Monday, Week 5  -  Adjectives

Tanoshii, atsui, omoshiroi, ookii, samui... They are all adjectives and not any kind of adjectives, but i-adjectives. Adjectives in Japanese are divided into two classes, i-adjectives and na-adjectives. I-adjectives ends with -ai, -ii, -ui and -oi. Of course there are na-adjectives having these endings, but in general they don't.

Adjectives can be quite tricky because they are modified for time (past tense) and politeness, to mention two things.

For more information: Grammar - Adjectives

Tuesday, Week 5  -  Ne and yo ending sentences

It's very likely that you have encountered Japanese sentences ending with -ね or -よ. The two words have different functions and wont change the general meaning of the sentence, but rather the purpose of the sentence.

ね is used when the speaker wants to confirm something from the listener. That means that there is some doubt whether the statement in the sentence is correct or not. To make sure then a ね is added.

よ is partly the opposite of ね. The particle is added at the end of a statement when the speaker wants to assure the listener something.

Wednesday, Week 5  -  Conversation with a Japanese

Every Wednesday afternoon all Swedish students learning Japanese get the opportunity to practice their language skills with Japanese exchange students. This is the golden opportunity to polish the countless flaws you make in Japanese.

Even though I know that I've just been studying for about 4 weeks and the words/grammar I know is far from enough to have a fluent conversation I still thought that I might be able to pull of some simple sentences. I was totally wrong. There were too many words that I wanted to say but didn't know it in Japanese. That is when I realized that the classroom environment is too artificial to learn "street smart" Japanese. I'm not complaining about the quality of the teaching, it can hardly be better I think. You rather need more practice out of school if it's possible. That way the usual exercises wont restrain you, and you'll become better at building your own sentences in a real situation.

From now on I should have more compassion for people trying to learn Swedish. It's a very long process to master a language. Today I felt that I was back to zero, I knew nothing. The feeling of communicating with someone in their own language is really good, I will keep working on it.

Thursday, Week 5  -  Tips about learning adjectives

I think adjectives has been the trickiest part of Japanese so far (yet have to encounter more advanced kanji). The first thing to put in mind when learning an adjective is what group it belongs to, then comes the different endings depending on whether it's past tense/present tense, positive/negative and polite/normal. Last time I wrote about adjectives I mentioned that there are two categories, i- and na-adjectives. The difficult thing is to remember what group they belong to. In general i-adjectives have the following endings: -ai, -ii, -ui and -oi. I think it's easier to learn na-adjectives with the -na ending. That way you know that when an adjective you've learnt doesn't end with -na it's definitely an i-adjective.

Below are the adjectives from this week's chapter in Genki:

Friday, Week 5  -  Japanese names

Japanese names are usually written in kanji. The surname comes first, like in other sino-related languages. Most surnames consist of 2 kanji.

The pronounciation is a problem with names that are written in kanji characters since many of them have several different pronounciations. I've been thinking if that's why some artists write their first name in hiragana or katakana to let people know the correct pronounciation.

If you encounter a Japanese, his/her surname will very likely one of the common ones:

Keep in mind that there are about 100,000 different surnames in Japan though...

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