Introduction practice

[lewisjarrett972354]

こんにちわ！
Hello, I am Lewis from England.
I wasn't too sure whether to comment on someone else's introduction post in case it was rude so I decided to make a new one.
I have attempted to make a brief introductory (kind of) paragraph in hiragana and would like some help in corrections please, I have been learning solo for about a week.
Although this may seem a bit ambitious, I am hoping to take Japanese for GCSE! So I would be very grateful if any assistance is offered.
This is my first time attempting a full paragraph in hiragana as I have just stuck with Romanji so far.
Hope it's okay.

こんにちわ。
わたしはLewisです, 15ですといぎりすぢんです。
たのじょはさんがつよかです。
いえごをはなします, でもにほんごもわかります, がゆくりはなしておねがいします！
おやはにほんごをはなしません。
わたしはせいぶつとかがくがすきです。
みどりがだいすきです。
さくじつ, ひこうきでにほんにでました。
とうきょうのくこうはとてもいそがしかつた。
わたしはにほんもういきたい！

And now in English, if it helps:
Hello, I am Lewis. I am 15 years old and from England. My birthday is on the 4th of March. I speak English but I also understand Japanese – but speak slowly please! My parents don’t speak Japanese. I like biology and chemistry. I love the colour green. Yesterday, I left Japan by plane. Tokyo airport was very busy. I want to go again!

Thank you. I love japanesepod101! <3

From Lewis.

[ericf]

こんにちは、ルイスさん。

That's a pretty good start! I'm so glad you used hiragana not romaji - hate that
Here's a few corrections (I guess many were just simple slips anyway):

こんにちは。
わたしはLewisで、15さいで、いぎりすじんです。
たのじょうびはさんがつよっかです。
えいごをはなします。でもにほんごもわかります。がゆくりはなしておねがいします！
おやはにほんごをはなしません。
わたしはせいぶつとかがくがすきです。
みどりがだいすきです。
さくじつ、ひこうきでにほんをでました。
とうきょうのくうこうはとてもいそがしかつたです。
わたしはまたにほんにいきたいです！

And maybe a bit of explanation of the changes wouldn't go amiss.

1. You've clearly got to grips with hiragana and its pronunciation (katakana should be an easy next step:) and you seem to know that は is also often pronounced わ. There's one other place it's pronounced like that: こんにちは.
2. Joining です sentences is done by changing です。 to で、age is expressed as さい. Minor spelling correction too.
3. Couple of minor spelling errors. (Also watch out for 4th day & 8th day, よっか & ようか.)
4. , -> 。Though there are also ways of joining those two sentences if you wanted.

8. をでました。might sound like you're "putting Japan out" but is the correct usage as far as I know.
You could also have にほんからでました。(I went out from Japan) or even にほんからかえりました。(I returned from Japan.)
9 & 10. I've changed both the last two sentences from casual to polite form as all the rest was in polite form.
10. また means again. You could use もう but it would have to be もういっかいにほんにいきたいです。which means "once more". I hope I go more often that once more

それでは、また。
エリック

[lewisjarrett972354]

I was wondering how you connect 'です' sentences! That helps a lot thank you. I should have probably checked it over before posting but I was in a bit of a rush haha, was a bit clumsy I suppose but thank you for correcting it! I'm not too familiar with the punctuation etc in kana either yet, and haven't even started kanji so I've got a lot to learn!
Just a few questions I'd like to ask:

1) たのじょうび in line 3
What does the part in bold mean? :s Pronounced "Ubi" isn't it?

2) How would I put my name in kana? "Lewis", there isn't a symbol for "L" is there? I'd love to know how.

3) And lastly, when I put numbers, should I spell them or just put digits? I believe I should spell them, right?

I'll try and take more care with my spelling next time round, thanks again.
Oh and one more thing, I haven't really been to Japan yet. I just figured it'd be something good to add in as practice haha! Can't wait to go though, I'd love to go up Mt. Fuji! It's one of my future goals.

ありがとうございます!
Lewis.

[ericf]

No worries.

Can connect verb sentences in a similar way to connecting です。sentences. You just need to use the stem form of the verb, which you'll learn about in time. e.g.
にほんにいきます。＋ふじやまをのぼります。＋いぎりすにかえります。
(I) go to Japan. (I) climb Mt Fuji. (I) return to England.
→にほんにいって、ふじやまをのぼって、いぎりすにかえります。
(I) go to Japan, climb Mt Fuji, (and) return to England.

1) Oh, the bits in bold were the just bits I changed. The word in that case is じょうび
And it's at this point that I realise I missed something; it should be たんじょうび not たのじょうび
たん = be born
じょう = life and/or birth
び = day

2) Lewis -> ルイス (katakana) or るいす (hiragana). (Hence ルイスさん above)
Yep, there's no L but actually the らりるれろ column from a hiragana chart are pronounced perhaps a bit closer to la li lu le lo than ra ri ru re ro anyway. Strictly it's the pronounced by using the tongue position from one letter with the mouth/lip position from the other (but I forget which way around it is

3) Actually, when writing the western way, horizontally （よこがき）, it's customary to use western numerals. And use Japanese numerals when writing vertically （たてがき）. To be honest though, for now I'd spell it out in hiragana anyway, just for the practice.

Spelling and punctuation will come with practice.

Cheers,
Eric.

[lewisjarrett972354]

Ah, I see! The 'stem form' still confuses me a bit but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually. Connecting sentences will be really useful, thank you again.

I'll probably post something again in the future, want to be as accurate as I can before I consider taking a proper course - I'd seem a bit too ambitious if I just started a GCSE with no knowledge whatsoever haha!

Anyways, I shall carry on practicing.

にほんごがわかりたい!

るいす
(I hope that's right LOL)

[mmmason8967]

Ah, I see! The 'stem form' still confuses me a bit but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually. Connecting sentences will be really useful, thank you again.

I'll probably post something again in the future, want to be as accurate as I can before I consider taking a proper course - I'd seem a bit too ambitious if I just started a GCSE with no knowledge whatsoever haha!

Anyways, I shall carry on practicing.

にほんごがわかりたい!

るいす
(I hope that's right LOL)

The only mistake as far as I can see is that your name should be ルイス, that is it should be in katakana, not hiragana. That's because foreign words, including non-Japanese names, are always written in katakana.

You've clearly got to grips with hiragana, so if you haven't started katakana yet, then go for it! There's a big pay-off with katakana: after you learn hiragana, you find you still can't read very much Japanese at all--the second half of verbs, and stuff like that--but after you get katakana you can suddenly read a surprising amount of stuff, thanks in no small part to the Japanese liking for borrowing English words. Once I'd learned katakana the thing that really pleased me was that I was then able to figure out enough to set up an account on Amazon Japan and make a wish list, which, for me, felt like a very major step forward from 'kore wa pen desu'.

[lewisjarrett972354]

Oh wow aha. Yeah I hope I'll be able to do that sometime!
And yeah I'll try and learn katakana soon, I already knew what it was for it's just my keyboard doesn't do it for some reason. :l I'll have to find an online one for it, but I know exactly what you meant by being able to read more once you learn it, can't wait.
This GCSE course I wanted to do has been delayed for another year and a half unfortunately though. But oh well, I still love to learn Japanese and besides, gives me more time to prepare I guess.

[mmmason8967]

Oh wow aha. Yeah I hope I'll be able to do that sometime!
And yeah I'll try and learn katakana soon, I already knew what it was for it's just my keyboard doesn't do it for some reason.

Give us some more details about your computer system. There must be some fairly simple reason it's not working. I say that because it obviously does hiragana properly, so it really ought to do katakana and kanji and although you can just about get by without kanji, it's just about impossible to write Japanese without both hiragana and katakana. So if does one, it surely must be able to do the other.

To learn a kana quickly, I strongly recommend watching the J-Pod Kantan Kana video series with a pen and piece of paper, and learn to write the characters while saying the name. I avoided doing this for ages because it's dead boring. My progress was slow, though. and I eventually I caved in and sat in front of the computer with a pen and a sheet of paper and started learning to write the characters. It took less than one weekend to learn the entire katakana. That was very far from being the most exciting weekend of my life, but the pay-off made it well worthwhile.

[lewisjarrett972354]

I meant, the online one I use at the moment only does hiragana aha. :') But yeah thanks for that advice, I'll be sure to try that sometime soon! I can already remember most of the hiragana, just need to start on katakana as you said.

By the way, I was bored in school the other day and decided to try and write another paragraph in hiragana, if you're willing to, can you see what corrections need to be made please?

こんにちは, ルイスです。
わたしはじゅごーさいで, いぎりすーぢんです。
わたしーたちのがくこうは“SHSB” です。
せんせいはすごいで, しゅくだいはわるいでわありません。
かがくがだいすきで, せいぶつもすきです。
きょう, れきしはしけんがあります。
でも, わたしはきがさしません。
いいしますよ！
のだ, としょかんにべんきょうします。
しけんはいちぢはんからさんぢまでです。

And in English: Hello, my name is Lewis. I’m 15, and from England. Our school is “SHSB”.
The teachers are great and the homework isn’t bad. I love chemistry, I like biology too.
Today, I have a history exam. But I’m not worried! I will do well! Because I am in the library studying.
The exam is from 1:30 until 3.

How is it?

[ericf]

こんばんは、ルイスさん。

ほとんどはだいじょうぶですが、このところきをつけてください。
じゅごー　　　　　→　じゅうご
わるいでわ　　　　→　わるくては
　「い」けいようしのひていは「い」→「くは」
　e.g. わるいです。→わるくてはありません。
れきしはしけん　　→　れきしのしけん
　「めいし」＋「めいし」→「めいし」の「めいし」
「きがさしません」はたぶん「きんちょうしません」のほうがいいかもしりません。
いいしますよ。　　→　ごうかくしますよ
のだ、としょかんにべんきょうします。→としょかんでべんきょうしていますから。
いちぢはん　　→　いちじはん
さんぢ　　　　→　さんじ

それではまた
エリック

[mmmason8967]

Well, I'm just a beginner too and so not necessarily very reliable, but I'll have a go! It looks fine to me, although I'd pick out the following as possibly being mistakes:-

There is no dash or hyphen in Japanese. The character you've used in いぎりすーぢん and じゅごーさい and わたしーたち is a vowel-doubling symbol used in katakana to indicate the preceding vowel is held for twice as long. These words seem to very often get written with a dash in romaji (especially watashi-tachi) but it doesn't appear when they're written in kana.

The わたしは at the start of the second sentence is redundant. じゅごさいわたしはmeans 'X is fifteen' and since you've already established that you're talking about yourself, we know that X is you, so it means 'I am fifteen'. In Japanese pronouns are very often implied but we English speakers like them to be explicit so we try to add them in, and generally get it wrong. Since you are already saying 'I am fifteen', adding わたしは makes it seem like you're saying something like 'As for me, I am fifteen' or maybe 'Speaking for myself, I'm fifteen'. The topic marker はmarks the topic that's being talked about, which is not the same as marking the subject of the verb. The Japanese for 'this is a knife' is ナイフです. If you say これはナイフです, you're adding a bit of emphasis, ending up with something like the well-known scene in Crocodile Dundee ('That's not a knife. This is a knife!').

In the second to last sentence I would have gone for から rather than のだ but that's mainly because I have no confidence at all when it comes to using のだ. Either way, I'm pretty sure that から or のだ should have been the last word in the sentence, not the first. The present tense that you used translates more like 'I study in the library' than 'I am studying in the library'; if you want to say you're doing something right now, at this very moment, you need the progressive tense, which you may very well never have heard of. To get the progressive, what you do is use the te-form of the verb (in this case the verb is suru, or shimasu if we're being polite) followed by iru (or imasu if we're being polite). To get the te-form, the basic process starts with the plain (not the polite) past tense of the verb, the last syllable of which is changed from 'ta' to 'te' or 'da' to 'de', depending on which one the past tense uses. The past tense of suru is shita (the polite forms are shimasu and shimashita); change 'ta' to 'te' and you end up with shite. Add imasu after it, and we're done. The sentence now says としょかんにべんきょうしていますから　（because I'm studying in the library right now). If none of this makes any sense, don't worry about it: just note that there is a way of describing an action that's taking place right now and, when you come across it for yourself, it'll make a lot more sense than my miss-out-all-the-details version!

[lewisjarrett972354]

うわ, エリックさんとマソンさん, ありがとうございます!
わたしはこれがわかります!
てつだいましたよ。

This has cleared up a lot of things for me, thank you very much again. I shall post again in the near future and hopefully have improved!
I’ll have a think about what the topic shall be. Any recommendations perhaps? Haha!
And yes I’ll look into this ‘progressive tense’, I’m sure it’it’ll be very useful.

One question though, a bit silly it may seem considering I’ve managed to understand everything else but,
'それではまた'はえいごでなんですか
Is it a polite way of saying “glad to be able to help again” or something similar?

ありがとうまた,
わたしはまいにちにれんしゅうします。

ルイス

[ericf]

Hmm, それでは、might be "well then..." and また is "again.".
Cheers,
Eric.