To be honest this isn’t really new grammar since by this point you should be used to marking things by placing a letter after them. Just like you use は to mark subjects and を to mark objects you can use things like へ, で or に to mark different types of prepositional phrases. Although I guess they’re more like post-positional phrases.

We’ll be covering this in more depth next week, but for now just relax and remember that even if Japanese prepositions seem to work backwards they are actually following a pattern you’re very familiar with.

Vocabulary

店 = みせ = store

へ = to, towards

Transcript

言語ガールズ #76

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Blue: In English we use prepositions like “to” and “from” to add more information to sentences.

Yellow: I went to the store.

Blue: They are called “pre”-positions because they come before the new information.

Yellow: “to” comes before “the store”.

Blue: 日本語 has similar words, but they work in reverse. The connecting word comes after the new information.

Blue: “To the store” is 店へ. The へ comes after the 店.

Yellow: Backwards talking start to need I do so?

Blue: That’s not what this lesson was about at all.

More fun trivia: In English our days are named after the sun, the moon and five ancient gods (four Norse, one Roman). Which seems kind of odd to me. Why the out of place Roman god? Why Saturday? Why not make them all Norse and go with something like Baldurday instead?

Vocabulary

日曜日 = にちようび = Sunday

月曜日 = げつようび = Monday

火曜日 = かようび = Tuesday

水曜日 = すいようび = Wednesday

木曜日 = もくようび = Thursday

金曜日 = きんようび = Friday

土曜日 = どようび = Saturday

Transcript

言語ガールズ #75

Internal Clock

Blue: It’s important to memorize the days of the week.

Yellow: Cool trivia: The days of the week are named after the sun, the moon and the five Chinese elements.

Yellow: Now we can say things like 今日は金曜日です

Blue: 違います。今日は水曜日です

Yellow: It’s 金曜日 in my heart.

Blue: Your heart can have an early weekend as long as the rest of you still remembers to come to school tomorrow.

There are actually rules for figuring out how to pronounce or read a kanji without memorizing every single word in the dictionary. First, all pronunciations can be classified as either a “kun” pronunciation or an “on” pronunciation. Most kanji have at least one of each and there are patterns about when to use “kun” and when to use “on”. Once you know those patterns you can look at a word and make a good guess at whether you should use the “kun” version of the kanji or the “on”.

But that’s the sort of thing that’s only useful for people who are memorizing all the kanji and right now we’re mostly focusing on grammar and basic vocabulary.

However, if you do decide you want to learn all the kanji be sure to not only memorize what the kanji means and how it can be pronounced, but also how the different pronunciations are classified. Knowing that a kanji has two different pronunciations isn’t very useful if you can’t remember which is which!

Vocabulary

今 = いま = now

日 = ひ = day

今日 = きょう = today

Transcript

言語ガールズ #74

When Do We Get To The Fun Part?

Blue: Most kanji have two or three different possible pronunciations.

Blue: Which pronunciation you use depends on the word the kanji is in.

Blue: For example, when you combine these two kanji into one word it doesn’t just change their meaning, it changes how they are pronounced.

Yellow: So it’s not enough to just memorize all the kanji, I have to remember the words they show up in?!

Blue: This is another reason that texts with pronunciation guides are really useful to new learners like us.

Blue: On the bright side this means your 日本語 hobby will last for years and years.

Yellow: That’s not the part of the hobby I want lasting for years and years!

It took all the way until strip seventy three to fully cover all of the grammar from the simple “Good morning, nice weather we’re having” example from the beginning of Gengo Girls. Maybe I could have planned this better…

“ne” is actually kind of a weird sentence ending that’s halfway between a question and a statement. A lot of it depends on your tone of voice. Adding “ne” with a questioning voice means “Am I right? Do you agree with me.” On the other hand adding “ne” with a more firm voice is more like saying “I know I’m right” or “I agree with you”.

Once again, just expose yourself to a lot of Japanese and you’ll get an instinct for “ne” in no time at all. It’s really just a way to add emphasis to a sentence and is much easier to understand than it is to explain.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #73

WHAT IS A CAPS LOCK?

Blue: Remember how can turn any sentence into a question by gluing a か onto the end?

Yellow: Yeah. That’s easy grammar.

Blue: You can also put a よ at the end of a sentence, which is like an exclamation point.

Yellow: Now I can be excited about things!

Blue: Or you can use ね. It’s like adding “Isn’t that right?” or “I agree” to the end of your sentence.

Yellow: Like in いい天気ですね from back in strips 4 and 5.

Blue: Exactly. “The weather is nice, isn’t it?” or “I agree, the weather is nice”.

Blue: But be careful not to overuse ね or よ in formal environments. They are both kind of casual.

Yellow: I guess yelling “!” all the time isn’t very professional…

“kowai” (scary) is easy to mix up with “kawaii” (cute). Please try to avoid doing this as it is rather awkward to accidentally tell a new mother “Your baby is incredibly frightening”.

You should also know that “kowai” can refer not only to “being scary” but also to “feeling scared”. So you have to look at the context of the sentence to figure out what the other person is saying. If someone describes themselves with “kowai” they probably mean that they feel scared, not that they personally consider themselves to be terrifying.

Vocabulary

映画 = えいが = movie

怖い = こわい = scary

Transcript

言語ガールズ #72

Gore Or Bore?

Blue: その映画は怖かったです

Yellow: いいえ。怖くなかったです。

Blue: You didn’t think it was scary? Event the scene with all the zombies?

Yellow: Zombiesは怖くないです

Yellow: What’s scary about a slow moving target that can be picked off with a single shot from a hunting rifle?

Blue: Maybe one zombie isn’t a threat, but what happens when there are hundreds?

Yellow: I guess shooting that many one by one would get pretty tedious…

One rule of thumb is that if an adjective is written 100% in kanji, like 綺麗, it is probably a “na” adjective even if its last syllable is an い. It’s only words like 新しい that are written with an actual い that follow い rules.

Of course, there are still a handful of adjectives written with an actual い that follow “na” rules anyways, so even this rule won’t work 100% of the time. Just 95% of the time. Which isn’t half bad.

Vocabulary

綺麗 = きれい = pretty; clean

Transcript

言語ガールズ #71

Some Of My Best Friends Are Books

Yellow: So to figure out how to conjugate and adjective I just look at the last syllable?

Blue: Well… usually.

Yellow: Usually?

Blue: Some adjectives that end in い, like 綺麗 (きれい), actually follow な rules instead of い rules.

Yellow: So you would conjugate です and leave the adjective alone.

Yellow: How do I tell if an adjective follows the normal rules or not?

Blue: Most dictionaries mark whether an adjective uses い rules or な rules.

Blue: So be sure you’re familiar with your dictionary.

Yellow: Did you hear that Mr. Dictionary? My friend here thinks we need to get to know each other better.

Yellow: What’s that Mr. Dictionary? You think we should go out for ice cream? Good idea.

“ii” is one of those short common words that gets written out in hiragana more often than in kanji. You’ll be seeing いい a lot more often than 良い.

More trivia: “Yokatta”, the past tense of “good”, is also a common (but casual) stand alone sentence used to show relief and happiness. Did a friend manage to pass a difficult test? Yokatta. Did your cancer test just come back negative? Yokatta. Did a relative make it through a natural disaster unharmed? Yokatta.

Vocabulary

良い = いい = good; ok

Transcript

言語ガールズ #70

Good Old Days

Blue: One very important adjective is 良い (いい), which means “good” or “OK”.

Yellow: I bet that gets used a lot.

Blue: But when you conjugate いい you have to use the older pronunciation “よい”.

Yellow: More irregular conjugations. I’m not surprised.

Blue: So the past tense of いい is 良かった (よかった) and the negative is 良くない (よくない).

Yellow: And the past negative must be 良くなかった (よくなかった).

Yellow: Maybe I could just avoid conjugating いい.

Blue: You don’t think you’ll ever need a past tense “good”?

Yellow: The past is dead. Live for the present!

You don’t really hear negative adjectives all that often. People tend to say “That’s old”, not “That is not new”. The big exception is when you need to contradict or correct someone. If you get asked “Is that a new shirt?” it makes perfect sense to respond “No, it’s not new” (いいえ。あたらしくないです).

Vocabulary

難しい = むずかしい = difficult

Transcript

言語ガールズ #69

Why Would You Say That!?

Blue: Last time we talked about past tense adjectives.

Blue: So this time we’re going to talk about negative and past negative adjectives.

Blue: To make a negative い adjective you replace the い with くない.

Yellow: 新しくない

Blue: To make a past negative adjective you replace the い with くなかった.

Blue: It’s a mix between the past rule and the negative rule.

Yellow: 新しくなかった

Blue: Now we can say things like: 日本語は難しくないです

Yellow: I understand what you just said…

Yellow: But at the same time I don’t.

I guess you could have a language with zero conjugations, but you would have to have a ton of context in every sentence. You couldn’t just say “I went to the store”, you’d have to say “ I [go] to the store in the past”. Which would be just as much work as conjugating your verbs. So hooray for conjugation!

Transcript

言語ガールズ #68

Some Things Never Change

Blue: When conjugating “AはBです” patterns with い adjectives you change the adjective but leave the です alone.

Blue: For example: To make a past tense sentence you change the adjective’s い to かった.

Yellow: So 新しい would become 新しかった?

Blue: That’s right.

Yellow: And we don’t use でした even though we’re in the past tense?

Blue: Right. We stick with です.

Blue: “The smartphone was new” would be スマホは新しかったです

Yellow: Not conjugating です is nice, but having to conjugate the adjective is lame.

Blue: But if you didn’t conjugate anything how would people know what tense you’re using?

Of course you can also use “na adjectives” in casual “A ha B desu” patterns. But since we’re focusing on formal Japanese right now I’ll leave it up to you to find your own examples in your favorite Japanese media.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #67

Starting Off Too Easy

Blue: Adjectives that don’t end in い are sometimes called “na adjectives”.

Yellow: Because they need an extra な when placed before a noun.

Blue: Besides the な rule these adjectives don’t have any conjugations.

Blue: You can just plug them right into any form of “AはBです”.

Yellow: Past?

Blue: スマホは便利でした

Yellow: Negative?

Blue: スマホは便利ではありません

Yellow: Negative past?

Blue: スマホは便利ではありませんでした

Yellow: So our first lesson on adjective conjugation was all about adjectives that don’t need to be conjugated?

Blue: When you put it that way…