Beginning to learn Japanese

these are my notes from my fourth lesson with ronan. we did this today via webcam with angelo and peter. today’s themes were expressing ability and continuing on with coming/going from last time. (i still need someone to check this out to see if it’s all kosher.)

part 1: the koto trick

i learned a trick today! this is a beginner trick.

i know japanese verbs have different forms but i don’t actually “know” them. today i learned a trick to make it easy to take the casual/dictionary form of a word and express “i can/cannot” easily; indicating ability, without needing to modify the verb.

for example, here you have to modify the verb ‘to speak’ to indicate ability:

Eigo o hanashimasu ka? = Do you speak English?
Eigo o hanasemasu ka? = Can you / are you able to speak english?

hanashimasu says ’speak’ and hanasemasu says ‘can speak’… but there’s another way where you use the casual/dictionary form:

Eigo o hanasu koto ga dekimasu ka? = same as “Eigo o hanasemasu ka?”

got that from an online forum.

first thing is: koto changes japanese verbs into nouns.

yomu (to read) + koto (the thing of) = yomu koto (the thing of reading; reading as a noun [gerund])

[casual form ] + こと+ が + できます。
[casual form of verb] + koto (the thing of) ga dekimasu (means ‘can’)

• you can read more about the grammar from an expert.
• you can learn more about expressing ability on About.com, i’m going to print that one out.

Some examples:

はしる 　こと　 が 　できます。
hashiru koto ga dekimasu
I can run

はなす　こと　が　 できます
hanasu koto ga dekimasu
i can speak

にほんごを　はなす　こと　が　 できます
nihongo o hanasu koto ga dekimasu
i can speak japanese

にほんごを　はなす　こと　が　できません
nihongo o hanasu koto ga dekimasen
i can’t speak japanese

finally, you can either modify the noun…

日本語　が　はなせます。
nihongo ga hanasemasu
i can speak japanese.

OR we can also add the koto ga dekiru!

にほんごを　はなす　こと　が　 できます
nihongo o hanasu koto ga dekimasu
i can speak japanese

part 1 vocab:

hiragana　ひらがな		ロマジ	英語	form/notes
はしる	走る	hashiru	run	[casual/dictionary]
はなす	話す	hana-su	speak	[casual/dictionary]
はなします	話します	hana-shi-masu		polite
はなせる	話せる	hana-se-ru		can casual form
はなせます	話せます	hana-se-mas-u		potential and polit

i was trying to clarify the differences between “hanashimasu, hanasemasu”… and i was confused by the way this page broke up the words. “hanas-imas-u” v “hanas-e-mas-u” … but if you write out the kanji it looks different. i made this table, but i’m still not sure if it’s right.

part 2: coming/going

Q：if you are in japan you ask:
いつ　にほんに　きます　か
itsu nihon ni kimasu ka?
when are you coming to japan?

A:
じゅにがつに日本にきます。
juni gatsu ni nihon ni kimas
in december i’m coming to japan

Q：if you are in ireland you ask me:
いつ　にほんに　いきます　か
itsu nihon ni ikimas ka?
when are you going to japan?

A:
juni gatsu ni nihon ni ikimas
じゅにがつに日本にきます。
in december i’m going to japan

part 2 vocab:

hiragana　ひらがな		ロマジ	英語	form/notes
いつ		itsu	when
きます		kimasu	come
いきます		ikimasu	going
にほん	日本	nihon	japan
に		ni	�to� particle	(in this case)

cultural note: if you are in japanese you don’t say “i’m coming! i’m coming!”… you say “i’m going! i’m going!”.

part 3: combining the koto trick with coming and going

here we combine the koto trick, with the casual/dictionary forms of coming and going.

• きます kimasu casual form is くる kuru
• いきます ikimasu casual form is いく iku
• できますdekimasu is “positive can do”
• できませんdekimasen is “negative can’t do”

くることができますか
kuru koto ga dekimasu ka?
can i come?

くることができません
kuru koto ga dekimasen
i can’t come:

にほんいくることができます。
nihon ni kuru koto ga dekimasu
i can come to japan.

other things:
hot humid -mushi atsui

not really..
amari dekimasen

questions:

i saw on this page it says ‘dekiru’ instead of ‘dekimasu’ as in:

Nihongo o hanasu koto ga dekiru.

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/readarticle.php?article_id=11

that confuses me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Vocabulary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.