家庭教師のおねえさん - click for gelbooru

In case you need a quick refresher, we last left our hero (あいと　ゆうきさん) passionately describing how he’s going to draw a scene in which the main character will feel some oppai for the first time.  As a fellow man, yuuki says it’s his duty to make sure he delivers the quality the scene deserves.

And so…

yuuki: daga boku wa mune wo monda koto ga nai (but I’ve never felt oppai myself…)

ashisu:  kiitemasen yo (I didn’t need to know that.  (lit. I wasn’t asking / I’m not listening))

vocab:

daga – but
boku – I
mune – bewbs (lit. chest/breast)
monda koto ga nai – have never “monda” == have never groped

Coincidentally, that covers the two negative forms I wanted to talk about ^^

First off,

ない

This is the ‘regular’ negative ending to verbs (as opposed to the polite negative ending).  Remember how we made the “pre-masu” form last time?  For u-verbs we’re going to do a similar thing today by making the negative stem for each verb.  While the pre-masu form meant substituting an “i” character for the verb ending, this time it’s an “a” character.  Probably best if you just look at the following diagram:

Hopefully that makes sense…

く　⇒　か
す　⇒　さ
つ　⇒　た

and so on.  Note the exception in red:

う　⇒ わ

Let’s look at some real examples with verbs:

きく　(to hear, listen, ask) ⇒　きか
はなす　(to talk) ⇒　はなさ
たつ　(to stand up) ⇒　たた

Remember this is only for u-verbs! For ru-verbs it’s again very simple: just drop the る.

Almost done, now we add ない!

う-verbs

きく　⇒　きか ⇒　きかない (do not hear/listen/ask)
はなす　⇒　はなさ ⇒　はなさない (do not talk)
たつ　⇒　たた ⇒　たたない (do not stand, for example: はるひ　は　たたない)

Click for gelbooru

る-verbs

たべる　⇒　たべ　⇒　たべない (do not eat)
みる　⇒　み　⇒　みない (do not see)
きこえる　⇒　きこえ　⇒　きこえない (kikoeru == to be able to hear, to be heard.  so kikoenai = can’t hear.  mio loves repeating this when she’s scared ^^;)

きこえない！　きこえない！　きこえない！

Guess now’s as good a time as ever to introduce the irregular verb ‘to be’  – ある (aru).  It only applies to inanimate objects, for example:

ほん　が　ある。 (There is a book.)

わたし　が　ある。　(I am (here)). Can’t say this (instead use いる)

The negative form is just ない.

ぼく　の　まんが　が　ない！ (boku no manga ga nai!  == my manga is gone! (not here))

Now the polite negative form:

ません

This one is easy, I promise (well, if you remember the masu form :P).  Take the masu form of a verb.  Now instead of ending it with ます change it to ません.  Done!  Alternately, take the pre-masu form and add ません.

あそぶ　⇒　あそび　⇒　あそびません (do not play)
もむ　⇒　もみ　⇒　もみません (do not squeeze)
みる　⇒　み　⇒　みません (do not see)

Tada!  Now you know both the regular and polite versions of the negative conjugation for verbs!

Useful tip -  to invite someone to do something, the negative version of the verb is often used (rather than, “do you want to…”).  For example:

いっしょうに　えろげえ　あそばない？ (do you want to play eroge with me?)　- in english it’d be like asking, “won’t you play eroge with me?” but with more of an invitational flavor

kimihagu - click for gelbooru

errr, here’s a more practical example:

いっしょに　おちゃ　でも　のまない？ (do you want get some tea or something together? (lit. drink))

Alrighty, back to reading practice with the manga:

yuuki – dakara koso jissai ni monde! kono me ni yakitsukenakereba ikenai!! (Therefore I must squeeze some breasts and burn that image into my eyes!)

dakara koso – for this reason, therefore
jissai ni – truly, in reality
me – eye/eyes
yakitsukenakerebaikenai – a verb conjugation meaning, must do ~.  In this case it’s must yakitsukeru (to bake/print/burn into one’s memory).  If you’re really curious, it’s the negative conditional + ikenai (won’t do/must not happen).  One more note for medium/advanced readers – the nakereba ikenai part can be contracted to nakya ikenai and further shortened to nakya.  So instead of tabenakereba ikenai (i must eat), in informal situations you could just say, tabenakya! (i gotta eat!)

yuuki – …mochiron momitai to itte momeru mono jyanai (sound effect: ba – I think the sound effect of him striking that pose? ^^;) (Of course, I can’t just squeeze some breasts just because I say I want to…)

mochiron – of course
momitai – the -tai form of momu
itte – the progressive form of iu – to say

yuuki – demo! (however!! (lit. but))

yuuki – shigoto no tame nara dareka ga kyouryoku shite kureru kana~ nante… (sound effect: chira chira – glancing) (If it was for the sake of my work, I wonder if someone would to help me out… or something…)

shigoto – work
~ no tame – for the sake of ~
dareka – someone
kyouryoku – cooperate
kana – an ending indicating uncertainty – for example, (そう　か? – is that so? versus そう　かな？ i wonder if that’s so… or たべる　か – is he going to eat it? versus たべる　かな – i wonder if he’s gonna eat it)
nante – or something like that

ashisu: sensei – honto ni shitagokoro wa nain desu ka? (you don’t actually have any ulterior motives do you?)

honto – really
shitagokoro – ulterior motives

Gaaaa, I love ashisu-san ^^  kawaiii~

yuuki: chotto dake (just a little)

yuuki: suimasen… (sorry…)

ashisu: sensei…

suimasen is an informal version of sumimasen.  Though you could technically translate the verb, sumimasen is an idiom meaning, “sorry” or “excuse me.”  It comes from the negative form of sumu – to end.

Argh, had planned to do the rest of the chapter but I gotta wake up for an early meeting tomorrow orz.  Plus the lesson was getting kind of long ^^;

That’s all for today.  Keep reading!  If nothing else it will improve your reading speed ^^

以上！

Sorry about the bad scan… manga don’t exactly lay flat ^^;;  Lesson material is taken from the opening chapter of まんが家さんとアシスタントさんと　(まんがかさんとあしすたんとさんと == Mr. Manga Artist & Ms. Assistant &). Read on for an explanation of the “tai” form, but first, and introduction to verbs!  Might be unsafe for work, but then again you shouldn’t be studying Japanese at work (usually) :P

From this point on, I will not always put up romaji for the hiragana, so make sure to get those down!  Total immersion, it’s for your own good :P

In the opening panel we see Mr. manga artist muttering aloud, 「おっぱいもみたい…」 (you can read that now, right? ^__^ if you’re a little rusty, it’s oppai momitai). oppai you probably are well familiar with at this point, so let’s focus on もみたい. もみたい is a conjugation of the verb もむ, to rub, wrinkle, massage… or in this cape… grope :P

cc cops a feel. click for gelbooru

First of all, all verbs in Japanese end with an う sound. So う、く、ぐ、す、つ、ぬ、ぶ、む、and る are all possible endings. Verbs are then split into two categories, in my classes we called them う verbs and る verbs. う　verbs can end in any of the characters previously listed, while る verbs always end in る. Take home lesson – unless the verb ends in る, it’s an う verb. If it ends in る, it could be either.

So what’s that have to do with anything? Conjugation varies depending on the verb type. For example let’s look at かく – to write. Since it doesn’t end in る, it must be an う　verb. Let’s conjugate to the ます (polite) form. For う　verbs, we take the ending character in the verb and convert it to the corresponding い character – in this case き, and get かき. Now add ます – かきます! Congrats, you can now say/read, “I/he/she/you/we/they write(s)”… politely!  Notice also that we don’t care about the subject! In Japanese you say “I write” the same way as you say, “you write” or “he writes,” etc. The only way to differentiate is by context or with a pronoun. (i.e. わたしはかきます。 (watashi wa kakimasu. watashi == I, so this translates to “I write.”)).

Back to the conjugation, let’s revisit the steps in conjugating. First of all we switch up the last character:

う　(u) ⇒　い (i)
く　(ku) ⇒　き (ki)
ぐ　(gu) ⇒　ぎ (gi)
す　(su) ⇒　し (shi)
つ　(tsu) ⇒　ち (chi)
etc…

Here’s a slightly more visual diagram.   Just use the same rules for ぐ and ぶ, which I left out ^^;

…easy enough, right? Once you’ve substituted the correct character, let’s call that form the pre-masu form. To the pre-masu form, just add ます for the ます conjugation.

いう　(to say)　⇒　いい (pre-masu form) ⇒　いいます
かく　(to write) ⇒　かき (pre-masu form)　⇒　かきます
およぐ (to swim)　⇒　およぎ (pre-masu form)　⇒　およぎます

Despite the number of swimsuits you see, not too much swimming seems to go on in anime :P click for gelbooru (though the pic isn't any bigger)

はなす　(to talk) ⇒　はなし　⇒　はなします
たつ　(to stand) ⇒　たち　⇒　たちます

Getting the hang of it? Worried about る verbs? Luckily they’re totally easy. Drop the る, you’ve got the pre-masu form. So just add ます and you’re done!

たべる (to eat) ⇒　たべ　⇒　たべます
きる　(to cut) ⇒　き　⇒　きます (update: i’m an idiot, this is an u verb ^^;;;  gomen m(_ _)m)
できる (to be able to)　⇒　でき　⇒　できます

Just remember that some verbs ending in る are actually う　verbs. For example:

かえる　(to go home) ⇒　かえり　⇒　かえります
わかる　(to understand) ⇒　わかり　⇒　わかります
なおる　(to be fixed, cured) ⇒　なおり　⇒　なおります

mio cures some people just by looking at them :P click for gelbooru (same rez orz)

We’ll cover irregular verbs another time :P Anyhow, let’s look over what we’ve covered… now you can recognize verbs, and conjugate to the ます form. The ます form is simply a polite version of the present tense, so the only difference between it and the regular form is formality. As far as strict meaning goes, they’re interchangeable. Thus, わたしはかく。　and わたしはかきます。 both mean, “I write.” The ます version is just more polite.

Getting back to the manga, instead of ます, you can add たい to the pre-masu form of a verb to give it the meaning, “want to ~.”

かく　(to write) ⇒　かき　⇒　かきたい (want to write)
たべる　(to eat) ⇒　たべ　⇒　たべたい (want to eat)
もむ　(to rub) ⇒　もみ　⇒　もみたい (want to rub)
みる (to see)　⇒　み　⇒　みたい (want to see)

Note that this form expresses a personal want, and thus is restricted to meaning, “I want to ~.” You can use it in a question to ask someone if they want to do something, but that’s as far as it goes.

えいが　を　みたい ですか　(Do you want to see a movie?)
えいが　が　みたい です。 (I want to see a movie.)
あなたは　えいが　を　みたい です (You want to see a movie. *Not a question, can’t say it this way)
あゆ　は　たいやき　を　たべたい　です。 (Ayu wants to eat taiyaki.  *Third person, can’t say it this way)

You’ll also note that the above examples stick です on the end of the sentences.  That’s the polite version of the ‘tai’ form.  For the regular version, just leave off the です.

Beginners can skip this paragraph, intermediate/advanced students may be curious… For verbs that take a direct object, you can use を or が as the object particle.  が denotes a stronger feeling than を　so make sure to use it appropriately.  However, there are some cases where, despite a strong feeling, が cannot be used.  Specifically, when the verb is passive, when the preceding noun is not the direct object of the verb, and finally, when you have a long phrase between the particle and the verb (わたしはあにめをねるまえにみたいです！ – I want to watch anime before i go to sleep.  – though You could say, わたしはねるまえにあにめがみたいです。).

Not to leave you hanging, here’s the next page.  The grammar will be covered (eventually ^^;) in future lessons, but I’ve provided a translation along with vocab run downs.

Just love hiroyuki’s character design.

So on the first page we see the manga artist mutters aloud, “I want to grope some breasts!”  In this panel his assistant responds with, “haa…” (ok……/riiight….).  はい means yes, and a very sharp, crisp は！ is also used to mean yes (often in military situations).  はあ  is kind of related to the latter… it can still mean yes, but with a sighing sort of tone (implied by the …..), it’s more of, well, a spoken sigh.  In some cases I think it ties pretty directly to saying ‘yeah…’

The boxes introduce the characters.  On the right, “Manga Artist – aito yuuki.”  His name could also be translated as, “Love and courage” ^^;  On the left, “Assistant – ashisu sahoto.”  yuuki’s speech bubble has some katakana in it – エッチ – a very important otaku word.  … “ecchi” :P  Did you read the rest of it it ok?  “iya mochiron ecchi na riyuu de wa nakute ne.”  == “Well, of course, not for perverted reasons…”

iya – no/well…
mochiron – of course
ecchi – perverted
riyuu – reason
de wa nakute – negative form of the verb ‘to be’

“kono motsure atte monde shimau shi-n no sankou ni” – “…I need a reference for this scene where they get tangled up and he gropes her on accident.”

kono – this
motsure au – to be tangle together
monde shimau – a form of the verb momu which implies an accident occured, or something unintended/undesired ended up happening
shi-n – scene
sankou – reference

“shujinkou ga hajimete onna no ko no mune wo momu shi-n…” – “It’s the scene where the main character feels a girl’s breasts for the first time…”

shujinkou – main character
hajimete – first time
onna no ko – girl
mune – breasts

“onaji otoko to shite saikou no kuoriti- de shiagete yaritai …!” – “As a fellow man, I want to deliver this with nothing but the best quality!”

onaji – same
otoko – man
to shite – “as a”
saikou – highest
kuoriti- – quality
shiageru – to finish, complete
yaritai – tai form of the verb yaru… this one’s a bit complex, for now let’s just say it’s a verb roughly meaning ‘to do’ (don’t try using it in speech until you understand it completely though or you may offend people ^^;)

What luck!  Another example of the “tai” ending.  Notice the panel ends with the word ‘shiageteyaritai’ and in the translation we have the corresponding ‘want to deliver.’  There are other ways to express the concept of wanting including ways to cover the situations not allowed by the ‘tai’ form.

Gonna stop there for now.  Sorry for those who already know these verb conjugations… don’t think I covered anything new or intersting.  ^^;  Going forward it looks like I’m gonna have to think of how to structure this better.  So much to cover ^^;;;

If you’re wondering how yuuki solves his dilema, don’t worry, I’ll finish off the chapter in a future post ^^

以上！

Alrighty, here we go!  Lesson 4 is here or start from the beginning if you’re behind.

Twenty of the new characters are covered by the following mark:

゛

Simply add that to any か、さ、た、or は character and you get a different sound.

か　⇒　が (ka -> ga)

さ　⇒　ざ (sa -> za)

た　⇒　だ (ta -> da)

は　⇒　ば (ha -> ba)

Guess it wouldn’t be a language lesson without some exceptions… note the bold characters in the table below don’t quite follow suit:

Because of those exceptions, you may see those characters romanized differently – du for づ, di for ぢ and zi for じ.  I stick to the romanizations that reflect how they’re pronounced, though it’s nice to be aware of the other way.  If nothing else, you use the alternate romanization when typing with the IME.  As far as I can tell, ぢ　and づ are a lot more rare than じ and ず so if you hear a “ji” or “zu” sound, it’s most likely the latter.

seinarukana

Once you’ve mastered those, we’ve got one final mark – a tiny circle for making p sounds:

゜

This symbol is only applied to the は row, making:

Woo hoo!  On the home stretch now.  We covered double consonants with the small つ in an earlier lesson.  Other characters are shrunk down and used to make other sounds also – や、ゆ、and よ.  Combine these with characters containing the い sound and you get:

As you can see… there’s not too much need to memorize every character individually… you can basically tell how to pronounce a compound character by looking at the sub characters.

じゃん！ (tada!)  You’ve got all the characters memorized now, right? ^^;;  Well, once you have, you’ll be able to read Japanese manga!  You won’t be able to understand anything, but you can sound it out ^^;;

Though we haven’t covered any kanji, most manga have furigana, small hiragana written to the side of kanji so you know how to pronounce the characters.  As such, you should be able to pick up a volume of your favorite series and work your way through it.  Well, ok fine, katakana will still trip you up, but we’ll be covering those eventually (and they’re much much less common).

Alrighty, reading/vocab practice!

1. ばば

2. がくせい

3. ざんこく

4. つづく

5. じかい

6. ぱんつ

7. ぼいん

8. ぷにぷに

9. きゃあああ！

10. にょろん

11. です

12. じじ

13. ばくにゅう

14.　ぞ　／　ぜ

15. したぎ

1. ばば – baba – old woman, grandmother, hag.  A very informal, insulting term to use in reference to older women.  Well, techinically (according to the dictionaries I use), ばば refers to one’s grandmother or an old woman, while ばばあ is the derogatory version.  In practice… you’re most likely to use the person’s name or おばあさん (obaasan).  i.e. A term that’s good to recognize but not one to use very often ^^;;

ながされて　あいらんとう

2. がくせい – gakusei – student.  Did I forget to cover ‘u’ sound pronunciation?  I think I did ^^;  basically ‘u’ sounds are made silent sometimes.  i.e. this would be pronounced ‘gak sei’ rather than ‘ga ku sei’.  Very similar to how you usually say, “des” for です instead of ‘de su’.  Or “mas” (ます) instead of ‘ma su’ .

kuugen pretending to be a がくせい ^^;

3. ざんこく – zankoku – cruel.  Sound familiar?  As in ざんこく　な　てんし　の　ように　しょうねん　よ　しんわ　に　なれ (zankoku na tenshi no you ni \ shounen yo shinwa ni nare).  If you don’t recognize that, you need to watch more evangelion :P

Click for gelbooru

4. つづく – tsuzuku – the verb, ‘to continue’.  You may see this at the end of an episode of anime or volume of manga to mean, “to be continued.”  The kanji looks like this: 続く

てんげん　とっぱ　ぐれん　らがん

5. じかい – jikai – another useful term that you’ll encounter in anime a lot at the end of episodes… this one means, ‘next time.’  Mostly you’ll see this in kanji form and as part of a bigger word: 次回予告 (じかいよこく), literally, ‘next time advance notice.’  A better translation would probably be more like, ‘A preview of next week’s episode,’ or, more succinctly, just, ‘Next time on [show name].’

K-ON! じかいよこく

6. ぱんつ – pantsu.  Usually this is spelled with katakana though – パンツ

ぱんつ witches

7. ぼいん – boin – a sound effect/term for big oppai.  A key word in a handful of eroge :P

Click for moe imouto

8. ぷにぷに – punipuni – can you tell I was watching K-ON? ^^;  An adjective meaning squishy.

9. きゃあああ！- kyaaaaa! – this is how Japanese scream ^^;  Change to a g sound for a more manly version ^^;  ぎゃああああ (gyaaaa!)

10. にょろん -nyoron ^^

Click for gelbooru

11. です – desu.  You know this verb, right?  The verb ‘to be.’  Sometimes overused to give a certain flavor to a character :P

12. じじ – jiji – the male equivalent of ばば, above.  Basically means gramps or ‘old geezer’ or however else you would informally address an elder ^^;  Again, technically it looks like the derogatory version ends with a long vowel （じじい) but in practice… you should be referring to old folk by other means :P

のぎざか　はるか　の　ひみつ

13. ばくにゅう – bakunyuu – lit. explosive breasts ^^;  I remember correctly, the nickname given to sonsaku :P

そんさく - ばくにゅう extraordinaire

14.　ぞ　／　ぜ – zo/ze – macho endings for the ends of sentences :P  Usually used by guys in place of よ to add emphasis to a sentence.

15. したぎ – shitagi – underwear.

ひゃっこ

And that’s it! ごくろうさま～

Next time we’ll learn some more vocab and grammar by translated manga ^_^

以上！

Click for gelbooru source

Today’s topic is… all sorts of random things that you might’ve wondered about… and has nothing to do with tsukiumi ^^;;  Check here to continue with the hiragana lessons, or here to go to the previous lesson.

っけ

When you see/hear っけ (kke) at the end of a sentence, it’s actually a highly informal version of the usual spoken question mark, か (ka).  It’s usually used when the speaker can’t quite remember something, for example:

そうだっけ？ (sou dakke? == is that so?)

あのこ、だれだっけ？ (ano ko, dare dakke? == who’s that girl again?)
くぜきりはだよ！ (kuze kiriha da yo! == it’s kuze kiriha!)

Click for gelbooru

ほんま、あかん、そや！

Did you know there are different dialects of Japanese?  The most well known is kansai-ben (kansai dialect), alternately osaka-ben (osaka dialect), which the words above are associated with.

ほんま　＝＝　ほんとう (honma == hontou == really)

あかん　＝＝　いけない、だめ  (akan == ikenai, dame == no good, won’t do)

そや　＝＝　そうだ (soya == sou da == that’s so, that’s right)

Unfortunately I don’t have the time to go through a whole lesson, but needless to say grammar is affected as well, such as the negative form of verbs (たべへん　＝＝　たべない (tabehen == tabenai == don’t eat)、みえへん　＝＝　みえない (miehen == mienai == can’t see)）.  Things like this are why you may hear people speaking and wonder why it sounds like a different language ^^;

Here’s some kansai-ben speaking characters you may be familiar with:

oosaka (azaumanga daiou)

Click for gelbooru

kitsune, suu (love hina)

Click for gelbooru

touji (evangelion)

Click for gelbooru

ruri, sango (toheart2)

ToHeart2 CG

kuroi-sensei (lucky star)

Click for gelbooru source

てる

A fairly minor point, but for those with an eye for detail, yes your ears don’t deceive you, the ている (teiru) verb conjugation is often contracted to てる (teru) in informal speech.  This can be done with both formal and informal conjugations, so it’s not out of the ordinary to see both:

はなしてる (hanashiteru) instead of はなしている (hanashiteiru)

はなしてます (hanashitemasu) instead of はなしています (hanashiteimasu)

(all the above == talking)

Ah, I should probably mention that the ている form is the … err not sure what the official term is.  Continutive?  Anyhow, it’s the equivalent of the -ing conjugation in english.  As in, はなす(to talk)　-> はなしている (talking)

Ways to say, “I”

You probably know わたし (watashi)、おれ (ore)、ぼく (boku)、and あたし (atashi) from your exposure to anime/manga/etc.  Unfortunately for completionists, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I was also curious and tried to make the most complete list possible.  Lots of these are archaic and no long used… then again, you never know when they’ll turn up in anime (like nagi – she uses the archaic, わらわ (warawa)).

わたし – watashi – your standard, regular polite form

あたし – atashi – a female form, perhaps sliiightly less polite than watashi.  Lotsa females use this, I believe kagamin included ^^

あたしたちにらんそうせいじだからね (atashitachi niransouseiji dakara ne. == that’s ‘cuz we’re fraternal twins)

わたくし – watakushi – a highly formalized form. Tatsuki uses this form, ojyou-san that she is ^^

あたくし – atakushi – feminine form of watakushi, perhaps slightly less formal

おれ – ore – informal male form.  Used by young boys, guys who are tough shit… Unfortunately I don’t watch too many J-Dramas, which might be a better source than anime (where roles are often highly exaggerated ^^;) for specific usage.

おれはだれだとおもってる？！ (ore wa dare da to omotteru?! == who the hell do you think i am?!)

Click for gelbooru

ぼく – boku – slightly informal male form.  I’ve seen this used anywhere from boys to business men.  A safer bet in informal situations if you’re afraid of coming off as arrogant.

おら – ora – informal form that has a strong rural feel to it.

おいら – oira – (perhaps more) informal form that also has a rural feel, perhaps more casual than ore.

わし – washi – informal old man form. ^^;

I think the principal (tachibana heizou) in tsuyokiss uses this form (though perhaps wasshi)

わっし – wasshi – I believe this is just a variant of washi, above.

あっし – asshi – an archaic form used by men in the Edo period.

わがはい – wagahai – the old school (archaic) form of ore :P  Use when you want to be (literally) old school + arrogant ^^;

うち – uchi – often used in kansai dialects by young girls.  Litterally means ‘house’ or ‘my own’.

Konoe konoka uses this ^_^  Haven’t followed negi for a while but I loved konoka’s accent ^^

Click for gelbooru

じぶん – jibun – in normal speech means, ‘myself’ but you may see some characters use it as a pronoun.

あたい – atai – very informal female form.  I think the women working the factory in mononoke-hime used this form.

わたい – watai – I believe this is an archaic kansai form – watashi -> watai

わて – wate – yet another archaic kansai form – watai -> watee -> wate (from wikipedia)

あて – ate – I have no idea where this comes from but I assume it’s a derivation of wate, above ^^;

わい – wai – archaic kansai version of ore ^^; wasshi -> wai

わっち – wacchi – a derivation of watashi in the mino dialect

おのれ – onore – nowadays it’s usually used as an informal, insulting way of saying, ‘you’.  If not used like that it can be similar to ‘jibun’.

せっしゃ – sessha – are you watching asu no yoichi?  If so you probably knew this one ^^  Used by samurai.

それがし – soregashi – another ancient form of watashi

わらわ – warawa – as mentioned above, an archaic feminine form.  Used by nagi ^^

よ – yo – archaic male form

Basically the lesson to learn here is… you’ll eventually just get used to sentence structure and be able to detect new words for “I” as they pop up.  With all the dialects, male/female forms, present day and archaic forms, it’s pretty daunting to actually memorize them.

There’s an equally long list of words for ‘you’.  I’ll leave those for next time :P

うん、ううん、う～～ん

This really threw me off when I was beginning.  うん (un) == yes.  ううん (uun) == no.

^^;

Pay attention to the situational clues, intonation, and precise spelling to figure out which it is.  う～～ん can be used to represent a sort of groaning sound, to confuse things further ^^;

かい、だい

These are informal sentence endings male characters use.  Both replace ka, and かい (kai) is used for yes/no questions. だい (dai) is used for wh-questions.

ない -> ねえ

In slang you’ll often hear negative forms of verbs end in ねえ (nee) instead of ない (nai).  It seems to be popular amongst young and/or thuggish boys, or just in highly informal situations.

For example,

いかねえよ。　そうゆうきらいだ。 (ikaneeyo.  sou yuu kirai da.  == i’m not going.  i hate that kind of crap.)

そうじゃねえか。 (sou jya nee ka.  == right?!)

It’s often not limited to verbs, and I haven’t yet gotten a formalized explanation for me… but asically ‘ai’ sounds become ‘ee’ sounds sometimes.

Accelerator uses this kind of talk a lot.

くさい -> くせえ (kusai -> kusee == stinks)

あぶない ->　あぶねえ (abunai -> abunee == dangerous)

わ

Males and females have different ways of speaking and this sentence ending is one of them.　わ (wa) is a sentence final particle usually only used by females.  It’s generally used when you would use よ (yo), although it can be conbined (わよ、わね (wayo, wane) are both common).

って

This one also took me a long time to get my head around.  This is an informal abbreviation for というのは (to iu no wa), and basically replaces は in certain cases.  Roughly translates to “speaking of ~”

あんたって本当にばかだね。 (antatte hontou ni baka da ne)　＝＝　あんたはほんとうにばかだね。 (anta wa hontou ni baka da ne)

In the above example it’s really just a stylistic difference.  A common construction is when person A mentions something person B isn’t familiar with, and you get the following situation:

A:　K-ON見た？ (K-ON mita? == did you see K-ON?)

B:　え？　K-ONって？ (e? K-ONtte? == eh?  What’s K-ON?)

It can also be used to quote someone, in this case acting as an colloquial quotation marker, or as a substitute for the と particle:

こなちゃんはくるの？ (kona-chan wa kuru no? == Is kona-chan coming?)

いや、いかないって (iya, ikanaitte == nah, she said she wasn’t coming)

In the above example, the second sentence would be as follows in it’s complete form:

いや、いかないといった。 (iya, ikanai to itta)

So what happened was that って was subbed in for と and then いった (itta == said) was just dropped.  You can see how you can save a lot of time, as the formal version would be ~といいました (~to iimashita == said ~).

ってば

I’m not sure what the etymological basis for this ending is but you’ll see ってば (tteba) when characters are becoming impatient/annoyed and are trying to get their point across/get someone to pay attention.

ね~！ね~、お姉ちゃん！ねってば！ (ne~!  ne~, oneechan! netteba! == hey!  hey, sis!  hey, listen to me! ;_;)

つうか

Hope I’m getting this right but I believe つうか (tsuuka) is a slurring of というか (toiuka).

No Plurals

There are no plurals ^^  No need to worry about things like goose/geese, foot/feet or whatever troublesome plurals you’ve dealt with in whatever language ^^

Because of this you have to be more specific with your wording or just accept the ambiguity.

I Should’ve Broken This Into Multiple Posts

Sorry to drone on for so long ^^;　　It was the insanely long list of pronouns ^^;

Next time, last hiragana lesson!

以上！

祈 (inori) sensei from tsuyokiss

Are you ready?  Be prepared for H, M, Y, R, and W characters, finishing up with the only solo consonant in the language!  Brace yourself, this is going to be a long lesson… lots of things to explain!  It may be best to cover a little at a time rather than trying to absorb everything all at once ^^; If you’re behind, here you can find all the previous lessons or click here for quick access to lesson 3.

Now that I’ve overloaded you (not overloaded? excellent!), time to talk about all the characters that aren’t quite what you’d expect.

は (ha)

You probably noticed that I strangely listed this as having either an H or W sound.  The reason is that for whatever… reason, it is pronounced as ‘wa’ when used as a particle in a sentence.  A little aside, you can think of particles as grammatical glue that hold the words of the sentence together.  Some have translations, but others don’t… は is one of the more difficult ones to translate.  Anyhow, I think it’s easiest if we have some examples.

はやて (hayate) is a name, so we stay with the h sound.

Click for gelbooru source

はんぶん (hanbun) is a noun meaning half, so again, h.

はな (hana) means flower, still h!

おれ　は ばか　だ。 (ore wa baka da) – in this example, は isn’t part of a name, noun, adjective or anything.  It simply is part of the sentence, falling between おれ (ore, an informal (and hence potentially rude) way of saying ‘I’) and ばか (baka).  You guessed it, it’s a particle in this case, denoting the subject of the sentence.　だ (da) is the verb to be, so ばかだ (baka da) means, {something} is stupid.  To specify what is stupid, we choose a subject, おれ (ore) and place the subject particle は after it.  As such, this sentence translates to ‘I am stupid.’

If you wanted to say ‘This class is stupid’ you simply replace ‘I’ with ‘this class’.  ‘this class’ is このくらす (kono kurasu), so the sentence becomes, このくらす　は ばか　だ。

Perhaps you’re thinking of asuka and her well known, あんた　ばか？　(‘anta baka’?)  Just thought I’d mention that in informal speech, lots of parts of the sentence can be dropped, in this case, は and だ.  This is fairly complex and I imagine I’ve already overcomplicated things, so I’ll just leave you two things: 1.) anta is an informal way to say, ‘you’ and thus can be rude.  2.) the full sentence would technically be あんた　は ばか　じゃないの？　(anta wa baka jya nai no?) (Update: Thanks to Hifumi for catching my previous error (used to say ‘anta wa baka da’, completely ignoring the fact that the original is a question ^^;;;) and providing a nice detailed explanation of the male/female nuances.)

While we’re at it, let’s talk about simple sentence struture:

Forming Simple Sentences

In English grammar, you often have a subject and a verb:

I am an otaku.  ‘I’ is the subject and ‘am’ is the verb.

You are an otaku.

Nanoha is flying.

Yami eats taiyaki.

With that in mind, let’s look at the same sentences translated to Japanese:

わたし は おたく です。 (watashi wa otaku desu.) watashi = I, desu = am

あなた は おたく です。 (anata wa otaku desu.) anata = you, desu = are

なのは は とんでいます。 (nanoha wa tonde imasu.) tonde imasu = flying

やみ は たいやき　を　たべます。 (yami wa taiyaki wo tabemasu.) tabemasu = eats

Note how in each case, the subject is followed by は (wa).  As you can see, the basic sentence structure is:

X は A。

Using the verb ‘to be’ (です (desu, polite form) or だ (da, regular form）), we have:

X は Y ですor だ。(X is/am/are Y.)

Basically, when は is being used in a sentence like above, this is when it’s pronounced ‘wa’.  Otherwise, it has an H sound, ‘ha’.

And with that, I’ve probably made the most convoluted lesson for understanding when は is pronounced ‘wa’  ^^;;; On the bright side, you can make simple sentences now!  Just pick a subject and a verb and string them together as above.

Signum　の　ぱんつ は くろい です。 (signum no pantsu wa kuroi desu – ‘Signum’s pantsu are black.’)

ふぃぎゅあ は たかい です。 (figyua wa takai desu – ‘Figures are expensive.’)

Back to hiragana!!

ふ　(fu)

This character is generally prounouced with an F sound even though it’s in the H row.  However, there is no F row, which makes this character the only one with an F sound.  In another lesson we’ll talk about how you can combine characters to get other F sounds… but don’t worry about that for now ^^;

A ふふふ moment from あかねいろ　に　そまる　さか (end of ep 6)

Depending on regional accent, certain words, or whatever random things I don’t quite understand, you may hear this character pronounced ‘hu’.  As your exposure and knowledge of Japanese increases you’ll probably get a better feel for when/why the pronunciation differs from time to time… but for beginners it’s fine to just think of it as ‘fu’.

へ (he)

Time for another particle lesson!  Just kidding, no not gonna burden you with that this time.  は was enough as is ^^;;  But just know that へ can also be used as a particle, and when it is, it’s pronounced the exact same as え (‘e’).  …well, and let’s just throw an example out there for fun:

わたし　は　がっこう　へ　いきます。 (watashi wa gakkou e ikimasu. – ‘I go to school.’)

Another note about romanization… sometimes I romanize へ as ‘he’ even though it’s a situation where it’s pronounced as ‘e’ – the reason being that it helps me remember that it’s the particle へ rather than the character え.  For these lessons I’ll try to stick to romanization that matches the pronunciation though, like above.

や　ゆ　よ (ya yu yo)

There’s nothing really weird about these characters… except that there’s only 3 of them!  That’s no mistake, there’s no yi or ye characters, so 2 less to memorize ^^

ら　り　る　れ　ろ (ra ri ru re ro)

Nothing weird about these characters either, but something to know is that there’s no L row in Japanese either.  What’s that have to do with the R characters?  Often times these characters are used to approximate L sounds and I think in some accents the R characters sounds a little more like L.  Like ‘fu’ though, you can’t really go wrong just thinking of these characters as having a pure R sound.

るーこ・きれいなそら。。。るーるる　るーるる　るーるーるー

わ　を (wa o)

Two things – again, missing characters!  Firstly, no need to memorize wi wu or we… those characters don’t exist!

Secondly, を is another pronunciation anomaly.  Luckily it’s really simple, just pronounce it as the character お (‘o’).  Sometimes it’s romanized as ‘wo’, but I’ve only rarely ever heard the ‘w’ actually pronounced (think once in a song…).  を is also a particle, but again we’ll leave that alone, especially since it has no bearing on the pronunciation.  を is always pronounced お.

There was actually an example above that used this character:

やみ は たいやき　を たべます。 (yami wa taiyaki o tabemasu.) tabemasu = eats, so this is ‘yami eats taiyaki’

ん (n)

The final character!  This is the only character in the Japanese syllabary that doesn’t have a vowel attached to it.  Also, it can have an M sound if it comes before B, P, or other M sounds.

TADA!  You know all hiragana… well, almost :P  We’ll cover those troublesome compound characters next week ^^;;

Time for some vocab!

1. め
2. はは
3. やめて
4. ふふふ
5. ゆうやけ
6. ほんとう
7. まな
8. ひめ
9. むかつく
10. わわわわすれもの
11. もむ
12. へんたい
13. らき☆すた
14. よゆう
15. みみ
16. りみ
17. みる
18. れい
19. もちろん

Don’t let Yoshimi distract you :P

1. め – ‘me’ means ‘eye’ (or ‘eyes’, since you don’t have separate plurals).  In the danny choo community, that gives this word yet another meaning…
   
2. はは – ‘haha’ is one of the ways to say ‘mother’. (another is おかあさん, oksaasan). Haha is the humble way of saying it. Why would you need a humble version? Well, in Japanese, it is polite to humble yourself when talking to others, especially people you just met, business acquaintances, etc. In these situations, you humble your self (and family) by using the humble term, ‘haha’ to talk about your own mother.
   
   Hmm perhaps the above pic wasn’t the best example since it’s pretty much nanoha-まま (mama) the whole time ^^;;
3. やめて – ‘yamete’ – a regular/non-polite command form of the verb stop.  i.e. yamete == “stop!”  A more polite form would be やめてください (yamete kudasai).  You’ll hear this in cases like, 「じょうだんやめてください。」 (Please stop joking around!) Other situations like… wellll… you know… *ahem* moving on…
4. ふふふ – ‘fufufu’ – covered above ^^  If you were wondering how to write out that devious laugh, this is it. fufufufu
5. ゆうやけ -’yuuyake’ – sunset.
   

   ゆうやけ in ep 9 of shigofumi, love that episode ^^

6. ほんとう – ‘hontou’ – really. Often combined with に to make an adverb. In renai stuff you might’ve come across the following cutesy conversation:
   「ほんとうに？」 (really?)
   「うん。」 (yeah)
   「ほんとうにほんとうにほんとう？」 (really, truly?)
   「うん。」 (yeah)
   「ほんとうにほんとうにほんとうにほんとう？」 (really, surely, truly??)
   「ああ。ずっとそばにいるさ。」 (aa.  zutto soba ni iru sa) (yeah, i’ll always be by your side)
   hahaha alright, enuf cheese out of me :P
7. まな – ‘mana’. As in magic power :P Actually it can be a name, like in sola – いしづき　まな (ishizuki mana).
   

   まな in one of the OVA

8. ひめ – ‘hime’ – you know this one, right? Princess!
   

   Henriettaひめ

   Best to end with さま ^^hime-samaaaaa!  (technically henrietta was a queen at that point in the show, wasn’t she? ^^;)

9. むかつく – ‘mukatsuku’ – characters will often mutter this when feeling annoyed + offended + angry… it means to feel irritated, offended or angry ^^  Kagamin uses this a lot to describe her feelings towards konata ^^;
10. わわわわすれもの – ‘wawawawasuremono’ – ^_^ If you’re not familiar with the phrase, the first part, ‘wawawa’ is just a stylistic repetition of the first syllable. wasuremono means ‘forgotten things’.
11. もむ – ‘momu’ – to rub, massage… though in otaku circles more often heard in the context of oppai – there meaning more like to squeeze, grope, fondle ^^;
    

    From boy meets girl? Not familiar with it ^^; At any rate click for gelbooru ...

12. へんたい – ‘hentai’ … … now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
    

    The sekirei author is probably へんたい ^^; Click for gelbooru

13. らき☆すた – did the star give it away? ^^; ‘raki ☆ suta’ – Lucky Star. If you’re wondering how to type the star, simply type  ほし (err this assumes you can type hiragana), then press space once to get a kanji (will probably be 星, which means, ‘star’ ^^), then press space again to get the list of all possible kanji. There should be a star in the list ^_^
    

    Scene from Lucky Star OVA

14. よゆう – ‘yoyuu’ – Dan says this a lot ^^ Literally it means, ‘surplus’, ‘excess’, ‘margin’, ‘flexibility’… in context, said as a taunt, it’s short hand for, “pffft, you’re not even worth my time.” i.e. So powerful that he has excess strength/awesomeness/etc to slack off and and still beat you.
    

    Surprisingly there was a pic of dan on gelbooru ^^; Click for source. Alas, he's definitely not in a 'よゆう’ moment :P

15. みみ – ‘mimi’ – ear/ears. Now you can read, ’ねこみみ’ – nekomimi! ^^
    

    Click for gelbooru

    Need to get back and caught up with negima, but I remember there was like a couple volumes it seemed where all the students were wearing nekomimi for the school festival or something. …I have a feeling that pic I found is from a doujin? ^^;

16. りみ – ‘rimi’ – another name, in this case, that of an Okinawan singer, なつかわ　りみ (natsukawa rimi). She has a lovely voice, and here she is performing shima uta, one of my favorite songs ^^
    
17. みる – ‘miru’ – the verb to see!
18. れい – ‘rei’ – tons of meanings, this is where kanji can actually help you (the following all read, ‘rei’). 令 – command, order. 例 – example/said/aforementioned. 礼 – thanking, expression of gratitude, 零 – zero. 霊 – soul, spirit. Any don’t forget as a name, need I remind you of あやなみ　れい? ^^
    

    click for gelbooru

19. もちろん – ‘mochiron’ means ‘of course’. As in, 「フィギュアかいたいの？」　(figyua kaitai no?, do you want to buy figures?) 「もちろん！」 (of course!)

That’s it!  Better late that never.  Alas, these lessons will end up being most useful for those who slack off and wait until I’m finished ^^;; On the otherhand, if you’re learning independently, these ramblings might help test your knowledge and augment it with random trivia ^^

Until next time! (it’s slight detour that covers random tidbits, for the next regular lesson click here)

以上！

to aru majutsu no index

On the off chance you’ve been faithfully following along, note that we’ll be picking up the pace a little from here on~

This week we’ll be covering 15 new kana – the s, t, and n characters!

lucky star

Get all that?  Right off the bat, there’s some interesting new characters to discuss. You may have noticed し、ち、and つ don’t quite follow last week’s pattern with the k characters, right? Indeed, in Japanese there are no native characters for ‘si’, ‘ti’, ‘or ‘tu’ (i.e. no official characters pronounced, ‘see’, ‘tea’, or ‘too’). し、ち and　つ are sometimes *romanized* like that, but they are pronounced, ‘she’, ‘chee’, and ‘tsu’.

nanoha strikers

You may be thinking, wait a second, I’ve heard the other sounds! What about Tia in Nanoha! So yes, it’s not that the Japanese have no way to write/say those sounds, it’s just not part of the native language (sometime after hiragana, we’ll go into katakana, the alphabet specially used for spelling foreign words).

code geass

This is also why romanized words and names may sound really weird when spoken by a Japanese person – for example, C.C. (C2) from Code Geass. To me at least, it sounds like they’re saying ‘sheets’, which is because C is pronounced しー and 2 is pronounced つー (ah, one quick note, the dash denotes a long vowel). Couple that with the fact that ‘u’ sounds, especially at the end of a word, are often silent, and you have sheets ^^;  Or you may have heard the term, ツーショット (つうしょっと – tsuushotto).  Basically it’s the Japanese way of saying 2 shot, and again, instead of ‘two’ they use the ‘tsu’ sound.  If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to a picture of two people, usually a couple or the like.

In summary, just remember し、ち、and つ don’t follow the trend. ^^

About つ

つ also appears in a smaller form in words that have a double consonant.  For example, なっとう, which would be romanized nattou.  Notice the つ is smaller – a normal sized つ would look as follows: なつとう and would be romanized natsutou.

kanon

As far as pronunciation goes, perhaps it’s best to just think of the word being split at the double consonant.  In our example ‘nattou’, above, you would say, ‘nat’ ‘tou’ (as opposed to ‘natou’).  Or in regular english, ‘not’ ‘toe’.

The double consonants aren’t restricted to t either – ヒャッコ (ひゃっこ {hyakko}) – for example has a double k.

Reading / Vocab Practice!

1. すき
2.　なに
3.　さす
4.　しぬ
5.　せつない
6.　そっと
7.　の
8.　ーたち
9.　ちち
10.　つかさ
11. て
12.　とおい
13.　にあ
14.　ぬき
15.　ねね
16. ーのに

shakugan no shana

Let’s go over the answers…

1. すき – ‘suki’ – you’re familiar with this word, right?  Love, liking, and all that jazz.  Unlike in English, it’s not a verb though.  The usual usage follows the pattern, XはYがすきです。 (X wa Y ga suki desu.)  This translates to ‘X likes Y.’  Substitute in your favorite subject and object and you’ve got a sentence. わたしはすしがすきです。　(watashi wa sushi ga suki desu. – ‘I like sushi.’)  PantherさんはKOS-MOSのことがすきです。　(Panther-san wa KOS-MOS no koto ga suki desu. – ‘Panther likes KOS-MOS’).

Click for gelbooru source

You’ll notice in the last example, when talking about a person (well, androids probably count), you commonly add ‘no koto’ to their name.  Literally ‘Xのこと’ is translates something like, ‘the things about X’… weird as it is, that’s how things usually go :P  おれはきみのことがすきです。 (ore wa kimi no koto ga suki desu. – ‘I like you.’ – in this instance, we added ‘no koto’ to ‘kimi’ (you))

2.　なに – Another word that you probably know, or are bound to learn early in your Japanese career – ‘nani’ = what.  You could use the above example to ask a question – あなたはなにがすきですか。 (anata wa nani ga suki desu ka. ‘What do you like?’ – note ‘ka’ at the end of the sentence, which is basically a spoken question mark.)

こなちゃんはなにをしていますか。　(kona-chan wa nani wo shite imasu ka. 'What are you doing, kona-chan?')

あなたはなにをしていますか。　(anata wa nani wo shite imasu ka. ‘What are you doing?’)  The examples I’ve been giving are all in the polite form, which should be used amongst people you don’t know or with people you respect.  In anime/manga/games, you may be more used to hearing なにしてんだよてめー。 (nani shiten da yo teme-. ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ Depending on the situation, it could be even more vulgar, ‘What the #@%@# are you doing, you bastard?!’ … well, maybe not that strong, but you get the point ^^;)

3.　さす – ‘sasu’  is a word with a variety of meanings, depending on the context (or the kanji used).  In this case, I had 刺す in mind, which makes it mean ‘to stab’ or ‘to pierce’ ^^;

chaos;head

あおいさんはだれかをさそうとしています。　（aoi-san wa dareka wo sasou to shite imasu. ‘aoi is about to stab someone.’) We’ll just ignore the verb conjugation in the previous sentence ^^;  If you just said, あおいさんはだれかをさす。 (aoi-san wa dareka wo sasu.) it would mean ‘aoi-san stabs someone.’

4.　しぬ – ‘shinu’ – another good word to know… the verb ‘to die’ ^^;;

じごく　しょうじょ (jigoku shoujo)

しぬのはいや! (shinu no wa iya – ‘I don’t want to die!’)

5.　せつない – ‘setsunai’ – I’ll stop with the morbid words, soon, I promise ^^; Until then… setsunai means ‘painful’. ^^;

せつないからなきました。　(setsunai kara nakimashita. ‘It was painful so she cried.’)

6.　そっと – ‘sotto’ – softly, gently, quietly. You’re likely to hear this when someone’s doing something delicate… completing a house of cards, placing daiki kougyou kanu in her display case, etc. ^^

7.　の – ‘no’ – this particle has a lot of meanings, but a good one to start with is the possessive.  For example すずみやはるひのゆううつ (suzumiya haruhi no yuuutsu … do I even need to translate that? :P  Well, let’s just break it down anyway.  suzumiya haruhi – the subject.  no – the possessive so we’re talking about something that belongs to haruhi.  yuuutsu – melancholy.  So literally, ‘Suzumiya Haruhi’s melancholy’.  Or, you’re undoutably familiar with the alternative, ‘The melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi’ ^_^)

Click for gelbooru

わたしのほん (watashi no hon – ‘my book’).  しきのかたな (shiki no katana – ‘shiki’s katana’). やみのたいやき (yami no taiyaki – ‘yami’s taiyaki’)… I think you get the idea ^^;

8.　ーたち – ‘tachi’ – a suffix used to denote a group. わたしたち　(watashitachi – ‘I’ + tachi = we). あなたたち (anatatachi – ‘you’ + tachi = you (plural), ustedes). はやてたち (hayatetachi – ‘hayate’ + tachi = hayate & friends, hayate & company, etc.).

はやてたち (hayatetachi ^^) click for gelbooru

9.　ちち – ‘chichi’ – The meaning you’d learn in class is most likely ‘father’ – it’s the humble way of saying father, so you’d using it when talking about your father to other people. I guess the way to think about it is that when speaking about to someone outside your family, you speak about your own family humbly. When you actually speak to a family member, you’d use the honorific, for example, おとうさん (otousan, father).

click for gelbooru

So what’s the other meaning? Erm, well, according to dictionaries, it’s milk or breast, but in my experience it’s usually used too mean boob. ^^;  So how’s your ero vocabulary doing?  mune? oppai? chichi? 　かぬのちちはおおきいです。 (kanu no chichi wa ookii. – ‘kanu has big oppai’)

10.　つかさ – ‘tsukasa’ ^_^ Evidently an archaic word for hill, but as you probably know, nowadays mostly used only as a name.

lucky star

11. て – ‘te’ – hand!
12.　とおい – ‘tooi’ an adjective meaning far.
13.　にあ – ‘nia’ – If you don’t know the name, you should watch tengen toppa gurren lagann ^_^

14.　ぬき – ‘nuki’, a suffix for, ‘without’, as in ごはんぬき (gohan nuki) – no food! Often used by Louise ^^;

ぜろのつかいま zero no tsukaima

15.　ねね – ‘nene’, as in andou nene ^^

とらことねね torako to nene (torako & nene)

16. ーのに – ‘noni’ – used to mean, ‘even though’ or ‘despite’ with a strong feeling of, ‘Even though {subject} went through the trouble of…’ For example, せっかくしょうぶぱんつはいてきたのに。。。　(sekkaku shoubu pantsu haitekita no ni… ‘I was even wearing my shoubu pantsu…’ – a more complete translation would be dependent on the context. In Japanese, partial sentences are common, and the full meaning is usually inferred by context. In this case, a likely situation would be that poor shinobu-chan tried to get keitarou-kun but her plan was foiled ^_^)

Probably a little heavy on random grammar in the vocab, hopefully it was useful or amusing though ^^;

Next lesson we stop messing around and finish off the rest of the hiragana!

以上！

This week’s characters are from the k row (or column, depending on how you write it out ^^;)… and here’s why last week’s lesson is so important – simply add a K sound to each character and you can read them all!

Writing out with last weeks character, you can start to get an idea of how the alphabet is structured:

あ　い　う　え　お
か　き　く　け　こ
さ　し　す　せ　そ

We haven’t covered the third row (s characters!), that’s for next time ^^;  Anyhow, notice how the ‘a’ sound characters line up in the first column, the ‘i’ characters in the 2nd column, etc.  The consonants aren’t completely uniform but the vowel sound in the column is.  As such, given that the third row is s and the first column is ‘a’, yeap, that first character in the third row is ‘sa’.  But again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, back to this week’s topics ^^;

When pronouncing these letters (or sounding them out in your thoughts ^^;) try to stay true to the underlying vowel.  For the most part, Japanese vowels won’t change sounds when followed by other characters or anything, so if you see か, it’s always, “ka”.  This makes spelling really easy, because if you can sound it out, there are only a couple exceptions.  For the most part words are spelled exactly as they sound.

Try to think of words you’ve heard in anime/drama/music/etc as a guideline, although keep in mind some people talk funny on purpose or abbreviate/alter pronunciation for effect.  If you have access to Japanese news, the anchors generally speak “properly”.

Long Vowels
A repeated vowel becomes a long vowel and basically is just voiced longer than normal.  In practice it’s very difficult to tell the difference until you’ve become familiar with more vocabulary, but for beginners it doesn’t hurt to exaggerate the pronunciation to remind yourself that the vowel is long.

The repeated vowel is always one of あ　い　う　え　お but the original sound can be almost any character, as long as it shares the same base vowel.  For example かあ would be kā, きい would be kī, etc. If the vowel sounds of two characters are different, be sure to pronounce each vowel and don’t try to make a diphthong out of it. (well, except for the exception I’m about to go over ^^;)

Fate-mama, or in Japanese, Fate おかあsan

For example, from last week we covered the word おおい.  The pronunciation is just a long お sound followed by い, so ōi.  This example brings us to another interesting point – for え and お, usually long vowels are made with い and う, respectively!  This is why you may see strange looking romanization from time to time – like toukyou (tokyo) or kousaka (kosaka) or ryouko (ryoko).  The ‘ou’ is simply the direct romanization of the spelling in Japanese, and pronounced as a long ‘o’.

So what’s up with the word おおい?  Well, unfortunately it’s an exception.  Most long お sounds are spelled おう but it’s not all the time and you simply have to memorize which words use おお.  On the other hand, when you’re reading, it’s all the same… おお　and　おう are both just long o sounds (ō)

To summarize, おう is pronounced as if it were おお and えい is pronounced like it were ええ.

Reading/Vocabulary Practice!

1. きく、きけ
2. か
3. ここ
4. かこ
5. くうき
6. くう、くえ
7. き
8. あき
9. あく
10. いく、　いけ
11. おか

Answers below the pic~

Answers!

1. きく、きけ – ‘kiku, kike’ this is the verb to listen, hear, or also, to ask.  きく is the basic, “dictionary” form of the verb – basically the present tense, while きけ is an informal command form (can be very rude in some situations).  Verbs will be covered in great detail later, but I figured I’d mention it here because if you watch anime, you’ve almost certainly heard something along the lines of “yoku　きけ!!” (listen up!!).
Some beginning courses don’t introduce you to the dictionary form until later, and instead start you with the “polite” form which would be “ききmasu”, in case きく wasn’t the “to listen” you were familiar with.

きく - to listen!

2. か – simple enough, this is ‘ka’.  It’s also the word for mosquito!  Strangely I still remember where I first learned this word – Love Hina vol 10, keitarou fails in another kiss attempt with naru, apparently the opportunity had come up after he said there was a mosquito on her shoulder ^^;

konata about to deal with a か (mosquito)

か is also a spoken question mark.  For example, ‘tabemasu’ (I will eat) becomes a question with か at the end – ‘tabemasuか。’ (tabemasuka?) (will I eat?)

3. ここ – ‘koko’ – you’ll probably hear this a lot, it means “here”.  Also part of a taunt of sorts ‘ここ made おいde’.  Literally it means, “come here” but usually used to mean, “catch me if you can”.

konata's map. In the upper left it says, ココ which is another way to write ここ　(specifically it's katakana, yet another thing to come later... ^^;)

4. かこ – ‘kako’ means ‘past’.

A scene from benisu's かこ

5. くうき – ‘kuuki’. Translates to ‘air’ or ‘atmosphere’ so you’ll probably hear it a lot in space themed anime/manga/etc.

chikyuu ni wa, くうき ga arimasu (Earth has an atmosphere)

6. くう、くえ – ‘kuu, kue’ is an informal verb meaning ‘to eat’. The regular version is ‘taberu’ which you’ll probably hear more often (and should use unless you want to offend someone ^^;). Most courses don’t teach you these words since they’re really not something you’d say or hear in normal life… but for an otaku, this is bread and butter. Any male protagonist worth his salt will say ‘kuu’! Well, since it is so informal, the characters are generally more rugged or GAR or what have you – Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Kamina from Gurren Lagann – these are the types of guys that definitely would say ‘kuu’ rather than ‘taberu’.

natose wa gohan wo くう (natose eats rice)

Again, くえ is the informal command form, and since the verb is informal to begin with, you have a really rough, potentionally extremely rude command.

7. き – ‘ki’ can have a lot of meanings, the the two you’ll probably recognize most readily are ‘tree’ and ‘spirit/feelings’.  The latter version of the word is used in a lot of idioms, for a example, ‘き ni iru’ (to be pleased with, like), ‘き wo tsukeru’ (be careful), ‘き ni suru’ (to worry, to mind).

き (tree) although in this case you'd more likely hear 'sakura' (cherry blossom/cherry tree)

8. あき – ‘aki’ – fall! Not the verb though, the season.

あきmitai (seems like fall)

9. あく -  ‘aku’ – to be open.  Yet another thing to be covered later, but this is an intransitive verb – that is, it doesn’t take a direct object. … uhh in normal English, well, let’s just give an example.  Since it’s intransitive, you would say, ’doa wa aku’ (the door is/will be open {ugh, yet another note, technically you’d conjugate the verb differently and say ‘doあ wa あいte いmasu’ …but for the sake of simplicity we won’t discuss that yet ^^;}).  The transitive version of the verb, akeru would be used like this, ‘koyori wa doあ wo あけru’ (koyori opens the door).

10. いく、　いけ – ‘iku, ike’ – to go, as in “nihon e いく” (going to Japan) or “うmi ni いく” (going to the beach).  Noticed a pattern yet?  いく is the regular version of the verb, while いけ is the informal (often rude) command form.

sonsaku wa gakkoう e いく (sonsaku goes to school)

11. おか – ‘oka’ – hill.  Randomly thought of this example due to the lyrics from H2O’s OP – 「あおnoおかniwa」 is from the third line of the song, meaning “on the green hill”.

minna wa おか ni あtsumatte いmasu (Everyone's gathered on the hill)

Final quiz! Name all the anime the screen shots were taken from! ^_^

Next time we’ll go over the s, t and n rows.

以上！

さ、勉強しましょう！ Let's study!

These “lessons” will be aimed at otaku, so expect anime/manga/game/novel examples and such. ^^;

Anyhow, the first step towards reading Japanese is learning the alphabet (well, technically it’s a syllabary)! aaand the first letter (or kana) is… あ！　In English it’s pronounced as ‘a’ in father, ‘o’ in otter, ‘a’ in saw, etc. Unfortunately I’m not sure how the pronunciation turns out in other languages/accents, gomen m(_ _)m

Here’s the rest of the vowels:

I think when learning this stuff it’s best to immerse yourself immediately so from here on out, after a character has been covered, I’ll start using the kana rather than the romanization.

Getting right into things, let’s practice!

Read the following:

1. あい

2. いい

3. うえ

4. あおい

5. おおい

6. あう

7. ええ

…

…

…

…

…the answers!

1. あい – ‘ai’ – you’re probably familiar with this word.  Usually when you hear it it’s, ‘love’ or ‘affection,’ though it’s also a homonym for the color indigo.  It can also be a name – i.e. Enma あい

Enma あい

2. いい – ‘ii’ – translates to ‘good’, as in ‘kimochi いい‘ (feels good) or ‘いい tenki’ (good weather).  Or if you see Kan’u you might tell her, ‘いい pantsu’ (nice pantsu)

いい pantsu

3. うえ – ‘ue’ – means ‘above’, like ‘tsukue no うえ ni aru hon’ (the book on top of the table) or ‘うえ no hou onegai shimasu’ (i’ll take the upper one please).  Or, in Shakugan no Shana-tan, 「いいkagen, あtama no うえ de meronpan taberu no wo yamete kure yo!」 (will you behave yourself and stop eating melonpan on my head?)

You may also hear うえ as a suffix when people address someone they respect like ‘hahaうえ‘ (mother).  Love Hina fans are probably familiar with Motoko’s sister, Tsuruko, who Motoko addresses respectfully as “あneうえ“.

motoko's あneうえ

The way I like to think about this is that to praise someone, you consider yourself a lowly being, with a lower social standing. This makes the target of your praise someone who is *above* you, with *higher* social standing, hence adding うえ sort of literally translates to ‘who is above me’. Anime fans are probably familiar with the use of ‘sama’, and yes, the usage is similar – showing respect to the person you address. I believe うえ is old fashioned though, and no longer in common use. I also usually only see it with kinship terms (i.e. haha, chichi, ane (mother, father, sister)), not appended to names, though because I so rarely see it, I’m not sure if it’s technically wrong to do so.

Here’s a close up of the upper right panel above:

Not quite readable (sorry ’bout that ^^;) but the speech bubble on the right is 「あ　姉上 いや　こ　これは　…」 The little characters to the right of the kanji are called furigana, the reading of the kanji usually in hiragana.  We’ll go into that a bit later, but in this case the reading is あねうえ (aneue).  So the whole blurb would be “a- aneue iya ko- kore wa…” (si- sis! err th- this is…)

4. あおい – ‘aoi’　- ‘blue’ as in ‘あおい sora’ (blue sky… also the name of a famous… *ahem* well I’ll you research that yourself if necessary *nsfw, don’t research this in public! the link is to wikipedia so I suppose it is relatively sfw though* ^^;;).

sora あおい

5. おおい – ‘ooi’ – an adjective meaning ‘many’, as in ‘rozario to banpaia no panchira wa おおい desu ne’ (there are a lot of panchira in rosario and vampire, aren’t there?).

panchira ga おおい

6. あう – ‘au’ – the verb ‘to meet’ as in, ‘kanojo to あう‘ (he’s meeting with his girlfriend).  It can also be attached the end of verbs to mean “to each other” or “together”.  For example…

“あい shiあう futari ga to-dai tte toko ni haいru to ne, ‘shiあwase ni narerundatte” Here あい is love as in 1. followed by shiあう (to do to each other).  As such this becomes ‘to love each other’ although in this case when translating, it’s more natural to say something like ‘lovers’ rather than ‘two people that love each other’.  If you’re not already familiar with Love Hina, this is the opening passage, “Did you know that if two lovers both go to Todai they’ll live happily ever after?”

7. ええ – ‘ee’ – can mean a lot of things depending on what dialect, how you pronounce it, etc.  For example, in the kansai dialect it’s the word they use for いい.  In normal speech it can be used in a complaining tone ‘ええええ?’ (whaaaat?/do i have to?), or a questioning sort of phrase, ‘ええ?’ (wha?)… or more of a flat agreement ‘ikun desu ka?’ ‘ええ’ (are you going? yeah)

“fukubikiken desu ka?” “ええ、kore kuraいno” (A lottery ticket? Yeah, about this big…”)

“KORAaaaaaa!” “Wa E?!” (“HEY!!!” “Wha.. wha?!”)

Additional Resource:

A quick search for “learn hiragana” pointed me to a nice simple tutorial that includes instructions on how to write these characters.  This post covers the characters in their 3rd lesson.

Next time, か　き　く　け　こ！ (ka ki ku ke ko)