Sumimasen

[linguoboy]

heh - if this keeps up, I'm going to have to start questioning the etymologies of lots of words I thought I knew.

It's a good habit to get into!

[Daistallia]

heh - if this keeps up, I'm going to have to start questioning the etymologies of lots of words I thought I knew.

It's a good habit to get into!

Indeed.

[Terra]

I have never heard of this word "skosh" or "skoosh". I have heard of "scooch" though, as in: "Could you please scooch over?". I never connected it to "sukoshi" though.

[linguoboy]

I have never heard of this word "skosh" or "skoosh". I have heard of "scooch" though, as in: "Could you please scooch over?". I never connected it to "sukoshi" though.

As well you shouldn't; it derives from an earlier blend of scouch and scoot.

[finlay]

I haven't heard this word either. I have maybe heard "skoosh" as a word meaning "squirt" in scotland, which could be a related usage or just a coincidence. But I'm not sure about that one.

[Bob Johnson]

<scooch> is /skuːtʃ/ following <scoot>
<skosh> is /skoʊʃ/ following <sukoshi>
completely separate

[ol bofosh]

Skadoosh I think I've heard on Kung Fu Panda, I think.

[Gojera]

If I had been forced to guess, I'd have guessed that "skosh" was a Yiddishism.

Here's a woman using "skosh" while cooking, at about 1:20.

[Daistallia]

I haven't heard this word either. I have maybe heard "skoosh" as a word meaning "squirt" in scotland, which could be a related usage or just a coincidence. But I'm not sure about that one.

Well, the Scots (and Brits in genereal) really weren't a big part of the occupation (40k BCOF compared to 350k+ Americans), so it makes sense there was less influance.

[King of My Own Niche]

My brain freaks out whenever I see ローマ字 because my Japanese teacher (a fiery red-headed white lady, funnily enough) has pounded it into my skull that ローマ字は駄目だぜ！(Emphasis my own)

高校で三年生から四年生まで日本語を勉強しました。いい先生がありました。でも、日本語を少しだけ話しますよ。そして、少しだけ書くのです。どうもありがとうございました、ラード先生！

[finlay]

I've seen arguments about it on the internet – someone put forward the point that if you want to learn to speak a little bit of Japanese and aren't too bothered about writing it, even hiragana and katakana can be very offputting to be presented with early on, not to mention kanji, so at beginner's level it makes more sense to start your students off with romaji as a kind of mnemonic tool. You can always go back and learn how to write it properly later.

To be honest, I think I'm better at learning things via reading and writing, so Japanese is very hard for me because I can't just read and write it. And at beginner's level they only taught me about 20 kanji (numbers and days of the week). I am getting a lot of exposure to it here, though, just passively, so I'm starting to be able to recognize most of the kanji you've written, for instance. Somehow!

[King of My Own Niche]

Well, before we did any kind of reading we did a lot of listening and speaking, and we wrote and practiced hiragana and katakana first (although we did start reading and writing before we got all the way through katakana). She avoided romaji as much as possible, she wanted us learning vocabulary in the native writing system, and it's actually made it easier to recognize words in the same way we recognize our native language, units, rather than individual characters.

After a few chapters of the text book (we were working out of Nakama, the first of a series, meant for a year-long college course, but stretched out for two years at the high school level) we started learning kanji, and we learn about ten every chapter, so we're up to 80 now, but we have a goal to kick it into gear and learn about 100-150.

After we started included kanji in our writing, particles, one of the biggest obstacles for beginners and non-linguists, became a lot easier.

Funny story, during one of the tests there was a word she'd said before, たくさん, which means "a lot". Well, after a few weeks (she grades very slowly), she gives them back and said, "I didn't mark this part as wrong because over half the class mistook たくさん for Mr. Taku."

[clawgrip]

I have seen texts aimed at lower levels that will leave out kanji that exceed a certain difficulty threshold, and they are difficult to read. When I see things like 新ぶん it's very jarring, because as you said, I am used to reading things based on units, rather than character by character.

I actually learned katakana first. I never took any Japanese language classes, so, having no prescribed study system, I just took the path of least resistance, so to speak. Someone I knew who lived in Japan at the time had sent me a couple magazines about all those robots and whatnot. What I noticed was that basically everything written in katakana was English (after a fashion). So I learned katakana more quickly and easily, since reading it mostly produced intelligible results, while hiragana invariably gave me only undecipherable native Japanese words.

I improved my knowledge of hiragana and started learning kanji as well when I actually started learning the language. All this was in the mid 1990s.

[Carson]

You're using Nakama?? I am SO sorry. I'm also using Nakama at uni and I actually kinda hate this book. Learn Japanese New College Text was a superior textbook, imo. It was better organized by far and had more effective examples. Nakama is a lot prettier, though.

高校で三年生から四年生まで日本語を勉強しました。いい先生がありました。でも、日本語を少しだけ話しますよ。そして、少しだけ書くのです。どうもありがとうございました、ラード先生！

Since you're in Nakama 1, you can't be expected to know the potential form for verbs yet--that's not covered until a couple chapters into Nakama 2. But, using it would improve your phrasing (which is technically very correct, btw--good job ). And, if you should slip it in when speaking to your 先生, I'm sure the look of surprise on her face would be most gratifying.

でも、日本語を少しだけ話せます。　[This is better than 話します because it says, 'I am able to speak only a little' vs 'I speak only a little.' Both are correct and get the point across, but I'm sure my professor would tell us it's more 'natural' to use the potential here.]

And

そして、少しだけ書くことが出来ます。　[Again, same thing. This one says, 'I have the ability to write only a little.' More natural, but what you had in the first place would be well understood if you had to survive in Tokyo for a week.]

And not sure about this one, but I think that 日本語を勉強しました would be better as 日本語を勉強していました. The distinction between those two in this sort of context has always been hazy for me .

The basic rule is that for -u verbs you change the last mora to an -e sound. So 話す　－＞　話せる　And　書く　－＞　書ける. -ru verbs replace -ru with -rareru, so 走る　－＞　走られる　（はし）And　決める　－＞　決められる　（き）. All verbs that are produced by this rule are -ru verbs and conjugate as such.

Have fun

[clawgrip]

Don't forget that your teacher is a human (I assume), so it should be いました not ありました.

Also, it really should be 日本語は少しだけ話せます, not を. Or you can even drop it altogether. The use of the potential form changes transitivity and forces the object into subject position. This distinction is often ignored in cases where the original subject is particularly important, but here it is not.

It would probably also be better to use しか to stress in a negative way that you can't speak much, i.e. でも少ししか話せません, since you appear to be trying to say your can't speak much despite studying and having a good teacher. I'm not sure if you know しか, but it is like the reverse of だけ and is always used with a negative. 日本語だけ話せます "I can only speak Japanese" 日本語しか話せません "I can't speak anything other than Japanese."

[Carson]

Don't forget that your teacher is a human (I assume), so it should be いました not ありました.

Also, it really should be 日本語は少しだけ話せます, not を. Or you can even drop it altogether. The use of the potential form changes transitivity and forces the object into subject position. This distinction is often ignored in cases where the original subject is particularly important, but here it is not.

It would probably also be better to use しか to stress in a negative way that you can't speak much, i.e. でも少ししか話せません, since you appear to be trying to say your can't speak much despite studying and having a good teacher. I'm not sure if you know しか, but it is like the reverse of だけ and is always used with a negative. 日本語だけ話せます "I can only speak Japanese" 日本語しか話せません "I can't speak anything other than Japanese."

d'oh, I hope I didn't forget to change to a nominative marker on the test

Also, I kinda wish there were a Japanese text book that used linguistic nomenclature to talk about particles. It would be so much easier than trying to explain the difference between　は　and　 が by using English comparisons. For that matter, I think the explanation for what the "suffering passive" is would have been much smoother. Here's to hoping that the Japanese Linguistics class I missed last fall is offered this coming fall.

[clawgrip]

Yeah, the problem is that textbooks are generally designed for people who likely don't have extensive/any knowledge of linguistic nomenclature.

[King of My Own Niche]

Yeah, the problem is that textbooks are generally designed for people who likely don't have extensive/any knowledge of linguistic nomenclature.

Agreed. This is a trait that is shared by the writers of Knowledge Bowl questions, which leads to me getting questions wrong when I answer with terms like "genitive" when the answer they were looking for is "possessive".

Don't forget that your teacher is a human (I assume), so it should be いました not ありました.

Also, it really should be 日本語は少しだけ話せます, not を. Or you can even drop it altogether. The use of the potential form changes transitivity and forces the object into subject position. This distinction is often ignored in cases where the original subject is particularly important, but here it is not.

It would probably also be better to use しか to stress in a negative way that you can't speak much, i.e. でも少ししか話せません, since you appear to be trying to say your can't speak much despite studying and having a good teacher. I'm not sure if you know しか, but it is like the reverse of だけ and is always used with a negative. 日本語だけ話せます "I can only speak Japanese" 日本語しか話せません "I can't speak anything other than Japanese."

ああ、どうも！

You're using Nakama?? I am SO sorry. I'm also using Nakama at uni and I actually kinda hate this book. Learn Japanese New College Text was a superior textbook, imo. It was better organized by far and had more effective examples. Nakama is a lot prettier, though.

高校で三年生から四年生まで日本語を勉強しました。いい先生がありました。でも、日本語を少しだけ話しますよ。そして、少しだけ書くのです。どうもありがとうございました、ラード先生！

Since you're in Nakama 1, you can't be expected to know the potential form for verbs yet--that's not covered until a couple chapters into Nakama 2. But, using it would improve your phrasing (which is technically very correct, btw--good job ). And, if you should slip it in when speaking to your 先生, I'm sure the look of surprise on her face would be most gratifying.

でも、日本語を少しだけ話せます。　[This is better than 話します because it says, 'I am able to speak only a little' vs 'I speak only a little.' Both are correct and get the point across, but I'm sure my professor would tell us it's more 'natural' to use the potential here.]

And

そして、少しだけ書くことが出来ます。　[Again, same thing. This one says, 'I have the ability to write only a little.' More natural, but what you had in the first place would be well understood if you had to survive in Tokyo for a week.]

And not sure about this one, but I think that 日本語を勉強しました would be better as 日本語を勉強していました. The distinction between those two in this sort of context has always been hazy for me .

The basic rule is that for -u verbs you change the last mora to an -e sound. So 話す　－＞　話せる　And　書く　－＞　書ける. -ru verbs replace -ru with -rareru, so 走る　－＞　走られる　（はし）And　決める　－＞　決められる　（き）. All verbs that are produced by this rule are -ru verbs and conjugate as such.

Have fun

Thanks! This'll come in handy :] My teacher would actually agree with you that Nakama isn't the best book, she prefers the 用こそ text book for some things, and she'll copy packets and dialogues out of that book. What she really doesn't like about it is that the printing is ridiculously small, but she likes it because it introduces kanji about the same time she does.

[finlay]

I have seen texts aimed at lower levels that will leave out kanji that exceed a certain difficulty threshold, and they are difficult to read. When I see things like 新ぶん it's very jarring, because as you said, I am used to reading things based on units, rather than character by character.

I actually learned katakana first. I never took any Japanese language classes, so, having no prescribed study system, I just took the path of least resistance, so to speak. Someone I knew who lived in Japan at the time had sent me a couple magazines about all those robots and whatnot. What I noticed was that basically everything written in katakana was English (after a fashion). So I learned katakana more quickly and easily, since reading it mostly produced intelligible results, while hiragana invariably gave me only undecipherable native Japanese words.

I improved my knowledge of hiragana and started learning kanji as well when I actually started learning the language. All this was in the mid 1990s.

I think I learnt a bit of Katakana when I was into Pokemon, so around 12 years ago (half my life). Or at least, it was via that that I first worked out that they divided things up by syllable rather than having consonants and vowels. I actually committed a few to memory when I had a Gorillaz album that for some reason (perhaps because one of the cartoon characters that makes up the band is meant to be Japanese, and the album had a few lines of spoken Japanese in it) had the titles in Katakana. Of course, I only got a few of them, and I worked out that they tend to transcribe a short vowel with ッ but not necessarily that the following character was usually a syllable with -u... I'm not sure what year that was, but Wikipedia says it came out in 2002. I guess it was then...

I learnt it completely in my early days here on the ZBB, forgot it all, and then had to relearn it when I actually started learning the language itself. And then I had to relearn quite a few of the characters when I actually came to Tokyo (incidentally, because nu is a very uncommon syllable, I didn't see the katakana ヌ for at least a month after I arrived, and it still looks a bit alien to me...).

[treskro]

The intro course I took for a summer course at a different university used Genki. I thought it was a great book--good pacing and presentation, and they introduce a total of around 300 kanji throughout the two books. It's also pretty good for self-studying, which cannot be said for the book I'm using now: Japanese: the Spoken Language. It's definitely a lot more dense, but it's also amazing for grammar explanations and drills. The main shortcoming is that it's all romanized (not Hepburn) since the author had a linguistic background, but we have supplementary material to learn kanji so it's not too big of a deal.

[finlay]

I used Genki for one class, and Japanese for Busy People for another. I think I preferred Genki. Both of them are back in the UK, though. I also had a linguistic textbook that used an odd romanization. I'm shit at self-study, though, so I've never really gone back to the textbooks again. Maybe I should get them sent over.

[Zwap]

Funny story, during one of the tests there was a word she'd said before, たくさん, which means "a lot". Well, after a few weeks (she grades very slowly), she gives them back and said, "I didn't mark this part as wrong because over half the class mistook たくさん for Mr. Taku."

I remember one time when a classmate sent me a text message about a cute girl in our class called 沢山, which had me very confused for a while because I couldn't recall anyone called さわやま. Turned out I had completely misinterpreted, he was telling me there were たくさん cute girls, which suddenly made a lot more sense...

[King of My Own Niche]

My teacher actually learned out of Learn Japanese New College Text, and she also has Japanese for Busy People, as well as Japanese in Mangaland, Genki, Youkoso, and a bunch of others. Goldmine!

[Carson]

I've heard some good things about Genki. I also have Japanese Step By Step, which is possibly one of the easiest to understand (incomplete) texts I've encountered so far. I just wish that the author put his whole course into the book instead of the basics. I understand a new edition came out recently, but I haven't had a chance to take a look at it.

One which I would really like to have is the Japanese Reader (iirc title) from, like... 1976? It was compiled by a man with an Italian surname and his wife, but I can't think of the name right now. It had complete short stories written in brush style and started off with hiragana and katakana with translation hints at the bottom of each page. Then it introduces Kanji at a slower pace using furigana. Can't remember how many, but I want to say it was upwards of 500. My JC's library had a copy; it's the only book I've ever been tempted to steal from a library .

[Shm Jay]

Ernesto Vaccari. I have the book, which is older than 1976, though I can't say how old off the top of my head (perhaps the 1950s).