Help : Hiragana Translation (sort of)

[elariah]

Hi,

I'm still learning my Hiragana but I am getting there slowly. I have a close friend who is helping me, but she is not a teacher so can't explain things that well, and I feel embarassed to have to ask for help all the time.

きょうは、よくねむられましたか？

I've broken this into, the topic being Today. (きょう is Today, and はis the subject particle)

The last bit confuses hell out of me though. Through a pain staking 2 hours I've worked out

よく (yoku, is basically wanting something) and ねむら (nemura, is to sleep) (but I thought nemui ねむい is sleepy).

The final pieces confuse me, there could be any number of words in there.

Could someone please help me break this down a bit more?

Thanks in advance!

[jazzbeans]

The verb is ねむる = to sleep, not ねむら. However...
ねむられました = ねむられる, the potential or passive + (polite) past tense of ねむる.

And yeah, ねむい means 'sleepy'. =)
よく = well/good or frequently/often.

So, the sentence is broken up like this きょう　は　よく　ねむられました　か？


I hope that helps, x. (If you would like more help with the translation, just ask!).

[elariah]

Thanks very much for that.

So she is saying that "today was a tiring day" for her.

I originally thought she was saying that "today she wanted to sleep often". But both of those question the use of ? too.

"ねむれました" compared to "ねむられました" probably didn't help things.

And I've only realised too that she will be using a mix of Hakata-ben and Kansai-ben too. Though I'm not sure if that would make a lot of difference.

How did you know where to split the hiragana? That's my biggest confusion, being so used to English having spaces.

[jazzbeans]

I don't know, I suppose I just got used to reading Japanese! To be honest, I moved onto Kanji ASAP after about a month of study, it helps a lot in regards to spliting up words, etc. I do get a little confused when I see hiragana sentences at times though.

She is asking you a question because she used the か particle at the end. =)

~られる forms... Here's a pretty good explanation of how they're used!

Here's a relevant example...
その　えいが　みられました　か?
= Did you see that film? or Was that film seen by you?

POTENTIAL FORM.
られる can be 'to be able'. E.g., an example given on that link is:
なんでも　たべられます
= I can/am able to eat anything.

Equivalent to なんでも　たべる　こと　が　できます.

PASSIVE FORM.
りんご　は　わたし　に　たべられました
= I ate the apple. or The apple was eaten by me.

りんご　は　あなた　に　たべられましたか？
= Did you eat the apple? or Was the apple eaten by you?

I hope that helps too, heh. And I hope I'm explaining this well or correctly. I don't think I even use this form much if at all actually. No idea why!


I would ask her to speak Standard Japanese whilst you are learning, it may be too hard otherwise. Although I'm sure she wouldn't speak much in them though anyways.

EDIT: It's worth mentioning about きょう　は... Often it means Today in respects to, "Regarding today, I did this" or "As for today..". Not about the day itself. Some people just put きょう to, like, "きょう、".

E.g., [I pulled this up after doing a Google search]
"今日は科学と英語の授業をした"
(きょう　は　かがく　と　えいご　の　じゅぎょう　を　した)
= Today, I did science and English class work.

[elariah]

Thanks very much for your advice and help!

I will ask her to use standard japanese if she can. I'm sure she'll try her best^^

I'm thinking, this site, the podcasts, rosetta stone, and a private tutor (starting next month) should help me kick start learning. I've only been learning for about 5 weeks (unfortunately during the busiest work load we've had in 8 yrs!).

I have 6 months to be able to hold a basic conversation! Hence the private tutor as I need discipline and set learning plan.

[jazzbeans]

No problem!


I'm sure you can learn all that, even with the heavy workload. Quite a few people reach a stupidly high level of fluency in.. well, the same amount that I've studied (one year and a half) despite other duties in their lives. So, really.. so long as you sink your teeth in it and take advantage of all those sources of learning, you'll do fine. =)

May I ask why you have to learn it by then, if that's not prying too much?

[Javizy]

If speaking is your main goal, I'd really recommend this book. If you're learning the grammar at the same time, doing shadowing will really drill it into your head, and you'll be able to train your pronunciation at the same time.

If you only have a basic grasp of the language, then misunderstandings are going to happen a lot, but you can avoid a large chunk of them by speaking clearly. You've probably read that Japanese pronunciation is "easy", but for every time you read that, you'll hear somebody who sounds like a vocalised version of romaji. Get your tutor to analyse your pronunciation, listen to the explanations carefully, and then consistent shadowing should take care of the rest.

You might want to use something like http://smart.fm/ to review your vocabulary as well. It uses a system that spaces reviews in a way that helps you remember the words. You can also try http://ichi2.net/anki/ to review offline, or on your iPhone/Touch.

It's a good idea to start with kanji as soon as you can, but since your immediate goal is speaking-focused, you might want to put it off, depending on your long-term plans. There are loads of great resources and discussions on this forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php as well as a lot of the types of learners that jazzbeans mentioned.

[elariah]

It's okay. I'm not on a strict 'timer', but I made a promise.

I promised my friend, who in 6 months time is moving to the UK to study English, that I would do my very best to be able to communicate in her native language with her (and her parents, because they don't know English at all!). She knows English to about TOEIC 600 (IELTS 5.0) but we would like to remove as much of the language barrier as possible.

At first I wanted to learn Japanese for fun, and so I started. But now I'm making it a much higher priority because I feel it is unfair for her to have to use English.

Javizy: Thanks for that link to the book. Much appreciated. And I'm using Kotoba! on my iPhone to learn a few kanji while on my train to work each day. I'll look up that Anki and see if I can put that on my iPhone. iPhone only has J-Pod 101 premium feed on it, Kotoba and most of Yuna Ito, Utada Hikaru and Ayumi Hamasaki on it. ^^

[Javizy]

How long is your commute? Occasionally I take an hour-long journey to meet a friend of mine, and I get about 500 done on the round-trip, and that includes time spent reading the newspaper. Compare that to today, when I've had absolutely nothing to do, but only managed about 150... I definitely recommend Anki over smart.fm then, since you can get iAnki on your iPhone (assuming you have a wireless network at home). If you see anything you like on smart.fm, you can always import it into Anki easily enough. You might want to post at the forum I mentioned for more advice, since personally I've never used smart.fm. It's a great place to find resources to import directly into Anki. If you are interested in tackling kanji, it's also a good place to find out about Remembering the Kanji, and how to use RTK Lite, which might be well suited to you.