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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Newbie Season 4 . 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.
16 Responses to “Newbie Lesson S4 #17 - What you Need to Know about the Seasons in Japan”
Saturday at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, What is your favorite season? And why?
Sunday at 11:27 am
Whoops, Naomi-sensei and I said that it was October a couple times in this episode, but it turns out we were one day too late for that. We’ll be right again if you listen to this episode in 11 months
Sunday at 5:57 pm
一番好きな季節は…春かもしれません。
紅葉と秋の空の光が大好きなんだけど、11月に寒くなるから、秋より春がいいと思います。
I guess my favorite season is spring. Even though I love the colours in the fall, and the way the sky lights up, it gets cold in november… so spring over fall…
Monday at 9:15 pm
I love the intro, very fun.
日本で一番好きなSeasonは春です。 桜はとてもきれいですので。
In Japan my favorite season is spring because the sakura are so amazingly beautiful!
Monday at 11:55 pm
秋がいちばん好きです。秋はに本にめちゃけれいですよ。
Tuesday at 2:16 am
春です。私の誕生日と私の結婚記念日で五月です。
Haru desu. Watashi no tanjoubi to watashi no kekkon kinenbi de go-gatsu desu.
It’s spring. My birthday and my anniversary are in May.
Tuesday at 10:10 am
プチクレア san> 微妙なところですね!(bimyou na tokoro desu ne) I am in love with the fall colors too
As a matter of fact I get “fall fever”
Charity san> 桜は本当にきれいですよね(Sakura wa hontou ni kirei desu yo ne)
Jacq san> 読書の秋ですね(dokusho no aki desu ne)
バロンsan> Awww! Happy May
春が待ち遠しいですね!(Haru ga machidooshii desu ne!)
Tuesday at 11:51 am
Mina-san
Eric is right!
今、11月です。10月じゃありません。
Ima, juuichi-gatsu desu. Juu-tatsu ja arimasen.
I’m sorry about the mistake.すみませんSumimasen
I like 冬(fuyu-winter) the best.
Thursday at 4:40 am
Being a true newbie, I have no idea what “mina-san” means! Is it “everyone”?
I really value the notes that I can read on my iPod touch as I listen — regular speed, slower, and in English. But I often wish that the basic vocab that’s covered (for instance, the months in this episode) were also included in the notes, so that I could see them in romaji and in hiragana or katakana. I’m a newbie, I’m JUST learning these kana symbols now and really need the reinforcement of both kinds of symbols. Kanji is just way beyond me. I’m not a premium member because I feel that it’s hard for me to dedicate the time to learning Japanese. I listen to the beginner and the newbie lessons that come in the feed, but the level of the newbie stuff is just right. I’m hoping to upgrade to the premium content, maybe as a Xmas present to myself. The fact that I’m actually learning stuff (I can COUNT TO 999 in Japanese!) amazes me; I think that the premium stuff will be worthwhile when I can afford it. The reason I can’t say the number to millions and billions is ’cause there were no notes about those higher numbers, and so the audio only just didn’t sink in.
My favourite season is Fall/autumn, but don’t ask me to remember what the vocab for that was! (not in the notes!)
ありがと ございます (arigato gozaimasu) — my first instance of typing hiragana on my mac! (or is it ありがとう? (not sure how I’ll ever remember when it’s a long vowel or not…)
Eric Armstrong
エリジュ (I have no idea whether that’s right — I haven’t learned the Katakana yet! I guess one can trust your computer to translate romaji into kana???)
Thursday at 5:21 am
Mina-san (みなさん) is just what you guessed: everyone. The san suffix is there to be polite.
You are doing well. Technically speaking, it is arigatou (ありがとう) but Rikai-chan knows what you mean. Rikai-chan is probably the best web tool for reading Japanese you can get, and it’s free!
http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/
I assume that the last thing you were trying to do was type your name in Katakana?
エリク (E-RI-KU) is probably the best way to write it, but a native speaker will be better to confirm that.
Fight on, Eric! Faito eriku-san! ファイトエリクさん!
Eventually things just start making more and more sense as you go on. The PDFs are invaluable learning tools, even if you only look at them for a little bit.
Thursday at 5:29 pm
Eric A. (エリック) san> Great! Loved your comment! One of the greatest features of JapanesePod101 is there is a community for people in every level to help each other, encourage each other and support each other just like バロンsan did
Also, as you guessed, the Premium subscription is worth (or more!) paying for, and for now, I hope you keep listening and learn vocabs from the audio and PDFs
Sunday at 7:14 am
Wow. Thanks everyone for your support. I’m exploring rikai-chan, though it is quite overwhelming with more difficult stuff. My hiragana reading seems to have taken a leap forward this week, so now I have to dig in and learn the katakana, too.
ありがとう everyone!
エリツク (haven’t quite figured out how to get the typing to do the little ツ character).
Sunday at 11:27 pm
Hey エリック、this is newbie host Eric
Since I have a bit of experience typing エリック、 here are some tips:
-You get the little “tsu” in words by typing two of the same consonant in a row, ex. erikku = エリック batta = バッタ (grasshopper)
-You can get the little tsu by itself with: xtu or xtsu = っ
-On a Mac, you can type straight to Katakana by holding “shift” while typing a word.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the lessons. Like Hiroko said, this is where you can get your questions answered, regardless of your subscription type. yoroshiku o-negai shimasu!
Sunday at 11:59 pm
Thanks for the tips! How does one write family names? My last name is “Armstrong”, and I’m wondering if there are phonetic rules as to writing foreign names in Japanese, or whether it’s just a matter of taste… I’m guessing it would be something like アムストロん or アモストロンゴ or some such… and then sometimes I wonder if it might be something like the Japanese for ARM-STRONG, written in Kanji.
Not sure where one might learn this kind of stuff… It seems to fall between the cracks of what you can include in JapanesePod101.com. Again, thanks for your help with this all.
Monday at 10:11 pm
There used to be a really good article on Wikipedia called “Transcribing English to Japanese” that covered a lot of the conventions, but for some reason it was taken down
.
Some of the things I’ve picked up from the katakana words I’ve seen are:
* Spell it like it sounds (if a word ends in an s, spell it with su or zu depending on how you pronounce it)
* Vowels followed by R drop the R and make the vowel long. For example, ARM becoms AAMU
* When you need a consonant use the “u” form (strong becomes su-to-ro-o-n-gu)
These are by no means hard and fast rules, but when in doubt, use the forums. There are a lot of people that will help you out more than I can. There’s even a topic for how you would write your name in Japanese.
Saturday at 3:51 am
あの、日本の夏は何月から何月までですか。
えーと、多分、七月から九月までです。
七月と八月と九月ですか。
いいえ、違います。九月は秋ですよ、六月から八月までです。
じゃあ
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