Objects really open up the sorts of sentences you can say. Now instead of just cryptically mumbling “I read” we can tell people exactly what we read. Instead of announcing “I see” we can tell people what we see. This is a definite upgrade!

Vocabulary

話す = はなす = to speak; to talk

Transcript

言語ガールズ #46

Object Oriented

Blue: Let’s learn a new sentence pattern.

Yellow: This time we’re tackling “Subject Verb Object”.

Blue: In English “Subject Verb Object” shows up in sentences like “He hits the ball” or “I speak Japanese”.

Yellow: The object is the thing you do the verb to. “Ball” and “Japanese” in these examples.

Blue: In 日本語 the pattern is “Subject はObject をVerb”.

Yellow: The を marks the object just like は marks the main theme.

Blue: Example: “I speak Japanese” translates to 私は日本語を話します.

Yellow: But how would you translate “We forgot the punchline”?

In English we use “yes” and “no” in a very flexible way. If someone asks “Are you not going to school?” we would interpret a “yes” to mean “Actually, yes, I AM going to school”.

But in Japanese “yes” and “no” are more literal. If someone asks “Are you not going to school?” an answer of “yes” means, “Yes, you are correct. I am NOT going to school.”

And since the Japanese love to pad their questions with polite modifiers that switch around the meaning of yes and no you can see why it’s a good idea to give a full answer to any question that you didn’t 100% fully understand. A native speaker might misinterpret what you mean by “yes” or “no” but there’s no room for confusion when you say “Yes, I want some ice cream”.

Vocabulary

はい = yes (polite)

ええ = yes (casual)

うん = yes (casual)

いいえ = no (polite)

いや = no (casual)

Transcript

言語ガールズ #45

Cutting The Gordian Knot

Blue: はい means “yes”, although in casual situations you might also hear ええ or うん.

Yellow: いいえ means “no”. In more casual speech you can also use いや.

Blue: Be careful! In 日本 it’s common to ask indirect questions where “yes” actually means “no”.

Blue: “Are you NOT going to school today?” instead of “Are you going to school today?”

Yellow: Do I not have your permission to worry about not memorizing this week’s vocabulary?

Blue: You have to memorize your vocabulary.

Blue: When answering an indirect question it can be safest to say exactly what you mean instead of just saying はい or いいえ.

Yellow: No fair. I spent a lot of time thinking up that trick question.

Lots of katakana today, so if you only memorized the hirogana you might need to reference a chart to memorize today’s vocabulary.

There’s probably some interesting cultural background to the fact that the Japanese use the same word (chigau) to mean both “to be different” and “to be wrong”, but I have no idea what. Was it considered more polite to tell people they were “different” instead of bluntly telling them they were “wrong”? Or was being different considered to be wrong? Or maybe it’s just the fact that being wrong means to say something that is different from the truth. Who knows? Not me.

Vocabulary

違う = ちがう = to be wrong; to be different

鉛筆 = えんぴつ = pencil

ペン = pen

ケイタイ = cellphone

スマホ = smart phone

Transcript

言語ガールズ #44

Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Blue: Let’s play a game where I say something wrong and you correct me.

Yellow: I would us 違う for that, right?

Blue: これは鉛筆です

Yellow: 違います。鉛筆ではありません。ペンです。

Blue: これはケイタイです

Yellow:　違います。ケイタイではありません。スマホです。

Yellow: Being right felt kind of good…

Yellow: Is this how you feel ALL the time!?

Desu doesn’t follow normal verb conjugation rules because it isn’t a normal verb, but is instead a verb-like copula. “Copula” is just a fancy linguistic term for “a word that links a subject to a predicate in an ‘A is B’ sort of pattern”. Which is interesting trivia but not something you actually need to know to speak Japanese. Just memorize those conjugations and you’ll be fine.

A piece of trivia that you DO need to know is that in casual Japanese “da” often gets left off the end of sentences, especially sentences of the “A is adjective” pattern. So don’t be surprised if you hear casual conservations involving “A wa B” with no desu or da. And since in Japanese you can also drop obvious subjects don’t be surprised if you hear sentences that are only one word long. It’s perfectly good casual Japanese grammar to say something like “oishii” (tasty) instead of “kore wa oishii desu”.

Transcript

言語ガールズ #43

Verb Privilege

Blue: There are a few irregular negative verbs you need to memorize.

Yellow: I knew this was coming.

Blue: The casual negative of する is しない and the casual negative of 来る(くる) is 来ない(こない).

Blue: Their polite negatives just follow the normal ます to ません rule.

Blue: です doesn’t follow the normal rules at all.

Chart: Polite Positive: です

Polite Negative: ではありません (the はis a “wa”)

Casual Positive: だ

Casual negative: じゃない

Yellow: How come when verbs break the rules they get special treatment, but when I break rules I just get in trouble?

Blue: That’s not a serious question, is it?

You might have noticed that the rules for casual negatives are a lot like the rules for positive polites. Words ending in “iru” or “eru” get a simple replacement while all other words have to be slightly transformed before getting their new ending.

The big difference is that in polites you transform sounds to “i” (ru becomes ri, su becomes shi, etc…) while in casual negatives you transform sounds to “a” (ru becomes ra, su becomes sa, etc…).

Transcript

言語ガールズ #42

Long Term Planning

Yellow: What about casual negative verbs?

Blue: Those are a little more complex.

Blue: If the dictionary form ends in “iru” or “eru” you just replace the る with ない.

Yellow: So “I can’t” is 出来ない (できない).

Blue: Otherwise you change the last syllable of the dictionary form to an “a” sound and then add ない.

Yellow: So “I don’t understand” is 分からない (わからない).

Blue: Still sticking with depressing examples?

Yellow: The more I lower your expectations now, the easier it will be to impress you later.

Remember, there is no future tense in Japanese so you’re going to be using the same negative verbs for both describing the present and the future. Depending on the sentence you put it in “benkyou shimasen” can mean “I’m not studying right now”, “I don’t study in general” or “I am not going to study in the future”.

Vocabulary

出来る = できる = to be able to do something

Transcript

言語ガールズ #41

You Can’t Make Me

Blue: It’s important to know how to make negative verbs so you can say things like “I will not go” instead of just “I will go”.

Blue: Making a polite negative verb is easy. Just replace the ます with ません.

Blue: So “I will not go” is 行きません.

Yellow: And “I do not study” is 勉強しません.

Blue: Could you try to choose a more responsible sounding example?

Yellow: 出来ません!

Don’t you just love that feeling you get when a new idea finally clicks?

Vocabulary

服 = ふく = clothes

きれい = pretty

高い = たかい = expensive; tall, high

Transcript

言語ガールズ #40

Negative On That Positive Reinforcement

Yellow: We’re practicing our 日本語 at the mall?

Blue: There are lots of things to look at and talk a bout here. Like that clothing shop over there.

Yellow: あの服はきれいです

Blue: 高いです

Yellow: Oh! I finally get it!

Yellow: Your sentence didn’t need a subject because it was obvious we were both talking about the same piece of clothing.

Yellow: You should celebrate this learning moment by buying me あの服.

Blue: You overestimate both my allowance and my generosity.

いい天気ですね is a lot like saying “It’s nice outside” and trusting in your listener to figure out that by “it” you mean “today’s weather”.

As a side note, it’s not that uncommon to hear someone say the full 今日はいい天気ですね. Just because you CAN leave out an obvious topic word doesn’t mean you HAVE to leave it out (although the Japanese usually do).

Vocabulary

今日 = きょう = today

Transcript

言語ガールズ #39

If You Know What I Mean

Yellow: If は marks the main topic of a sentence, how come some sentences don’t have a は?

Yellow: Like いい天気ですね.

Blue: If your listener already knows what the main topic is going to be you don’t have to actually include it in the sentence.

Blue: So you could say 今日はいい天気ですね.

Blue: But you don’t have to include the 今日は because people know that you’re probably talking about today’s weather.

Yellow: So the better you are at guessing my topics the less 日本語 I have to actually use?

Blue: Don’t use this as an excuse to skip out on memorizing new vocabulary!

Japanese has a lot of spoken grammar markets. They use か to mark sentences as questions. They use は to mark topics. And they use things like が and を to mark various other important bits of information that we’ll talk about much later.

Which is good news for us because it can make analyzing complex sentences much simpler. Even in a sentence with dozens of adjectives and adverbs and prepositional phrases you can still depend on は to point you to the main subject. Most of the time…

Transcript

言語ガールズ #38

Ha Ha Ha

Blue: Let’s talk about the reason that は sometimes sounds like “wa” even though it’s usually pronounced “ha”.

Yellow: Is the reason: “Because 日本語 is confusing”?

Blue: In 日本語 every sentence has a main topic, subject or theme.

Blue: That theme is marked by putting a は right after it, and it’s these topic marking は that sound like “wa”.

Blue: So if you wanted to talk about cats your sentence would start off with “猫は”.

Yellow: Like in 猫は可愛いです.

Blue: Now you can figure out the topic of any sentence by just looking for whatever word comes before the は.

Yellow: That’s almost useful enough to make up for one letter having two sounds.

Using “suru” to turn a noun into a verb isn’t that different from how we use “to do” in English. For example, you would never say “That man can math”, you would say “That man can do math”.

The big difference here is that “to do” comes before the noun but “suru” and “shimasu” comes after.

Vocabulary

する = to do

来る = くる = to come

勉強 = べんきょう = study (noun)

勉強する = to study (verb)

Transcript

言語ガールズ #37

Victor’s Humility

Yellow: I found two verbs that don’t follow the normal polite conjugation rules.

Blue: You must be talking about する and 来る.

Blue: The polite form of する is します and the polite form of 来る is きます.

Yellow: Oh… I guess you already knew about them.

Blue: する is especially important because it can be used to turn certain nouns into verbs.

Blue: Like turning 勉強 into 勉強する.

Yellow: I was really hoping I had learned something before you this time.

Blue: It’s not a competition.

Yellow: You’re only saying that because you’re winning.