I’ve been taking French lessons at Alliance Française de Singapour for some time now and I have sadly not been making much progress. Maybe I’m just getting too old for it but this foreign language thing seems a lot harder than it used to be. Either that or I am getting lazier to study. There’s no way to tell.

Perhaps it’s because I am not actually wired to master a language through a structured curriculum. After all, I did learn Japanese (JLPT 1 certified) by watching anime — totally true story.

In order to attack this problem from a new direction, I’ve come up with a long-shot proposal that may just be crazy enough to work. I am offering “free” Japanese lessons to any interested French speaker (of sufficient proficiency) out there who shall in return give me — you guessed it — similarly “free” French lessons. I can start anywhere from Japanese basics to JLPT preparations. Side note: This proposal works a lot better if said French speaker resides in la République de Singapour.

So, French speakers out there (in Singapore?) looking to pick up the mystical Japanese language, do drop me an email… Please?

Other courses I can offer in exchange include: “Preparing for SAT” (2310 non-superscore), “How to write an A’ Level General Paper” (straight As) and “US university application for dummies” (my own Commonapp essay makes me cry).

I’m sure everyone knows and loves Rei, but what the heck is 絶対領域? Answer lies after the break.

絶対領域 (zettai ryouiki) literally means “absolute territory”. It is used in Evangelion for Absolute Terror Field (AT Field) which powers the Eva units. Although the term “absolute terror” was derived from Sigmund Freud‘s writings, “zettai ryouiki” was first used by Eva and has absolutely no relationship to “absolute terror” in psychology. (Absolutely. Get it? LOL!…nvm)

And right now, zettai ryouiki has almost nothing to do with Evangelion either, although it is frequently printed in the same style as it appeared in Evangelion (pictured above) as a form of homage. In fact, 絶対領域 today has more to do with knee socks than angst-filled mecha pilots.

Here’s a typical example of the zettai ryouiki.

絶対領域

In the online Japanese geek lingo, “zettai ryouiki” refers to the area of uncovered thigh between the skirt and the knee sock. It can be found in almost any moé-type game or anime. It’s considered a moé attribute, just like nekomimi, megane and tsundere.

絶対領域

The presence of zettai ryouiki requires socks that go above the knees. Thus in the above picture, Tama-nee (red hair) is the only girl with it. In fact, Tama-nee from ToHeart2 is well-known for her awesome zettai ryouiki. :P

絶対領域

Another well-known zettai ryouiki belongs to Rin Tohsaka from Fate/stay night.

絶対領域

Pretty much all maid characters with short skirts have zettai ryouiki, such as the girls from He is My Master. Here’s a Mitsuki cosplayer.

絶対領域

Akiba-blog regularly goes around checking out the cosplayers at Akihabara for zettai ryouiki.

In fact, zettai ryouiki has become a science. According to Hatena Diary, the golden ratio for the ultimate zettai ryouiki is 4:1:2.5 (length of skirt : zettai ryouiki : length of socks above knee) and the acceptable margin for error is ±25％. The ratios are generally off because it is thought that the ultimate zettai ryouiki would generate so much moé that the equivalent energy would be enough to vaporize the planet.

絶対領域

While the term was originally used in Evangelion, it was not until the new millennium before zettai ryouiki was first used in its current context. According to Wikipedia, it was apparently used in reference to a desktop mascot program in the creator’s blog on 21 March 2001 and took off after becoming a web meme and subsequently referred to in various doujinshi.

絶対領域

Banpresto (a division of Namco Bandai Holdings and the makers of Super Robot Wars) registered 絶対領域 as a trademark under digital media last year but it is unknown whether it is related to Evangelion, for which they have the rights to develop games.

絶対領域

And not too long ago, COSPA released an event-limited zettai ryouiki shirt which I have yet to find.

The subtitle of Broccoli’s Galaxy Angel II for PS2 is 絶対領域の扉 (zettai ryouiki no tobira) or “Door of the Absolute Territory”. I wonder what that means? <_<

絶対領域

In conclusion, 絶対領域 are cool. <3 Tama-nee

This ends yet another useless post brought to you by DM.

You hear it in anime and drama all the time, often without realizing it. It is the bane non-native Japanese speakers (or at least one of the numerous). It lurks in the shadows as it descends upon you with such suddenness and ferocity that leaves you confused and speechless. It was invented by the Japanese with the sole purpose of making foreigners suffer in eternal damnation and to punish us for pretending to speak the language.

It is 敬語 (keigo), or the dreadful “levels of politeness” in Japanese. Haruhi save us all. Keigo mainly involves the manipulation of verbs. Please read the chapter on verbs first if you haven’t already.

Japanese is a very polite language. You can barely swear with it. In fact, the easiest way to be insulting in Japanese is simply to NOT be polite. In that respect, Japanese is whole new world for English speakers.

There are various grammar rules dealing with politeness and they are all categorized under 敬語 (keigo). 敬 means “respect” and 語 means “language/words”, so it literally means “words of respect”. Clever, huh?

The types of Keigo are mainly as follows:

• 尊敬語 (sonkeigo) – Honorific form
  Used to show respect for the actions/possessions of people who are higher in social status than you. (i.e. teachers, elders)
• è¬è­²èªž (kenjougo) – Humble form
  Used to belittle the actions/possessions of yourself or people in your “group” so as to be humble.
• 丁寧語 (teineigo) – Polite form
  Used for general politeness required when dealing with strangers/unfamiliar acquaintances.
• 丁重語 (teichougo) – More Polite form (?)
  Not sure about the English term; more polite than teineigo and has generally been subsumed under kenjougo.
• 美化語 (bikago) – Beautification form (?)
  Not sure about the English term; this simply refers to the addition of お (o-) or ご (go-) in front of nouns to make them more… uh… dignified? This has generally been subsumed under sonkeigo and teineigo.

A lot of textbooks teach the last two categories as part of the first three, so generally you will only learn three types of Keigo: honorific form, humble form and polite form.

尊敬語 (Honorific form)

ZOMG sir you are totally cool and awesome! Your brilliantness makes me tremble in orgasmic reverence and please confer upon me the honour of having your children! Heartfelt appreciations from the bottom of my heart!

Okay, so maybe it’s not that extreme, but the general idea of the honorific form is to glorify every action and item associated with a person who is of a higher social rank than you. This social rank can come in many forms, such as age, experience, wealth, skills and family structure.

Whether you use sonkeigo or not does not depend on who you are speaking to. Rather, it depends on who you are speaking about (of course the listener is often that person, but not always). This is very important.

Some situations where you have to use honorific form to describe the actions of another person:

• You are describing the actions of your superior
• You are speaking about the founder of your school
• You are speaking about a teacher whom you respect
• You are speaking about a well-respected historical figure
• You are trying to suck up to that person
• You are referring to a national leader
• You are referring to Haruhi-sama
• You are a maid speaking about your master

Here’s an example:

kana: キョンは閉鎖空間に入った。
ro-maji: kyon wa heisa kuukan ni haitta.
english: Kyon entered the Sealed Dimension.

kana: ハルヒ様は閉鎖空間にお入りになった。
ro-maji: haruhi-sama wa heisa kuukan ni ohairi ni natta.
english: Haruhi-sama entered the Sealed Dimension.

The two sentences above share the same meaning, but 入る (“to enter”) is replace with お入りになる for Haruhi-sama because we are describing the actions of a higher being. :P This is the basics of honorific form.

A more complex example:

kana: これは私の弁当だ。
ro-maji: kore wa watashi no bentou da.
english: This is my bentou.

kana: そちらのはハルヒ様のお弁当でいらっしゃる。
ro-maji: sochira nowa haruhi-sama no obentou deirassharu.
english: That is Haruhi-sama’s obentou.

Note the numerous changes made to the sentence even though the meaning stays the same. Keigo is like a whole new language by itself.

The prefixes お or ご (depends on the word) for nouns make them more polite. This is usually used in conjunction with the honorific form, but there are some words that almost always come with the prefix. For example, お金 (okane) and ご飯 (gohan). There are also some nouns that convert differently, for example the bikago of 家 (ie), which means “house/home”, is usually お宅 (otaku) and not お家 (oie). BTW, that is where “otaku” came from, but that’s a topic for another day…

Some common conversions to honorific form for verbs:

To go: 行く (iku) → いらっしゃる (irassharu)
To come: 来る kuru) → おいでになる (oide ni naru)
To be: だ (da) / である (dearu) → でいらっしゃる (deirassharu)
To eat: 食べる (taberu) → 召し上がる (meshiagaru)
To look: 見る (miru) → ご覧になる (goran ni naru)
To know: 知る (shiru) → ご存知である (gozonji dearu)
To say: 言う (iu) → おっしゃる (ossharu)

Still with me? Good. Fortunately, most conversions to honorific form are not as senseless. The examples above are actually the exceptions. Most verbs follow a general rule when converting to honorific form:

お + Root -masu form + になる

Simple huh. Some examples:

To listen: 聞く (kiku) → お聞きになる (okiki ni naru)
To enter: 入る (hairu) → お入りになる (ohairi ni naru)
To meet: 会う (au) → お会いになる (oai ni naru)

Please read my chapter on verbs if you don’t know what is -masu form.

There are of course other rules associated with honorific form, such as the passive honorific. But you get the general idea… right?

è¬è­²èªž (Humble form)

I suck. I am the most useless person in this room. All my so-called achievements could never have happened in a million years without the help of everyone here. I will go orz in that corner now.

For some reason, Mikuru comes to mind. But nevermind, it’s not important.

Anyway, kenjougo or the humble form is used to describe your own actions and the actions of people who are in your “in-group”. It is used when speaking to a person of higher level or equipped with more +rep rare items.

An “in-group” is a vague and Japanese definition that changes depending on the situation, but the general idea is people who are close to you and are on the same level as you, such as your classmates and your siblings.

Some situations where you have to use humble form to describe your own actions:

• You are speaking to your company’s CEO
• You are a student speaking to the headmaster
• You work in the service industry
• You are speaking to your ancestors through a spirit medium
• You are a maid slaving working for Haruhi-sama
• You belong to a harem and your character type is submissive
• You are just really polite all the time (until you go oyashiro)
• Your first name is Kotonoha

Example:

kana: キョン：「俺はSOS団に入った。」
ro-maji: kyon: “ore wa SOS-dan ni haitta.”
english: Kyon: “I joined the SOS-dan.:

kana: みくる：「私はSOS団にお入りしました。」
ro-maji: mikuru: “watashi wa SOS-dan ni ohairishimashita.”
english: Mikuru: “I joined the SOS-dan.”

That’s basic kenjougo. You can be even humbler:

kana: 私はSOS団にお入りさせて頂きました。
ro-maji: watashi wa SOS-dan ni ohairisasete itadakimashita.
english: I joined the SOS-dan.

It still means the same thing, but now the sentence translates literally to “I gratefully received the permission to join the SOS-dan.”

If you’ve ever watched Ai Yori Aoshi, let me just tell you that Aoi spent the entire series speaking this way. Go rewatch it if you don’t believe me. She uses keigo no matter who she’s speaking to. It’s scary.

Some common conversions to humble form for verbs:

To go: 行く (iku) → 伺う (ukagau)
To come: 来る kuru) → 参る (mairu)
To be: だ (da) / である (dearu) → でござる (degozaru)
To eat: 食べる (taberu) → 頂く (itadaku)
To receive: もらう (morau) → 頂く (itadaku)
To look: 見る (miru) → 拝見ãã‚‹ (haikensuru)
To know: 知る (shiru) → 存じる (zonjiru)
To say: 言う (iu) → 申だ(mousu)

So now you know where “itadakimasu” came from. :P Just like with honorific form, the above examples are actually exceptions. Most other verbs follow a general rule when converting to humble form:

お + Root -masu form + ãã‚‹

Please note that the end is suru and not naru like in honorific form (if you use honorific form on yourself, you’re gonna get it). Some examples:

To listen: 聞く (kiku) → お聞きãã‚‹ (okikisuru)
To enter: 入る (hairu) → お入りãã‚‹ (ohairisuru)
To meet: 会う (au) → お会いãã‚‹ (oaisuru)

I shall not go into the passive humble form since I have yet to even cover regular passive form… Oh well, maybe another day. :P

丁寧語 (Polite form)

Look at me! I speak like a little girl!

Ok this is not so true. But the fact is that using the polite form when you are not supposed to makes you sound like a little girl.

The polite form is easier to understand than honorific and humble forms. You use it to be polite to the person you are speaking to, that’s about it. Social status doesn’t really matter here. You can use honorific and humble forms whether or not you are using polite form.

Polite form makes you sound more formal. You generally use it when speaking to strangers or people who are not emotionally close to you. If you are a girl, you can use it all the time and not sound weird. But I think younger people generally prefer to speak in normal form when they are among peers.

Polite form is basically -masu form. That’s about all there is to it. I covered it in my chapter on verbs under the heading “Part II: “-masu” Form“.

But just to illustrate the difference again, here are some examples:

食べる (taberu) → 食べまだ(tabemasu)
行く (iku) → 行きまだ(ikimasu)
来る (kimasu) → 来まだ(kimasu)

The same also apply to their honorific forms:

召し上がる (meshiagaru) → 召し上がりまだ(meshiagarimasu)
いらっしゃる (irassharu) → いらっしゃいまだ(irasshaimasu)
おいでになる (oide ni naru) → おいでになりまだ(oide ni narimasu)

And their humble form:

頂く (itadaku) → 頂きまだ(itadakimasu)
伺う (ukagau) → 伺いまだ(ukagaimasu
参る (mairu) → 参りまだ(mairimasu)

As you can see, polite form is really independent of humble form and honorific form. And much simpler too.

When to use Keigo

So how do you know when you should use which type of keigo? Well first you have to know who you are speaking to. If the person is a stranger or if you are unfamiliar with him/her, use polite form. If the person is higher level than you, use honorific form when describing his/her actions or when making a direct request and use humble form for yourself and your peers.

For example, if you are a waiter/waitress speaking with your customer, you speak in polite form and use honorific form to refer to his/her actions. You use humble form to refer to your own actions, the actions of your co-workers and the restaurant you represent.

Even when speaking with your friends, it is sometimes necessary to use honorific and humble forms because it also depends on the topic of the conversation. If you are telling your friends about a present which you received from your boss, then it is necessary to use honorific form for the parts that are describing your boss’ actions, even though you are not speaking in polite form with your friends.

Conclusion

Knowing how to correctly apply keigo is one of the most important things that determine your fluency in Japanese. Although it is getting less and less popular among Japanese teenagers to use keigo, it is still an important part of Japanese and will continue to be.

Also, keigo sounds pretty darn cool if you can spew it out fast enough like they do in anime. :P Really, I don’t know what is wrong with Japanese kids these days…

In this chapter, we talked about:

1. Types of keigo
2. Honorific form
3. Humble form
4. Polite form

Have fun~

I still haven’t decided on the topic for the next chapter. Maybe more on verbs or maybe something else.

P.S. I did promise that this chapter would be Lacus-sama… but I realized that I have very few usable pictures of her! Now if anyone could send me their collection that would be great… XD

Anyway, I’m going to spend a little time today talking about the difference between hentai and ecchi and why Hentai, as we use it, is really an English word.

There’s nothing NSFW. Really. Okay maybe there is a little…

In Japanese, ecchi is usually written in katakana as エッチ but the English letter “H” written in capital can be used interchangeably. Hentai on the other hand is nearly always written in kanji as 変態.

Among the English anime fandom, the general interpretation is that “Ecchi” refers to things that contain lewd or sexual behaviour that excludes sexual intercourse while “Hentai” refers to the inclusion of sex and the graphic depiction of it. Some also see it as “softcore vs. hardcore”. For example, a show like the Green Green TV series or even Love Hina would be considered to be “Ecchi” (by varying degrees), while shows like Cool Devices and Bible Black are classified as “Hentai”.

(Please, for the love of Haruhi, don’t google for those names)

The definition described above is restricted to English. Those are what “Ecchi” and “Hentai” mean in English (or rather the branch of English used by anime fans). Japanese has different uses for those two words.

In Japanese, 変態 (hentai) and エッチ (ecchi) are worlds apart. In general, pornographic materials are referred to as “ecchi” or “H”, although “ero” (supposedly more subtle than “ecchi“) seems to be preferred for certain things like games and manga nowadays. You don’t go into a Japanese video store asking for “Hentai anime”, instead you ask for “H-anime” (if you dare to ask for it at all that is).

Ecchi not only means lewd or dirty, it in fact refers to the act of sexual intercourse itself, something that is specifically excluded from its English definition. In fact, the sentence “ecchi shiyou ze” or “H shiyou ze” in Japanese would mean “Let’s have sex”. (Please don’t try to use it on strangers IRL kthx)

Therefore, in Japan, ALL porn videos (animated or not) are considered H-videos (or just AV) and there’s no such thing as “Hentai videos” or “Hentai anime”.

So where does hentai come in? Well… it doesn’t, actually. While dictionaries and historians generally agree that this usage of the letter “H”, subsequently “ecchi“, was derived from the word “hentai” some time in the last century, the two words are pretty much unrelated in modern Japanese.

Hentai, when used in a sexual context, means “pervert”. Not the “oh, you’re such a pervert! ;)” kind of pervert, but the kind of pervertness that gets you thrown into jail and admitted to mental institutions. Seriously, even an otaku buying lolicon porn in the middle of Akiba will stare at you hard if you ever try to ask for a “Hentai video”. It just conjures all sorts of weird and terrible images in the mind of a native Japanese. In fact, it’s probably more common to see 変態 (hentai) used for its scientific definition, which is “metamorphosis” (i.e. caterpillar to butterfly).

Ecchi on the other hand is a slang used to refer to porn, sex and anything related to sex in general.

In fact, most Japanese do not even know that “H” came from “Hentai”. They are THAT different. So please, for the love of Haruhi, do not refer to porn anime as “Hentai” when you are in Japan! You might just get into trouble with the police! I speak NOT from personal experience! Really!

That said, it’s perfectly legitimate to use “Hentai” as such in English. The English language has been assimilating words for its own evil purposes for hundreds of years. For example, the word “pork” came from the French word “porc” for pig, yet we use “pork” to refer specifically to pig meat. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as we don’t confuse it with the original language.

Feena is the win

Another example: The term 少女愛 (shoujo ai) does exist in Japanese, but it’s used more often as a synonym for lolicon (“feelings of love towards young girls”) than for Girls’ Love (“lesbianism”). I kid you not. The first page of results on google for 少女愛 gives you nothing but lolicon-related articles. In English, we use it only for the latter meaning.

And by the way, the word “rorikon” in Japanese is a synonym of 小児性愛 (“paedophile”). You often see it used in newspaper reports on child porn criminal cases. This is again different from the English usage of “lolicon”, where it is implied (and necessary) that the material in question is drawn and not real.

It’s interesting to see how English adapts foreign words to fulfil more specific purposes. 刀 (katana) really just means “sword”, but since we already have the word “sword” in English, we use “katana” to refer only to Japanese swords. Similarly, ロリコン (rorikon) is really just a synonym of “paedophile”, but since we already have the word “paedophile” in English, we use “lolicon” to refer to drawn girls and not real girls.

Interestingly, as a side effect of this, the Japanese and English wikipedia articles on lolicon are actually talking about completely different things, which is why the English version starts off with the emphasis “in the western world”.

Well, hope you enjoyed this little post. I talk too much.

H. Get it? Ahahaha. Okay fine it’s a lame joke.

Finally, a new chapter! Sorry it took so long, but I’m lazy. :( This time I’ll introduce Japanese adjectives. Adjective is pretty simple in Japanese so this chapter will hopefully be clear and not as confusing as kanji…

Please make sure you’e read the previous chapters first before continuing as I won’t be explaining the things that I’ve already covered before, such as basic sentence structure and kanji, again.

Suzumiya-sama is the image girl for this chapter.

Lacus will be the image girl for the next chapter.

Introduction

Japanese adjectives are divided into two main groups: the -i adjectives (い形容詞) and the -na adjectives　(な形容詞).

In general -i adjectives are native to spoken Japanese that predates kanji (see Chapter III for more on the origins of kanji), while -na adjectives are mostly foreign loan words with Chinese being the majority.

Just like verbs, adjectives in Japanese also have their “dictionary form”, which is the form they appear as in dictionaries and when referred to as a stand alone word.

-i adjectives

-i adjectives can be easily identified by the trailing い (thus their name) that appears in their dictionary form, such as 嬉しい (ureshii), 怖い (kowai) and 懐かしい (natsukashii).

Similar to the trailing hiragana for verbs, the trailing い can be modified to indicate different tenses while the rest of the word is retained. For example, past tense of kowai is kowakatta.

When used to modify a noun, you simply add the -i adjective to the front of the noun. For example, かわいい猫ちゃん (kawaii neko-chan) and 怖い怪獣 (kowai kaijuu).

-na adjectives

-na adjectives are usually not easily identifiable in their dictionary form because they look just like nouns. When used to modify nouns, they are usually followed by the particle な, thus they are called -na adjectives. I say usually because depending on the tense, na may be replaced by other grammar structures.

Example of -na adjectives include 馬鹿 (baka), ルーズ (ru-zu), 快適 (kaiteki) and 憂鬱 (yuuutsu).

By themselves, -na adjectives look exactly like nouns. Take a look at the following sentences.

kana: あの人は警察でãã€‚
ro-maji: ano hito wa keisatsu desu
english: That guy is a police officer.

kana: あの人は憂鬱でãã€‚
ro-maji: ano hito wa yuuutsu desu
english: That guy is melancholic.

憂鬱 (yuuutsu) is a -na adjective while 警察 (keisatsu) is a noun, but you can’t tell that from the above example without knowing the meaning of both words. And in fact, 憂鬱 can also be used as a noun:

kana: 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱
ro-maji: suzumiya haruhi no yuuutsu
english: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Thus depending on whether it’s being used as an adjective or a noun, 憂鬱 can mean either “melancholic/gloomy” or “melancholy/gloom”. In a sense, both usages are treated as the same word and it’s up to the context to determine whether the word is being used as an adjective or a noun. This ambiguity is similar to the way the word is used in Chinese which both 憂鬱 and 警察 originated from. Most -na adjectives can be used as nouns in this manner.

Chuck Norris has got NOTHING on Haruhi

The only time where you can be 100% certain that something is a -na adjective (assuming you don’t know the meaning of the word) is in a sentence such as this:

kana: 彼女の憂鬱な表情に萌える。
ro-maji: kanojo no yuuutsu na hyoujou ni moeru
english: I am moé for her melancholic expression.

When the particle na is used, you can be certain that the word before it is a -na adjective, because nouns modify other nouns using the particle no and not na, such as 私の猫 (watashi no neko) or 暁の車 (akatsuki no kuruma).

So yeah, it’s mostly up to your vocabulary to help you identify -na adjectives because they look just like nouns. But the good thing is that they are so similar that -na adjectives generally follow the same grammar rules as nouns, so it’s not always a problem if you can’t tell whether a word is a -na adjective or not because the rules will apply anyway. Usually.

Negative Form

I think if you’ve watched enough anime, you should know that in negative sentences, the trailing “desu” or “da” (meaning “to be”) that is normally there is instead replaced with “jyaarimasen” or “jyanai“.

kana: 彼女は宇å®äººã§ãã€‚
ro-maji: kanojo wa uchuujin desu
english: She is an alien.

Becomes:

kana: 彼女は宇å®äººã˜ã‚ƒã‚りません。
ro-maji: kanojo wa uchuujin jyaarimasen
english: She is NOT an alien.

Note that “desu” and “jyaarimasen” are polite forms of “da” and “jyanai“. It’s part of keigo (which includes polite form, honorific form and humble form). More on that in another chapter. Also note that “jya” is a contraction of “dewa” with the former being used exclusively for spoken Japanese.

Anyway, because -na adjectives are just like nouns, the negative form of -na adjectives is the same as that of nouns.

kana: 私は憂鬱じゃない。
ro-maji: watashi wa yuuutsu jyanai
english: I am not melancholic.

However, -i adjectives follow a different set of rules… “kawaii jyanai” is NOT the negative form of “kawaii“. The correct way to do it is to take off the trailing i and replace it with kunai or kuarimasen (again, just a matter of politeness here).

kana: このæ¯è‰²ã¯æ‚ªããªã„。
ro-maji: kono keshiki wa warukunai
english: This scenery is not bad.

In the example above, 悪い becomes 悪くない.

Don’t try this at home!

Past Tense

Basically everything that’s been said above still applies.

For -na adjectives it’s quite straightfoward as usual:

憂鬱でãã€€â†’　憂鬱でした
yuuutsu desu → yuuutsu deshita
憂鬱だ　→　憂鬱だった
yuuutsu da → yuuutsu datta

It’s just the same as nouns. And the difference between is just politeness level, “desu” and “deshita” being more polite than “da” and “datta“.

For -i adjectives, you have to take off i and replace it with katta.

かわいい　→　かわいかった
kawaii → kawaikatta
かわいいでãã€€â†’　かわいかったでã
kawaii desu → kawaikatta desu

Note that a trailing でだcan be added to -i adjectives to make them polite, but unlike with -na adjective and nouns, でだdoes not indicate the tense of an -i adjective. Both kawaikatta and kawaikatta desu are past tense. There is no such thing as kawaikatta deshita.

Negative Past

For converting negative to negative past (for both -i adjectives and -na adjectives), you can think of the ない at the end as an -i adjective and change it into past tense in the same way.

憂鬱ではない　→　憂鬱ではなかった
yuuutsu dewanai → yuuutsu dewanakatta
かわいくない　→　かわいくなかった
kawaikunai → kawaikunakatta

And you can just add でした for the polite negative form that ends with ありません.

憂鬱ではありません　→　憂鬱ではありませんでした
yuuutsu dewaarimasen → yuuutsu dewaarimasen deshita
かわいくありません　→　かわいくありませんでした
kawaikuarimasen → kawaikuarimasen deshita

Haruhi is… hot. Literally.

Politeness

I’m too lazy to explain, so here’s a list of examples on how to convert from normal to polite forms. As above, 憂鬱 (yuuutsu) will be used as the -na adjective examples and かわいい (kawaii) for the -i adjective examples.

憂鬱だ　→　憂鬱でã
憂鬱ではない　→　憂鬱ではありません
憂鬱じゃない　→　憂鬱じゃありません
憂鬱だった　→　憂鬱でした
憂鬱ではなった　→　憂鬱ではありませんでした ／ 憂鬱ではなったでã
憂鬱じゃなった　→　憂鬱じゃありませんでした ／ 憂鬱じゃなったでã

かわいい　→　かわいいでã
かわいくない　→　かわいくありません
かわいかった　→　かわいかったでã
かわいくなかった　→　かわいくありませんでした ／ かわいくなかったでã

I’ll explain politeness levels in greater detail in a future chapter.

jyanai vs. –kunai

I mentioned just now that “kawaii jyanai” is not the negative form of “kawaii“. But you still hear people say “kawaii jyanai” sometimes, why?

Well the difference is that “kawaii jyanai” is ALWAYS a rhetorical question, i.e. “Isn’t it cute?”, whereas “kawaikunai” is USUALLY a statement, i.e. “It’s not cute.”

It is not possible to use “kawaii jyanai” as a statement and therein lies the difference.

Just a little note.

Adverbs

Most adjectives can be used as adverbs. For -i adjectives, replace い with く when modifying verbs instead of nouns. Take 寂しい (sabishii) for example.

kana: 彼女は寂しく微笑んだ。
ro-maji: kanojo wa sabishiku hohoenda
english: She smiled lonelily.

And yes, lonelily is really the adverb of lonely. In this case, 寂しい (lonely) is changed into 寂しく (lonelily) so as to modify the verb 微笑む (to smile).

For -na adjectives, use the particle に instead of な when modifying verbs. Let’s use éã‹ (shizuka) as an example.

kana: 彼女は部室でéã‹ã«SFノãƒãƒ«ã‚’読んでいる。
ro-maji: kanojo wa bushitsu de shizuka ni SF noberu wo yondeiru
english: She’s quietly reading a sci-fi novel in the clubroom.

It’s quite simple really.

Nominalization

You turn adjectives into nouns by using the –sa suffix.

大きい (big)　→　大きさ (bigness; size)
小さい (small)　→　小ささ (smallness; size)
長い (long)　→　長さ (“longness”; length)
短い (short)　→　短さ (shortness; length)
高い (high)　→　高さ (highness; height)
低い (low)　→　低さ (lowness; height)

And no, “longness” is NOT a word. D:

Some -na adjectives use the –sa suffix too, but generally it is not needed because they can be used as nouns anyway.

The interesting thing is that the nominalization of adjectives with opposite meanings usually give you the same thing. For example, both 長さ (nagasa) and 短さ (mijikasa) are used to mean “length”. You need to look at the context to determine which one to use.

kana: このケーキの大きさはちょうどでãã€‚
ro-maji: kono ke-ki no ookisa wa choudo desu
english: The size of this cake is just right.

kana: このケーキの小ささはちょうどでãã€‚
ro-maji: kono ke-ki no chiisasa wa choudo desu
english: The size of this cake is just right.

The two sentences above translate to the same thing, but they have different implications. The first sentence is saying that the “bigness” of the cake is just right, or the cake is big enough (maybe the speaker is really hungry). The second sentence is saying that the “smallness” of the cake is just right, or the cake is small enough (to eat in one bite, maybe?).

In general though, the “bigger” or “longer” adjective in the pair is used as the generic nominalized form.

That is to say, 大きさ (ookisa) is used to describe size more often than 小ささ (chiisasa), 長さ (nagasa) over 短さ (mijikasa) and 高さ (takasa) over 低さ (hikusa) etc.

The –ki suffix

Long, long ago, using -i adjectives with nouns was not a simple matter of just dumping the adjective in front as it is. People had to convert it to the –ki form first! The horror! Okay, so it’s really just a matter of replacing -i with –ki…

aoki sora…

kana: 青き清浄なる世界のために！
ro-maji: aoki seijou naru sekai no tame ni
english: For a blue and pure world!

So yeah, the –ki form is really nothing special, just slightly archaic. It also sounds cooler. BTW, a cookie for anyone who knows where the above line is from.

Combining Adjectives

When you use two adjectives to describe an object, you need to first join the adjectives together. If the first adjective is an -i adjective, you need to replace i with kute. If the first adjective is a -na adjective, you need to add de.

kana: 彼女は綺麗でかわいい子でãã€‚
ro-maji: kanojo wa kirei de kawaii ko desu
english: She is a beautiful and cute girl.

kana: 彼女はかわいくて綺麗な子でãã€‚
ro-maji: kanojo wa kawaikute kirei na ko desu
english: She is a cute and beautiful girl.

Note that the tense is determined by the trailing adjective. Whatever tense that it is in applies to the first adjective too.

Also, you cannot use this grammar pattern for adjectives that contradict each other, even if they are not direct opposites. For example, you cannot say “beautiful and greedy” because one is considered a positive attribute while the other is considered a negative attribute.

Fence Sitters

On an interesting note, there are a few adjectives that can be either -i or -na.

小さい (chiisai)　＝　小さな (chiisa na)
大きい (ookii)　＝　大きな (ooki na)
可笑しい (okashii)　＝　可笑しな (okashi na)

The meaning is exactly the same. The -i version is more common, but -na sounds better in a lot of cases because it produces a more distinctive sound and is therefore often used in song lyrics.

You know I just had to include this…

Conclusion

In the fifth chapter, we talked about:

1. -i and -na adjectives
2. negative, past and negative past
3. polite forms of adjectives
4. adverbs
5. nominalization
6. misc. info

The next chapter, when and if it comes, will either be on verbs (again) or politeness levels. Depends on my mood, my horoscope, the alignment of the planets and the next chapter of Suzuka.

She’s no Haruhi but Ryoko is still cool

Japanese Titbit #1

According to WWWJDIC, The word 黄昏 (tasogare) is defined as “dusk” or “twilight”. It’s a word that you don’t see much in normal usage outside of poems and songs. The normal word used to refer to evening is 夕方 (yuugata).

Some examples of it being used: .hack//Legend Of The Twilight is known in Japanese as 「.hack//黄昏の腕輪伝説」 (.hack//tasogare no udewa densetsu). See-Saw has a song titled 「黄昏の海」 (tasogare no umi) in its Dream Field album. I looove that song.

The origin of tasogare is pretty interesting.

Long ago, there were no street lights and evening was a time where you couldn’t really make out the faces of other people. It was bright enough that people didn’t need to carry lanterns or lamps but just dark enough to mask any details.

And when you couldn’t tell who was heading your way, you would ask 「誰そ、彼は？」 “taso, kare wa?“, an archaic expression that means 「誰だあれは」 “dare da are wa” or “Who’s that person?”.

Somehow along the way, “taso kare” got turned into one word and became “tasogare“, which is then used to refer to evening. The kanji 黄昏 (which also means evening in Chinese) was added on later.

たそかれ → たそがれ

Just like 今日 (kyou), 明日 (ashita) and 浴衣 (yukata), 黄昏 is a kanji compound that is being used for its meaning rather than its reading. (Edited for factual error)

The reading of tasogare should technically be “koukon” following the on-readings of 黄 and 昏, but it takes on the reading of “tasogare” because of the similar meaning. Therefore, “tasogare” is neither the kun-reading nor the on-reading.

(Editied for additional information)

I forgot to add that tasogare conveys a feeling of loneliness and melancholy when used in songs and poems today. Listen to See-Saw’s “Tasogare no Umi” and you’ll see what I mean.

Today’s lesson will not focus on any particular topic. Instead, we will take a look at some of the interesting things you can find in the Japanese language, things that you probably won’t find in a textbook. Maybe. In a sense, I’m lumping all the small miscellaneous topics into a katamari. I’ll probably include a Katamari chapter every few lessons.

Okay, so that’s really just an excuse for me to write a really short chapter of randomness because I am sort of busy this week.

On another note, Katamari chapters will not have any theme character but instead have a variety of pictures from various forgotten directories on my computer. I bet an archaeologist can publish a few books just by digging through my hard drives.

Your nominations from last week will carry on to next chapter.

“Big” Numbers

You have probably seen the kanji used for counting in Japanese, but if you had ever been to a bank in Japan or signed a legal contract in Japanese, you would have noticed some weird and complicated-looking kanji, such as the ones in the right column below.

一 (ichi)	one	壱
二 (ni)	two	弐
三 (san)	three	参
四 (shi or yon)	four	肆
五 (go)	five	伍
å…­ (roku)	six	é¸
七 (shichi or nana)	seven	漆
八 (hachi)	eight	捌
九 (kyuu or ku)	nine	玖
十 (jyuu)	ten	拾
ç¾ (hyaku)	hundred	ä½°
千 (sen)	thousand	阡
万 (man)	ten thousand	萬

These kanji are called 大字 (daiji), literally “big words”, and they are used in legal documents to make the numbers difficult to modify and thus prevent cheating. The difference between 一 (one) and 二 (two) is just another stroke, but there’s no way to change 壱 (one) into 弐 (two). The readings stay the same for both versions.

Some manga and anime use daiji for the “looks cool” effect. Examples include the manga of Ikkitousen and Kannadzuki no Miko, both which used daiji to number their volumes. The end result is that some foreign fans can’t tell the order of the books. Oh well… 弐 certainly looks better than two little horizontal strokes, though. :3

Speaking of Kannadzuki, that brings me to the next topic…

Old Japanese Months

Look up ANN’s listing for 神無月の巫女 (Kannadzuki no Miko) and you’ll see that one of the translations for the title is “Priestesses of the Godless Month”. AniDB has it as “Priestesses of a Godless Moon“. The kanji 月 can refer to both a month and the moon, but what exactly does “kannadzuki” refer to?

The answer: October (therefore ANN’s translation is more appropriate)

But why is October called the “godless month”? For that we have to refer to the old Japanese names for the different months.

Modern months use number + gatsu, for example August is 八月 (hachigatsu), literally “the 8th month”. However, the old Japanese calendar uses months with symbolic names that were relevant to the people of that time.

It is believed that all the Shinto gods gather in the province of Idzumo (part of modern day Shimane prefecture) for a meeting every year in October. Therefore, most of Japan is left “godless” and October is known as the “godless month”. In Idzumo, October in the old calendar is called 神有月／神在月 (kamiaridzuki), literally “the month with gods”.

Other references to the old Japanese months in anime and manga include Happy Lesson and Azumanga Daioh.

Happy Lesson in particular has almost every single female character named after a month, with the five main heroines being Mutsuki, Kisaragi, Yayoi, Satsuki and Udzuki, or January to May. Kisaragi~~~ :3

In episode 17 of Azumanga, a joke involving “shiwasu” (December) was made in reference to Yukari-sensei running. The kanji for shiwasu consists of 師 (teacher) and èµ° (run), but 師 also refers to monks and priests in older context. The name came from the fact that December is a busy time and even monks and priests, who are normally calm and composed, have to rush around running to get preparations done for the coming new year.

Pronouns

Japanese people don’t like to use pronouns. That said, they have an awful lot of them. Depending on the context and the other person’s relationship to you, you have to determine which pronoun is more suitable. All examples below are based on anime, games and manga and may not reflect Real Life ™.

Some pronouns for “I/me” and what they say about the speaker:

私 (watashi) – most commonly-used, generally neutral
私 (atashi) – girls and guys-who-want-to-be-girls only
私 (watakushi) – rich old men, butlers and princesses
僕 (boku) – female or male prepubescent children or young boys
俺 (ore) – male and asserting one’s manliness
わし (washi) – old men nearing death bed
うち (uchi) – female and speaking with an accent
å·± (ora) – rural, i.e. farmers
おいら (oira) – same as above, see: Rakushun from Juuni Kokuki
æ‹è€… (sessha) – ninja or samurai, see: Kaede from Negima!
我輩 (wagahai) – male and arrogant, see: Keroro from Keroro Gunsou

In general, you should use “watashi” if you have no idea what you are doing.

Some pronouns for “you” and what they say about the other person:

è²´æ–¹ (anata) – more or less generic, also used by wives to call their husbands
貴女 (anata) – the person is female
あんた (anta) – shorter form of anata, may sound rude
君 (kimi) – female, or a lower-ranking person in a work environment
お前 (omae) – your pet, someone very close to you or someone you hate
å·± (onore) – someone you really hate, possibly about to be hit by you
貴様 (kisama) – see above
汝 (nanji) – thou, see: Mai-Otome (waga na ni oite nanji no chikara wo…)
其方 (sonata) – archaic and similar to thou, see: Lafiel from Seikai series
てめえ (temee) – someone you really hate, you might be yakuza.
お宅 (otaku) – someone emotionally distant and unknown to you

In general, anything that is supposed to be used for people who are intimate with you can sound really rude and/or insulting when used on a stranger or someone you hate. Weird but that’s how it goes.

The safest bet when you are not sure is to not use any pronouns at all when possible. Use name + san if you know the person’s family name. If you really absolutely have to say “you”, then “anata” is probably the safest bet. Just don’t cry if you get punched in the face (well maybe not that bad).

Conclusion

In the fourth chapter, we talked about:

1. numbers used in legal documents
2. old Japanese months
3. pronouns
4. this chapter is really short because I am busy
5. I padded the post with useless pictures

I promise the next chapter will be longer. Hopefully.

Hey, at least this time I did try to talk about things that are related to anime. Yay(?)

On a final note, instead of just nominating a girl for the next chapter, you can also give some suggestions on what I should talk about. Tentatively it’s going to be about adjectives, but that’s just not much fun…

Well, let me just assure you that kanji is one of the craziest things about Japanese. Wars have been fought over deciding how a kanji should be read.

I realized that in order to get to the more interesting stuff, I need to first explain kanji and related topics. So I’ll be doing a crash course to kanji today and then we’ll get to the things that I promised in the next lesson. Really.

Before we start, here are your character nominations for this week’s chapter:

• Yuki Nagato (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu)
• Lacus Clyne (Gundam SEED)
• Suiseiseki (Rozen Maiden)
• Shana (Shakugan no Shana)
• Mahoro (Mahoromatic)
• Nanaka Shirakawa (D.C. II)
• Saber (Fate/stay night)
• Kotori Shirakawa (D.C.)

Tough call. But…

Mahoro wins!!!… just because I happen to have some pictures of her lying around. ^^;; On to today’s lesson…

Introduction

As you probably know, kanji originated from China and not space. But to a native English speaker it might as well have orignated from space. Kanji is an insidious conspiracy to deter foreigners from learning Japanese. Imagine that instead of 26 roman letters, you have 5000 pictograms that each has an individual meaning and can be combined with other characters in various arrangements to create more complex ideas. Each of these alien writings also has multiple possible readings and meanings depending on the context.

That said, it’s still better than Chinese, where ALL the words are written in hanzi (mandarin pronounciation of kanji). At least with Japanese you get hiragana and katakana, which are phonetic alphabets.

Kanji is not all bad, though. You can fit more ideas into a smaller space and once you’ve mastered them you can laugh at the other people who are still struggling. :3

Readings

Depending on the kanji’s origins and usage, there can be anywhere from one to more than ten ways of reading a particular kanji. The readings are grouped into three categories: 音読み (on-yomi), 訓読み (kun-yomi) and 名乗り (nanori).

On-readings came from ancient Chinese readings and still bear some similarities to modern Chinese. They are easy to figure out with enough experience if you are a native Chinese speaker. However, they sound different enough such that a Chinese speaker with zero exposure to Japanese will probably not be able to comprehend words pronounced with on-reading.

Kun-readings came from the spoken Japanese language that existed long before a writing system was developed using Chinese characters. Kanji characters came to be used to represent native Japanese words that had similar meanings and these characters took on the words as their kun-readings.

Nanori are basically special readings that some kanji may take on when they are used in a name. They can only be found in names. However, kanji in names are not limited to nanori and can also be read using on-reading and kun-reading. Almost all kanji characters have both on-readings and kun-readings, but many of them do not have nanori.

On vs. Kun

There are some general patterns with regards to determining whether a word should be reading using the on-readings or kun-readings of its kanji components.

• on-reading is used for most compound words (usually in pairs of two kanji).
  • æ–°é®® (shinsen)
  • 戦争 (sensou)
  • 学生 (gakusei)
  • 開始 (kaishi)
• kun-reading is used for most native Japanese words (usually with one kanji + some hiragana)
  • 新たなる (aratanaru)
  • 争う (arasou)
  • 学ぶ (manabu)
  • 開く (aku or hiraku)

I have highlighted the kanji shared by both sets of examples above so that you can see just how much the on-reading differs from the kun-reading of the same kanji.

Furigana

All words in Japanese can be written using hiragana but kanji is usually preferred for easier reading. There are exceptions, though. Some words are more commonly written in hiragana because the kanji version is archaic, troublesome or just ugly.

When a word is written using kanji, the hiragana version may be written above it in a smaller script size. Since hiragana is a phonetic alphabet, this acts as a reading guide. Hiragana written above (and sometimes below) kanji is known as furigana.

Most Japanese publications only include furigana for 1. words that are archaic or not commonly used, 2. names of people and places and 3. made-up words or words coined for new phenomenons or inventions. Manga and novels targeted at children and teenagers tend to have furigana for all the kanji. When the text is printed vertically, such as in manga and novels, the furigana is to the right of the kanji.

Example

Here’s an example of a compound kanji word.

This word means “Japan”. Japan can also be written as simply 日本 (nihon/nippon). 日本国 means literally “the nation of Japan”. It consists of three kanji characters. In this case, æ—¥ means “sun”, 本 means “origin” and 国 means “country”. Literally, kanji by kanji, it translates to “the nation of sun’s origin” or as Westerners prefer it “the land of the rising sun”.

The word as a whole is read as “nihonkoku“, which consists of the on-readings of the three kanji characters. Here’s the first one:

Meanings: sun, days, Japan
On-readings: nichi jitsu
Kun-readings: hi bi ka
Nanori: a aki iru ku kusa kou su tachi ni nitsu he

Note that “ni” is not, strictly speaking, an on-reading of æ—¥, neither is the “ni” in “nihon” the nanori. The combined on-reading for 日本 is technically “nippon” (contraction of nichi + hon) which slowly evolved into “nihon“. Both readings are used in modern Japanese and they are generally interchangeable. Just a little FYI.

Review

Reading kanji is hard because of the numerous possible permutations. However, general guidelines do exist. You can usually guess whether the on-readings or the kun-readings should be used, which narrows the possiblities down to half… Oh well.

You can search for all the possible readings of a kanji using a kanji dictionary such as the one included in WWWJDIC.

If all else fails, pray for furigana.

Origins of Kanji

Kanji consist of radicals and elements. Elements refer to the different parts of a kanji that come together to form the kanji. For example, the kanji 明 (bright) consists of the radicals 日 (sun) and 月 (moon).

In general, there are two different kinds of elements: semantic and phonetic. Semantic elements are referred to as “radicals” while phonetic elements have no special names.

Semantic Elements

Chinese hanzi, the origin of Japanese kanji, first came from pictograms depicting the objects being decribed. 月 (moon) in its earliest form looked like a crescent, for example.

In order to describe more complex and abstract ideas, multiple characters are combined together to form a new character. For example, 雨 (rain) + 田 (field) = 雷 (thunder). Elements of a character that contribute to its meaning are called semantic elements. Semantic elements are also sometimes referred to as radicals. 雨 and 田 are the two radicals that make up 雷.

Phonetic Elements

But soon people realized that just wasn’t any way to draw certain ideas using pictures. Thus, an alternative way of creating hanzi by using an element for its phonetic value is born.

For example, 女 (woman) + 馬 (horse) = 媽 (mother in Chinese). The element 馬 (read as “ma3” in Chinese) in this case is not actually incorporated for its meaning but for its phonetic reading: 媽 is read as “ma1”. The element 馬 is the phonetic element because it gives us the reading “ma”.

Note: The numbers after the reading indicate the tone. There are four tones in Chinese Mandarin.

Radicals

Chinese and Japanese dictionaries classify the characters by their main radical. The main radical of a kanji/hanzi is usually located on the top or the left side of the kanji. Essentially the main radical is a semantic element that tells you what kind of kanji/hanzi is the character you are looking at.

女 is the main radical for 媽 and tells us that this character is related to women. Although this isn’t always very useful for guessing the meaning of a kanji since it’s hard to tell what things were considered femine by the ancient Chinese…

Example of Phonetic Element

There are some common phonetic elements that are combined with a variety of main radicals to get words that mean completely different things but have similar on-readings. For example, ç½ (white) 泊 (overnight) 拍 (clap) 伯 (uncle) 柏 (oak) all share the on-reading “haku” because all the other kanji use ç½ as their phonetic element.

On another note, ç½ has the kun-reading “shiro“, such as in ç½ã„ (shiroi). It means white. A caucasian is referred to as a ç½äºº (hakujin). The kun-reading for 柏 on the other hand is “kashiwa“. Kun-readings are usually not related to the phonetic elements.

Example of Semantic Element

é›· (thunder) 雫 (droplet) 雲 (cloud) é›» (electricity) all share the 雨 (rain) radical as their main radical. In a sense, they are all things that are related to rain. In a printed dictionary, you would search for them (assuming you don’t know the readings) under a list of kanji with the 雨 radical arranged by stroke counts. They have completely different on-readings because the element they share is used for its meaning and is not phonetic.

Simplification of Kanji

During the Pre-WW2 years, kanji was nearly identical to Chinese hanzi except for some kanji created natively. Today however, a lot of kanji characters are written quite differently from their hanzi counterparts. This is mainly because Japanese and Chinese writings underwent simplification on two sepereate occasions.

Simplified Chinese was introduced in the 50s and 60s by the People’s Republic of China. The writing system was significantly simplified in order to promote literacy. For example, the hanzi for horse 馬 is written in Simplified Chinese as 马. Simplified Chinese has been steadily gaining popularity due to China’s growing economic clout.

Traditional Chinese continues to be used by Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, i.e. the territories that were not under central government control during the simplification process. Some people see Traditional Chinese as a symbol of resistance against the Communist Party or as an important part of Chinese culture, but personally I think China had the right idea by making the language a heck lot easier to write… Most literate people living in China and Taiwan can read both scripts, so it probably doesn’t matter anyway.

Meanwhile, the post-WW2 Japan under American Occupation rule was encouraged to simplify its writing system, which it did. Thus Japan and China both simplified their writing system independently of each other. Modern Japanese kanji is a mixture of Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and some simplifications unique to Japanese.

Comparison of Simplified Versions

Some examples to show how the three writing systems differ.

As you can see, some characters follow either Traditional or Simplified Chinese while some characters are simplified in a different way from Simplifiied Chinese.

Native Kanji

There are some kanji characters that are native to Japanese. They have never existed in Chinese, whether Traditional or Simplified. This is not counting those kanji that originated from Chinese but evolved differently.

Japanese-made kanji are called 和製漢字 (wasei-kanji) or 国字 (kokuji).

Examples of kokuji are:

Kokuji usually do not have on-readings because they did not originate from Chinese. However, sometimes it is hard to read kanji compounds without on-reading so some kokuji take on the on-readings of their phonetic element. The only kanji with an on-reading in the examples above is 働. The on-reading is “dou” which is derived from the on-reading of å‹•.

Review

To sum up, there are three origins for Chinese characters:

1. evolved from diagrams depicting specific objects
2. combining radicals to form a new compound meaning
3. combining radicals and phonetic elements

Despite Western misconceptions, only a small percentage of Chinese characters falls into the first category. Characters in the third category take on the readings of their phonetic elements, thus it is possible a person with enough experience to predict the reading of an unknown Chinese character. Similarly, the on-readings of many kanji can be guessed by examining the phonetic elements.

Japanese kanji evolved from the Chinese writing system, but the two different in many ways today due to the simplifications that took place in the two langauges. Modern kanji differs from both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese writing systems in various ways.

Conclusion

In the third chapter, we talked about:

1. on-reading, kun-reading, nanori
2. furigana
3. origins of kanji/hanzi
4. semantic elements and phonetic elements of kanji/hanzi
5. modern Japanese kanji vs. modern Chinese hanzi

Ok, so that wasn’t the interesting and fun topic that I promised. Kanji is heavy stuff. If you don’t understand this chapter, it’s okay. The only really important thing you have to know when you learn the language is the fact that kanji have kun- and on-readings. The rest is purely useless head knowledge.

Anyway, the next chapter will be a lot more interesting and relevant. I hope.

Remember to nominate a girl for the next chapter~

And yes, this week’s theme is Tamaki Kousaka from To Heart 2. :3

Introduction

First, here’s a very basic sentence in Japanese:

kana: 俺は河野貴明だ。
ro-maji: ore wa kouno takaaki da.
english: I am Takaaki Kouno.

俺 (ore): I / me
河野貴明 (kouno takaaki): Takaaki Kouno, the main character in To Heart 2

The hiragana は (ha) is read as “wa” when used as a particle. は indicates the topic of a sentence. Topic is a grammatical definition that has no equivalent in English. It’s usually okay to treat the topic as the subject, but there are times where this will not work. I’ll explain more later… For now just take it as the indicator for the subject.
だ (da) is the normal form of でだ(desu) which anyone who watches anime should know.

By the way, please do not introduce yourself in this manner in real-life. 俺 and だ should never be used when speaking to strangers unless you are looking for a fight… also known as 喧嘩を売る (kenka wo uru), literally “to sell a fight”. Payment in pain no doubt.

Let’s take a look at another sentence…

kana: いつもタマ姉と屋上で昼飯を食べる。
ro-maji: itsumo tama-nee to okujou de hirumeshi wo taberu.
english: I always have lunch with Tama-nee on the rooftop.

いつも (itsumo): all the time / always
タマ姉 (tama-nee): Tamaki Kousaka from TH2
屋上 (okujou): rooftop. In games and anime, this usually refers to the rooftop of a school…
昼飯 (hirumeshi): lunch, also 昼ご飯 (hirugohan) or お昼 (ohiru). hirumeshi seems to be preferred by many males.
食べる (taberu): to eat, also 食う (kuu). kuu sounds much rougher.

I have highlighted all the particles in the above sentence. Try to figure out what each particle does. Remember that a particle is used to indicate the role of the word just before it with regards to the entire sentence.
と (to) usually means “and”. In this case, it indicates who you do the action with.
で (de) indciates the location of an action.
ã‚’ (wo) indicates the object of an action.

Notice that this sentence does not have an explicit subject. It is common in Japanese to hide the subject when it is obvious, a practice that is not considered grammatically-sound in English. (e.g. “Got to go now” = “I got to go now”)

In fact, subjects in most Japanese sentences are kept implicit and only included when there is a good reason to do so, such as when the subject is ambiguous or new to the conversation. An implicit subject is often (but not always) the speaker, depending on the context and the previous dialogues.

In the sentence above, the subject is obviously “I”, the speaker.

Native English speakers learning Japanese have a tendency to think of sentences without an explicit subject as being passive (i.e. “The lunch was eaten”). It takes time to get used to it so that you don’t confuse yourself when you get to real passive forms.

Review

Sentences usually end with a verb. Particles are used to indicate the relationships of the words to the verb and to the sentence as a whole. Speaking strangers in non-polite form can result in much pain. The subject of a sentence is usually hidden but there is always an implied subject when that happens. You just have to figure out what it is.

Noun modifying clauses

Almost all sentences follow the basic sentence structure seen above, but if you actually attempt to decipher a long-ish sentence in Japanese, you might find yourself wondering why real-life doesn’t seem to work that way.

The main reason for this is because Japanese LOVE to use long-ass clauses to modify nouns. Noun modifiers often take up more than half of a sentence. A sentence that can essentially be simplified to less than five words (if you extract only the subject, object and verb) can end up taking up three paragraphs because of all the descriptions and explanations attached to each of those words. I heard this is true for German too, but I have no firsthand experience.

Example:

“My brother bought a dog last month. It died recently after being knocked down by a car. I heard that the driver was drunk.”

This will usually be written in Japanese as:

“The dog which my brother bought last month died recently after being knocked down by a car which I heard was driven by a drunk driver.”

It’s doable in English, but it just sounds too long and confusing. Most written sentences in Japanese are structured like this. It is difficult for beginners to locate the main subject and object of the sentence because each of the clauses has its own subject, object, verb and even sub-clauses.

Notice that I did not actually write the sentence above out in Japanese because I don’t want to go too much into this topic. Learning to break complex sentences up into parts and extracting the key information requires a good grammar and vocabulary foundations and lots of exposure to Japanese. There’s no shortcut around it. I just brought this up as a point of interest for those who are curious.

Subject and Topic

Just now, I mentioned that subject and topic are different things but it is usually safe to treat them as the same. Now I shall explain how they can refer to very different things in the same sentence.

Subject is indicated by the particle が (ga).
Topic is indicated by the particle は (wa).

Subjects work the same way as their English counterparts: they indicate the performer of an action.
Topics are much more general and unrestrictive. They can indicate almost anything about a sentence.

kana: 明日は行きまãã€‚
ro-maji: ashita wa ikimasu
english: I will go tomorrow.

In the sentence above, ashita (tomorrow) is the topic and ikimasu (to go) is the verb. We can clearly see that the topic in this case is NOT the subject, because “Tomorrow goes” makes no sense.

There is a hidden subject in this sentence, and that is “I”. You can see it as “ashita wa watashi ga ikimasu.” However, as I have mentioned, the subject is often kept implicit. One only states the subject explicitly when it is needed, because otherwise it places unnecessary emphasis on the subject.

Essentially, when you define a topic you are literally defining the topic of discussion. By saying “watashi wa” for example, you are basically saying “Now I shall talk about me…” or “As for me…”. Therefore, the verb at the end of the sentence may or may not apply to watashi directly, but we know that the sentence on the whole is somehow related to watashi.

Example:

kana: タマ姉は足が長いでãã€‚
ro-maji: tama-nee wa ashi ga nagai desu
english: Tama-nee’s legs are long.

足 (ashi): legs / feet
長い (nagai): long

A more literal translation would be “As for Tama-nee / Speaking of Tama-nee, her legs are long.” In this case, it is obvious that the subject of the verb でだis NOT Tama-nee but her legs.

As I mentioned, the topic and/or the subject of a sentence may be excluded from a sentence if the context is clear. The above sentence requires both to be explicit in order for the meaning to be clear, due to a lack of context. Let me demonstrate this with two different examples.

Example 1: A few people are talking about Tama-nee and each of them lists out something about her body.

Person A: “tama-nee wa kami ga akakute nagai desu” (Tama-nee has red long hair)
Person B: “ashi ga nagai desu” (Her legs are long)
Me: “mune ga ookii desu!” (Her……nevermind)

There is no need to restate the topic “tama-nee” anymore once it has been established for conversation, unless you need to 1. change the topic or 2. emphasis the topic. Neither is there a need to use any pronouns in Japanese, because pronouns are reserved for special ocassions when you need the extra emphasis. (Like, ZOMG YOU ARE THE CRIMINALZ! 貴方を犯人でãï¼)

Example 2: A few people are comparing the lengths of legs belonging to various people.

Person A: “doraemon wa ashi ga hikui desu” (Doraemon’s legs are short)
Person B: “konomi-chan mo hikui desu” (Konomi-chan’s legs are short too)
Me: “tama-nee wa nagai desu” (Tama-nee’s legs are long)

ã‚‚ (mo): a particle used to indicate “also / too”.

Notice that there is no need to restate the subject “ashi” after the first statement. It is understood that by “tama-nee wa nagai desu“, I don’t mean “Tama-nee is long” but rather I am referring to her legs. The topic of the sentence is not the same as the (implied) subject of the sentence.

Review

Japanese sentences contain painfully-long, noun-modifying clauses. There is no hope for gaijin.
Topic does NOT always equal subject. Topic is NOT the same as subject. There is no hope for gaijin.
Resistance is futile. Give up!…

…Just kidding. But seriously, I can’t really explain any further for these two topics. I am writing this merely as an introduction to the various quirks of Japanese language, not as a complete guide to picking up the language.

Conclusion

In the second chapter, we talked about:

1. Basic sentence structure
2. Some common particles
3. A particle usually indicates the role of the previous word
4. Japanese are lazy and like to hide their subjects and topics
5. Japanese are crazy and like to modify their nouns with long clauses
6. Topic is NOT subject

Have fun~ Check back some time again for the third chapter soon. I realized that I should not structure my lessons like a real textbook because I won’t be able to cover much of the basic grammar anyway.

Instead, I’ll be spending the next chapter talking about some random quirks I’ve come across while studying the Japanese language so that you can show off to your fellow anime fans your newfound l33t Japanese trivial knowledge. Until next time, jya.

P.S. feel free to leave a comment on which girl you want me to focus on for the next chapter… ;)

I assume that people who read this blog are, more often than not, fansub watchers. So for the first lesson today, instead of talking about “watashi wa John desu”, I’ll begin with something slightly more advance.

Part I: Verb Groups

Anyway, verbs. There are three main categories of verbs in Japanese and they are usually referred to as “Group 1”, “Group 2” and “Group 3”. Creative names huh. Usually when you start to learn Japanese as a foreigner, all the verbs you encounter end with “-masu”, such as ikimasu and tabemasu The truth is, the “-masu” suffix is a tense and you will never find the word “ikimasu” in a dictionary. The words are actually iku and taberu.

I will be presenting all the examples using the dictionary form and I will explain how and why they are converted to the “-masu” form.

Examples

Group 1
打つ utsu
読む yomu
聞く kiku
突っ込む tsukkomu
戸惑う tomadou
犯だokasu
死ぬ shinu
当たる ataru
帰る kaeru
入る hairu
切る kiru
ある aru
行く iku

Group 2
消える kieru
着る kiru
奏でる kanaderu
逃げる nigeru
変える kaeru
いる iru
食べる taberu
寝る neru
借りる kariru
萌える moeru
焼ける yakeru
分ける wakeru
生きる ikiru
生まれる umareru

Group 3
ãã‚‹ suru
くる kuru
存在ãã‚‹ sonzai suru
性交ãã‚‹ seikou suru
浮気ãã‚‹ uwaki suru
変更ãã‚‹ henkou suru

I think if I leave you to stare at the examples long enough, you will see some pattern as to how the groups are determined. There are some exceptions of course, but generally the pattern is easy to understand. And for those of you who read Japanese, yes some of the examples are meant to be weird. ;)

Group 3

First things first, let’s get the easiest group out of the way.

There are only two Group 3 verbs: くる kuru (“to come”) and ãã‚‹ suru (“to do”). The rest are just various combinations of noun + suru (literally “to do [noun]”).

Simple huh.

As for differentiating Group 1 and Group 2 verbs, the first rule of thumb is by the last hiragana character.

Group 1

Group 1 verbs end with one of the following hiragana:
う　く　ぐ　ãã€€ã¤ã€€ã¬ã€€ã‚‹ã€€ã‚€ ぶ
u ku gu su tsu nu ru mu bu

Group 2

Group 2 verbs always end with ã‚‹ ru.
The second last hiragana in a Group 2 verb will always have either a trailing “e” (read “ei” like “A” in “ABC”) or “i” (read “yi”, like “E” in “EFG”) sound. For example, 分ける wakeru.

General Guidelines

A verb that ends with anything but -ru is ALWAYS Group 1, but the reverse is not true. 当たる ataru ends with a -ru, but it is Group 1 and not 2 because the second last hiragana does not have a trailing “e” or “i” sound. 帰る kaeru, 入る hairu and 切る kiru on the other hand all fulfill the Group 2 requirements, but yet they are in Group 1. As with all language rules, there are exceptions and there is no way around it but pure memorization.

Note that all the rules only apply for the dictionary form of verbs. The trailing hiragana changes depending on the tense, in which case it will not match the ones above. But if you are certain that a word is in its dictionary form and yet the last hiragana does not fit any of those listed above, then it is most likely not a verb.

If you observe the kanji and the trailing hiragana for each group, you can probably notice a better way to differentiate the two groups, but I am not going to cover it because it is somewhat more confusing (for those who want to try, the only exception for that rule is 寝る neru being in Group 2).

Review

Let’s say you encounter the verb 泳ぐ oyogu (“to swim”)

First you check the trailing hiragana: ぐ gu
Result: Group 1. Only Group 1 verbs can end with -gu.

Another example: 叱る shikaru (“to scold”).

First you check the trailing hiragana: ã‚‹ ru
Result: Inconclusive, -ru can be found in both groups.

Then you check the second last hiragana: か ka (叱る when written out in full hiragana is しかる)
Result: ka does not end with a trailing “e” or “i” sound, therefore 叱る shikaru is Group 1.

It’s pretty simple, you just have to remember the exceptions that end with -iru or -eru and yet are in Group 1. Some common exceptions are 帰る kaeru (“to return home”), 入る hairu (“to enter”) and 切る kiru (“to cut”).

Exercise

Using the rules I’ve given above, try to group the following in Group 1 or 2.

1. 騒ぐ sawagu Group 1.
2. 入れる ireru Group 2.
3. 変わる kawaru Group 1.
4. 占う uranau Group 1.
5. 回る mawaru Group 1.
6. 避ける sakeru Group 2.
7. 痛む itamu Group 1.
8. 焼く yaku Group 1.
9. 生かだikasu Group 1.
10. 欠ける kakeru Group 2.
11. éã‚Šã‚‹ oriru Group 2.
12. 打ち合わせる uchiawaseru Group 2.
13. 試だtamesu Group 1.
14. 猫みみ nekomimi Not a verb. Neko Mimi Mode desu~~~
15. ぶっ掛ける bukkakeru Group 2. It’s really a verb.

Part II: “-masu” Form

I will spend the second half of this introduction to Japaese verbs by teaching the -masu form. Most language schools teaching Japanese as a foreign language will actually start with the -masu form first before teaching the dictionary form.

This is due to two main reasons. The first is because the -masu form is much more polite than the dictionary form. In fact, -masu is also known as the polite form. So by teaching a foreign student who has just started learning Japanese the polite form first, he or she would not go around offending people unknowingly. Tense manipulation in the polite form is also simpler.

Conversion

Here’s how you convert dictionary form to polite form.

Group 1

Example: 咲く saku (“to blossom”)

Assuming you know your hiragana table, take the trailing hiragana from the verb, which is く ku in this case, and match it with the hiragana that is in the same row but has a trailing “i” sound. What we want is ki.

The “k-” row: か　ka　き　ki　く　ku　け　ke　こ　ko

Replacing ku with ki and add masu to the end, and viola! We get 咲きまだsakimasu. This works for all Group 1 verbs.

Other examples:

打つ utsu = 打ちまだuchimasu
読む yomu = 読みまだyomimasu
聞く kiku = 聞きまだkikimasu
突っ込む tsukkomu = 突っ込みまだtsukkomimasu
戸惑う tomadou = 戸惑いまだtomadoimasu
犯だokasu = 犯しまだokashimasu
死ぬ shinu = 死にまだshinimasu
当たる ataru = 当たりまだatarimasu
帰る kaeru = 帰りまだkaerimasu

Group 2

Too simple. Just take off the trailing ã‚‹ ru and replace with masu

Examples:

消える kieru = 消えまだkiemasu
着る kiru = 着まだkimasu
奏でる kanaderu = 奏でまだkanademasu
逃げる nigeru = 逃げまだnigemasu
変える kaeru = 変えまだkaemasu
いる iru = いまだimasu
食べる taberu = 食べまだtabemasu

Group 3

There are only two of them, so just memorize.

ãã‚‹ suru = しまだshimasu
くる kuru = きまだkimasu
存在ãã‚‹ sonzai suru = 存在しまだsonzai shimasu
性交ãã‚‹ seikou suru = 性交しまだseikou shimasu

Polite Past Tense

“I went.”

This is pretty easy too. Just change the suffix from masu to mashita, no matter which group it is. This applies to polite form only. I will be covering tenses for dictionary form at a later date.

読みまだyomimasu = 読みました yomimashita
消えまだkiemasu = 消えました kiemashita
しまだshimasu = しました shimashita

Polite Negative

“I [will not / do not] go.”

Japanese does not differentiate between “will not” and “do not” and uses negative in both cases. Again, what I have here is for the polite form only. The normal negative form will be covered at a later date. Simply replace all masu with masen

読みまだyomimasu = 読みません yomimasen
消えまだkiemasu = 消えません kiemasen
しまだshimasu = しません shimasen

Polite Negative Past

“I did not go.”

This is simply a matter of adding deshita to the end of the polite negative form.

読みまだyomimasu = 読みませんでした yomimasen deshita
消えまだkiemasu = 消えませんでした kiemasen deshita
しまだshimasu = しませんでした shimasen deshita

Review

Converting to and from polite form is pretty easy so I won’t make an exercise for it. Or I’m just too lazy to. :3 You just have to remember the two Group 3 verbs and the general rule for the Group 1 verbs. Even a chimpanzee can convert Group 2 verbs to polite form.

Similarly, converting from polite present to polite past, polite negative or polite negative past is a simple matter of following the general rule. There are no exceptions for these three rules. Hurray.

Conclusion

In the first chapter, we talked about:

1. Verb groups
2. Dictonary form
3. Polite / “-masu” form
4. Polite past, negative and past negative

Have fun~ Check back some time again for the second chapter if I ever get to writing it. Turns out I did finally write it… Click on the link below.

P.S. I do realize that the pictures have nothing to do with the topic… ;)