Yes, I purposely manipulated lesson order to make sure the kanji for 100 was introduced in strip 100. My deepest apologies.

Vocabulary

百 = ひゃく = hundred

千 = せん = thousand

万 = まん = ten thousand

Transcript

言語ガールズ #100

Big Round Numbers

Blue: Here are some numbers for counting above 99.

Blue: Just like with 十 you can put numbers before each word to tell how many hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands you have.

Yellow: And just like with 十 you can add smaller numbers to the total by putting them after.

Yellow: So a big number like 5,312 would be 五千三百十二

Blue: That might look confusing but it’s easy to split apart: 五千 plus 三百 plus十 plus二.

Yellow: Counting in 日本語 is pretty easy. I wonder why we waited until strip 100 to talk about… oh wait… are you serious!?

Blue: Congratulations! You’ve made it through 百 strips of 言語ガールズ.

Although the Japanese always say numbers in Japanese they sometimes write them in western style. This is especially true when doing math, talking about prices and inside of video games. But they honestly can show up just about anywhere. So don’t be surprised if you’re halfway through reading a Japanese news article and suddenly see a familiar number like “12,503” jump out at you.

Vocabulary

一 = いち = one

二 = に = two

三 = さん = three

四 = し = four

五 = ご = five

六 = ろく = six

七 = しち = seven

八 = はち = eight

九 = きゅう = nine

十 = じゅう = ten

Transcript

言語ガールズ #99

Easy as 1 2 3

Blue: It’s about time we learn how to count!

Blue: Numbers 11-19 are created by writing a number after 十.

Yellow: So 十三 ( じゅうさん) is 13.

Blue: If you put the number before the 十 instead that shows how many tens you have.

Yellow: That means 五十 (ごじゅう) is five tens, or 50.

Blue: It’s possible to put numbers both before and after the 十.

Yellow: 五十三 (ごじゅうさん） means five tens plus a three, or 53.

Yellow: Which seems dangerously close to being math…

Japanese, like English, has a lot of different words for food. “Gohan” suggests a complete meal rather than raw food. “Gohan” is also the word for cooked rice. The fact that the word for rice and food in general are the same should tell you a lot about the Japanese diet.

From what I’ve heard almost every complete Japanese meal will either be based around rice or at least include a small bowl of rice as a side dish. This is even true of a lot of breakfast dishes. I think the big exception is noodle dishes; the noodles provide enough carbohydrates without any extra rice.

But I honestly know very little about Japanese cuisine. You’re going to need to find a different blog if you’re interested in international cuisine.

Vocabulary

朝ご飯 = あさごはん = breakfast

朝 = あさ = morning

ご飯 = ご飯 = food

昼ご飯 = ひるごはん = lunch

昼 = ひる = noon

夕ご飯 = ゆうごはん = dinner

夕 = ゆう = evening

Transcript

言語ガールズ #97

Honestly They’re All Pretty Important

Yellow: I overslept today so I didn’t have time for 朝ご飯.

Blue: But at least you’re keeping up with your vocabulary.

Blue: Here’s some trivia: The word 朝ご飯 is made up of the symbols for “morning” and “food”.

Yellow: Hmph. You can’t eat trivia.

Blue: Lunch and dinner follow a similar pattern.

Yellow: Unless you wrote the trivia down on paper and then ate the paper…

Yellow: Important question: which do you think would taste better? My math notes or the rough draft of that essay we wrote in English?

This is another great example of how important hierarchy is to Japanese culture. Even when people are all at the same social level (like a group of employees with similar jobs) there are still rules stating that some people get to be “senpai” and other have to be “kouhai” complete with special rules about how to properly treat each other.

Interesting kanji trivia: “senpai” has the symbol for “before (先)” and “kouhai” has the symbol for “after (後)”. Translated literally they more or less just mean “the people who came before the other people” and the “people who came later”.

Vocabulary

先輩 = せんぱい = senior

後輩 = こうはい = junior

Transcript

言語ガールズ #96

Be Nice To The N00bs

Blue: One important Japanese social custom is the idea of 先輩 and 後輩.

Blue: A 先輩 is someone who has more experience than you at work or school.

Blue: 後輩 is the opposite: someone with less experience like a new student or new employee.

Blue: 後輩 are supposed to respect their 先輩. In exchange the 先輩 are supposed to support the 後輩.

Yellow: Sounds like a buddy system between experts and beginners.

Yellow: Is that why characters in school dramas always call the upperclassmen 先輩?

Blue: Exactly. Using the title 先輩 shows respect.

Blue: It doesn’t work the other way though. 後輩 usually just get called by name.

Yellow: Too bad we’re both the same age or we could try those titles out.

Blue: Aren’t you just one flunked test away from repeating the grade? You might still get a chance to call me 先輩 after all.

A lot of polite rituals are phrases that get used again and again over hundreds of years until they don’t really mean anything specific any more.

Like in English we respond to “Thank You” with “You’re Welcome”. But do we really mean “You’re welcome to my help whenever you want” or is it just something we got used to saying and don’t think about too closely anymore?

Or what about saying “gesundheit” to people who sneeze? Almost nobody knows what it actually means, it’s just something we say. (I had to look it up. Turns out it’s German for “Health”).

Vocabulary

元気 = げんき = energetic / healthy

おかげさまで = Thanks to you (polite phrase)

Transcript

言語ガールズ #95

Status Quo Is Supreme

Blue: The opposite of 病気 is 元気.

Yellow: Let’s see… It means “energetic, healthy and cheerful”.

Blue: When you meet someone you haven’t met in a while it’s polite to ask お元気ですか

Yellow: And that phrase means… “Are you doing well?”

Blue: The polite response is はい おかげ さま で

Yellow: Which means… “Yes, thanks to you”.

Yellow: Doesn’t always make sense to give other people credit for your health but that’s what you say.

Blue: By the way, you were pretty sick last time I saw you. How did you get better so fast?

Yellow: Turns out it was a punchline related illness so it cleared right up as soon as the joke stopped being funny.

One popular Japanese superstition claims that “Idiots can’t catch colds”. Don’t know where it came from but it provides a great setup for a lot of friendly teasing (Gee Tanaka-san, you’re the only one in the office that hasn’t gotten sick this winter. I wonder why? Ha ha ha).

Although as a beginner you probably shouldn’t try and crack any jokes like that. Telling a joke without offending anyone is really hard in a foreign language and the last thing you want to do is call your boss an “idiot” and have him not laugh back. So for now just stick to boring formal Japanese and leave the jokes to the natives.

Vocabulary

あなた = you (formal)

病気 = びょうき = sick

風　= かぜ = wind

風邪 =　かぜ = common cold

Transcript

言語ガールズ #94

Anybody Got A Medkit?

Yellow: I don’t feel so good…

Blue: あなたは病気ですか

Yellow: Huh?

Blue: I asked if you were sick.

Yellow: Maybe a little…

Blue: That reminds me! Did you know that the 日本語 words for “wind” and the “common cold” are both pronounced かぜ and share a kanji?

Blue: Remember it this way: If you stay out in the 風 too long you’ll catch a 風邪.

Yellow: Are you saying… words?

Blue: I think you need to go see the nurse.

01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 01011100 00100110 00100011 00110000 00110011 00111001 00111011 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110101 01100100 01111001 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01111001 00100001

Transcript

言語ガールズ #93

Bait And Switch

Yellow: Let’s do something different today.

Yellow: I don’t want to study. I want to play!

Blue: Only if you can translate that sentence…

Yellow: 私は勉強したくありません。 遊びたいです。

Blue: Very good.

Blue: But you didn’t let me finish.

Blue: Only if you can translate that sentence… into binary code.

Yellow:　That’s not fair!

Blue: It’s your fault for not noticing the “…” in panel one.

It’s really easy to “steal” a short book by finding a corner in the store and then reading the whole thing before anyone notices. It’s a little bit harder with longer books. And I really don’t recommend trying to memorize an entire dictionary in stealth mode.

More seriously, notice that the word for money, “okane” has an honorific “o” at the beginning. Like I mentioned back in strip 53 there are certain words that almost always have a polite honorific attached to them and “okane” is one of them.

Vocabulary

買う = かう = to buy

ゲーム = game

お金 = おかね = money

Transcript

言語ガールズ #92

Window Stealing

Yellow: こにちは！ What are you doing here at the mall?

Blue: 本を買いました

Blue: What about you?

Yellow: 新しいゲームがあります！

Blue: 買いましたか

Yellow: いいえ。私はお金がありません

Blue: Why would you come to the mall with no money?

Yellow: I played the game for three hours on the store’s demo system before they asked me to leave.

So “hoshii” and “-tai” can’t be used in third person. And it’s pretty obvious they can be used in first person (since most of our examples were done that way). But what might be less obvious is that they can be used in second person questions. If you want to ask someone “What do you want?” or “Do you want to do X?” you can use “hoshii” and “-tai”.

You may not really know what the other person wants, but you can ask them.

Of course, even if someone tells you what they want there is no way to be sure they were telling the truth so you still can’t use “hoshii” and “-tai” to talk about their answer.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #91

Who Cares What He Wants?

Blue: 欲しい and the –たい ending have an important restriction: They can’t be used in third person.

Yellow: You mean I’m not allowed to say things like “My dad wants a new car”?

Blue: Not with 欲しい and –たい.

Yellow: How come?

Blue: The basic idea is that you can never know for sure what other people want.

Yellow: What if I’m pretty sure my dad wants a new car?

Blue: Later on we’ll learn some grammar that lets you say “I think my dad wants a new car” or “My dad says he wants a new car”.

Yellow: What if I was psychic? Then I could know for sure what other people want.

Blue: 日本語 wasn’t really developed with psychics in mind.

My first thought on writing today’s strip was “Wow, did it really take me 90 pages just to get to a simple idea like ‘I want to’? Maybe I should have covered this earlier”

Then again, most of the stuff up to this point has been pretty important too, so I think all in all I’m OK with the order I’ve been covering material in.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #90

Immediately Useful

Blue: Let’s talk about how to say “I want to do a verb”.

Blue: Start with the polite ます form of the verb. Then replace the ます with たい. Finally add a です to the end to be polite.

Blue: So “I want to read this book” would be 私はこの本を読みたいです

Yellow: Makes sense so far.

Blue: For negative and past tense treat the たい like an い adjective.

Blue: For example, “I wanted to read” is 読みたかったです

Blue: That reminds me! I found this great historical fiction book at the library the other day. It’s all about life Victorian England. I can lend it to you if you want…

Yellow:よみたくないです！よみたくないです！