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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 2 . 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.
51 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S2 #6 - Winter Plans”
Wednesday at 6:50 pm
Mina-san, Mina-san, today’s location is カーツーム・Kātsūmu - hello to all of our listeners in Khartoum, Sudan! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
Wednesday at 9:41 pm
Hello to everybody, first this time!
Guys is a promise to put me a day when I finish with my exams, for lucky all right for the moment
Please keep going!
Wednesday at 10:37 pm
ピーターさん,
OK I have been meaning to talk to you about this for a while. You have such a great knowledge of language, I am always surprised when I hear you say it. And you say it too often. You are setting a bad example for everyone.
The work “unique” means “one of a kind”. Something cannot be “very unique” because it would mean “very one of a kind”. It is either unique or it isn’t. Here are some notes from the web.
Very unique
Unique means “one of a kind,” so something cannot be very unique or quite unique. (It is possible, however, for something to be almost unique.) In such cases, use the word distinctive instead, e.g., “Barry Sanders’ running style is quite distinctive.”
Thanks
John C. Briggs
Thursday at 12:44 am
I agree that Sakuraさん’s ふ is very cute. ^_^
Thursday at 1:28 am
There’s a 3rd meaning of “unique” in m-w.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/unique
It just sounds wrong to me to describe something as unique without qualifiers. “This car is unique.” The flow is all wrong. “This car is fairly unique” sounds much better.
Thursday at 1:55 am
Unique. Its a favorite of grammar buffs to argue about.
I’m with you if it only meant “one of a kind”, but it has several definitions, including the more modern meaning of “Unusual”.
I find it a little funny that in the definition they say “It is possible, however, for something to be almost unique”.
Thursday at 2:20 am
If you just substitute “one of a kind” for “unique” you can see if something works or not
“almost one of a kind” (OK)
“very one of a kind” (wrong)
If the word “unique” starts to be acceptable in the diluted form in MW usage 3, it will lose its value in the language.
People have made the word “bad” mean “good”, but that really is not helpful. I think generally we are better off having “good” mean “good” and “bad” mean “bad” and “unique” mean “unique”.
John
Thursday at 2:44 am
“one of a kind” is only one definition of the word:
Very unusual (OK)
” bad” is ” good” and “good” is “bad” -Clearly we are not taking about slang here, we are talking about dictionary forms of the word.
“If the word “unique” starts to be acceptable in the diluted form in MW usage 3, it will lose its value in the language.”
Its been acceptable since the 19th century… Language is an evolving thing… it changes with time.
Plus ピーターさん comes from economics and marketing, where this word is heavily used as “unusual”.
Thursday at 2:57 am
BTW: I really liked this lesson… I want to go to Hawaii too!
Thursday at 3:05 am
Well, I guess in the end we will need to see an example sentence from Peter PODcasts to see how it is being used in context to determine if his usage is right or wrong.
Personally, I think that the example of “good” or “bad” here is relevant. Things that are “slang” today can wind up in the dictionary tomorrow if widely accepted and used. That is exactly what happened to “unique”. It adopted the minor meaning (for better for worse).
Since Peter is a habitual offender of the adverb/adjective “verb”, I think his use of “verb unique” is more than likely just another overblown usage.
By the way, there is not greater abuser of the language of marketing, so let’s not hold them up as a model. For them, abuse of superlatives is a way of life, not a model for the rest of us that wish to communicate clearly our thoughts.
John
Thursday at 3:09 am
ピーターさん、
As always, great lesson today. I really think this style of breaking down the sentences is helpful. Particles are forever a struggle with me.
ジョン
Thursday at 3:17 am
Below 80% of the American Heritage Usage Panel disapproves of this kind of comparitive sense of use of “unique.” But there are detractors.
Eighty percent disapprove of the sentence “Her designs are quite unique in today’s fashions.” But as the language of advertising in particular attests, unique is widely used as a synonym for worthy of being considered in a class by itself, extraordinary and if so construed it may arguably be modified.
Thursday at 4:02 am
OK, I know I have gone on too long, and Eranさん would probably be within his rights to delete me, but I have one more thing to add.
I just searched Yahoo news for “unique” and out of the first 100 articles found, only 1 out of 100 had this comparitive usage of “unique”. This represents a range of authors and editors. Clearly this usage is frowned upon by a wide range of people.
The one “comparative” useage that I saw was, ” completely unique perspective”.
Thursday at 4:08 am
Excellent
Thursday at 4:24 am
::checking the lesson again, trying to find the UNIQUE part::
Thursday at 4:28 am
John Briggs-san,
And, on the subject of grammar, I would like to congratulate you on not splitting the infinitive “not a model for the rest of us that wish to communicate clearly our thoughts.” So many people would have said, “to clearly communicate”! Thanks for that.
You are on a tear today!!
Thursday at 4:34 am
JPOD Team:
Can you explain the “mysterious n sound”? I have been noticing this lately and I seem to remember learning something about that . . . . but could you make a point of it in a lesson some time? Or have you done that?
In today’s lesson, “modorimasu ga” in the pdf, as heard became “modorimasun ga” with the “mysterious n”. Can I just say “n” any time??
Thursday at 4:37 am
ummm no iTune today? or it’s just my company again???
Eran-san, help!
Thursday at 4:39 am
Lizさん,
The truth is that I shouldn’t be talking about grammar at all. My knowledge of grammar is very poor.
Vickyさん,
Sorry, my comments about “unique” are not specific to this lesson.
ジョン
Thursday at 5:26 am
Speaking of accents, the problem is not english but japanese.
I know I’m repeating once more the same thing, but :
We’re a lot of boys here who learn or learned classical japanese with female teachers.
And when we come to japan, we don’t understand men and we’re speaking like girls.
The good point at japanesepod101 was those formal/informal lessons, and to hear boys speaking. That’s why I subscribed.
I like Sakura-san, Natsuko-san, Takase-san, Chigusa-san but we need more informal boy’s speech.
If Yoshi-san is the only boy in the team, I think Peter’s japanese is pretty good to take a part in the conversation.
Thursday at 5:31 am
Johnさん、
Your efforts in the Save Peter Campaign™ are appreciated.
Very very nice!
Thursday at 5:41 am
Beckさん,
Well as they say “to err is yuman…”
John
Thursday at 5:51 am
Alain-san if I read your post correctly, you say your a boy?
WOW! I thought you were a girl or am I wrong please correct me!
PS: Peter-san I understand your accent and everyone else at JP101 stuff so don’t worry ok!
Thursday at 6:03 am
About today’s lesson my winter plans are to spent my Christmas Eve with family, friends and watching Pope Benedict XVI Mise on TV! I going to be eating some Pozole, Tamales (Mexican Food), Rompope, wine, beer, smoking cigarettes, etc
Finally I might go to Time Square and celebrate New Year 2007 there but I still need to confirm that meeting! how about everyone else winter plans?
S_R_C
Thursday at 6:19 am
Minaさん,
I cannot miss the opportunity to complain again about the use made of these “comments” for discussing all kinds of topics unrelated to the day’s lesson!
Just for one moment, imagine you are studying one of last year’s lessons (what I am doing every day), look up the comments, hoping to find useful hints on grammar point, vocab, etc., and end up deciphering 90% outdated chat. I think it is a pity, especially since the past lessons represent such invaluable material for newcomers.
So I would suggest the following : could there not be two different “comments” links for each lesson, one restricted to the lesson per se, and another one for general discussion topics. Those discussions are definitely important because they form the link between the whole community of users, but they easily transform into annoying clutter after just a few weeks.
I am not sure of whether this could easily be implemented, or whether other people will like the idea. I personally think it would improve the quality of the learning material offered to new users on the long term.
And many thanks again to the JPod staff for their efforts and responsiveness.
Thursday at 6:39 am
We’ve been through this before. If you want more focused discussion, the forum lends itself much better for that. The comments section does not. I’m sorry, but it’s just the nature of the technologies and how they’re setup.
I don’t know how possible this would be, but what if there was an option when you make a post you could specify if it was mostly on topic for the lesson or not? Then you could have a setting to hide the ones that aren’t.
Thursday at 6:42 am
Jean-Michel your right my apologize from my part! but has you can see I also comment on today’s lesson too so I do both comments at a time ok!
To all Newbies, New Comers, Beginners Welcome to the site JP101!!
S_R_C
Thursday at 7:15 am
When a が appears as a particle or not at the beginning of a word, the “g” is technically supposed to be pronounced as kind of a cross between “g” and “n.” Shimizu先生 once told us that a lot of Japanese people actually don’t know this, though. That’s why you’ll hear it pronounced by some as a clear “ga” and other as more of a “gna.”
Thursday at 7:21 am
Jean-Michelさん、
ごめんなさい。
ジョン
Thursday at 7:35 am
Jason-さん,
I agree forums are more focused… but not on one particular lesson. Your suggestion of marking posts in different ways is not so far from mine. I do not know which one would be easier to implement.
ジョン さん, I did not mean to frown on anybody’s posts ! I am kind of a grammar buff in French myself, so I better shut my mouth ! BTW I did not know it was easy to ignit such discussions among English speakers, too. I thought it was a plague we inherited from the French Academy !…
Thursday at 8:30 am
さくらさん、
どっちらクラブにいますか?
かぶきちょは。。。。えっと。。ちょっと危ないね。
Thursday at 8:41 am
John B,
Right on! I can’t believe people make such horrible grammar errors. I think your willingess to help people understand language makes you a very unique person.
Jim
Thursday at 9:35 am
Jason-san,
However, you wrote “gna”, whereas the sound I hear is “nga”. Like desun ga.
Thanks, as usual!!
Thursday at 10:27 am
Jean-Michel-san, try jppod’s learning center as well!!! If not, just post here what you are looking for. We are here to help each other out, not just Japanese!
Thursday at 10:30 am
I think the major point is that just because the Romanisation of something is ‘ga’ doesn’t neccesarily mean it sounds like ‘ga’ to our ears.
Another stumbling point is the ‘n’ sound. A lot of the time it sounds like ‘m’. And yes, I know the rules for the ‘n’ sound. For example ’shinbun’ often sounds like ’shimbum’. The first ‘n’ changes according to the rules for ‘n’ but the second doesn’t.
I’ve often heard 日本 referred to something approximated to ‘nihong’.
Don’t trust your Romaji, they can lie!
Thursday at 1:18 pm
歌舞伎町のホストクラブ!?
なんとかドキドキしまうす
Thursday at 9:38 pm
Jimさん,
ジョン
Thursday at 9:40 pm
Jean-Michelさん, Well I blame the french anyway. Didn’t we get the word “unique” from you guys.:) ジョン
Thursday at 9:45 pm
Jasonさん,
Regarding Lizさん question, after listening to the lesson again, I thought that what we might have here is
もどります ん が
where the ん is “explaining the reason” or “please under stand my situation”. I think this fits in the context of the dialogue.
If so, the transcript is wrong.
What do you think?
ジョン
Friday at 12:10 am
John-Briggss-san sent me this great explanation about the “mysterious n” sound.
Meaning:
Verb short form + ndesu - the mode of explaining things
Examples:
Ashita nihon ni iku ndesu - I will go to Japan ( so I bought new suits case etc)
Densha ga okureta ndesu - Train delayed ( so I came here late)
John-san, Doumo!!
Friday at 12:29 am
No. It’s the combination g/n sound. If you listen closely, you can hear Sakuraさん do it with other g sounds too. It’s just more pronounced there. Maybe because there’s a pause at that particular が. Not to mention んが would also be ungrammatically.
Friday at 12:32 am
*ungrammatical.
Liz, that “mysterious n” sound and the “mysterious n” sound found it in the lesson aren’t the same.
Friday at 12:34 am
*”found in” not “found it in.”
Geez, I can’t type this morning.
Friday at 2:56 am
Languages evolve. The meanings of words evolve. I think this is a good thing. Today, no one uses “shoen” as the plural for “shoe” and that’s okay.
We are not French. We do not need to form a committee to mandate what is the ‘proper’ official use of our language and what is not. Let the words evolve.
At any rate, it’s stressfull to discuss these things on the internet. It makes me paranoid about having grammar mistakes in my comments.
Friday at 3:46 am
Jim-san you may be right just until certain point because knowing grammar doesn’t make you unique ok! Everybody can learn grammar, its something common and indispensable we should all know!
Guess who has all that” I’m not cheering my self or what you to cheer me up but ITS ME”ok
If you disagree then check out my posts, my pages, my pictures, etc and you’ll see for yourself period!
S_R_C
Friday at 7:06 am
Anyone who wants to discuss the matter of “languages is a living thin” contact me! it’s my favorite topic to debate about. I am not gonna participate in this one though because I don’t think it should be in the comments for this lesson.
Friday at 8:36 am
Ok, I think we’ve thoroughly beaten the poor horse that is the word “unique” here and what it does and doesn’t or may or may not mean to a bloody pulp. Let’s move on. If anyone wants to continue a discussion about language evolution, feel free to start a thread in the forum.
Sindy, I don’t think there’s a person here who’d deny that you’re unique in the truest sense of the word. Or at least desperately hope so.
Sunday at 6:43 am
Thank you Jason-san!
So you know your on the list of JP101 worth it staff!
Congratulations!
and there are more JP101 staff on that list too but I will tell them when we get the change!
S_R_C
Monday at 11:33 am
Japanese-pod,
私は鳥取に行きましたよ!
It was really cool! The sand dunes were incredible. My friends and I spent an afternoon jumping off of them. We also went to an onsen in the mountains. There was a pool inside a cave and the view from there was beautiful. It is the most memorable place I’ve ever been.
Tuesday at 11:01 am
Lora-san
鳥取の砂丘はすごいですよね。
Tottori sand dune is great, isn’t it.
Wednesday at 2:40 pm
Hello. Could someone explain the difference between kaeru and modoru? I am not sure when to use which one. Thanks !
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