Lesson#6 – Adjectives (Part 1)

In japanese Language there are 2 big families of adjectives:
I-Adjectives (i-Adj from now on)
Na-Adjectives (na-Adj from now on)

They are called like that cause they respectively ends with “i” and “na” in their attributive form. (You didn’t expect it, right? 😀 )

Some examples of I-Adj:

atarashii 新しい new
furui 古い old
atsui 暑い hot
samui 寒い cold
oishii おいしい delicious
mazui まずい bad tasting
ookii 大きい big
chiisai 小さい small
osoi 遅い late, slow
hayai 早い early, quick
omoshiroi 面白い interesting, funny
tsumaranai つまらない boring
muzukashii 難しい difficult
yasashii 優しい easy
ii いい good
warui 悪い bad
takai 高い tall, expensive
yasui 安い cheap

Lesson#5 Verbs of possession

We already talked about verbs that are usually translated with “to be”. Now let’s have a look at the verbs that can be translated with “to have” to express possession.

Aru/Iru

Oh yes! Them again
They aren’t only used to express the existence but also to express possession!
How can you understand which meaning has aru in a sentence?
Well, simple! the structure used when you want to express possession is different.

When they are used to express existence, there is only one element of the sentence marked with “wa” or “ga” and this element is the “thing” that “exists”

Lesson#4 – Numbers

Since in the examples in the previous lesson there were numbers… let’s take the chance to study them 🙂

kanji – arab number – romaji

零/◯ 0 zero, rei
一 1 ichi
二 2 ni
三 3 san
四 4 yon / shi
五 5 go
六 6 roku
七 7 shichi / nana
八 8 hachi
九 9 kyuu
十 10 juu

Lesson#3 Iru-Aru

Iru and Aru are the verbs used to express the existence of something. So they mean “to be (in a certain place)” “to exist” or simply “there is”
Iru is used for persons and animals while Aru is for all the rest.
Those 2 verbs are used in many others constructs as auxiliary verbs but it’s not the moment to study it.
As usual, they have a polite form: imasu and arimasu

So a pair of examples:

庭には猫がいる
niwa ni wa neko ga iru
There is a cat in the garden (庭–>niwa–>garden 猫–>neko–>cat)

ペンは机の上にあります
pen wa tsukue no ue ni arimasu
The pen is on the desk (ペン–>pen 机–>tsukue–>desk “no ue ni”–>on )

Lesson#2 – desu

I was planning to explain all the japanese verbs who can be translated as “to be” in a single lesson, but it would be way too long 😀
So in this lesson I will talk only about “desu”.

desu – da
Japanese verbs always have 2 forms: a formal one and an informal one used with friends and family only.
“desu” is the polite form of “da” and it’s often considered the japanese version of “To be” but it’s actually not. Usually desu just works as auxiliary verb to express courtesy. Anyway, it’s not easy to explain cause there is nothing similar in english.
We will focus, for the moment, on the only way “desu” is used as “to be” verb.

Let’s break the ice! Lesson#1!

To break the ice, I decided to start with something super basic! Even without having studied japanese, many people probably already know this. But it’s just the beginning, don’t worry 🙂

Sentence Structure and Personal Pronouns

Let’s say that there is only one strict rule about japanese sentences: the verb must be put at the end of the sentence. The other elements can be used in various orders and they are omitted when possible. The shorter the sentence.. the better!
Ok, let’s say that it’s not totally random, but since there are not strict rules.. you’ll get it with experience

My New Blog is Up!!

Hello everyone!

This is the first time I am gonna write a blog so I feel kinda lost ^_^

Why did I take this decision?!? Well, simply cause no one of my friends or any other person around me has the least interest for the things I like the most 😦  Not even the girl I am dating cares 😦  She is more like embarrassed by.. hmmm.. my being different.

So what I am gonna talk about?? I am gonna post about my biggest passion in life: Japan!

I will focus in particular in learning japanese language! I will post “lessons”, articles and stuff to help who is out there and is learning this beautiful language! I’m not a teacher, my japanese is not that great, but I hope to be helpful to everyone is just getting started!

Japanese language is cool, but there will be space for other stuff related to Japan, especially music. I almost only listen to J-Pop/J-Rock, but maybe I will also talk about K-Pop. Not directly related to Japan.. but oei, it’s cool music 🙂

I can’t promise to do not talk about stuff happening in my life or other random things. Sometimes I need to vent, sometimes thoughts randomly comes out of my mind and I don’t know how to stop them 😀

I hope to meet many other persons interested in Japan like me and many many many persons who are learning japanese! We can surely help each other 🙂

I think I am done with my first entry, I wanted to make it short but ok, I don’t like to stick to plans 😀

Cris ^_^