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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 6:30 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.
22 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #157 - A Farming Family”
Tuesday at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, What did you think of Yoshikai’s voice acting? Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
Tuesday at 9:58 pm
A little better: today, only the ipod sound file is wrong (bad zip file)
Spring cleaning has not settled this daily problem => Impossible to learn with ipod.
Tuesday at 11:34 pm
Great lesson! とても面白かったです。Loved the bonus track too. It’s great, even though I have been studying japanese for ~3 years I learned a lot of new words with this Beginner Lesson (i.e. かかし、玉蜀黍)
btw, for anyone interested, かかし actually has kanji too: 案山子. So does カラス:烏 。I find this last kanji very easy to remember, as it’s the same as the kanji for “bird” (鳥)but without that one stroke to make the top part “white” (白). Makes sense, as crows aren’t white, they are black!
the kanji in 玉蜀黍 is interesting too: jewel + green caterpillar + millet = sweet corn. 面白い!
Wednesday at 2:54 am
Class 2 passive - lovely stuff. The whole context thing will take a bit of getting useful. That bonus track is something else. It was difficult to understand even with the transcript.
Wednesday at 5:00 am
I am a little shocked and confused
isn’t passiv meant that the object of the aktive sentence to become the subject of the passive? And acording to this shouldn’t とうもろこしbe marked by が? instead of を?
My wife says no
so I am thinking about trusting her and your great lesson. But could someone explain why I am wrong?
Thank you in advance
Hanspeter
Wednesday at 8:54 am
四百レッスン!おもでとう!
Wednesday at 11:35 am
本当に第400目のレッソンの?すご~いよね☆
JP101組みがこんなに頑張ってくれてありがとう!
そして、ボーナス・トラックについて...
Here’s the Japanese Wikipedia article for 北の国から: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E3%81%AE%E5%9B%BD%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89
And this appears to be the opening of a ‘95 episode of the drama: http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1-9WT1fj58
And this is Fuji TV’s page for season ‘02: http://www.fujitv.co.jp/jp/furano/index2.html
Hanspeter, I’m not sure exactly what example you’re referring to, but the Japanese passive can be a little tricky at times (at least as far as particles are concerned).
If there’s just an object and someone doing an action, you have:
母はケーキを食べた。 My mom ate the cake.
ケーキが母に食べられた。 The cake was eaten by my mom.
Let’s say, though, that there are two people involved.
母が私のケーキを食べた。 My mom ate my cake.
私は母にケーキを食べられた。 I had my cake eaten by my mom.
In Japanese, the passive tense is sometimes used to convey negative emotions. Thus, the emotion “and I was angry” is conveyed in the second example above.
This isn’t always necessarily the case (i.e. you can use the passive tense and not imply negative emotion), but if you want to be sure that you’re not misinterpreted, instead of このケーキは母に作られた (this cake was made by my mom), you could say:
このケーキは母が作った。
これは母が作ったケーキだ。
母がこのケーキを作った。
And one last thing on the use of the passive tense to imply negativity–sometimes you see sentences in Japanese like, 「昨日雨に降られた」 meaning, “yesterday I was rained on (and it was inconvenient).” But notice that although there’s no subject nor object in the Japanese version of the sentence, it’s still grammatically correct.
Wednesday at 11:36 am
本当に第400目のレッソンの?すご~いよね☆
JP101組みがこんなに頑張ってくれてありがとう!
そして、ボーナス・トラックについて...
Here’s the Japanese Wikipedia article for 北の国から: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E3%81%AE%E5%9B%BD%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89
And this appears to be the opening of a ‘95 episode of the drama: http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1-9WT1fj58
And this is Fuji TV’s page for season ‘02: http://www.fujitv.co.jp/jp/furano/index2.html
Wednesday at 1:37 pm
Michelleさん,
Thanks for the additional information on forming sentences using the passive, particularly this example:
私は母にケーキを食べられた。 I had my cake eaten by my mom.
That’s a new structure for me & I’m going to have to think about it, as it doesn’t feel ‘obvious’ yet, if you catch my meaning. If asked to translate into japanese, I would have tried:
私のケーキが母に食べられた。My cake was eaten by my mom.
Does that work too? I am certainly troubled by the passive.
Wednesday at 2:31 pm
JP101 Crew and Listeners!
What did you think of Yoshikai’s voice acting? It was great I love it!
Alain-san
That’s why we have JP101 site for the people that don’t like to learn with an ipod.
I always take my time everyday to visit the JP101 site, study, enjoy fooling around and have fun!
S_R_C
Wednesday at 3:38 pm
Hmmm….Yoshikaiさんの声は。。。最高です!面白くて、お上手ですね。会話は、本当にYoshikaiさんだけでしたか?
-Hugo
Wednesday at 5:47 pm
Alain-san,
Please accept my sincere apologies for the continued issues surrounding the availability of the iLearning Center zip files (primarily the sound ones). I can imagine how frustrating this must be and can’t thank you enough for your continued patience and support.
While on the surface it may appear that the issue is easy to fix, it is actually quite complicated. Having said that, please rest assured that it is a high priority for us and we are working hard to ensure that it is corrected in the very near future.
On a positive note, we have just posted an entry on our blog announcing the release of an installer application for the iLearning Center. It is currently in beta and only available for Windows users. It’s aimed at making the installation of lessons on the iPod much, much easier. If you are a Premium subscriber that uses the iLearning Center on a Windows machine and would like to help us beta test this installer, please visit our blog today!
Thanks,
Eran
Wednesday at 6:05 pm
Thank you very much ミシェルさんfor your long explanations.
, (which she herself likes to eat in opposit to mice)
I was refering to: “karasu ni tōmorokoshi o taberareru”;
Some kind more astonishing つまexplained that if I would substitue karasu with neko and tōmorokoshi with nezumi she would think it would be correct to say:
nezumi ga neko ni taberaremashita.
Perhaps she feels a little pitty for the mouse? but not for the corn
Hanspeter
Wednesday at 7:22 pm
Eran-san,
Thank you for your answer and for all the good job done.
I’ll try this installer.
Thursday at 5:54 am
ミシェルさん、貴方の説明はとても大事でした。
ペーターさん、how can you say English has so many verb tenses???!!!!!
You certainly haven’t seen Portuguese yet, have you???
I’ve been away for a while and I can really notice how the level of comments has increased. I’m amazed. Everybody is becoming an expert in Japanese!!!
Keep it coming, folks…
また
Thursday at 8:47 am
かわいそうなパパさん。
北海道のとうもろこしはすごくおいしいと思います。 

Well I am wondering, how do they prepare the 焼きとうもろこし。From what I remember it was a bit sweet and salty, but it was not salty like table salt. I can’t really put my finger on it. Can anyone help me with this missing flavor?
I think it’s a great idea introducing different famous voices in the bonus track. It helps us (those who did not grow up with the Japanese pop culture) understand certain jokes or voices they make. I really like how パパsaidオマエ。
皆さんがんばってください。
Thursday at 1:34 pm
(first off, sorry for the double posting earlier… sometimes I can’t get posts to go through at all, and sometimes they seem to be held in a sort of holding pattern… for moderation?)
Anyhow, Alan–I admit that the use of passive tense isn’t really one of my strong points, but from what I understand, 私のケーキが母に食べられた (My cake was eaten by my mom) is grammatically correct… for example, search for the phrase “母に食べられた” on google, and you’ll come up with tons of hits. It just has a different nuance than “私は母にケーキを食べられた”
Here are a few passive voice-related links:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/i-yasu/Lesson17.htm
http://www.njuku.com/?cat=6 (scroll down to “emotional passive tense”)
Thursday at 12:32 am
o. my. god. DEAD BRILLIANT!! Yoskikai-san was absolutely brill. I never laughed so hard!!!
great lesson as always! and…Hello from Scotland.
Thursday at 6:32 pm
皆さん
日本語で受身動詞はちょっとややこしいですね。
I’d like a to make a suggestion to the Jpod team to make it easier for us to spot the ’suffering passive’ by translating it carefully based on its meaning rather than attempting a literal translation- this is not ‘passive’ as the latin word intended, that is , it is not to do with action ‘passing’ to the subjed from a third party- maybe we should start referring to this as a completely separate construction altogether.
It is one of the difficult idiomatic constructions to translate- there is no way it can be done literally and no wonder お父さん got confused in school!
In カラスに玉蜀黍を食べられる the give away is the をparticle.
I think it would be more appropriate to translate カラスに玉蜀黍を食べられる as ‘we’ll get the corn eaten by the crows’ [as the る ending is also used for the future in Japanese, remember?] to emphasise the fact that the person speaking is involved. Since the をparticle marks the object, the subject of the sentence in this case would be is ‘we’ as in:
私たちはカラスに玉蜀黍を食べられる
カラスに玉蜀黍が食べられる just means a less emotionally charged /more neutral statement of fact: ‘the corn is eaten by the crows’-
So, 子供ちゃん, these sentences are not the same thing! お父さん said, “we’ll get all the corn eaten up by those flipping crows!
”- he did not just give you the information on what the crows eat.
宜しくお願いします
mikuji
Tuesday at 10:56 am
My favourite lesson ever, purely for the entertainment.
“What’s grammar?”
Friday at 3:33 am
Question: In the last lesson, Peter-san mentions u and a columns in his explanation of the verb form. Can you either point me to an online reference on your site on the web that would help explain what the columns are (in relationship to verbs) and how they are used?
Thanks in advance
Tryllid.
Monday at 9:02 pm
え、弘、パパのてを貸して。パパはなにしてる。カカしを立ててる。やだ、そのかかしが怖い。それが目的だよ。怖くないとカラスに玉蜀黍を食べられるよ。カラスが玉蜀黍を食べる。そうだよ。全部、だから、このかかしがある。ね、パパ。カラスに玉蜀黍に食べられるとカラスが玉蜀黍を食べる、同じこといてるんね。そうだ。何が違う。文法、文法で何。文法でパパって高校卒業できないように、作られたものさ。
また、明日。
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