January 11th Summary

Week One

Note: All notes, quotes and references come from Genki: An integrated Course in Japanese and An Introduction to Modern Japanese, both published by The Japan Times.

Lesson Summary:


~desu: It is...


Gakusei desu. ( I ) am a student.


Juujihan desu. ( It ) is half past twelve.


Note that none of these sentences has a “subject”, like “it” and “I” in the English translation. This is very common in Japanese; speakers tend to leave out subjects whenever they think the listener knows who or what they're talking about.  When it isn't clear, you can make it obvious by using;


X wa Y desu: X is Y.


*Watashi wa* gakusei desu. *I* am a student.


*Tanaka san wa* ryuugakusei desu. *Mr. Tanaka* is an exchange student


Wa and no (used later on) are particles. They attach themselves to phrases and show how the phrases relate to the rest of the sentence.


Nouns like gakusei and ryuugakusei stand alone, unlike the English version “student” and “exchange student”, which have to have “a” and “an”. There are no such words in Japanese. “-s” also isn't used at the end of nouns. Sentences like gakusei desu could mean anything without a subject; “they/we/you are students” or “I am/you are/she is a student.”


Questions:


Forming a question in Japanese is easy; simply add ka to the end of the sentence.


Tanaka san wa nihonjin desu. Mr. Tanaka is Japanese.


Tanaka san wa nihonjin desu ka. Is Mr. Tanaka Japanese?


The sentences can be answered with “yes/no”. Some question sentences will have the question word nan (what).


nan ji (what time?) Ima nanji desu ka. What time is it now?


nan sai (how old?) Maiku san wa nansai desu ka. How old are you, Mike?


nan desu (what is?) Kore wa nan desu ka. What is this?


Using no:


This particle connects two nouns, and is very versatile.


Watashi no denwa bangou. My phone number.


Eego no gakusei. A student of the English language.


Kanada no daigaku. A college in Canada.


The word order of the first two sentences match in both English and Japanese, whereas the last sentence has it in reverse. *The main idea comes at the end and the description comes before it.* Think of it as describing the noun.


Noun 1 (description) no Noun 2 (subject)


The entire phrase itself is just one big noun.