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Grammar question 勉強してるん - help?

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watermen
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Grammar question 勉強してるん - help?

Postby watermen » February 2nd, 2008 9:23 pm

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I have 2 questions here:

1. マンゴーランゲージという==>Can be roughly translate into "A website called Mango Languages" right?

2. 勉強してるん==> What kind of grammar is it. Why not just 勉強します?

Psy
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Postby Psy » February 3rd, 2008 3:22 am

I'm not sure why-- I'm not a native speaker-- but that Japanese seems a little... rough. But yes, you're right, という is "called" so マンゴランゲージというサイト is "a site called Mango Languages" and マンゴランゲージというとてもいいサイト "a very good site called Mango Languages."

んだ/んです/のだ/のです is a form that adds a sense of explanation to a sentence. Some people liken it to saying "you see," like in this case "you see I'm studying Japanese with.." Still, だ on its own sounds kinda harsh, and normally you don't use んです unless you're answering a question that used either it or some form of "why." (なぜ, どうして, etc.)

Kind of a cool flashcard program though. What is it?
High time to finish what I've started. || Anki vocabulary drive: 5,000/10k. Restart coming soon. || Dig my Road to Katakana tutorial on the App store.

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maxiewawa
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Postby maxiewawa » February 3rd, 2008 3:32 am

Psy didn't mention it, but してる is a shortened form of している(しています)。

It's www.mangolanguages.com . It's a cross between pimsleur and... Rosetta stone.

I had a go but I got sick of it really quickly.

watermen
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Postby watermen » February 3rd, 2008 3:59 am

maxiewawa wrote:Psy didn't mention it, but してる is a shortened form of している(しています)。

It's www.mangolanguages.com . It's a cross between pimsleur and... Rosetta stone.

I had a go but I got sick of it really quickly.


Thanks for reminding me してる is a shortened form of している. It makes sense now.

Like you, I was initially sick of it after about 8 lessons. One of the reason is because I realized that the grammar is getting tough, yet they offer very little explanation. I was using it to study Spanish at that time.

Today, I suddenly feel like using it to study Japanese again, since I only went through 4 lessons in the past and was bored with it . I suddenly feel that the Japanese lesson here is so effective, may be because I have a better understanding of Japanese grammar with Jpod101, the repetitive style that is offered in the site is extremely effective. It actually helps me to strengthen whatever I learned in Jpod101.

watermen
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Postby watermen » February 3rd, 2008 4:08 am

Psy wrote:
Kind of a cool flashcard program though. What is it?


Hey man, you got it, If you take picture of the site, it can be used as a flash card. :P

Here is another for you.

Image

Javizy
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Postby Javizy » February 3rd, 2008 4:13 am

I think he's asking why the ている-form is being used when there is no progressive/perfective sense to the translation 'I study'. This has come up a couple of times before.

Basically (in fact, I don't know how to elaborate on this), ている can be used to describe habitual actions:

毎朝ジョギングをしている。I go jogging every morning.
どんな新聞を読んでいますか。Which newspaper do you read?

As with many things, you usually need some context to understand this usage properly. I'm not 100% when it comes to using this form myself, and I have trouble deciding whether to use plain or progressive forms in various other situations, since Japanese uses progressives more often than English.

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