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)

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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！

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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!)

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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)

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kitsune, suu (love hina)

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touji (evangelion)

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ruri, sango (toheart2)

ToHeart2 CG

kuroi-sensei (lucky star)

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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?!)

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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 ^^

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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！

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)