Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Two girls are talking about their friend Mami’s new boyfriend. Is he a nice guy or not? We’ll learn a few adjectives to describe people and review using sō da to talk about how things seem. After listening, stop by JapanesePod101.com to leave us a post!
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Lower Intermediate Lessons. 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.
14 Responses to “Lower Intermediate Lesson #34 - Boyfriend”
JapanesePod101.com says:
July 26th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, recently we’ve done a lot of lessons describing people. We’ve used そう、みたい、and デブ. We’ve talked about describing your type and more.
Who will you describe with all this information?
henjin says:
July 27th, 2007 at 6:53 am
I checked out your expanded vocab:
こちらこそ：same here
but I am confused as I learned it as meaning: my pleasure.
Or have I mixed up my vowels? Or can it also mean my pleasure? However I do tend to mix up my vowels and I think I usually say：
こちろ not こちら I’m constantly saying ka instead of ke and that kind of thing.
Sorry if this is way off topic. And a real apology if I’m being plain dumb. 
Apart form that todays lesson was as usual amazing and very useful. 
デボン says:
July 27th, 2007 at 11:47 am
みな様！久しぶりでございます！
Ok I have a question about all of this. I know the そうだ form is a very popular form when used as “It looks…” or “It seems…” but I have a question about そうだ as in “I hear that…” 例文は「天気よほうによると、明日は雨がふるそうです。
My question is this form appears in my level 3 JLPT book but when I was in Japan my Japanese friends said they never used it and some seems to not even recognize it 
! Is this true, is it not a used form, is it an archaic form? If so, how would we say the above sentence in more everyday Japanese?
I suspect for the next year and a half as I study for level 2 I’ll be asking a lot of questions about archaic forms since I’m not in Japan 
and won’t be able to tell.
By the way, I was wondering if you could do a lesson about 気に。。。 These are always so hard for me to grasp if I haven’t memorized the phrase. Like 気になる、気にする、気を付ける、etc. Just a thought, thanks!
maxiewawa says:
July 27th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
気づいた。。。僕も「きに。。。」には弱い。試験でよく出るから、ちょっと気になった。
つまり、気にづいたから、気にしている。
(Does that make sense?)
DIMSOMMERS says:
July 27th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
デボン-san
Sōda may be more common than you have heard. For example, I was speaking the other day, in English, and there was a person translating everything I was saying. She continually used sōda to report what I was saying (it was in a “polite” situation). A reason your friends may not hear it as much, is sōda can be replaced by って is casual speech when reporting what someone said between friends.
Hope that helps
Brian S.
mikuji says:
July 27th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
More on the ‘tolerant’ expression.
I searched ’space alc’ (www.alc.co.jp) dictionary and they do not report anything like ‘houyouryoku’ it if you enter the English ‘tolerant’ or ‘open minded’ but the Japanese to English part gives this results:
* 包容力が豊かである
have infinite patience
* 包容力のある
liberal and tolerant
..which suggests the word 包容力 is used normally only within this set expression , i.e. followed by のある. So we should learn this as a whole phrase.
I have not actually listened to the lesson yet, so it will be interesting if this was actually mentioned in the podcast.
I read the PDF though and I was a bit disappointed at the amount of Japanese offered, being only a few lines- one would expect more material in the lower intermediate level. However, I’d better reserve judgement untill I actually listen to the full podcast..
Cheers
mikuji
maxiewawa says:
July 27th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
今日のintroはレッソンと同じ面白い。すごい！ところで、お父さんの最初の言葉は何だっけ？
If anyone’s interested:
A: お父さん。カナダ人の女の子と結婚したいんだ。
B: Badda-Boom. その娘は日本語がしゃべるんだろう～あ。
A:大丈夫。Japanesepod101きかせるから。
I’m not sure about きかせる。。。せいかいですか。
markystar says:
July 29th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
pretty close!
B: バカもん！その娘は日本語がしゃべるんだろうが。
ばかもの is like ‘you idiot!’ hahahaha 
pretty severe お父さん, huh?
glad you liked it! 
Jason says:
August 1st, 2007 at 8:38 am
こちらこそ：same here
but I am confused as I learned it as meaning: my pleasure.
Well, the phrase more literally means something along the lines of “I should be the one saying that.” Its exact meaning (and translation) changes a bit depending on what “that” is. For example:
A: よろしくお願いします。
B: こちらこそ、よろしくお願いします。
===
A: It’s a pleasure to meet you.
B: [No, no]It’s *my* pleasure to meet *you.*
Basically, こそ flips the emphasis and applies the content of the conversation onto what it’s attached to. Usually it implies that’s what the content should really be applied to/attributed to/blamed on. Here’re a couple more examples.
At a traffic accident:
A: 本当にごめんなさい！
B: いえいえ。私の方こそ。
===
A: I’m really sorry!
B: No, no. *I’m* the one who should be apologizing (not you).
A: あんたはなんでここにいるの？
B: お前こそなんでここにいるんだよ？
===
A: Why are you here?
B: (Me?) Why are *you* here?
Jason says:
August 1st, 2007 at 8:42 am
I should add that こそ doesn’t always flip empahsis (though very often it’s used to), but it always adds emphasis to what it’s attached to.
markystar says:
August 1st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
A: あんたはなんでここにいるの？
B: お前こそなんでここにいるんだよ？
hahahahahaha! now that’s my kinda sample sentence!
marky
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Category: Lower Intermediate Lessons |
Grammar: sō da | Topic: boyfriends, describing people, love, talking about people | Politeness Level: casual, Informal
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