日本語 - Week 16 (Contemporary Japanese Vol. 1)

The book I am using is Contemporary Japanese Vol. 1 by Eriko Sato from the Tuttle Language Library. Volume 1 of the book has 61 lessons. Target end date is April 14, 2012.

MONDAY: Lesson Thirty Eight – リーさんのへやはどうですか

The Japanese use the sentence connective wordそれに to connect two sentences that are in agreement with each other. Think of it as the equivalent of the English furthermore. Given this, you could not use this if the two sentences you are connecting are opposing each other. An example of correct usage would be in the sentence this room is bright, furthermore it is clean which in Japanese would be この部屋は明るいです。それに、きれいです.

TUESDAY: Lesson Thirty Nine – 日本語はむずかしくありません

You could use degree adverbs to specify the degree of whatever property of the noun you are highlighting. You just put them before the verb or adjective. とても is very much while まあまあ is more or less. These two are used with the affirmative conjugation of the verb. The next two are only used with negative verbs, using them otherwise would make the sentence ungrammatical. They are あまり which means not very much and ぜんぜん which means not at all.

WEDNESDAY: Lesson Thirty Nine –日本語はむずかしくありません

Japanese adjectives are like verbs in that they could be conjugated. Okay, that does not sound fun. Well, it is part of the language. There are two types: the –i type and the –na type. Distinguishing whether the adjective belongs to one or another is quite tricky, and this is why I usually just scan this portion instead of drilling the lesson into my head. I am hoping that in time they would come naturally. Examples? たかい is an –i adjective. If you have notices, it ends with that syllable. If it is placed before a noun or attached to the copula then we have no problem, it stays the same. An example would be: The book is expensive 本はたかいです and It is an expensive book たかい本です.

THURSDAY: Lesson Forty – どんあたてものですか

Let’s continue with the adjectives. Now we have the –na type. This is the tricky one. The adjective こうか also means expensive but it is a –na verb. –Na verbs need to add –な after the adjective if a noun comes next. If it is attached to the copula, then there is no need to add anything. Let’s ue the example we used yesterday. The book is expensive 本はこうかです but It is an expensive book would be こうかな本です.

FRIDAY: Lesson Thirty Forty – リーさんのへやはどうですか

The –te form of the verb is very useful because many conjugations use this. We won’t talk about the uses but rather just how to form it, for now. For normal –ru verbs you just get rid of the –ru and add –te, in that たべる becomes たべて. For verbs ending with –su, get rid of that ending and add –shite which means する becomes して. Those that end in –mu, -nu, and –bu are replaced with –de, example: しぬ becomes しんで, よむ becomes よんで, and あそぶ becomes あそんで. For the others, try checking online. I don’t want to focus on this just yet. The important thing is that now I have an idea.

For next week I would be covering lessons forty to forty two. We can do this guys! The goal is to pass the N5 examination of the JLPT in December 2012! =)