Post by Mellow Yellow on Jan 26, 2007 18:12:24 GMT -5
I need a place to rant. To start things off, a fun fact. Did you know that it is common for teens in Japan to commit suicide because of how tough their school system is? My sensei must have thought it was a good idea to bring said toughness to america....
In WW2 American soldiers were probably tortured by being forced to learn this godforsaken language...
First, one must understand how Japanese works. There are 3 alphabets, Hiragana (used for Japanese words), Katakana (used to write foreign words in Japanese), and Kanji (stolen from the Chinese over the course of many invasions and mass slaughters).....
So by now I have learned all of the hiragana and katakana alphabets. that is 46 characters a piece for those. Now we start on Kanji.. Since Kanji were stolen from china they have both a chinese meaning and a japanese meaning, but can have many of each. Some kanji can have up to 4 or 5 meanings and no way to discern between them other than where they are in the sentence.....
What really urks me is that in japanese they divide their verbs and adjectives into 2 types. Ru verbs and U verbs, and ii adjectives and na adjectives.
So the other day I was suprised to find that the form of the verbs and adjectives that we have been learning is called "Polite form" and that we must now be able to use what is called "plain form".
Apparently politeness is very important to the japanese, but they dont seem to mind laughing at gaijin (non japanese) like me when we say something wrong.
It works like this: The polite affirmative verb "Tabemasu (to eat)" has a dictionary form "Taberu (ru because it is a ru verb)" however, we were not told to memorize the verb types and are subsequently having a hard time with conjugation. So to change "Taberu" into plain affirmative form, you just add ~ndesu to the end. Simple right?
Ok but what if you wanted it in negative form? The polite negative way is "Tabemasen", which to turn negative you would drop the "masen" add "ru" and now you also add "naindesu".....
And that is only for certain types of sentences in certain situations..... and one must remember that you have to do this to every verb AND adjective, with different rules depending on what type it is, where it is in the sentence, what day of the year it is, who your great grandfather was, and your blood type........
Ok, so I am just joking about the last few....
In WW2 American soldiers were probably tortured by being forced to learn this godforsaken language...
First, one must understand how Japanese works. There are 3 alphabets, Hiragana (used for Japanese words), Katakana (used to write foreign words in Japanese), and Kanji (stolen from the Chinese over the course of many invasions and mass slaughters).....
So by now I have learned all of the hiragana and katakana alphabets. that is 46 characters a piece for those. Now we start on Kanji.. Since Kanji were stolen from china they have both a chinese meaning and a japanese meaning, but can have many of each. Some kanji can have up to 4 or 5 meanings and no way to discern between them other than where they are in the sentence.....
What really urks me is that in japanese they divide their verbs and adjectives into 2 types. Ru verbs and U verbs, and ii adjectives and na adjectives.
So the other day I was suprised to find that the form of the verbs and adjectives that we have been learning is called "Polite form" and that we must now be able to use what is called "plain form".
Apparently politeness is very important to the japanese, but they dont seem to mind laughing at gaijin (non japanese) like me when we say something wrong.
It works like this: The polite affirmative verb "Tabemasu (to eat)" has a dictionary form "Taberu (ru because it is a ru verb)" however, we were not told to memorize the verb types and are subsequently having a hard time with conjugation. So to change "Taberu" into plain affirmative form, you just add ~ndesu to the end. Simple right?
Ok but what if you wanted it in negative form? The polite negative way is "Tabemasen", which to turn negative you would drop the "masen" add "ru" and now you also add "naindesu".....
And that is only for certain types of sentences in certain situations..... and one must remember that you have to do this to every verb AND adjective, with different rules depending on what type it is, where it is in the sentence, what day of the year it is, who your great grandfather was, and your blood type........
Ok, so I am just joking about the last few....
