Talking Japanese Part 2

Written by Kevin Leathers on 13 Mar 2009

Welcome to part 2 of Talking Japanese which looks at the final weeks of the Japanese language course. Here we’ll talk about the things learned during the lesson and going beyond the usual basics that people start with, as well looking at the experiences of the course so far.

Warning!
Kevin is still learning the language as he goes along. What is described here is more to give an idea of what a part-time lesson would contain and should not be used as a reference to learning the Japanese language.

Week 4

So we are into the fourth week of the term. The 7:30am Saturday morning starts are starting to become more difficult. The things I do for UKA.

After the usual routine Hiragana test and recap of all the previous lessons we went straight into a new set of sentences looking at pointing out objects to another person. As well as learning a new sentence, this one also came with the added bonus of expanding the vocabulary with items you would find in a classroom, as well as some other random objects. Though when in a classroom full of standard items, it is difficult to expand beyond book, chair, table, etc.

One thing you have to remember when talking about objects is where they are in relation to the person you are talking to. Kore is used when talking about something close to the speaker, while Sore is used for objects close to the listener and finally Are is used for objects far away from both. So you should get something like this.

Kore wa kaban desu
This is a bag

Sore wa kaban desu
That is a bag

Are wa kaban desu
That is a bag (far away)

Add in the question of what the object is.

Kore wa nan desu ka
What is this?

And you can see how the sentence is formed as well as providing an answer. While the question above uses Kore, you just need to alter it with Kore/Sore/Are in relation to where the object is to the speaker and listener.

Using that you can also add in the parts learned before and then say what type of object something is.

Kore wa nan no hon desu ka
What kind of book is this?

Sore wa nihongo no hon desu
It is a Japanese book.

Lots of things learned in this lesson, even throwing in the polite and informal way to ask someone who a person is. Something you’ll need if like me you are useless with names.

That’s the end of week four, and after being given a sheet to fill in full of items that need names and the next set of Hiragana letters to learn it’s off to spend the time practicing.