日本語 - Week 6 (Contemporary Japanese Vol. 1)

The book I am using is Contemporary Japanese Vol. 1 by Eriko Sato from the Tuttle Language Library. Let’s start! Volume 1 of the book has 61 lessons. I only study Monday to Friday, two days for each lesson, which means it will take us 122 days or 24 weeks and 2 days to finish the whole book. Target end date is March 20, 2012.

MONDAY: Lesson Thirteen - 大学のえいごの先生です

Let’s review possession. No, not the demonic kind, although the concept is similar. We are talking about the particle ~の and the easiest way to explain this is to say that it functions like an ‘s which is attached to a name of a person or anything you could think off before mentioning the word being possessed. Its usage is easy. Britney’s dog would be Britneyの犬. However, this particle’s powers are not limited to that, because it could also qualify something as something even without the idea of possession. In English you could say the Filipino teacher. There is no ‘s in there, but in Japanese they would still use the particle we are talking about and will end up with フィリピンの先生.

TUESDAY: Lesson Fourteen - あれはだれのですか

Surprise. Lesson fourteen only has one page, and the grammar item tackled is also about the possession particle. How convenient since we already discussed this yesterday. You know the meaning of this. Grammar break!!!

WEDNESDAY: Lesson Fourteen - あれはだれのですか

Surprise again. As you might have noticed, we dedicate two days for each lesson, and we have nothing to tackle today. So let me just tell you how to ask whose. Just plug in the possession particle to the question word who and you are done, meaning whose is written like だれの. Whose is this would be これはだれですか.

THURSDAY: Lesson Fifteen - でんわばんごう

For lesson fifteen we only have a review of numbers and how they function. Since the title is all about phones we are to expect that we would at least learn how to ask someone’s phone number, right? Well, let’s do that tomorrow since this lesson has two days all to itself. For now let us review the Kanji first for one to ten. Or maybe YOU should, I will just list them all here: 一二三四五六七八九十. What about the higher numbers? Just combine the tens and the ones in a logical way. As for the numbers above 100, there’s one whole lesson in the book reserved for that alone.

FRIDAY: Lesson Fifteen - でんわばんごう

To ask for someone’s phone number just say でんわばんごうは何ですか which is their way of asking “What’s your phone number?” It is not confusing like it is in Korean where they ask “How many/much” your phone number is. Here it is phrased just like it would be in English. For dashes, say の.

                                                                                                                                                  

For next week I would be covering lesson sixteen until the second half of lesson eighteen. We can do this guys! The goal is to pass the N5 examination of the JLPT in December 2012! =)