Monday, Week 4  -  Grammar talk - Negations in different forms

It's Monday again and as usual we had grammar class. This weeks a different form of negation of verbs are introduced. It starts to get a bit confusing with the different possible endings of verbs. The most important thing when you learn a verb is to know the stem of that verb and also what type of verb it is (-u, -ru etc).

There's a difference in the endings of the same verb depending on how formal you make it. If you look up a verb in a dictionary it is usually written in the plain form, in this case みる. So みます can't be found in the dictionary. The plain form can be used when you know the one you speak to well. The polite form is otherwise to recommend.

There are many new things this week as well, I'll put up more tomorrow.

Tuesday, Week 4  -  Katakana practice - some (un)useful words

I'm still practicing katakana by writing foreign words on a plain paper many times. It helps both remembering katakana and learning new words at the same time. Here are list of some (un)useful ones:

Naturally many words in Japanese are borrowed from Chinese, many of them probably from the past. As with many other languages English plays a very dominant role in the importing of new expressions and words in Japanese. For the interested here's a collection of some more rare foreign words from languages other than Chinese and English: Japan Reference.

Wednesday, Week 4  -  Kanji introduction, numbers

It's about time to say something about kanji, also known as the hardest part in the Japanese writing system. Kanji characters are borrowed from Chinese many hundred years ago. Since then some characters have evolved into different meanings in Japanese and Chinese. Sometimes they're even written differently. Today we practiced the numbers in kanji. There are many things to think of when writing kanji, for example stroke order etc. I've tried to write some instrutioncs on how to write the kanji for numbers 1-10 below.

It's important to have good proportions between the strokes. 3 for example is written with 3 horizontal strokes. The middle stroke is the shortest and the bottom one the longest.

Some strokes are written from right to left, like the first stroke in 1000. Don't forget the hook in the last stroke of 10,000.

For more information about numbers, check out Numbers and counting.

A good site to visit for learning kanji is Kanji alive.

Thursday, Week 4  -  Exercise - Describe your week

I feel that I've made some real progress this week. The feeling of writing simple sentences in Japanese is getting better. Hiragana now comes more naturally and I don't have to think for that long to construct a sentence. I have to thank our teachers for the numerous assignments they give us, and their patience for correcting our mistakes.

It's still some very simple and basic sentences I can write and I haven't learnt all the kanji in the sentences yet. They are suggested automatically when typing Japanese on the computer. Below is a exercise I did today. The sentences are quite boring, but with my very limited vocabulary that's all I can write now...

Schedule
	School	After school
月曜日 (Monday)		テニス (Tennis)
火曜日 (Tuesday)	日本語 (Japanese)
水曜日 (Wednesday)	日本語のテスト (Japanese test)
木曜日 (Thursday)	歴史 (History)
金曜日 (Friday)	経済 (Economics)	デート　(Date)
土曜日(Saturday)		買い物 (Shopping)
日曜日(Sunday)		アルバイト (Part-time job)

Exercise sentences
水曜日に日本語のテストがあります。	I have Japanese test on Wednesday.
月曜日にテニスがあります。	I have tennis on Monday.
火曜日に日本語のクラスがあります。	I have Japanese class on Tuesday.
金曜日に経済のクラスがあります。	I have economics class on Friday.
金曜日にデートがあります。	I have a date on Friday

Friday, Week 4  -  Days - A new way of counting

Some dates use a different counting than the ordinary counting (いち、に、さん、よん...). An example is the 14th every month. In ordinary counting it should be じゅうよんにち (にち is day), but for dates it's じゅうよっか instead.

日曜日	月曜日	火曜日	水曜日	木曜日	金曜日	土曜日
	1	2	3	4	5	6
	ついたち	ふつか	みっか	よっか	いつか	むいか
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
なのか	ようか	ここのか	とおか	じゅういちにち	じゅうににち	じゅうさんにち
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
じゅうよっか	じゅうごにち	じゅうろくにち	じゅうしちにち	じゅうはちにち	じゅうくにち	はつか
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
にじゅういちにち	にじゅうににち	にじゅうさんにち	にじゅうよっか	にじゅうごにち	にじゅうろくにち	にじゅうしちにち
28	29	30	31
にじゅうはちにち	にじゅうくにち	さんじゅうにち	さんじゅういちにち

The days marked in red are different from the ordinary numbers. Those dates use the Japanese counting instead of the Chinese counting.

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