The Complete Guide To Learning Japanese

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The Complete Guide to Learning Japane
The Complete Guide to Learning Japanese

Disclaimer: This is still a work in progress!
What is a complete guide to Japanese?

Despite what many are lead to believe, learning Japanese is not significantly more difficult than learning any other language. The truth is mastering any foreign language is quite an endeavor. If you think about it, you are essentially taking everything you've learned in life and re-learning it in a completely different way. Obviously, no single book can really claim to teach you everything about a language including all the vocabulary a fluent adult commonly obtains during her life. So what do I mean by a complete guide to Japanese? Most Japanese textbooks only go over a small subset of what you need to learn Japanese, typically covering a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary with a smattering of dialogues and readings. However, mastering a language requires much more than just learning grammar and vocabulary. What most Japanese textbooks fail to recognize is that they can't possibly hope to cover all the necessary vocabulary and kanji (Chinese characters) to obtain full fluency. This guide fully recognizes that it cannot teach you everything word by word and character by character. Instead, it will give you a solid understanding of the fundamentals with a wide collection of dialogues and examples. In addition, it will go over various techniques and tools to enable you to teach yourself. Essentially, this book is a guide on how you can learn Japanese to complete fluency by actually using Japanese in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Another important distinction in the complete guide is that it does not try to hide or avoid more casual but perfectly acceptable aspects of the language. Many textbooks often avoid styles of speech and vocabulary you would normally use regularly with close friends, family, and acquaintances! In this guide, you will be introduced to all aspects of the language based on real-world practicality and usefulness; not on an artificial, filtered version of what others consider to be "proper" Japanese.
Resources and Tools

There are a large number of useful tools on the web for learning Japanese. Not only are there excellent online dictionaries, which are often better than many print dictionaries, there are also great tools and social networking sites for online collaboration and language study. In order to fully utilize these online resources or if you're reading this book online, you'll need to setup your computer to support Japanese. You can see a full list of these resources and instructions on how to setup your computer at the following link: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/resources
Corrections
I'm currently writing this as quickly as possible without a lot of proofreading so there WILL be many typos and mistakes for the first few revisions. Please feel free to point out any mistakes in the comments. I may delete your
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comment after making the correction to keep the comment sections clean for more in-depth discussion but I do appreciate them very much!!
Table of Contents
Writing Systems and Pronunciation

The Scripts
The Japanese writing system is comprised of three main written scripts: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana is the main phonetic writing system used to represent every distinct sound in Japanese. Because of it's phonetic nature, we will first learn Hiragana to also learn how to pronounce all the sounds in the Japanese language. While Katakana represents the same sounds as Hiragana, it is mainly used to represent words imported from other languages. Kanji, which are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese, are heavily used in writing. There are no spaces in Japanese so Kanji is necessary in order to separate the words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for distinguishing homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.
Pronunciation
In the next section, we will learn all the characters in Hiragana and how to pronounce them. As we will see, every character in Hiragana (and the Katakana equivalent) corresponds to a specific sound. This makes pronunciation very easy as each letter has exactly one pronunciation. However, because there are relatively few distinct sounds in the Japanese language, you must pay extra attention to proper intonation. Unlike English pronunciation which is based on accents, Japanese pronunciation is based on alterations between a high and low pitch. For example, homophones can have different pitches of low and high tones resulting in a slightly different sound despite sharing the same pronunciation. The largest barrier to proper and natural sounding speech is incorrect intonation. Therefore, as you listen to Japanese and begin to imitate the sounds, it is very important that you pay attention to pitch in order to sound like a native speaker.
Hiragana
00:00 The table below represents the entire Hiragana syllabary categorized by the consonant and vowel sounds. With the exception of a few sounds (as shown by the pronunciation in parentheses), most sounds in Japanese are easily represented by a vowel or consonant-vowel. There is also one consonant-only sound: . Hiragana - Click for stroke order and sound
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n w r y m h
(n)
i (chi) (shi)
u (fu) (tsu) e o
(o)
To understand how this chart works, let's start by looking at the right-most column, which are all the vowel-only sounds. a i u e o Here are some sample words for reading practice. Example: - love (read as "ai") 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - to meet - house - nephew - above - to say
Each additional column represents a consonant sound with each of the five vowel sounds. For example, the "k" column has the following sounds. ka ki ku ke ko is the only character with no vowel sound. It adds an "n" sound as shown in the examples below. - gold (read as "kin") - woman; girl (read as "on-na")
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- music (read as "on-ga-ku") Here are my recommendations for learning how to read, write, hear, and say the characters and sounds in Hiragana. Reading: You'll be getting plenty of reading practice with the material in this book. Writing: You'll need to develop muscle memory so use regular pen and paper. You can start with a practice sheet with trace lines and work up to a free-form sheet. It's important to use the correct stroke order. Hiragana tracing practice sheet Hiragana free-form practice sheet Hearing: You can listen to the pronunciation for each character by clicking on it in the first chart. If your browser doesn't support audio, you can also download them at http://www.guidetojapanese.org/audio/basic_sounds.zip. There are also other free resources with audio samples. Speaking: Practice repeating the sounds. I recommend recording yourself to get an accurate idea of what you sound like. Pay careful attention to the "r" sounds! While most of the sounds are pretty straightforward, the "r" sounds deserve careful attention for English speakers because there is no equivalent sound in English. It is more similar to the "r" sound in Spanish. What works for some English speakers (even if it may not be technically correct) is to shape the lips something like the sound that is made for the English "r," but to make the sound with a single trill or flap of the tongue against the front of the palate.
Other Tools
Smart.fm has a nice tool for practicing Hiragana recognition at http://smart.fm/series/3322.
Katakana
00:00 Katakana, as already mentioned, is mainly used to represent words imported from other languages. We've already learned all the sounds when we learned Hiragana. All you need to learn is a different way of writing them. Katakana - Click for stroke order and sound n w r y m h n t s k a
i (chi) (shi)
u (fu) (tsu) e
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The Complete Guide to Learning Japane e
* (o) * = rarely used
Due to the straight lines and relatively few strokes, there are many characters in Katakana that look very similar. In particular, and . You should pay careful attention to the stroke order and direction. You may also notice that the Katakana is virtually identical to its Hiragana counterpart . They are in fact, written pretty much the same way. The sheets below should help you get some writing practice. Katakana tracing practice sheet Katakana free-form practice sheet
English words in Japanese

Many words from foreign languages, particularly English, have become part of the Japanese language via Katakana throughout the years. However, there are relatively few distinct sounds in Japanese and only five vowel sounds. As a result, these words usually don't bear much resemblance to their original pronunciations. An important thing to remember is to stay true to the Japanese pronunciation and completely forget how it's really supposed to be pronounced. To give you an idea, here is a short list of foreign words and their Japanese equivalents. Sample Katakana Words English America Russia bus motorcycle French fries (fried potato) Japanese
Other Tools
Smart.fm has a nice tool for practicing Katakana recognition at http://smart.fm/goals/24667.
Additional Sounds
Though we have covered all the distinct characters in both Hiragana and
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Katakana, there are additional variations and sounds that still remain to be learned.
Voiced Consonants
Voiced consonants are consonant sounds that require a voice, creating a vibration in your throat. A number of consonant sounds in Hiragana and Katakana can be changed to their voiced counterpart by adding two small dashes to the upper-right corner of the character; namely the "k", "s", "t", and "h" consonant sounds. There is also a semi-voiced consonant sound "p", which is created by putting a small circle in the upper-right corner of the "h" characters. Voiced Hiragana Click for Sound p b d z g a i (ji) (ji) u (dzu)
e o Voiced Katakana Click for Sound p b d z g a i (ji) (ji) u (dzu) o
Y-vowel sounds
A consonant can precede the three y-sounds: and . This is done by attaching a small, half-size version of the y-sounds to the consonant+i sounds as you can see in the table below. All small and combinations in Hiragana - Click for Sound p b j g r m h n c s k ya yu
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yo All small and combinations in Katakana - Click for Sound p b j g r m h n c s k ya yu yo
Hard Consonant Sounds

While no single letter ends in a consonant sound except , Japanese does have a way to carry over the next consonant sound back with a small . This can be used with the consonants "p, k, t, s" to create a hard stop. For example, (meaning "person") would be read as "hi-to". however carries the "t" consonant sound back and is pronounced "hit-to". Here are some more examples. (to-rak-ku) - truck (zas-shi) - magazine (kap-pu) - cup
The Long Vowel Sound

We will now go over the long vowel sound which is simply extending the duration of a vowel sound. You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding either or depending on the vowel as shown in the following chart. Extending Vowel Sounds Vowel Sound Extended by /a/ / i/ e / /u/o /
For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from , you would add to create . Other examples would include: , , , , and so on. The reason for this is quite simple. Try saying and separately. Then say them in succession as fast as you can. You'll notice that it's easier to drag out the vowel. It's important to make sure you hold the vowel sound to the full length of both characters because there are many
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similar words that are only different by the length of the vowel. For example, means "here" while means "High school". Here is a short list of example words with long vowel sounds. The long vowel sound is highlighted. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. (ga-ku-se) - student (sen-se) - teacher (kyo) - today (o-ha-yo) - good morning (o-ka-san) - mother
There are also a small number of exceptions where an "e" vowel sound is extended by adding or an "o" vowel sound is extended with . We'll see example of these words in later sections. Long vowel sounds in Katakana are much easier. You simply need to use a dash: . 1. (tsu-a) 2. (me-ru) 3. (ke-ki) - tour - email - cake
Additional Katakana Sounds

is the only sound that is pronounced with a "f" sound, for example (futon) or (Fuji). That's fine in Japanese because there are no words with other "f" sounds such as "fa", "fi", or "fo". However, it's problem when converting foreign words such as "fork" into Katakana. This problem was solved by using small vowel sounds. For example, the small can be attached to to create (fo). "Fork" then becomes . There are other gaps that are filled with this technique. The "v" sounds are also expressed by putting two dashes to the vowel sounds. However, "v" sounds are rarely used due to the difficulty native Japanese speakers have in pronouncing them. The following table shows the gaps that were filled using these techniques for Katakana. Additional sounds v w f ch d t j sh i
u o
e
1. 2. 3. 4.
(so-fa) - sofa (win-do-u-zu) - Windows (as in MS Windows) (wok-ka) - vodka (chek-ku) - check
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(chek-ku)
- check The Complete Guide to Learning Japane
Kanji
The last and most notorious aspect of the Japanese written language is Kanji, which are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese. Most words in Japanese are written in Kanji even though they are still pronounced with the Japanese phonetic sounds represented by Hiragana and Katakana.
Stroke Order
When learning Kanji, it is very important to learn it with the proper stroke order and direction from the beginning in order to avoid developing any bad habits. Japanese learners often think that stroke order doesn't matter as long as the end product looks the same. However, what they don't realize is that there are thousands of characters and they are not always meticulously written the way they appear in print. Proper stroke order helps ensure the characters look recognizable even when you write them quickly or use more cursive styles. The simpler characters called radicals are often reused as components in larger characters. Once you learn the radical stroke order and get used to the patterns, you'll find that it's not difficult to figure out the correct stroke order for most Kanji. One good general rule of thumb is that strokes usually start from the top-left corner toward the bottom-right. This means that horizontal strokes are generally written from left to right and vertical strokes are written from top to bottom. In any case, if you're not sure about the stroke order, you should always verify by looking the character up in a Kanji dictionary.
Kanji in Vocabulary
There are roughly over 2,000 characters used in modern Japanese so you can imagine that memorizing them one-by-one as you might for syllabaries such as Hiragana does not work very well. An effective strategy for mastering Kanji is learning them with new vocabulary within a larger context. This way, we can associate various contextual information with the character in order to reinforce memory. Remember that Kanji, ultimately, is used to represent actual words. So it is important to focus not so much on the characters themselves but the words and vocabulary that include those characters. In this section, we will learn how Kanji works by learning a few common characters and vocabulary.
Kanji Readings
The first Kanji we will learn is the character for 'person.' It is a simple two-stroke character where each stroke starts at the top. By clicking the link to the stroke order, you may have noticed that the character as rendered by the font is not always the same as the hand-written style. This is another important reason to check the stroke order. Definition: person
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Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi:
Kanji in Japanese can have one or several readings. The reading for Kanji is split into two major categories called kun-yomi and on-yomi. Kun-yomi is the Japanese reading of the character while on-yomi is based on the original Chinese pronunciation. Generally, Kun-yomi is used for words that only use one character. The actual word for "person" is one example. Example: - person Kun-yomi is also used for native Japanese words including most adjectives and verbs. On-yomi, on the other hand, is mostly used for words that originate from Chinese, which often use 2 or more Kanji. For that reason, on-yomi is often written in Katakana. We'll see more examples as we learn more characters. With , one very useful example of an on-yomi is to attach it to names of countries to describe nationality.
Example
- American (person) - French (person) While most characters will not have multiple kun-yomi or on-yomi, the more common characters such as will generally have a lot more readings. Here, I only list the ones that are applicable to the vocabulary we learned. Learning a reading without a context within vocabulary will only create unnecessary confusion so I do not recommend learning all the readings at once. Now that you have the general idea, let's learn some more vocabulary and the Kanji used within them. The stroke order diagrams with red highlights show you where each stroke starts. 1. - Japan 2. - book
Definition: sun; day Stroke Order On-yomi: Definition: origin; book Stroke Order On-yomi:
1. - student 2. - teacher
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Definition: academic Stroke Order On-yomi: Definition: ahead; precedence Stroke Order On-yomi: Definition: life Stroke Order On-yomi:
1. - tall; expensive 2. - school 3. - high school Definition: tall; expensive

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi: Definition: school Stroke Order On-yomi:
- small - big - elementary school - middle school - college; university - elementary school student - middle school student - college; university student Definition: small
Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi: Definition: middle; inside Stroke Order On-yomi: Definition: large Stroke Order
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Kun-yomi: On-yomi:
1. - country 2. - China 3. - Chinese (person) Definition: country
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
- Japanese language - Chinese language - English - French - Spanish Definition: England Stroke Order On-yomi: Definition: language Stroke Order On-yomi:
With only 14 characters, we've managed to learn over 25 words ranging from China to elementary school student! Kanji is usually regarded as a major obstacle but as you can see, you can easily turn it into a valuable tool if you learn it in the context of vocabulary.
Okurigana and changing readings

You may have noticed some words that end with Hiragana such as or . Because those words are adjectives, the trailing Hiragana, called Okurigana are needed to perform various conjugations without affecting the Kanji. The thing to watch out for is remembering exactly where the Kanji ends and Hiragana begins. For example, you never want to write as . You may have also noticed that the Kanji readings don't always match the reading in a particular word. For example, is read as and not . Readings often go through these small transformations to make pronunciation easier. Ultimately, you'll want to check the reading for any new words you encounter. Fortunately, it has become much easier to look up new Kanji thanks to online tools and electronic dictionaries. You can find a tutorial on how to use these tools at the following link
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http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/resources/findingkanji
Different Kanji for similar words

Kanji is often used to make subtle distinctions or give a different shade of meaning for a word. In some cases, it is very important to remember to use the correct Kanji for the correct situation. For example, while the adjective for hot is , when used to describe the climate, you must write it as . When you are describing a hot object or person, you must write it as instead.
Definition: hot (for climate only) Stroke Order Kun-yomi: Definition: heat; fever Stroke Order On-yomi:
In other cases, while there is generic Kanji that can be used for all situations for a given word, the writer may use a more specialized version for stylistic reasons. The examples in this book will generally use the generic and usually simpler Kanji. If you want to learn more about learning the different Kanji for a single word and new words in general, go to the tutorial at the following link: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/resources/learning_words
Basic numbers and age

1 to 10
Learning the first ten numbers is a one good way to get started in learning any language. For Japanese, it also allows us to get familiar with some basic and important Kanji. One thing to pay attention to is the fact that 4 and 7 have two possible pronunciations. The more common is in bold. Numerals Kanji 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Reading
11 to 99
As an added bonus, we don't need to learn any more numbers to count up to 99. The tens digit is simply the number and ten. For example, two-ten is twenty, three-ten is thirty, etc. We will learn higher numbers past 99 in a later chapter.
Example
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
- 11 - 20 - 21 - 39 - 40 - 74 - 99
Counters and Age

Let's use the numbers we just learned to talk about our age. In Japanese, we must use counters to count different types of things. The counter for counting age is . Because the Kanji is rather difficult, it is also written as (though it's actually a completely different character) Counters are simply attached to the end of the number. However, as we saw in the last section, Kanji readings can often go through small changes to aid pronunciation. The following digits are read slightly differently when used with the age counter. The age 20 is also a completely irregular reading.
Irregular readings
1. 2. 3. 4. - 1 year old - 8 years old - 10 years old - 20 years old
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. - 20 years old - 21 years old - 48 years old - 70 years old
We will learn many more counters in a later chapter.
Chapter summary and practice

We covered all the sounds in Japanese, how they are written in Hiragana and Katakana, and how Kanji works. In addition, we also learn number up to 99 and how to count age. Let's apply what we've learned to come up with a simple self-introduction. The best way to learn a language is to regularly interact in that language and the only way to do that is to meet Japanese speakers so a self-introduction is an ideal way to apply what we've learned in this section.
Learning the expressions

You only need a couple of fixed expressions for your simple self-introduction.
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1. Shortened form of an expression originally meaning "I meet you for the first time". it's a standard greeting similar in intent to "Nice to meet" or "How do you do?" 2. There is no easy direct translation but it means something along the lines of "please treat me well" when used at the end of an introduction.
Telling people your name

If you haven't done so already, you'll need to decide on what to call yourself in Japanese. As we've learned, Japanese has a relatively limited set of sounds so it's very likely that your name will need to sound very different from its native pronunciation. I would recommend asking your teacher or a Japanese speaker for help in converting your name to the Katakana equivalent. You may even want to ask the first person you introduce yourself to. If you want to give it a try on your own (like right now), you can try this tutorial on finding your name in Japanese: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/resources/nameinjapanese To say you are that name, you need only attach to the name. The pronunciation is usually shortened to just "dess". We will learn more about in the next chapter.
Example
[name] (I am) [name]. 1. (I am) Brown. 2. (I am) Alice Smith. In Japan, the last name is given more weight so it is common to just go by your last name especially in a more formal environment such as the classroom or workplace. When using the full name, the last name always comes first for Japanese names. However, it can go either way for names from countries where the order is reversed.
Putting it all together

Using the fixed expressions and the vocabulary we learned in the last section, we now have everything we need for our simple self-introduction. Below is a short list of potentially useful nouns to describe what you are for your self-introduction.Don't forget that you need to add to the country for nationality. 1. - college student 2. - working adult
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
- South Korea - Canada - England - Australia - France - Spain - Europe - Brazil - Mexico Nice to meet you. (I am) Alice Smith. (I'm) American. (I'm a) college student. (I'm) 18 years old. Please treat me well.
Other expressions
In addition to practicing your self-introduction, a good way to practice pronunciation is to use various expressions for different scenarios. It's ok if nobody around you speaks Japanese. They'll understand you're hard at work practicing. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - thank you (polite) - sorry (polite) - used before eating a meal (lit: I humbly receive) - used after finishing a meal (lit: It was a feast) - used when leaving home (lit: I'm going and coming back) - used as farewell for someone leaving the house (lit: Go and come back) - used when returning home - welcome home
Nouns and Adjectives

At the end of the last chapter, we used Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji to create a simple self-introduction. In the process, we used to express state-of-being. In this chapter, we will learn more about the state-ofbeing and how to use nouns and adjectives.
State-of-Being
In English, the verb "to be" is used to describe what something is or where it is, for example: "He is a student" and "He is at school". In Japanese, the two are described very differently. The state-of-being we will learn is used to describe only what something is and not where it exists. The state-of-being is very easy to describe because it is implied within the noun or adjective. There is no need to use a verb nor even a subject to make a complete sentence in Japanese. Take for example, a casual conversation
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among friends asking, "How are you?"
How are you? (casual)

- healthy; lively Used as a greeting to ask whether one is well A (Are you) well? B (I'm) fine.
Polite State-of-being
While the previous dialogue may be fine among close friends, you should use the polite form when speaking to a teacher, a superior such as your boss, or people you're not very familiar with. For nouns and adjectives, all that is required for the polite form is to add to the end of the sentence. We did this in our simple self-introduction in the last section and because it's understood by context that you are talking about yourself, there is no need to add a subject. We can ask questions in the polite form by further adding to . The is a question marker so a question mark is not necessary. Below is a simple greeting in the polite form.
How are you?

A (Are you) well? B (I'm) well.
Practical Applications
Here's an example of a casual morning greeting between two classmates and a polite morning greeting with the teacher.
Casual Morning Greeting

1. - Good Morning (casual) Alice: Morning. Lee: Morning.
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Alice: (Are you) well? Lee: (I'm) good.
Polite Morning Greeting

1. - Good Morning (polite) 2. - a honorific prefix used for politeness and never used when referring to oneself Teacher: Morning. Smith: Good Morning! Teacher: Are (you) well? Smith: (I'm) well. You can follow a similar model to practice greeting people in the morning. We'll learn the expressions for afternoon and evening greetings in the next section.
Topic Particles
Context plays a powerful role in Japanese so one word sentences are perfectly fine for simple question and answers. However, longer and more sophisticated sentences will consist of many words that perform various grammatical roles. In Japanese, the grammatical role each word plays in a sentence is defined by particles. Particles are one or more Hiragana characters that assign a certain grammatical function to the word that comes before it. We'll see how this works by first learning the topic particle.
Topic Particle
As mentioned previously, context is very important in Japanese and is often silently understood by the situation. However, what you want to talk about may not always be obvious or you may want to change the topic of the conversation. For that purpose, the topic particle is used to indicate a new topic for the conversation. Note: The topic particle while written as , is pronounced .
Example
1. - this
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2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
- what - that - pen - now - a little (casual) - busy - movie - likable (unlike English "like" is an adjective not a verb)
1. (As for) this, what is (it)? 2. (As for) that, (it's) a pen. 1. (As for) now, busy? 2. (As for) now, (I'm) a little busy. 1. (As for) movie(s), (do you) like? (lit: is likable?) 2. (I) like (them). (lit: Is likable.)
Greetings
The topic particle is also used in the greetings for daytime and evening. The expressions were originally full sentences with a topic meaning, "As for today/tonight, how is your mood?" but they were eventually shortened to just "As for today" and "As for tonight". 1. - Good day (pronounced ) 2. - Good evening (pronounced )
How are things lately?

1. - recent; lately 2. - how 3. - busy Teacher: Good day. Smith: Good day. Teacher: (As for) lately, how (is it)?
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Smith: Busy.
Inclusive Topic Particle

The particle is the the same as the topic particle but adds a meaning of "as well" or "also".
Suspiciously busy
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - today - tomorrow - day after tomorrow - yes (casual) - truth; reality
Lee: As for today, (are you) busy? Smith : Yeah, (I'm) busy. Lee: What about tomorrow? Smith: Tomorrow is also busy. Lee: What about the day after tomorrow? Smith: The day after tomorrow too. Lee: Really?(lit: Is it true?)
Addressing People
Addressing other people directly
In Japanese, the word "you" is seldom used to refer to a person except in the case of very close relationships. Most of the time, you will refer to people using their name (last name is more polite than first) usually followed by a name-suffix. You have probably already heard somewhere at some point. It is the polite name-suffix used to refer to your social superiors, elders, or people you are unfamiliar with. The most common name-suffixes are listed below.
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- Polite name-suffix (gender-neutral) - Casual name-suffix (generally for males) - Casual name-suffix (generally for females) If you're not sure which to use to address someone, with the person's last name is generally the safest option. You can also always ask the person what they prefer to be called by.
Always sleepy
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. - yes (polite) - but - sleepy - that - hardship; rough time; tough - ok - always
Teacher: Smith-san, (are you) well? Smith: Yes, (I'm) fine. Teacher: Lee-san, (are you) well? Lee: Yes, (I'm) fine. But (I'm) sleepy. Teacher: That's tough. Smith: (It's) ok. Lee-san is always sleepy.
Talking about yourself

We already saw that it's usually understood implicitly by context when you're talking about yourself. However, there are times you may still want to refer to yourself as a topic to say, "As for me..." or "me too". There are several options for referring to yourself depending on level of politeness and gender.
List of different words meaning me, myself, and I

1. - polite, gender-neutral 2. - same Kanji as but this reading is only used in very formal situations 3. - polite, masculine
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4. - casual, very feminine 5. - very casual and masculine
How's the pizza?

1. - pizza 2. - tasty 3. - no (casual) John: As for pizza, tasty? Lee: No. Alice: As for me, tasty. This short conversation highlights a very important point. The topic only brings up the general topic of the conversation and does not necessarily indicate the subject of any one particular sentence. The last sentence would be very strange if it meant "I am tasty". However, because "I" is only a general topic, from the context of the entire conversation, we know that Alice is saying that as for her, the pizza is tasty.
Addressing family members

We've already encountered the honorific prefix in . This prefix is used in all sorts of words and comes from a Kanji which can be read as either or . However, determining which reading to use is usually not an issue as this Kanji is usually written in Hiragana. Definition: honorable
1. - money 2. - rice; meal 3. - tea The reason we're looking at it here is because of how the honorific prefix is used to refer to family members. We'll learn more about honorifics in a much later chapter but the basic idea is to use the honorific prefix to refer to family members of other people outside your own family. Just like how you should not use to refer to yourself, you would not use honorifics to refer to your own family members when speaking with people outside your family. However, because honorifics are relative to the person you're speaking to, you should not use them when referring to members of your own family while talking to another member of your family. This would not likely
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happen unless you had Japanese speakers in your family or you have a Japanese host family. We will learn more about the concept of inner and outer circle for honorifics in a much later chapter. The list below is by no means complete and only covers the more common words for the primary family members. Family member chart One's own family Family Parents Mother Father Wife Husband Older Sister Older Brother Younger Sister Younger Brother Son Daughter Someone else's family
Smith's parents
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - Yamada (surname) - Asian (person) - no - but - (one's own) mother - Japanese (person) - so - father - (one's own) father - American (person) (exp) - I see
Yamada: Smith-san, are (you) Asian (person)?

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Smith: No. But, (my) mother is Japanese. Yamada: Is that so? As for (your) father? Smith: (My) father is American. Yamada: I see.
Sentence-Ending Particles
Let's add some life to our sentences by using sentence-ending particles. These particles are attached at the very end of the sentence to add a different nuance or tone.
and sentence endings

and are two of the most frequently used sentence ending particles. 1. is used when the speaker is seeking agreement and confirmation. It adds a tone similar to saying, "right?" or "isn't it?". 2. is used when the speaker wants to point something out or make something aware to the listener. It adds a tone similar to saying, "you know?". 3. The two can be used together as
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. - today - hot (for climate/weather only) - tomorrow - busy - ramen - tasty, delicous
1. As for today, (it's) hot, isn't it? 2. As for tomorrow, (I'm) busy, you know. 3. As for ramen, (it's) tasty you know, isn't it?!
You look young for a teacher

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
- Tanaka (surname) - no - very - young - how old - that - secret
Smith: Nice to meet you. (I'm) Smith. Tanaka: Nice to meet you. (I'm) Tanaka. Smith: Tanaka-san, (are you) a student? Tanaka: No, (I'm) a teacher. Smith: Really? Tanaka: It's true, you know. Smith: (You) are very young, right? How old (are you)? Tanaka: That's a secret.
Adjectives
We've already used some adjectives as the state-of-being but we have yet to describe a noun directly with adjectives. In order to do this, we first have to learn the two different types of adjectives in Japanese. There are two types of adjectives called i-adjectives and na-adjectives.
Examples of i-adjectives
All i-adjectives end in . 1. 2. 3. 4. - good - cool; handsome - busy - fun
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5. - hot 6. - cold
Examples of na-adjectives
All adjectives that do not end in are na-adjectives. 1. - likable 2. - healthy; lively 3. - quiet
Examples of na-adjectives that end in

Though most adjectives that end in are i-adjectives, there are a small number of na-adjectives that end in . The examples below are two of the most common na-adjectives that end in . 1. - clean; pretty 2. - distasteful
Describing nouns directly

You can easily describe a noun by placing the adjective directly in front of the noun. For na-adjectives, you first need to add before you can attach the adjective to the noun (hence the name).
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. - person - time - game - object; thing
1. good person 2. lively; healthy person 3. pretty person 4. busy time 5. fun game 6. likable thing
You're so-so handsome

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
- Yamamoto (surname) (i-adj) - new (adv) - very (adv) - so-so - thank you (polite)
Smith: Is Tanaka-sensei a new teacher? Yamamoto: That's right. Smith: (She's) a very pretty person, isn't she? Yamamoto: Is that so? Smith: Ah, Yamamoto-sensei is so-so handsome too Yamamoto: ...Thank you.
Male/Female Speech
As opposed to polite speech, which is mostly gender-neutral, casual speech has many constructions that make it sound masculine or feminine to varying degrees. Of course, you do not have to be a specific gender to use either masculine or feminine manners of speech but you do need to be aware of the differences and the impression it gives to the listener. The first example of this is how and are used in casual speech.
Declarative
The declarative is attached to nouns and na-adjectives to give it a more declarative tone and make the state-of-being explicit. This is important in some grammatical forms we will cover later. For now, we can use it in casual Japanese to give a more definitive, confident, and somewhat masculine tone. For males, in particular, it is important to use it before or to avoid sounding too feminine. Note: Only attach to nouns and na-adjectives. Never to i-adjectives.
Example
1. - Japanese language 2. (na-adj) - skillful, good at 3. (i-adj) - fun
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1. As for Japanese, (you're) good at it, aren't you? (feminine) 2. As for Japanese, (you're) good at it, aren't you? (masculine) 3. As for Japanese, (it's) fun, you know. (gender-neutral as cannot be used for i-adjectives)
The homework is easy!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. (n) - homework (i-adj) - difficult (na-adj) - easy - umm - probably; maybe - which one; which way
Alice: As for homework, (is it) difficult? John: It's easy! Alice: Really? John: Umm, (it's) probably difficult. Alice: Which is it? Because John is male, he decides to use with with the na-adjective . However, regardless of gender, you cannot use with i-adjectives so he says . is grammatically incorrect.
Noun properties
The particle has many different uses but one of the most basic usages is for describing nouns with other nouns similar to how we described nouns with adjectives. This is usually used to describe ownership, membership, property or any other description that involves another noun. It is important to remember the order the modification takes place. You don't want to inadvertently say "name's me" when you meant to say "my name". If you're unsure of the order, I recommend translating as "of" and reading it in reverse.
Examples
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
- me; myself; I - name - this - car - Japan - pen - desk - up; above - bag - down; below - teacher - Japanese language
1. Name of me (my name) is Kim. 2. This car is car of Japan (Japanese car). 3. Pen is above of desk. 4. Bag is below of desk. 5. Tanaka-sensei is teacher of Japanese (Japanese teacher).
What's your first name again?

1. 2. 3. 4. - first name (lit: bottom name) - what - why - huh, eh
Lee: What is Smith-san's first name? Smith: (It's) Alice. Lee: Alice-chan, huh? What is Lee-san's first name? Lee: JaeYoon.
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Smith: ...Lee-kun, huh? Lee: Huh, why?
Noun replacement
The particle can also replace the noun entirely when it's understood by the context.
Examples
1. - red 2. - which 1. Like the red one. 2. Which one is Smith-san's?
Negative State-of-Being
Because the state-of-being is implied within nouns and adjectives, expressing the negative is a bit different from English. The noun or adjective are conjugated directly to say that [X is not Y]. Conjugating nouns and adjectives into the negative tense is done through two simple rules. There are only two exceptions to the rule for i-adjectives both involving the adjective meaning "good". The words and (which is a combination of another word with ) originally come from the adjective . Though it is usually pronounced in modern Japanese, all conjugations still derive from the original reading. You will see similar examples later as we learn different types of conjugations. Negative tense for nouns and adjectives For nouns and na-adjectives: Attach to the end Example 1. 2. For i-adjectives: Drop the at the end and replace with Example 1. 2. Exceptions: conjugates from 1. 2. Note: The negative tense is very similar grammatically to i-adjectives. Similar to i-adjectives, you must never use
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The Complete Guide i-adjectives. Similar negative tense is very similar grammatically toto Learning Japane to i-adjectives, you must never use the declarative with the negative tense.
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - salad - steak - not very (when used with negative tense) - this - book (i-adj) - interesting - this year - winter (i-adj) - cold
1. As for salad, don't like very much. 2. As for steak salad, (it's) not salad, you know. 3. As for this book, (it's) not interesting, you know. 4. As for this year's winter, (it's) not cold, is it?
That's not a good thing!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. (n) - class; lecture - not very (when used with negative tense) (i-adj) - interesting; funny - but (i-adj) - difficult - that (i-adj) - good (n) - matter; event (adv) - not at all (when used with negative tense)
John: Yamamoto-sensei's class is not very interesting. Alice: As for me, (it's) interesting. John: But isn't it very difficult? Alice: That's a good thing.
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John: It's not good at all!
Negative Nouns/Adjectives in Polite Form

As before, all that's required for the polite form is to add to the end of the sentence.
I'm not an otaku!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. (n) - hobby; interest - what read as when used with - computer (abbreviation of or PC) - game (na-adj) - likable - sports - no (polite) - otaku; geek; enthusiast
Yamamoto: What is your hobby, Lee-san? Lee: Computers. (I) also like games. Yamamoto: Do (you) like sports? Lee: No, I don't like (it) that much. Smith: Lee-san is an otaku. Lee: I'm not an otaku
Identifying the unknown

identifier particle
With the topic particle, you have to know what you want to talk about ahead of time. Obviously this will not always be the case. For example, if you wanted to know what kind of food somebody liked, it would be impossible to ask if each kind was his/her favorite using the topic particle saying "as for this" and "as for that". That is what the particle is for: to identify or seek to identify an unknown.
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As for pizza, do (you) like it? What kind of pizza do (like)? (Among all possibilities) You can sometimes restructure your sentence to mean the same thing with and without the particle. As for food that (you) like, what is it? As for food, what is it that you like? (Among all possibilities) However, while the topic particle can only bring up a general topic of conversation, the identifier particle play a specific role in that it's identifying a particular thing among other possibilities. As for Smith-san, busy. Smith-san is the one that is busy.
Which teacher do you like the most?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - which - number 1; the best; the most (i-adj) - cute - second year; sophomore - next year - something to look forward to - why - class - interesting - difficult
Lee: As for John-san, which teacher do (you) like the most? John: (I) like Tanaka-sensei. Lee: That's so, isn't it? She is cute. But (she's) second-year teacher. John: Looking forward to next year! Alice: As for me, I like Yamamoto-sensei, you know?
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John: Huh? Why? Alice: Isn't (his) class interesting? John: It's not interesting! It's difficult! Alice: Is that so?
The one or thing that...

Though it doesn't work all the time, a simple trick to easily distinguish is to translate it as "the one or thing that...". This way, it clearly illustrates the particle as identifying a particular thing or person. 1. Tanaka-sensei is the one that (I) like. 2. Isn't his class the thing that is interesting?
Conjunctions
There are really only two conjunctions in Japanese that can combine two sentences together into a compound sentence: "but" and "because". However, there are several versions of each with a slightly different level of politeness.
Combining two sentences with "but"

You may remember we already used to mean "but" or "however". While is always used at the beginning of a new sentence, there are two conjunctions that also mean "but" and can be used to combine two sentences together into one compound sentence, similar to English. The two conjunctions are and . is fairly casual while is slightly more formal and polite. (Note that this is completely different from the identifier particle we learned in the last section.)
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. - today - busy - tomorrow - free(as in not busy) (I'm) busy but (I'm) free tomorrow.
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(I'm) busy but (I'm) free tomorrow. Note: If the first clause ends with a noun or na-adjective without any tense and you're not using , you must add .
Example
(I'm) free today but (I'm) busy tomorrow. 1. 2. 3. 4. If the noun or na-adjective is already conjugated to another tense such as the negative tense , you don't need to add . (I'm) not free today but (I'm) free tomorrow. 1. 2.
Combining two sentences with "so"

You can combine two sentences with or to show a reason and result but it's important to remember that the reason comes first. Therefore, it may be beneficial to remember it as meaning "so" rather than "because" to match the order. is slighter more polite and formal compared to .
Example
1. - here 2. - noisy (It's) noisy here so (I) don't like it very much. (It's) noisy here so (I) don't like it very much. Note: Once again, If the first clause ends with a noun or na-adjective without any tense such as the negative tense and you're not using , you must add for . However, for you must add instead.
Example
1. - here 2. - quiet
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(It's) quiet here so (I) like it. 1. 2. 3. 4. Once again, this only applies to nouns and na-adjectives that are not conjugated to another tense. (It's) not quiet here so (I) don't like it very much. 1. 2.
Combining two sentences with "despite"

Similarly, you can attach two sentences with to mean "despite" or "in spite of". Similar to , you must attach when the first clause ends with a plain noun or na-adjective.
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. - teacher - very (i-adj) - young - this year - (economic) recession - Christmas - customer (i-adj) - few, scarce (i-adj) - cute (na-adj) - serious; diligent - man - friend
1. Despite the fact that that Tanaka-san is (a) teacher, (she) is very young. 2. This year is recession so despite it being Christmas, customers are few. 3. Although Alice is cute, because (she's) serious, (she has) few male friends.
Leaving parts out

You can leave out either side of the conjunction if it's understood by context.
Example

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Smith: I don't like (it) here. Lee: Why? Smith: Because it's noisy. If you leave the first part out, you still need to add , , or just as if the first sentence was there. 1. 2. 3. 4. - library - here - not very (when used with negative) - likable
Lee: Despite the fact (it's) library, (It's) always noisy here, huh? Smith: That's why I don't like (it) very much. Other options would be the same as it would be with both sentences. 1. 2. You can even leave out both parts of the conjunction as seen in the next dialogue.
So what?
Lee: I'm busy lately, you know? Smith: So? Lee: So (it's) tough, you know! But (I'm) finally free today so (I'm) happy! Smith: Oh, is that so?
Listing multiple nouns

complete list particle
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The particle is used to group multiple nouns together in a complete list.
The poor chicken family...

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. - rice dish with chicken and egg (parent and child bowl) - ingredient - rice; meal - onion - soy sauce - and then - of course - chicken - egg (i-adj) - bad feeling, gross, unpleasant (i-adj) - tasty (na-adj) - poor, pitiful (as in to feel sorry for) (i-adj) - interesting (na-adj) - ok - truth; reality - parent - child
Smith: What are the ingredients for Oyako-don? Tanaka: Rice, onions, and soy sauce. And then, because it's "parent and child bowl", chicken and egg, of course. Smith: That's unpleasant, isn't it? Tanaka: Is that so? But it's tasty, you know? Smith: Don't you feel sorry for them? Tanaka: Smith-san, (you're) interesting. (It's) not real parent and child so (it's) ok, you know. Smith: But...
and partial list

and are also used to list multiple nouns together. The major difference is that they imply that the list is not complete and is a sample among a larger list. is merely a more casual version of .
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I hate natto
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - what kind (n) - food - candy - cheese cake - strawberry - short cake (i-adj) - sweet (n) - thing (n) - natto (fermented soybeans) (na-adj) - dislike; hate
Yamamoto: As for Smith-san, what kind of food do (you) like? Smith: Let's see. (I) like things like Japanese candy, cheese cake, and strawberry short cake. Yamamoto: (You) like sweet things, don't you? Smith: (I) also like things that are not sweet, you know. Yamamoto: How about natto? Smith: As for natto, I hate it.
possible options
can be used with multiple nouns to list several possible options, essentially meaning "or".
You're just like whatever, huh?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - exam - when - today - tomorrow - definitely, for sure - then (casual) - haphazard, whatever works - next week - as I thought
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Alice: Exam is when? John: Today or tomorrow. Alice: It's not today for sure. John: Then, (it's) tomorrow. Alice: (You're) haphazard, huh? Lee: Exam is next week, you know. Alice: As I thought.
Explanations and expectations

In English, changing the order of words in the sentence can often change the tone as well. For example, asking "Is he a student?" sounds very different from "He's a student?" While the former is a very neutral question simply seeking a yes or no answer, the latter expresses surprise that the person is in fact a student and is seeking confirmation of that fact. In Japanese, we saw that sentence order is very flexible due to how particles clearly define the grammatical role of each word. So in order to express this kind of biased question or answer, we add to the end of the sentence to show that we are seeking or providing an explanation. For nouns and na-adjectives, you also need to add before .
Example
1. - he 2. - student 1. Is he (a) student? 2. He's a student? (Seeking explanation why he's a student) In the second sentence, because the person is implicitly seeking an explanation for why he's a student, it gives the impression that the speaker is surprised or considers the fact that he may be a student to be unexpected.
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Health is important too

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. - by the way - why - busy - me, myself (polite, masculine) - swim club - eh, huh - so - but - hobby; interests - computer; PC - game - health (na-adj) - important - I see
Smith: By the way, Lee-kun, why are you busy? Lee: Because (I'm in) swim club. Smith: Eh? Is that so? Lee: That's so but? Smith: But isn't (your) hobby computers and games? Lee: That's so but health is also important so. Smith: I see.
Explanation for and

When the sentence has additional things following the such as or , the is replaced with to make pronunciation easier. While can still be used, it is considered to be oldfashioned.
What's the problem?

1. - um, er, excuse me
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- um, er, excuse me The Complete Guide to Learning Japane 2. (i-adj) - good; fine 3. - word; language
Smith: Yamamoto-sensei, Lee-san is not an otaku because (he's in) swim club. Yamamoto: Um, Smith-san, Otaku is not a very good word, you know. Smith: Is that so? But Lee-san is not an otaku so isn't it fine? Yamamoto: Smith-san... Smith: Yes? Yamamoto: No, nevermind (lit: (it's) fine). The phrase shows a very important way setting expectations can enhance your abilities to express certain things. By setting the expectation that it should be good and asking the opposite allows you to ask questions like, "isn't it?". You can compare the difference in meaning by looking at the different variations below. This is only to give you the general idea as you'll naturally get the hang of it through the regular course of exposure to the language. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. - Is it good? (neutral yes/no question) - Is it not good? (neutral yes/no question) - It's good? (seeking explanation as to why it's good) - It's not good? (seeking explanation as to why it's not good) - It's good, isn't it? - It's not good, isn't it?

In this chapter, we learned how to use nouns and adjectives to describe what something is or isn't. Here is a simple list of examples using the various conjugations we learned in this chapter. Nouns and Adjectives Conjugation Examples Positive Noun Na-adjective Exception Negative Positive Polite Negative Polite *
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I-adjective
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* = exceptions
Questions using state-of-being

Now that we're familiar with the state-of-being, we can already ask and answer many different types of questions that involve what something or someone is. This includes asking simple yes/no questions or by using a question word.
Various ways to say yes or no

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - yes (polite) - yes (polite) - no (polite) - yes (casual) - no (casual
Various question words

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. - what - who - when - how - what kind of - why - why (casual)
The word for "what" or is a bit tricky because it has two readings. When used by itself, it is always pronounced . However, as we've already seen, when used with it is read as . There are other cases when it is read as as we'll see later. As you begin to practice speaking Japanese, you can apply what we've learned in this chapter to ask various icebreaker questions.
Sample ice-breaker questions

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - hobby; interests - number 1; the best; the most (na-adj) - likable - Japan - food - English (i-adj) - difficult - class (i-adj) - fun music
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1. What is your hobby? 2. What is your favorite food? 3. Do you like Japanese food? 4. Is English difficult? 5. Is class fun? 6. What kind of music do you like? Try to come up with your own questions for your teacher, classmates, or conversation partner.
Writing Practice
For writing practice, try writing a brief description about yourself. As always, make sure to correct your work early to avoid developing any bad habits. You can either ask a Japanese speaker or use http://lang-8.com/. Here's a short list of words that might be useful. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. - name - elementary school - middle school - high school - college - first year; freshman - second year; sophomore - third year; junior - fourth year; senior - major - interests; hobbies - reading - sports - Japanese language - desirable - very - a little (i-adj) - interesting; funny (i-adj) - difficult (na-adj) - easy - food
For example, here's a short self description by Alice Smith.

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
- economy - economics - soccer - by the way (i-adj) - tempura - pizza
Verbs
Similar to nouns and adjectives, the verb always comes at the end of the sentence. In fact, if you consider the implied state-of-being for nouns and adjectives as a verb, it could be said that all complete sentences always end with a verb. At the end of the last chapter, we learned how to set expectations by seeking or providing explanations with . The same thing applies for verbs.
Example
1. Do you eat sushi? 2. You eat sushi? (seeking explanation why he/she eats sushi as opposed to a neutral question "Do you eat sushi?")
I love sushi!
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. - sushi is an optional honorific prefix - to eat (na-adj) - lovable; very likable - raw - fish (i-adj) - amazing
John: As for sushi, (you) eat (it)? Smith: Yes, I love (it)! John: But (it's) raw fish, you know.
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Smith: So? John: That's amazing.
Particles used with verbs

Before we can do much with verbs, we first need to learn some particles that are used to describe how various parts of a sentence interacts with the verb.
Object Particle
The particle is used to designate the direct object of a verb. Note: While is technically a w-consonant sound, it is pronounced the same as .
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - movie (ru-verb) - to see; to watch - rice; meal (ru-verb) - to eat - book (u-verb) - to read - hand - paper - letter (u-verb) - to write
1. Watch movie 2. Eat rice/meal 3. Read book 4. Write letter
And/With Particle
We learned that we can list multiple nouns in the last chapter with the particle, e.g., salt and pepper. We can also use the same particle with verbs to express and action that is done together.
Examples
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1. 2. 3. 4.
- friend - to talk - relative (u-verb) - to meet
1. Play with friend. 2. Talk with Lee-san. 3. Meet with relative.
Target Particle
The target particle is used to designate the target of an action whether it's a time or location. It serves the purpose of many English prepositions such as "at", "in", "to", and "on" as long as it indicates a target of an action.
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - school (u-verb) - to go - tomorrow - bus (u-verb) - to ride (u-verb) - to ask - in front (u-verb) - to stand - friend (u-verb) - to meet
1. Go to school. 2. Watch movie tomorrow. 3. Ride on bus. 4. Ask teacher. 5. Stand in front of people. 6. Meet friend.
Context Particle
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The context particle is used to describe the context or the means in which a verb takes place. For example, if you're eating at a restaurant, since the restaurant is not a direct target for eating, you wouldn't use the particle. Instead, you would use the particle to describe the restaurant as the context in which eating is taking place.
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. - restaurant - Japanese language (u-verb) (u-verb) - to speak - chopsticks - movie theater - work - busy
1. Eat at restaurant. 2. Speak in Japanese. (Speak by means of Japanese.) 3. Eat with chopsticks. (Eat by means of chopsticks.) 4. Watch movie at movie theater. 5. Busy with work. (Busy by means of work.)
Directional Particle
The particle is similar in some ways to the particle. However, while the particle indicates a target for just about any verb, is more specifically used to indicate a direction of motion verbs such as "to go" or "to send". Because the particle does everything does and more, this particle is not used as often as the other particles. However, it is still beneficial to be at least familiar with it. Note: While is normally pronounced as "he", this particle is pronounced as
Examples
1. - letter 2. - to send 1. Go to school. 2. Send letter to Japan.
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Existence Verbs
With the state-of-being that we learned in the last chapter, we could only describe what someone or something is. In this section, we'll learn to express whether someone or something exists and where. There are two verbs that show existence for animate and inanimate objects. (u-verb) - to exist (inanimate) (ru-verb) - to exist (animate) Without getting caught up with the details, is generally used for things that can move of their own volition such as humans or animals while is for inanimate objects and abstract concepts such as time.
Example
1. - where 2. - time 1. Where is Alice-chan? (lit: Alice-chan exists at where?) 2. Do (you) have time? (lit: Is there time?)
Location
With some additional vocabulary, you can use these two verbs to describe the location of anything or anyone. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. - here - there - over there (farther away) - above - below - right - left - front; before - behind - next to
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. - key - table - bank - post office
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1. Alice is behind (the) school. (lit: As for Alice, exists behind of school.) 2. Key is above (the) table. (lit: As for key, exists above of table.) 3. Bank is next to post office. (lit: As for bank, exist next of post office.)
Any cute girls there?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. - tomorrow - club - to go - to do - conversation - practice - me; myself (masculine and very casual) - homework - Japanese person - cute - woman - child - girl - um; excuse me - for the time being; just in case - as expected (casual) - to get irritated
Alice: There's Japanese club tomorrow, want to go? (lit: Tomorrow, Japanese club exists but go?) John: What do (you) do at Japanese club? Alice: (You) do Japanese conversation practice. John: I have a lot of homework so (I'm) good. (lit: As for me, a lot of homework exists so good.) Alice: Japanese people are also there, you know. John: Is there cute girl(s)? Alice: Um, just in case, I'm going too but?
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John: Is that so? As I thought, I'm good. Alice: So irritating.
Negative Tense
Verb Types
In this section, we'll learn how to conjugate verbs to the negative tense. However, before we can learn any verb conjugations, we first need to learn how verbs are categorized. With the exception of only two exception verbs, all verbs fall into the category of ru-verb or u-verb. All ru-verbs end in while u-verbs can end in a number of u-vowel sounds including .For verbs ending in , if the vowel sound preceding the is an 'i' or 'e' vowel sound, it will be a ru-verb in most cases. Otherwise, it will be a u-verb.
Examples
1. - is an e-vowel sound so it is a ru-verb 2. - is an a-vowel sound so it is an u-verb If you're unsure which category a verb falls in, you can verify which kind it is with most dictionaries.
Exceptions
There are only two exception verbs that are neither ru-verbs nor u-verbs. 1. - to do 2. - to come Examples of different verb types ru-verb u-verb - to see - to speak - to eat - to ask; to listen - to sleep - to swim - to wake; to occur - to play - to think - to wait - to teach; to inform - to drink - to come out - to buy - to exist (animate) - to wear - to exist (inanimate) - to die
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exception - to do - to come
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Negative Tense
We can now learn the rules for conjugating the verb into the negative tense based on the different verb types. Be extra careful of which is one extra exception verb for this conjugation only. Negative tense for verbs 1. For ru-verbs: Drop the and attach Example: = + 2. For u-verbs that end in : Replace with and attach Example: + + = 3. For all other u-verbs: Replace the u-vowel sound with the a-vowel equivalent and attach Example: + = 4. Exceptions: 1. 2. 3. Negative tense conjugation examples ru-verb u-verb exception
You don't have a TV?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - hey - TV - program (e.g. TV) - how (u-verb) - think - not at all (when used with negative) (i-adj) - interesting; funny (u-verb) - to understand; to know (ru-verb) - to see - why - one's own home, family, or household
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12. - lie; no way (casual) 13. - truth; reality John: Hey, as for recent TV shows, how (do you) think? It's not interesting at all, huh? Alice: (I) don't know. As for me, I don't watch TV so. John: Huh? Why don't (you) watch it? Alice: As for our house, there's no TV. John: No way! Alice: (It's) true. John: ... No way! Alice: (It's) true, you know.
Polite Verbs
Verb Stem
Before we can learn the conjugation rules for the polite verb form, we must first learn how to create the verb stem. The verb stem is used in many different types of verb conjugations including the polite form. Below are the rules for changing the verb to its stem. Verb stem conjugation rules For ru-verbs: Drop the Example: = For u-verbs: Replace the u-vowel sound with the i-vowel equivalent Example: + = Exceptions: 1. 2. Verb stem examples
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u-verb exception
ru-verb
Polite Verb Form

Now that we know the rules to create the verb stem, it is very easy to conjugate the verb to the polite form for both positive and negative tenses. Polite and polite negative verb conjugation rules 1. Polite Positive: Attach to the verb stem Example: + = 2. Polite Negative: Attach to the verb stem Example: + =
Verb as a target
The verb stem can also be used to make it a target for another verb, typical a motion verb such as "go" or "come". This is done by attaching the target particle to the verb stem.
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - lunch - to eat - to go - me, myself - to meet - to come - friend - movie - see, watch
1. Go to eat lunch. 2. Coming to meet me.

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3. Go to watch movie with friend(s).
My family is in Korea
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. - everybody (polite) - this year - spring - vacation - what - to do - me, myself - here - part-time job - family (u-verb) - to meet (u-verb) - to go - South Korea (ru-verb) - to exist (animate) - airplane - charge, cost, fare - very (i-adj) - tall; expensive (u-verb) - to go home - so (na-adj) - tough, rough
Yamamoto: Everybody, what will (you) do at this year's spring vacation? Lee: As for me, (I) will do part-time job here. Yamamoto: (You) will not go to meet your family? Lee: My family is in Korea so the plane ticket is very expensive. Therefore, (I) will not go back home to Korea this year. Yamamoto: Is that so? (It's) very tough, isn't it?
Desire and Volition

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To want to do
In order to describe what someone or something wants to do, we must conjugate the verb into the form. This is done by simply attaching to the verb stem. One important thing to note is that this conjugation changes the verb into essentially an i-adjective. This is because it's no longer an actual action but a description of what one wants to do. Therefore, you can do all the same conjugations on the form as any other i-adjectives.
Example
1. - crab 2. (i-adj) - scary 1. (I) want to eat crab. 2. (I) want to go to Japan. 3. (I) don't want to watch (a) scary movie.
Volitional Form
We'll learn more about different uses of the volitional form later on but for now, we can simply consider the volitional form to mean "let's" or "shall we" e.g., "Let's go watch a movie." The rules for changing a verb into the volitional form is below. Volitional form conjugation rules 1. For ru-verbs: Drop the and add Example: = = 2. For u-verbs: Replace the u-vowel sound with the o-vowel equivalent and Example: + + = 3. Exceptions: becomes becomes
I'm bored
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. (sentence-ending particle) - a more casual and masculine version of - library - study - to do - boring, dull - then (casual) (na-adj) - ok - definitely, for sure
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John: I have nothing to do lately. (lit: Lately, I'm free.) Alice: Shall we study Japanese at the library? John: That's boring. Alice: Then, what do you want to do? John: Shall (I) go to watch a movie maybe? Alice: Are (your) studies ok? John: Yeah, (it's) ok. Alice: (It's) definitely not ok, you know.
Polite Volitional Form

The conjugation rules for polite version of the volition form is simple and only requires adding to the verb stem. Polite volitional form conjugation rules For all verbs: Attach to the verb stem Examples = (let's eat) = (let's go) = (let's do)
It's a good idea!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. - lesson (ru-verb) - to begin - weather - class - outside - idea - well then
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8. (u-verb) - to go Yamamoto: Let's begin today's lesson. Smith: Teacher, because the weather is good today, let's do the class outside! Yamamoto: That's a good thought. Shall (we) go outside? Everybody: Yes!
Telling Time
Time
In order to effectively describe when we want to do certain things and make plans, we'll need to know how to describe time. Similar to the age counter we learned in the very first chapter, we simply need to use the counters for hours and minutes. - hour counter - minute counter Once again, there are a number of reading variations to pay careful attention to. These readings are listed below. Hour reading variations Hour 4 o'clock 7 o'clock 9 o'clock Kanji Reading Minute reading variations Minutes How many minutes Kanji Reading 1 min 3 min 4 min 6 min 8 min 10 min
Examples
Though there are words for AM and PM, military time is used more often in Japan. 1. 2. 3. 4. - what hour; what time - AM - PM - half
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1. 2. 3. 4.
- 1:01 - 4:44 PM - 10:30 AM - 18:25 (6:25 PM)
Example
1. - what hour; what time What time is it now? (It's) 2:30.
Days of the week

Below is a vocabulary list pertaining to days of the week. Combined with time, this should be adequate for making plans in the near future. We will learn how to express complete calendar dates in a later chapter. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. - What day of week - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday - last week - this week - next week - every week - weekday - weekend
Is it really late?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - everybody - restaurant - what time - evening - a little (casual) (i-adj) - late - everyday - to sleep (u-verb) - to be different
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10. - ok Lee: Everybody is going to eat at (a) Japanese restaurant next Friday, (do you) Alice-chan want to also go? Alice: What time are (you) going? Lee: 8:30 night. Alice: (It's) a little late, isn't it? Lee: That's because Alice-chan (you) sleep at 10:00 every day. Alice: That's not so! Lee: Then it's fine as 8:30 right? Alice: Fine! 8:30.
From and until

Two particles that often go together especially with time expressions are "from" and "until" .
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. (particle) - from (particle) - until - aerobics - class - class (u-verb) - to begin - this - company (u-verb) - to work - parents - contact
1. Aerobic class is every Tuesday and Friday from 6:00 until 7:00pm. 2.
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From what time is class start? 3. Until when do (you) want to work at this company? 4. (I) hear from (my) parents on every weekend. (lit: Contact comes from parents every weekend.)
Question words and particles

Particles can be used with some question words to form other useful vocabulary. Let's first learn or review all the various questions words. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. - who - what - where - how - why - which way - which - why (casual) - why (formal) - when - how many - how much
with question words

The following question words can be used with to include and/or exclude everything. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. - everybody or nobody when used with negative tense - nothing when used with negative tense - everywhere or nowhere when used with negative tense - no matter what - both ways - always
Things aren't as consistent as one would hope however. For example, is usually not used to mean "everything". And always means "always" for both positive and negative tenses. Other words can be used instead to express similar concepts. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - everybody - everybody (polite) - everything - not at all (when used with negative tense) - absolutely, unconditionally or never when used with negative tense
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with question words

The combination of two particles can be used with question words to indicate "any". 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - anybody - anything - anywhere - anyhow - any way - any time - any number of things - any amount
with question words

The question marker can also be used with some question words to indicate "some". 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - somebody - something - somewhere - somehow - one way (of the two) - for some reason - for some reason (casual) - for some reason (formal) - sometime - some number of things - some amount
Never mind, you guys are too weird

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. - hey (casual) - today - lunch - somewhere - me, myself (polite, masculine) - anything - then (casual) (i-adj) - tasty - physical object - obvious - who - everybody (casual) - as usual, without change (na-adj) - strange
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15. - cafeteria Alice: Hey, as for today's lunch, let's go somewhere to eat. John: Right. What shall we eat? Lee: I'm fine with anything. Alice: Then, don't (you) want to eat something tasty? John: That's obvious. Who wants to eat a thing not tasty? Lee: I'm fine with anything. John: Then, let's challenge (ourselves) today with something not tasty! Alice: Everybody is strange as usual, huh? The cafeteria is fine for today as well.
Adverbs
We've already been using adverbs extensively without really paying much attention to them because they are easy to use. They don't require any particles and they can appear almost anywhere in the sentence. Below is a list of common and useful adverbs, some of which we've already seen.
Useful adverbs
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - always - often - usually - sometimes - rarely - not at all (when used with negative tense) - probably, maybe - a lot (amount) - a little (amount)
Creating adverbs from adjectives

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There are many words that are not adverbs by themselves but are made into adverbs from other adjectives. This is similar to how "ly" is added to many words in English to make them into adverbs such as "quickly" or "slowly". The rules for changing an adjective into an adverb is given below. As usual, is conjugated from the original pronunciation. This is where the adverb we just learned for "often" comes from. Rules for changing adjectives into adverbs For na-adjectives: Attach to the end Examples 1. 2. 3. For i-adjectives: Replace the with Examples 1. + = 2. + = Exceptions: 1. becomes 2. becomes
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. - room (na-adj) - pretty; clean - female - voice actor/actress (adv) - on purpose - cute (u-verb) - to speak - tomorrow - important - exam - tonight (i-adj) - early (ru-verb) - to sleep
1. Make room clean (lit: Do room cleanly). 2. Japanese female voice actresses often speak cutely on purpose. 3. Tomorrow, because there's an important test, going to sleep early tonight 4. (Are you) really going to Japan next year?
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Verb clauses
Now that we are familiar with both state-of-being and verbs, we can begin to look at how to use verb clauses to construct more complicated sentences. As we have learned, a complete sentence must end either in a real verb or state-of-being. This sentence can also be used as a clause as a part of a larger sentence. Remember also that the polite form only goes at the end of a complete sentence so a verb clause used within a sentence must be in the plan form.
Verb clauses as adjectives

A verb clauses can be used to describe a noun just like an adjective. Except for nouns and na-adjectives that is not conjugated to another tense, nothing is required except to put the clause directly in front of the noun. The highlighted areas show the clause that is a smaller sentence used in the larger sentence.
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - rice; meal - time - television - book (u-verb) - read - head; mind - height (na-adj) - lovely (i-adj) - tall - personality - gentle
1. When eating a meal, don't watch TV. 2. People that does not read books are not smart. 3. Tall people are lovely, huh? 4. Don't like people whose personality is not gentle. For na-adjectives, as always we need to use to attach it to a noun. As for nouns, there is no need to use a clause to modify a noun with another noun as the particle allows us to chain any number of nouns. 1. - shape, form 2. (na-adj) - pretty; clean 3. - fruit
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4. - luck 1. Fruit that has very pretty form is tasty. 2. As for second year Japanese students, luck is good.
I'm going alone

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. - this year - spring vacation - plan(s) - sightseeing - Mexico - one person; alone - intention - together - explanation, reasoning
Yamamoto: Tanaka-san, do (you) have some (kind of) plan this spring vacation? Tanaka: Yes, (I) plan to go sightseeing to Mexico. Yamamoto: That's nice. I want to go to Mexico too. Tanaka: I intend to by myself... Yamamoto: No, it's not the case that I want to go together with you in particular!
Verb clauses as nouns

Verbs clauses are different from nouns and are limited in many ways because you cannot attach any particles to them. However, we just learned that verb clauses can act as an adjectives. All we need to treat verb clauses as a noun is by attaching a generic noun to the clause: can also be used as a noun replacement. The difference is is a more general statement while is specific to the context of the sentence.
Example
1. - event, matter, generic happening 2. - cooking
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
- chopsticks - rice; meal (i-adj) - difficult, hard - morning - early - to occur; to awake (na-adj) - poor/weak at
1. (I) like cooking. 2. It is difficult to eat rice by way of chopsticks. 3. Not good at waking up early in the morning.
What do you like to do when you're free?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. - this week - particular - bookstore (i-adj) - bothersome - me, myself (masculine, casual (na-adj) - free (as in not busy) - as I thought, as expected
Smith: Do you have some kind of plan this weekend? John: Not particularly but? : Smith: How about going to Japanese bookstore with everybody? John: It's too bothersome so I'm fine. Smith: What do you like to do when you're free? John: I like not doing anything. Smith: As I thought.
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In this chapter, we learned how to use describe common activities using verbs. We also learned how to make or suggest plans by using the and volitional form. Finally, we learned the concept of verb clauses and how to use them to create more complicated sentences. Here is a short list of examples using the various conjugations we learned in this chapter. Verb Conjugation Examples Plain Ru-verb U-verb Exception Exception Exception * = exceptions Negative Polite Negative Polite *
Verbs ending in
* *
* *
Future plans and routine activities

In this chapter, we learned how to use verbs to talk about things we do or do not do. The verbs, by themselves, do not have a specific tense so they can be used to describe activities in the future or an unspecified time. With the grammar we learned in this chapter, we now know how to make plans with other people and talk about what the kinds of things we do on a regular basis. Here is a long list of vocabulary describing various times in addition to the ones we already learned for days of the week. Though the vocabulary list is rather long, you'll notice that it's mostly different combinations of the same Kanji such as for day. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. - yesterday - today - tomorrow - every day - last month - this month - next month - every month - last year - this year - next year - every year - morning - this morning
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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
- every morning - afternoon - evening - tonight - tonight - every night - rice; meal - breakfast - lunch - dinner - spring - summer - autumn - winter - rest, vacation
1. What shall (we) do today? 2. What kind of food do (you) want to eat? 3. What shall we eat for lunch? 4. What do (you) usually due on weekends? 5. Do (you) have some kind of plan this winter vacation? 6. How (about) going to watch movie next weekend? 7. What do (you) like to do when (you're) free?
Writing Practice
If you have friends who speak Japanese, great! Next time you're making plans either in an email or face-to-face, surprise your friend by using Japanese. Otherwise, for your diary on paper or on Lang-8, you can talk about the kinds of things you do and activities you enjoy. For example, here is a short self-description of John Brown talking about the things he likes do or (or not).
I like sleeping the most

1. 2. 3. 4. - hobby - particularly (ru-verb) - to sleep - #1; the best; -est
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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
- homework - studies (u-verb) - to speak - Kanji - pronunciation - future - as much as possible (na-adj) - with ease; comfortable - work; job - a lot - to work - what one should do (lit: how do) - time
Nice to meet you. My name is John Brown. As for (my) hobbies, there aren't any particularly but (I) like sleeping the best. (I) don't like doing things like homework and studying very much. But (I) like speaking in Japanese, you know. Because things like Kanji and pronunciation are interesting. (I) want to go to Japan sometime. As for in the future, (I) want to do a relaxing job as much as possible but everybody in Japanese works a lot so what should (I) do? As expected, (I) want to go when (I'm) a student.
Verb tenses and clauses

At the end of the last chapter, we learned about the concept of the verb clause. In this chapter, we will learn more ways to utilize the verb clause along with the progressive and past tense.
Progressive Tense
The progressive tense in most cases indicate an action that is ongoing. Some simple examples of the progressive tense is "I am watching a movie" or "I am eating". The same tense is also used to described an ongoing state resulting from the action such as, "I am married". In order to learn the conjugation rule for this construction, we must first learn the te-form, a very useful verb form that we will use in many different types of grammar.
The te-form
The conjugation rule for ru-verbs and the exception verbs are fairly easy as you simply need to append to the stem. To change ru-verbs into the te-form
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Drop the part of the ru-verb (same as the stem) and add Examples 1. 2. Conjugating a u-verb to the te-form is a bit more complex because we must break up u-verbs into four additional categories. These four categories depend on the last character of the verb. The list below has an example of a common verb with each different ending. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. (u-verb) - to speak (u-verb) - to write (u-verb) - to swim (u-verb) - to drink (u-verb) - to play (u-verb) - to die (u-verb) - to cut (u-verb) - to buy (u-verb) - to hold (u-verb) - to go
The table below illustrated the four different categories and the conjugation rules for each using the list above. There is also one additional exception for this conjugation: Te-form conjugations for u-verbs Ending Non-Past changes to... Te-form Exception Verbs Non-Past Te-form *
* exceptions particular to this conjugation
Progressive Tense
In order to change a verb to the progressive tense, we simply need to attach a verb we already learned to the teform. This is the ru-verb used to express existence of an animate object. In this case, it is used simply
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as a grammatical construct to express the progressive tense and has little to do with the original verb. Using for progressive tense To describe a continuing action, first conjugate the verb to the te-form and then attach the ru-verb . Examples 1. 2. The beauty and simplicity of this construction is because it ends in the ru-verb , any additional conjugations are the same as any other ru-verb, including the polite form. This also applies to the past tense, which we will learn later. Progressive Conjugation Examples Positive Ru-verb U-verb Exception * Exception * * = exceptions Negative Positive Polite Negative Polite
Exception *
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - that - already (u-verb) - to acquire knowledge - pen (u-verb) - to hold - marriage - dog - cat (u-verb) - to keep; to raise (pets in particular) (u-verb) - to get fat (ru-verb) - to get skinny
1. (I) know that already. (lit: In state of having acquired that knowledge already.) 2. Do (you) have (a) pen? (lit: In state of holding (owning) pen?) 3. Are (you) married? (lit: In state of being married?) 4.
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5. 6. 7. 8.
Not doing anything. Raising a dog. Not raising a cat. (The) cat is fat. (lit: Cat is in state of having gotten fat.) (The) dog is skinny. (lit: Dog is in state of having gotten skinny.)
Where do you live?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. (u-verb) - to reside at - dormitory (ru-verb) - to happen to see - for a long time or distance - east - direction - place - that much (i-adj) - far - first year; freshman (u-verb) - to choose - #1; the best; -est (i-adj) - late
Alice: Lee-kun, where are you residing at now? Lee: (I'm) living in the dorm. Alice: Is that so? (I) don't see (you) every much, dorm of where? Lee: The place that's at the far east direction. Alice: Why are you living in such a far place? Lee: (I'm) a freshman so (we're) the latest to select a place to live.
Shortened progressive form

The from can be dropped in more casual situations.
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Example
1. What are (you) doing? 2. What are (you) reading? 3. Don't own a dog. 4. Do (you) have (a) pen?
Past Verb Tense

Plain past tense verbs
The conjugation rules for the plain past tense are quite simple now that we've already learn the rules for the teform. This is because the plain past tense conjugation rules are almost identical to the rules for the te-form. The only difference is to use and in the place of and respectively. The past-negative conjugation rule should also be familiar to you as it's identical to the past-tense conjugation rules for both i-adjectives and negative state-of-being. Remember that the progressive tense always end in the ru-verb: . This means you can use the same rules as any other ru-verbs to easily change the progressive tense to the past progressive or negative past progressive. Plain past verb tense conjugation rules Past tense: Conjugate to the te-form and replace with and with Examples 1. eat ate 2. drink drank 3. eating was eating Negative past tense: Conjugate to the negative tense and replace the last with Examples 1. eat not eat did not eat 2. drink not drink did not drink 3. eating not eating was not eating
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When you don't understand, you should say so

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. - to know (i-adj) - odd, strange, funny - together - to study - expected to be (sentence-ending particle, casual) - I wonder (casual) - sorry - errand (ru-verb) - to be late - (one's own) mother - sudden - phone - to say (ru-verb) - to teach; to inform (ru-verb) - to understand - properly - to convey - should - sigh
Alice: Where is Lee-kun? John: Don't know. Alice: That's odd. (We) are supposed to study here together but (I) wonder where (he) went? Lee: Alice-chan, sorry. (I) was little late due to an errand. Alice: What were you doing? Lee: A phone call came suddenly from (my) mother. I told John, didn't (he) tell you? John: Sorry, I didn't understand the thing (you) were saying so (I) didn't say anything to Alice-chan. Alice: (You) should properly convey when you didn't understand something, you know.
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John: (I) understood. Lee: Did (you) really understand? John: Not really. Alice: Sigh...
Polite past verbs

The rules for the polite past tense is similar to the other polite tenses and are all based on the verb stem. Polite past verb tense conjugation rules Past tense: Attach to the verb stem Examples 1. 2. Negative past tense: Attach to the verb stem Examples 1. 2. Summary of tenses Positive Non-Past Past - go Negative - don't go
- went - didn't go
Spring vacation is already over

Smith: Yamamoto-sensei, good afternoon! Yamamoto: Smith-san, good afternoon. It already became thoroughly spring, hasn't it? Smith: That's so, isn't it. Spring vacation really ended quickly. Yamamoto: Is that so? What did (you) do in spring vacation?
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Smith: (I) rested taking it easy so (I) didn't do anything in particular. Yamamoto: That is good as well. (It's) also important to properly take rest so. Smith: Yamamoto-sensei, what did (you) do for vacation? Yamamoto: (I) was doing various things with class preparation. Smith: (It's) important to properly take rest, you know. Yamomoto: That's right.
State-of-Being Past Tense

Plain past nouns and adjectives
The conjugation rules for nouns and na-adjectives are identical once again for the past tense. The rule is also the same for i-adjectives and negative tenses as they both end in . As usual, and conjugations start from the original pronunciation. Plain past state-of-being conjugation rules For nouns/na-adjectives: Attach to the end Examples 1. 2. For i-adjectives/negative tenses: Replace the with Examples 1. + = 2. + = 3. + = 4. + = 5. + = 6. + = Exceptions: conjugates from 1. = 2. = Summary of plain nouns/na-adjective tenses
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Positive Non-Past Past - (is) student
Negative - is not student
- was student - was not student Summary of plain i-adjective tense Positive Negative - is not tall
Non-Past Past
- (is) tall
- was tall - was not tall
Looking forward to next year

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. - spring - school term - already; more - soon - to end - finally - real (na-adjective) - various - summer - vacation - look forward to - certain, sure - second-year, sophomore - to become - pluralizing suffix - to be pleased - class - more (sentence-ending particle) - a more casual and masculine version of - not at all (when used with negative) - to listen
Alice: Spring term will also end soon, huh? John: Finally. Cause it was really tough for various (things). Looking forward to summer vacation! Alice: It was rough sure but it was fun.
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Lee: And then, we'll become second-year students, huh? Jonn: That's right! And then, Tanaka-sensei will become our teacher. Alice: What are you getting happy (about)? Tanaka-sensei's class is much more difficult, you now. Lee: Tanaka-sensei is cute, huh? John: (She's) cute, huh! Alice: Not listening at all...
Polite past nouns and adjectives

The polite form for past nouns and adjectives is similar to the plain past conjugation rules. Past state-of-being conjugation rules 1. For nouns/na-adjectives: Attach to the end Examples 1. 2. 2. For i-adjectives/negative tenses: Add to the plain past tense Examples 1. + = 2. + = 3. + = 4. + = 5. + 6. + 3. Exceptions: Add to the plain past tense 1. = 2. = Summary of polite nouns/na-adjective tenses Positive Non-Past Past - (is) student Negative - is not student
- was student - was not student Summary of polite i-adjective tense
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Positive Non-Past Past - (is) tall
Negative - is not tall
- was tall - was not tall
Note that only applies to nouns and na-adjectives. Japanese learners have a tendency to do the same for i-adjectives, for example but it is incorrect!
How was your vacation?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - Mexico - trip - family - that much (i-adj) - far - place - fairly - little while
Yamamoto: Tanaka-sensei, how was the trip of Mexico? Tanaka: It was very good. Various (things) were interesting. Yamamoto-sensei also wanted to go, right? Yamamoto: Yes. But because (I have) family, it's fairly difficult to go to such a far place. Tanaka: I already went so (I) won't go for a while. Yamamoto: That's why (for reasons I already said), (I) didn't have intention of going together with (you) Tanakasensei at all.
Verb sequences
In this section, we'll learn how to describe verbs that happen after, before, and at the same time as another verb. To describe clauses that happen sequentially, we must first learn all the te-form conjugation rules.
Te-form conjugation rules

For the progressive tense, we only needed to learn the conjugation rules for plain verbs. However, nouns, adjectives, and the negative tense can also be conjugated to the te-form.
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Te-form conjugation rules 1. Plain nouns and na-adjectives: Attach to the noun or na-adjective. Examples 1. + = 2. + = 3. + = 2. I-adjectives and negative tense: Replace the last with . Examples 1. + = 2. + = 3. + = 3. Exceptions: As usual conjugates from 1. + = 2. + =
Sequence of actions
The te-form we learned at the beginning of this chapter is very versatile and has many uses. In fact, the te-form alone is used to express a sequence of actions that happen one after another. This will make your conversations smoother as it allows you to connect multiple sentences instead of having many smaller, separate sentences that are often too short. 1. 2. 3. 4. - morning (ru-verb) - to get up; to happen - and then - breakfast Morning, (I) woke up. Then (I) ate breakfast. Then, (I) went to school. Morning, (I) woke up, ate breakfast, and went to school.
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. (i-adj) - gentle - head - popularity - what should one do (lit: how do) - drinking party
1. Because she is pretty, gentle, and smart, (she's) popular with everybody. 2. (You) don't do homework and what are you going to do? 3.
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Drinking party is not today, it's tomorrow.
Before and after

You can use and to describe an action as happening before or after another action. 1. - front; before 2. - after
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. (ru-verb) - to sleep - bath (u-verb) - to enter - here (exception) - to come - properly - contact (exception) - to do - afternoon - rice; meal - lunch (ru-verb) - to eat - homework (u-verb) - to swim (i-adj) - dangerous
1. Take a bath before going to sleep. 2. (I) properly contacted (you) before (I) came here. 3. Did homework after eating lunch. 4. Swim after eating is dangerous. Note: Be careful of the tense of the verb that comes before and . is non-past while is always past tense. Another way to describe an action is to use the te-form with . While similar to , conveys a stronger and more immediate relation between the two events, often used for situations where the previous action needs to be completed for the next action to start.
Example
1. - dinner
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2. (u-verb) - to learn 3. (i-adj) - good 1. (I'll) do homework after (I) eat dinner. 2. As for Katakana, (it) is good to learn after learning Hiragana
Two simultaneous actions

You can express two actions that are taking place simultaneously by attaching to the end of the stem of the first verb. The tense is determined by the main verb at the end. Using for concurrent actions 1. Change the first verb to the stem and append 1. + 2. +
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - to speak - manners (i-adj) - bad - dictionary (u-verb) - to use - sentence (u-verb) - to write (ru-verb) - to go through, to get across
1. Do homework while watching TV. 2. (It's) bad manners to speak while eating. 3. Wrote Japanese text while using dictionary but (it) didn't get across at all.
Listing multiple verbs

Partial list of verbs
In the second chapter, we learned how to list multiple nouns using and . Using the te-form, we now know how to list multiple verb clauses similar to . However, in order to create a partial list of verbs similar to and , we must use another construction described below.
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Rule for creating partial list of verbs Conjugate all the verbs to the past tense and attach to each verb. Finally, add at the end. 1. 2. 3. Do things like eating and drinking.
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. (ru-verb) - to sleep - beer - sports - walk, stroll
1. Like to do things like sleeping and reading book(s). 2. (I) did things like drink beer and watch tv. 3. Do (you) do things like sports and strolls?
Partial list of reasons

There may be more than one reason for something but and can only connect two sentences. Once again, we can use the te-form to list multiple verbs for one reason. However, if we want to imply that the list is only several among a larger list of potential reasons, we can add to the end of each verb clause. Note:: You must add for plain nouns and na-adjectives. Because she is pretty, gentle, and smart, (she's) popular with everybody. Because she is pretty, gentle, and smart (among other reasons), (she's) popular with everybody.
Examples
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. (i-adj) - hot (for climate/weather only) - class - pool (ru-verb) - to get tired (i-adj) - sleepy
1.
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Because today is hot (among other reasons) and there's also no class so let's go to the pool. 2. (I'm) tired and sleepy (among other reasons), (I) don't want to go anywhere today.
Just hanging out again

1. - music 2. - lie; no way 3. - same Alice: What were you doing yesterday? John: There was no homework and (I) was free (among other reasons) so (I) watched TV and listened to music (among other things). What about (you) Alice-chan. Alice: There was homework. (I) was doing that, you know. John: No way! Alice: What are you going to do? John: (It's) ok. (I'll) do it while listening to class. Alice: Same as always, huh?
Phrasing verb clauses

Quoting a phrase
The most straight-forward reason to phrase a verb clause to quote somebody. A verb clause can be phrased by adding to the end of the clause. For verb clauses that end in an plain noun or na-adjective, we must add . A direct quote would use the Japanese version of double-quotes: but you can also paraphrase.
Examples
1. (u-verb) - to say 2. - he 3. -she; girlfriend
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1. Smith-san said "he/she is not coming today". 2. He always says (he/she) is busy. 3. She said (he/she) is free next week.

This grammar is also very useful for defining things and asking how one would say something. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. - class - conversation - practice - toilet; bathroom - of course - bathroom - inside - meaning - well then, in that case - difference (u-verb) - to understand - mostly - context - for example - that kind of, such (na-adj, noun) - stupid - normal
Smith: Brown-san, where is the bathroom? Brown: Of course, it's in the bathroom. Yamamoto: Brown-san, in Japanese, toilet has the same meaning as bathroom. toilet Brown: Then, what do you say in Japanese for "toilet"? toilet Yamamoto: (You) also say for "toilet". Brown: How do (you) understand the difference?
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Yamamoto: In most cases, (you) understand by context. sit on the bathroom Brown: For example, do would (you) say "sit on the bathroom" in Japanese? Smith: Normally, (you) don't say such a stupid thing.
Other verbs for phrasing thoughts

There are many other verbs that can be used with a phrased verb clause as you can see in the following examples. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. - college, university - cafeteria (i-adj) - tasty (u-verb) - to think - school (particle) - until - this - train (i-adj) - early, fast (ru-verb) - to be late - email (u-verb) - to send - cigarette - to breathe in; to smoke - promise - study abroad (ru-verb) - to decide
1. Do (you) think the college cafeteria is tasty? 2. (I) heard that this train is the fasted to school but (it's) not fast at all. 3. ! (I) sent by mail that I'm going to be late tomorrow! 4. Promised not to smoke cigarettes. 5. Decided to go do study abroad to Japan next year.

In addition, this grammar also gives us another way to do introductions.
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
- Mariko (female first name) - bulletin board, online forum - English - practice - partner; other party (u-verb) - to find - a lot - together
Mariko-san, Nice to meet you. I'm Alice Smith. It was written in the forum that you are looking for a partner to practice English so I'm sending you this email. I'm currently studying Japanese at an American university and thinking that I want to practice Japanese a lot. How about studying together? Smith Alice
Short, casual version of

The phrase is used so often and in so many ways that there is a shortened casual version: .

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. (u-verb) - to play (i-adj) - late - to a greater degree - to get studying done; to become informed (lit: become study) - rarely - properly - textbook - me, myself (slang, masculine) - to differ, to be different
John: Alice-chan is late, huh? Lee: (She's) busy with study so (she) said (she's) not coming today.
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John: What are (you) going to do, studying all the time? Despite the fact that (It's) said that you'll get a lot more studying by practicing Japanese while playing with everybody. Lee: I guess so. But, I think it's good to use textbook and study properly once in a while. John: By saying that, you want to say (I) don't study at all? Lee: That's not it!
Experiences
"Have you ever done [X]?", you can ask a question of this nature quite literally by using the noun for a generic event: and .
Examples
1. Have you ever gone to Japan? (lit: Is there an event (where you) went to Japan?) 2. (I) have never sung song at Karaoke. (lit: There is no event (where I) sang song at Karaoke.) 3. (I) had never eaten okonomiyaki but (I) finally ate (it) when (I) went to Japan. (lit: There was no event (where I) ate okonomiyaki but finally ate when went to Japan.)

LA
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Smith-san, Thank you for the email. I wrote that I wanted to practice English but I don't have much self-confidence yet so I will write the reply in Japanese. I live in a place called Kawaguchi-shi north of Tokyo. Have you ever gone to Tokyo? There are a lot of people and it's a very busy place. And then, there are lots of tasty restaurants. Have you ever eaten things like Okonomiyaki and Monjayaki? Monjayaki is famous in Tokyo. As for Smith-san, are you living in America? As for me, I have net yet been to America but I'm thinking I want to go sight-seeing to places like New York an LA. That's why I'm studying English but it's pretty difficult and there's still a lot of things I don't understand. Let's work hard together and study! Mariko
Transitive and Intransitive

A transitive verb is one that requires an agent to complete the verb while an intransitive verb is complete in itself and doesn't require a direct object. In Japanese, it is important to distinguish between these two types of verbs because intransitive verbs cannot take a direct object (the particle). Below is a sample list of common transitive and intransitive verbs and examples of how the particles change depending on which type of verb is used. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs Transitive (ruverb) (ru-verb) (u-verb) (u-verb) (ru-verb) (ru-verb) (ru-verb) (u-verb) (u-verb) to start Intransitive (u-verb) to begin to come to an end to fall to come out; to leave to enter to be opened to be closed to be attached to disappear to be extracted
to put to an end (u-verb) to drop to take out to insert to open to close to attach to erase to extract (ru-verb) (ru-verb) (u-verb) (u-verb) (u-verb) (u-verb) (ru-verb) (ru-verb)
Example
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1. Start conversation with a person (you) don't know. 2. Movie begins soon. 3. Finally finished homework. 4. Homework finally ended.
What happened?
Tanaka: What happened? (lit: What is it that existed?) Suzuki: This cup fell. Tanaka: It isn't that Suzuki-san (you) dropped it? Suzuki: No, I didn't do anything, you know. Tanaka: Then, is it that this cup fell by itself? Suzuki: It was already fallen before I came here so (I) don't know. Tanaka: No, (I) saw Suzuki-san (you) dropping that cup, you know.

In this chapter, we learned the progressive and past tense for both positive and negative verbs. We also learned the te-form for the progressive tense as well a number of other uses. Here is a list of examples using the various conjugations we learned in this chapter. Te-form Conjugation Examples Plain Noun/na-adjective I-adjective Exception Te-form Negative Te-form * *
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Ru-verb -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending Exception Exception Exception * = exceptions
* *
-ending (u-verb)
Past Conjugation Examples Plain Noun/naadjective I-adjective Exception Ru-verb -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending -ending (uverb) -ending -ending Exception Exception Exception Past Negative Past Polite Past Polite Negative Past
* * * * *
* * * * * *
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* *
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* = exceptions
Conjugation practice
We learned many conjugation rules in this chapter which you'll need to practice until they are almost instinctive both for speaking and listening. I recommend using flash cards to practice conjugation rules using a mix of every type of verb, adjective, and nouns. Here are some suggestions and examples of how you might want to make your own cards. The important thing is to focus your cards on areas you are weak at and to make sure you are comfortable with conjugating any word in any tense at a moment's notice. Front side - to buy past negative negative-past Front side - to buy polite polite past polite negative polite negative-past Front side - to buy buying was buying not buying wasn't buying Front side - to buy want to buy wanted to buy not want to buy didn't want to buy Back side - to buy Back side - to buy Back side - to buy Back side - to buy
To get a good representation, you should use at least these common verbs, nouns, and adjectives. 1. - student 2. - teacher
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
The - teacher Complete Guide to Learning Japane (na-adj) - healthy; lively (na-adj) - likable (na-adj) - distasteful (na-adj) - clean; pretty (i-adj) - big (i-adj) - small (i-adj) - good (i-adj) - cool; handsome (ru-verb) - to see (ru-verb) - to eat (ru-verb) - to wear (u-verb) - to cut (ru-verb) - to exist (animate) (u-verb) - to exist (inanimate) (u-verb) - to talk (u-verb) - to write (u-verb) - to go (u-verb) - to swim (u-verb) - to drink (u-verb) - to play (u-verb) - to die (u-verb) - to use (exception) - to come (exception) - to do
Telling stories
Conversation is often made up of narratives whether it's about events happening around us or what people think and feel. In this chapter, we've learned many grammatical structures that allow us to talk about what's happening and what people are thinking and saying. A good way to practice what you learned in this chapter is to talk or write about anything on your mind whether it's something interesting that happened recently, somebody you've recently met, or what your plans are for the future. Below is a very small list of things you can write and talk about. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. - matter; event - oneself (u-verb) - to think (ru-verb) - to feel - recent; lately (ru-verb) - to occur; to awake (i-adj) - interesting - Japanese (language) - study - reason - future
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12. (exception) - to do 1. Thing(s) oneself is thinking and feeling lately (among other things). 2. Interesting thing(s) that happened recently. 3. Reason why (you) thought (you) want to study Japanese. 4. Thing(s) (you) want to do in the future.
Numbers and amounts

We've been using numbers here and there but we've yet to comprehensively cover how to count or tell the date and time. We will do that here in addition to learning how to express different amounts and make comparisons.
The Numeric System

Numbers starting from 100
We already learned all the numbers up to 99 in the first chapter. We will now learn the numbers 100 up to 10 quadrillion. If you need a quick review, here are the first 10 numbers. Numerals Kanji 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Reading Here are the additional units for numbers starting from 100. Numerals 100 1,000 10,000 Kanji 10^8 10^12
Reading Note: Units larger than require another preceding number and cannot be used by themselves. For example, does not mean 10,000, you need to add a one: . Because the Japanese numeral system is based on units of four not three, the same units get repeated once you get past 10,000 until you get to 100,000,000. In other words, numbers are organized as 1,0000, 1,0000,0000, 10^12, 10^16 and so on. You'll need to pay careful attention to reading changes for some sound combinations. The chart below outlines the numbers that are pronounced slightly differently.
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Numerals Kanji Reading 300 600 800 3000 8000 10^12
Example
Large numbers are rarely written in all Kanji as you can imagine something like would be difficult to read. You will usually see a combination of numbers and Kanji or just numerals altogether. 1. 1,234 - 1,234 2. - 53,000
Other numbers
Several ways to say zero and other types of numbers are listed below. meaning "circle" is similar to how we use "O" (the letter) in things like phone numbers, room numbers, and addresses. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - zero - zero - circle; zero - suffix for room numbers X - negative X - period; dot; decimal point X.Y XY - X.Y XY - Y/X (Y of X parts)
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. - room 203 23.5 - twenty three point five - fourth (1/4) - negative five
It's so confusing!
John: Oh already! (I) don't understand Japanese numbers at all!
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1 million Alice: It's certainly difficult, isn't it? Because in Japanese (you) count by units of four, I just add four, divide by three, and change (it) into (the) English number. For example, is 2 plus 4 and (it's) six so it becomes 1 million. John: No, (I) don't understand at all! Lee-kun, it isn't difficult? Lee: Korean is the same as Japanese so (it's) easy, you know. John: That's cheating, isn't it?
Counting and counters

Counters
Unfortunately, counting discrete items isn't as straight-forward as just using the numbers we just learned in the last section. We must use various counters depending on the type of object we're counting. We already learned the counter for age in the very first chapter. Below are a list of more common counters and when to use them. Counter When to Use To count number of people To count long, cylindrical objects such as bottles or chopsticks To count thin objects such as paper or shirts To count bound objects usually books To count small animals like cats or dogs To count the age of a living creatures such as people or animals To count small (often round) objects To count number of times To count number of locations
As usual, the reading may change depending on what makes pronunciation easier as well as a couple of exceptions for . Fortunately, counters are always attached to the end of the number, so we need only worry about the readings for the first 10 numbers. The higher digits are read the same as any other number. Below, you can see a list of readings for all these counters. The variations are indicated in bold. Counting with variations
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9
10 20
There is also a generic counter for when none of the more specific counter applies. This counter goes up to ten Generic Counter Numeral How many Kanji Reading 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
You may encounter many other types of counters in your studies. In fact, , which we have already seen used as a superlative, is yet another counter meaning #1 where #2 is , #3 is and so forth.
Other useful counting vocab

There are some additional vocabulary that are useful for counting in certain ways. 1. - attaches to a counter to indicate order 2. - attaches to a counter to indicate each 3. - attaches to a counter to indicate repeated intervals
Example
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1. Staple 2 sheets of paper each. 2. Who is the 3rd person that entered the store? 3. Exercising every other day (spaced 1 day in between).
Beer is fattening
Tanaka: Sorry I'm late. Yamamoto: It's ok. Tanaka: What are (you) drinking? Yamamoto: Draft beer. Tanaka: Didn't (you) say (you) would not drink beer anymore? Yamamoto: (I) think one bottle every once in a while is fine. Tanaka: As for beer, (you) get fat soon. Which number bottle is this? Yamamoto: Isn't two bottles ok every once in a while as well? Tanaka: (I) think it's not ok.
Dates and Time

Dates
Dates are similar to using counters, one each for year, month, and day. - year counter - month counter - day counter
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The year counter is pretty straight-forward, as there are no reading variations. However, there are variations for months and a whole bunch of exceptions for days of the month. The two lists below show all the months in a year and the days of the month. Special readings or variations are appropriately marked. Months of the year Month January February March April May June July August September October Kanji Reading What month
November December Days of the month Day What day 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th Kanji Reading
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15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21th 22th 23th 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 30th 31th
For completeness, here are all the days in the week. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. - What day of week - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday
Date formats
The date format employed in Japan is the same international date format used in many other parts of the word: year, month, day in that order. Once again, it is common to use numerals to make it easier to read. You may encounter another calendar native to Japan based on the reign of each emperor when filling out public documents. Basically, the year starts over from 1 called at the beginning of each new reign along with the name of the era. For example, the era began in 1989, therefore, the year 2009 would be . If you live in Japan, it would be beneficial to remember the current year and your birthday in the Japanese calendar. Below are the eras going back about 100 years. You can also search online for convenient converters or charts with each year.
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1. 2. 3. 4.
- Heisei era (1989/1/8-) - Showa era (1926/12/25-1989/1/7) - Taishou era (1912/7/30 - 1926/12/25) - The first year of an era until the end of that year (12/31)
Example
1. 2009/12/24 2. Thursday December 10, April 1st 3. 1981/11/30 4. 1989/9/9
Time
We already covered how to tell time in a previous chapter so here's a brief review. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - hour counter - minute counter - AM - PM - half Hour reading variations Hour 4 o'clock 7 o'clock 9 o'clock Kanji Reading Minute reading variations Minutes How many minutes Kanji Reading 1 min 3 min 4 min 6 min 8 min 10 min
Example
1. - 1:01 2. - 4:44 PM 3. - 10:30 AM
Time spans
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We need to learn a couple more counters to express a span of time versus a fixed date or time. This counter is attached to a date or time to express a length of that time. - span of time - a span of week(s) - a span of month(s) While these counters are pretty straight-forward, there are a number of reading variations. In particular, while usually means the first of the month and read as , it can also mean a span of one day when read as . - 1st of the month - span of one day - span of one week - span of one month - span of ten months
Example
1. - span of two days 2. - span of three weeks 3. - span of two months
Various amounts
Now that we learned how to use numbers and express date and time, it would be a good time to review how to express various amounts. Most amounts can be expressed with just vocabulary, many of which we've already seen. Below is a list of just some of the vocabulary used to describe various amounts. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. - a little - a little (casual) - a lot (i-adj) - few (i-adj) - many - not yet - already; more - a little more - a lot more - a long time - this much - that much - that much (over there) - about
Expectation of more
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There are two particles that are used to express the word "only": and . Just like every other particle, these particles attach to the end of the word that they apply to. The primary difference with is that it must be used with the negative and emphasizes the lack of something.
Example
1. - meat 2. - tonight 1. Eat only meat. 2. Not eat anything but meat. 3. Let's go just the two of us tonight. (lit: As for tonight, let's go by way of only two people.) 4. (I) have only 500 yen.
Too much of something

An excess of something is expressed with the ru-verb which means, "to pass" or "to exceed". There are several rules for attaching this verb to adjectives and other verbs. As is a regular ru-verb, all subsequent conjugations are the same as any other ru-verb. Using to indicate it's too much Verbs: Change the verb to the stem and attach Examples 1. 2. Na-adjectives: Attach Examples 1. 2. I-adjectives: Remove the last and attach As always, conjugates from Examples 1. 2. 3. Negative verbs and adjectives: Replace the last from with and then attach Examples 1. 2.
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Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - yesterday (u-verb) - to drink - hangover - head (i-adj) - painful
1. (I) drank too much yesterday and (my) head hurts with hangover. 2. The amount is too much so (I) ordered a much smaller size. 3. Diet is fine but (you're) not eating too much (too much of not eating).
On a diet
Alice: (I'm) hungry. (lit: stomach has emptied) John: Why? It's still 2 o'clock, you know. Alice: (I) didn't eat anything but breakfast today. John: Why didn't (you) eat lunch? Alice: Last night, (I) ate too much dinner so (I'm) on a diet. John: Normally, (you) don't say you're on a diet after you ate a lot yesterday. Alice: That's why I just started. John: (You) intend to be on a diet until when? Alice: (It's) no good already. (I) will quit from tomorrow. John: (I've) never heard of a one day only diet.
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Alice: (I) wonder if that's why (I) don't lose weight? John: Obviously.
Comparisons
In order to make a comparison, you have to define either side of the comparison using and/or . defines the direction the comparison is leaning toward while defines the side it's leaning away from. The important thing to remember is that is a noun while is a particle. Another particle often used in making comparisons is , which describes the extent of something.
Example
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. - direction; side (particle) - rather than (particle) - extent of - which way - dog - cat
1. Which do (you) like more, dog or cat? (lit: Dog and cat, which side is the one (you like?) 2. Like dog more than cat. (lit: Like the side of dog rather than cat.) 3. Hate dog more than cat. (lit: Hate the side of dog rather than cat.) 4. Don't like cat as much as dog. (lit: Don't like cat to extent of dog.)

In this chapter, we learned how to work with numbers and amounts. Numbers, dates, and counting is a fairly tricky thing to master with all the various readings and exceptions so it's something that will require quite a bit of practice to master. Here is a list of simple questions you can ask or answer to practice various dates and numbers. 1. What is today's date? 2. What month, what day is tomorrow? 3. When is (your) birthday? 4.
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How old (are you)? 5. What time is it now? 6. From what time to what time is (the) store open? 7. As for (your) family, how many people?
Shopping and other activities involving amounts

All the work we did in this chapter to learn how to use numbers, count, and compare amounts will come in handy when dealing with money in Japan. If you are planning to visit Japan, you'll be able to get a lot of practice for this chapter by shopping, dining, and generally getting around. Yen, the Japanese currency, is roughly equivalent to a penny so 100 yen is around one US dollar. The counter for yen is actually pronounced ("en").
Shopping
1. 2. 3. 4. - electronic - dictionary - how much? - Japanese currency counter
Alice: How much is this electronic dictionary? 3 Store clerk: (It's) 30,000 yen. Alice: (It's a) little too expensive, isn't it? Is there (one) that is a little more cheap? 25 Store clerk: This model is 25,000 yen. Alice: How is (it) different with this? Store clerk: (Are you) studying Chinese? That also has Chinese (in it) so (it's a) little more expensive. Alice: For the purpose of studying Japanese, which (do you) think is better?
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Store clerk: Let's see. This model has only English but (there's) more example sentences and words so (I) think this model is better. Alice: Is that so? Then (I) will go with this one.
Traveling

Potential and uncertainty

Culturally, Japanese people tend to only be assertive when they're absolutely sure of something. In order to accurately convey how sure one is of something, Japanese has many ways to express various degrees of certainty. In this chapter, we will learn how to express how sure we are by talking about things that are possible, probable, and conditional.
Expressing potential
Potential Form
The potential form describes the feasibility of the action. The rules for changing a verb into the potential form is given below. All verbs in the potential form become ru-verb. Rules for creating potential form
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For ru-verbs: Replace the with Examples 1. = 2. = For u-verbs: Replace the u-vowel sound with the e-vowel equivalent and attach . Examples 1. = 2. = Exceptions: 1. 2. You can also drop the from for ru-verbs. For example, becomes instead of . However, you should start practicing with the full conjugation first as the shorter form is more casual.
Various degrees of certainty

There are a number of sentence endings that indicate various degrees of certainty to a statement.
Indicating a fair amount of certainty

You will often hear at the very end of the sentence during, for instance, a weather forecast. It is used to express a fair amount of certainty when used with a flat intonation. In casual situations, it is also used to seek agreement similar to when expressed with a rising intonation. However, while is used for what the speaker believes to be generally agreeable, can be more assertive and opinionated. is another more masculine version of the casual usage of . Both and are attached at the end of sentence. Typically, the polite form is not used with these sentence endings (excluding which we'll see in a much later section).
Indicating a possibility
is another sentence ending that expresses a neutral possibility with about 50% level of confidence. It is simply the and particle combined with the potential negative form of . This means that it conjugates just like any other negative ru-verb.
Appearances and hearsay

We often make deductions based on appearances and observations. In this section, we will learn how to describe what things appears to be based on our own and other people's observations.
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Appearance or manner
The noun is the most generic word used to describe an appearance or manner of a state or action. It can be used in various ways the same as any other noun.
Example
Outward appearance
can be substituted by in more casual situations when describing an outward appearance or what someone or something looks like. at first glance, looks identical to meaning "want to see". You could even say it has a similar meaning as an outward appearance is how one wants to see something. However, the key difference is that while all verbs in the form such as conjugate as an i-adjective, this acts like a na-adjective.
Example
Guessing from observation

In English, "seems like" or "looks like" is also used to guess an outcome or what something is based on one's observations and deductions. In Japanese, this is expressed by appending to the verb or adjective with the following rules. The resulting word becomes a na-adjective. Rules for guessing outcome using Verbs: Conjugate to the stem and append Example 1. = - Looks like cup is about to fall) 2. - Looks like it's going to rain Na-adjectives: Append 1. I-adjectives: Drop the last and append Example 1. Looks tasty. 2. Looks fun. Negative tenses: Drop the last and append Example 1. Looks like (he/she) will not come.
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2. Looks not tasty.
Expressing hearsay Appearance from hearsay or behavior
Trying
There are several different ways to try something in Japanese including making an effort toward something, making an attempt at something, and trying something out to see what happens.
Striving for a goal

In order to express "try" as striving toward a goal, we use the same we learned in the last section to describe the manner or appearance of the way we want to act. In this case, we use the verb "to do" and the target particle to do toward the manner or appearance of the verb clause.
Examples
1. Try not to smoke cigarettes (lit: Do toward manner of not smoking). 2. Trying not to eat sweet things (lit: Doing toward manner of not eating sweet things). 3. Was trying to exercise a lot more but soon gave up (lit: Was doing toward manner of doing more exercise but soon gave up).
Making an attempt
The volitional form can also be used to describe an attempt to do a single action. For this expression, we use the volitional form followed by and the verb "to do" .
Example
Experimenting
Conditional Phrasing questions

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When we want to talk about a question in a larger sentence, we can treat the sentence as a phrase by using the question marker.
Example
1. Do (you) know when Tanaka-san is coming? 2. (I'm) agonizing whether I should go to Japan next year for study abroad. When it's a yes/no question, you can append an optional to represent the other choice.
Example
1. - to be troubled over something, to agonize over a decision 2. - study abroad 1. Do (you) know whether Tanaka-san is coming tomorrow or not? 2. (I'm) agonizing whether I should go to Japan next year for study abroad or not. 3. Whether (I) want to go to Japan or not, (I) don't know.
Chapter summary and practice Optional and required

In this chapter, we will learn how to talk about things that one may or may not have to do. This includes asking for favors, making requests and suggestions, and the various command forms.
Consequences
The expression "even if" is used when something happens regardless of another action. In Japanese, the same idea is expressed more literally with the te-form and the inclusive particle.
Examples
1.
Asking for permission

In Japanese, we can ask and grant permission by saying it's ok or fine even if we do a certain action using the
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same grammar.
Examples
1. Is it fine even if (I) go to the toilet? 2. (You) older-sister said it's fine to eat (it)! 3. Even if it's late, it's fine until next week. 4. As for identification, it is ok even if it's (a) student id?
Things we don't have to do

Similarly, for the negative tense, if it's ok or fine even if we don't do a certain action, it means we don't have to do it.
Examples
1. Don't have to do anything. (lit: (It's) good even if (you) do nothing.)
Unintended consequences
Sometimes our actions have unintentional consequences that wasn't intended to happen.
Required actions Asking for favors Making requests Making suggestions Command Forms Chapter summary and practice

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9/7/2010

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

The Complete Guide to Learning Japanese

What is a complete guide to Japanese?

Resources and Tools

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Writing Systems and Pronunciation

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane e

* (o) * = rarely used

English words in Japanese

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

e o Voiced Katakana Click for Sound p b d z g a i (ji) (ji) u (dzu) o

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

yo All small and combinations in Katakana - Click for Sound p b j g r m h n c s k ya yu yo

Hard Consonant Sounds

The Long Vowel Sound

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Additional Katakana Sounds

- check The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi:

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

1. - tall; expensive 2. - school 3. - high school Definition: tall; expensive

Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi: Definition: school Stroke Order On-yomi:

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

1. - country 2. - China 3. - Chinese (person) Definition: country

Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi:

Okurigana and changing readings

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Different Kanji for similar words

Basic numbers and age

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Counters and Age

We will learn many more counters in a later chapter.

Chapter summary and practice

Learning the expressions

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Telling people your name

Putting it all together

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Nouns and Adjectives

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

among friends asking, "How are you?"

How are you? (casual)

How are you?

Casual Morning Greeting

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Alice: (Are you) well? Lee: (I'm) good.

Polite Morning Greeting

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

How are things lately?

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Inclusive Topic Particle

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

Talking about yourself

List of different words meaning me, myself, and I

The Complete Guide to Learning Japane

4. - casual, very feminine 5. - very casual and masculine

How's the pizza?

Addressing family members

Stroke Order Kun-yomi: On-yomi: