Mina-san, does shanai ren-ai happen often in your country?

Hi JPod san

Somebody have a tough day at the JPod Factory?
Akira has her cell phone spied through by her husband
Father hits brother on the head
Taichi eats Ryota’s Lunch
Kenji steals Daichi’s bag.

It is beautiful day in Tokyo enjoy be POSITIVE!

仁居流 san>For some Kanjis, the kanji was put from how it sounds/pronounced rather than the individual meaning….and for this kanji, 旦那 used to be written 檀那、and it came from the Sanskrit language, “Daana” or “Daana pati”, and it originally means to give money to gods. From there 檀那/旦那 began to mean someone who pay money, or support families, “patron” in English. In Edo period, 旦那 was used not only for men but for women as long as she/he was making money.
sorry this is maybe “too much” information

Is it worth learning either of 嫉 or 妬? Are they used much?

Also, can somebody give Peter a better translation for モテモテ? He doesn’t look enough like Oprah to say things like ‘he’s got it going on’

ジャービジ san> yes, I think so. 嫉妬 is a commonly used word, and you will see 妬 used as 妬む（ねたむ）to be jealous by itself. ジャービジ san, how would you describe モテモテ in English?

Hello

I generally like the exposure to vocabulary and situations I gain from this level. I find some of the past lessons the best among jpod’s, and possibly the most enjoyable among any other learning material. However, I have a some concerns about the quality of grammar as taught at this level in the recent past. Understanding Japanese requires both words and proper rules, i.e. grammar.

I was really looking forward to a proper explanation of passive, and the lower intermediate level seemed to be the ideal place to learn from. I have to say that I was “slightly” disappointed…

The explanation of passive given in the first podcast based on “the cake is eaten by me” and “the bug is eaten by the birds” examples, is far too elementary for this level. Also, it is far from natural. I assume the examples given, based on converting active to passive, sound as artificial in Japanese as they do in English. I accepted the explanation given by Peter though that the point was to practice the “construction and formation” (sic) of passive sentences and kept hoping for more to come.

Now we reached the end (?) and all that I can say about the last lesson is that if this is an attempt to explain the indirect passive, it is not one of the best I have come across. I hope somebody with some experience in linguistics will back me up on this.

This literal approach of translating sentences from active to passive just creates and perpetrates confusion about the Japanese sentence structure. I am at a loss to understand how anybody could benefit from that awkward explanation involving, “the possessive part will be separated”, “there is no `my’ in there”, “literally there is no possessive in there”, and “you have to bridge the concept.”

At best, what I get here is a mechanical, artificial, and counterproductive “rule” to produce Japanese passive sentences from active ones, that I am not sure how and when to use in the first place! At the very least it misses the very important point that many so called passive sentences in Japanese (suffering/indirect passive) are not passive at all. In fact, intransitive verbs can be followed by an object as well. I would say that this passive is the one I encounter more often when I try to read and watch Japanese material. Besides, “this” is the most interesting part to me, not how the `my’ disappears from a sentence. In this sense the explanation given, besides being artificial and convoluted is also, narrow and limiting. It’s like the Ptolemaic system of the movement of planets that used a complicated epicycle approach of circles within circles to explain the movements of planets, that worked to an extent, but was completely unnatural and based on a completely wrong conception of the world. If I had been thrown into Japanese society without any prior knowledge of Japanese, I probably would have come up with a similar rule to help me go on with my life, after many years of painful struggling… I think Japanesepod should aim higher than that!

To reiterate, I am not saying that passive could not be the worthy subject of a intermediate level grammar lesson. All I am saying that the level at which is being thought does not seem to fit any internationally recognized framework of reference for languages. Far more advanced passive is thought in many elementary Japanese textbooks and far more is expected at an intermediate level. The JLPT level 3, to give a specific example, which is (self) described in terms of “elementary grammar” and “beginner’s level,” requires a much better understanding of passive (including the causative passive).

Where will I learn, say, passive at a reasonable level at Japanesepod? The gap between lower and upper intermediate is too great for me because of the language barrier whereas all lower levels are virtually identical…

タチコマ-san,
I am also working through the series, all I know is that the English passive and Japanese passive are different that is why it appears that the English translation isn’t passive - because it isn’t. However, in Japanese the same sentence is considered to be passive (I think).