Have Fun & Learn Japanese at JapanesePod101.com! Today a woman is waiting for her friend but her friend doesn’t come. How long will she wait? Our grammar points are kashira and wa ne, used by obasan (old women) to sound more lady-like. After listening, stop by JapanesePod101.com and be sure to leave us a post!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Premium 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.
Mina-san, what do you think happened to Goto-san? Could he be the one who stole all the wasabi?
Goto- san, having left the parent -teacher meeting full of good advice on how to get his kids to read (
), decided to go for a quick snack at the local sushi bar. He’s currently trying to stop the 大将 comitting 切腹 over the humiliation of the stolen wasabi…
As it is, Naomi先生 and Akihiroさん could also be right about the Goto joke. On top of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, there’s a character named Goto ( pronouced Go Too, rhymes with ” Yum-yum the fair you must not woo”; a Japanese noble) in Gilbert and Sullivan operetta ” The Mikado”. His name is cited in one song but he otherwise does not appear in the piece… We’re still waiting for him…
Goto-San is probably sick from eating all the wasabi that he stole
Maybe Goto-san had the poison gyoza
or to add on to Naomi先生’s theory…kidnapped by the yakuza, and force fed poison gyoza. かわいそうやね。
Why is there no audio for basic users?
Perhaps because this is a premium lesson? I’d imagine the PDfs were put in the basic section by mistake.
Jason
All the previous premium lessons have audio for basic users. I suppose that’s changed now.
It’s probably a mistake since the PDF’s are still in the basic section - last week the audio was part of the free content
I was planning to check out the premium account anyway, so I can wait a while if not.
Mina-san, moushi wake gozaimasen! Really, really sorry.
The audio belongs in the Basic category.
Apologies.
I really enjoy this Premium lesson series. The sentence-by-sentence breakdown is really educational. I aspire to get to the intermediate level, but I’m not quite there yet.
Arigatou gozaimasu.
Steve from St. Louis
シズちゃん from ドラえもん is always using わ, and so was a young female character in a book I was reading. Is it common among children as well as おばさん? I did notice, though, that male characters in the lessons have used it more than once (Take in ‘The Typhoon Cometh’, and Yuki in one of the recent Rugrats lessons). Is there ever a situation where male speakers would use it, or were we being given some “information” on the characters?
As for waiting, I usually phone the slowster to find out where they are, but otherwise 15-30 minutes would be my limit depending on who/where it was. Like with Naomi’s anecdote, all the hate, frustration, and desire to kill that build up while waiting seem to evaporate the second I see the person
わね and わよ are おばさん style. it seems to me that on tv and some stories girls will use that style as a sort of conventional style.
young girls use わ the same way guys do. maybe a native speaker can back me up on this, but i think it’s similar to な and pronounced with a falling intonation.
これうまいわー this is delicious
帰るわー i’m going home now
それ面白いわー that’s funny
but i think it’s similar to な
I always got the impression that it was more like a softer よ. But that could just be me.
i get the same impression too. like it’s somewhere between よ and な…
i always use it with my friends when i want to leave the statement neutral (i’m not asking for a response, but i’m asserting something, but not as far as よ). i’m not a native speaker so i don’t know if this is the appropriate use, but i nobody told me i was speaking girly.
i think わ is a really dangerous particle for guys to use, but if you have the confidence to try it, it’s really guy’s style.
there are definitely some words that it takes a certain person to pull off. わ and 俺 and お前 fall into this category. if you use these incorrectly you could really rub people the wrong way… but we include them in our dialogs because this is the japanese you’ll hear every day.
i’m trying to master these kind of expressions, but more and more i’m trying to master the polite style.
I think I am using わ instead of な when i want to exaggerate my feelings.
young girls, especially teenagers use it more often. but be careful with the intonation when you want to use it. you could be really girly.
We should point out here that in some areas, like Kansai I think, consider わ to be much more gender neutral than say the Tokyo area. Personally, I think being a foreign guy I would probably avoid わ altogether.
I like when girls use it though, as long as it’s not overused. It sounds cute and girly to me. わ萌え?
Category: Premium Lessons |
Grammar: kashira, wa ne (sentence final particle) | Function: talking like an obasan, wondering about things | Topic: obasan, waiting | Politeness Level: casual
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