事(しごと)ですごく忙(いそが)しいです。
I’m very busy at/with work.
忙しい = busy
or
私(わたし)には仕事(しごと)がたくさんあります。
私(わたし)には仕事(しごと)がいっぱいあります。
Both of these say, “I have a lot of work.” The only difference is the first one uses たくさん instead of いっぱい, which is a little more formal.
Thursday at 12:42 am
Oh, and just FYI JP-san,
いっぱい is actually an adverb, not an adjective. So it’s modifying the verb not the noun, and adverbs are usually put right before the verb they modify. So while,
いっぱい人(ひと)がいますね。
is not technically wrong, it’s better to say,
人(ひと)がいっぱいいますね。
Both of these mean “there are lot of people, aren’t there?”
Thursday at 12:50 am
And that should be 用事(ようじ) not 用事(じょうじ). Man, this is just not a good typing night for me.
Thursday at 1:07 am
Hi みなさん
I’m still way back in lesson 34 so trying desperately to catch up! I have noticed ピーターさん saying そのちょうし (sorry I hope this is the right way to spell chyoushi) to かぜのりさん. I thought ちょうし meant ‘health/condition’. Can someone please tell me what does it mean in this context?
Many thanks - I don’t post much but I love reading your submissions and the great atmosphere in here.
Mark
Thursday at 1:14 am
Mark-san, 調子(ちょうし) does mean health/condition, but it also has a LOT of other possible meanings. My dictionary (Jquicktrans which is a wonderful and cheap offline Japanese dictionary for Windows. Google it!) says: “tune, tone, key, pitch, time, rhythm, vein, mood, way, manner, style, knack, condition, state of health, strain, impetus, spur of the moment, trend.” So when Peter-san says, その調子, it means something like “that’s the way!” I think it’s short for その調子でいいです, litterally “doing it that way is good.”
Thursday at 1:20 am
Jason-san, thanks for all the help!
Welcome to the community; it is great to have you!
Thursday at 2:05 am
Peter-san, you’re very welcome, and it’s great to be here.
Thursday at 4:44 am
Wow, so now I know how people feel when they come to comment and there are already a million there… normally I’ve written a large part of the million
I really like the new format. Very effecient, looks nice
Prem-san,
I wasn’t able to find any clearly delineated guidelines yet on using は multiple times in one sentence, but I did find this link which touches on it a bit:
http://www.nihongoresources.com/grammar/particles.htm#empathic
You might find that interesting. In the meantime, as Jason-san mentioned yesterday, just be aware that while it’s possible, it’s not very common. Keeping in mind that the topic itself is often omitted in Japanese, you can understand how it would be uncommon to see more than one topic in a single sentence.
Thursday at 12:00 pm
Hi Jason san
Thanks very much… now I see - it’s actually あさめしまえ!
Mark
Thursday at 12:07 pm
あさめしまえ? I had to look that one up. I’ve never actually heard it before. My personal first choice would have been 楽勝(らくしょう). I’m not saying あさめしまえ is wrong or anything.
Thursday at 3:39 pm
Jason San,
どもありがとございます。 きょもしごとがいっぱいあります。 よこそいっらしゃいます ジェソンさん。
Like Peter said, it’s great to have you answering questions around like most people do here.
夏子さん
お名前はすごいですね。
じゃ、また
ジヤンポール
Tuesday at 1:59 pm
Hello,
In the last few lessons, Peter indicating class 1, 2, 3 verb…etc.
can someone point me where to find out more info about this ?
or there is a class that I missed ?
thanks much !
Michael
Sunday at 7:54 am
I don’t get why the additional dialog in the informal version isn’t translated?? How should we learn from that?
Sunday at 9:08 pm
i wasn’t here back when this lesson was recorded so i never saw this one until today. i listened to the informal, and it almost seemed more like a bonus track that simple informal version. i’ll look into it on monday!
btw - we try to catch all the posts, but a lot of times on the old lessons like this one, we might miss a new comment, so if you find some glitch in the site or something like this, it’s a lot faster if you send an e-mail to contactus@japanesepod101.com.
Monday at 10:39 am
Thanks, I always take my time to finish a lesson, so I often discover a lot of errors, and will keep you guys updated
Monday at 11:48 am
works for me, dude!
there are lot of oversights in some of these old lessons cuz there were like only 2 people doing everything, so you’re giving us a chance to smooth out the old stuff. hopefully you won’t find as many in the newer lessons!
marky
Friday at 1:28 am
rikon sounds like reconsider
Friday at 2:34 pm
magic Toaster
It’s nice mnemonic??
Tuesday at 10:44 am
hi everyone great program i really learnd alot natsko got a great voice tottemo suki desu keep it up
Tuesday at 6:05 pm
airam-san,
Thank you for your great comment!
Please keep learning Japanese with us!
Friday at 5:36 am
今日は何の日ですか。
今日は水曜日ですよ、正解でしょう。
それだけですか。
今日は十五日、水曜日です。正解ですか。
それだけですか。
今日は三月十五日、水曜日でしょう。
も一度を聞きます。今日は何の日ですか。
わかりません、降参です。
ヒントを開けます。離婚の反対はなんですか。
あ、結婚記念日。おめでとう。
今日は何の日だ。
今日は水曜日だよ。正解。
それだけだ。
十五日水曜日だよ、正解だよね。
それだけだ。
三月十五日水曜日。
も一度聞く、今日は何の日。
わかりません。降参。
ヒントは開けるね。離婚の反対は何だ。
あ、結婚記念日、おめでとう。
また、ね
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