Postby 如奈山 » April 10th, 2007 12:04 am
Yeah, in romaji my name, Jonathan, would be Jonasan, which after adding in titles could potentially be said as Jonasan-san. My homestay family found that rather amusing, to say the least.
わたくし doesn't use a subject particle? That's the first I've ever heard that. While I'm aware that particles can be omitted in conversation as a matter of informality, わたくし, as you probably already are well aware, is a very formal word referring to oneself. As such, I would think that the standard rules indicating subject would apply. Incidentally, what book did you read that from?
As for スタンと言ってください I don't think it's too terribly polite. I've always thought of it as a pretty neutral expression, polite, but nothing like, say, スタンと申していただけませんか。And considering that in the previous sentence you used 申すas your self-introduction verb, which is really polite, going to a really informal style seems inconsistent, don't you think? Even so, if you wanted to be more informal, I suppose you could omit the ください from the phrase or replace it with くれ, but I'm pretty sure both of those are pretty rude unless you know the people you're speaking to quite well. So, for introducing yourself to strangers, I'm not sure that this would ever be appropriate...
In any case, I'm still puzzled over the form that you used. I found ゆう as an alternative reading for 言う, but to be honest, I'm not sure how to distinguish it from the more common いう. That aside, though, while I've seen the ～んだ （のだ）form before, I've only ever used it used in explanations for things. For instance: 田中：どうして遅いの？山本：事故があったんだよ。Tanaka: "Why are you late?" Yamamoto: "The thing is, there was an accident." But as far as using that form to make a request, I've never seen it used this way. If you don't mind, please explain this phrase and the rule behind it.
As for my introduction, I wrote that off the top of my head without double-checking my textbooks on some concepts that I may need to be refreshed on, so there are no doubt errors. Here's what I was trying to say, though:
はじめまして、ジョナサンで、１年４月間ぐらいから日本語を勉強しています。
Greetings, I'm Jonathan and I've been studying Japanese for about 1 year and 4 months.
ホームステーファミリーのよると名前の漢字は「如奈山」だそうなので、エイリアスにそれを使います。
According to my homestay family, the kanji of my name are "如奈山" so I'm using that as my alias.
趣味はアニメやピアノを弾くことや読むことです。そして、もちろん日本語を勉強することもあります。
My hobbies are, among other things, anime, playing the piano, and reading. And, of course, there is also studying Japanese.
In retrospect, I see two errors in my introduction. First, as you already noticed, where I say １年４月間ぐらいから I think it should have been １年間４ヶ月ぐらいから since the ヶ is needed to make it よんかげつ (four months), as in 1 year and 4 months, which is what I meant to say. For some reason, I was thinking just tacking 間 （かん） on to the end of the time period would change the whole thing to an amount of time. Oh well.
The other error I made is with the phrase: ホームステーファミリーのよると名前の漢字は「如奈山」だそうなので. I attached そうな(modified form of そうだ) to indicate that I'd heard it from them, but I'm now I'm not so sure that this was actually necessary.
One final note, 如奈山 is just one possible combination of kanji that could be read as じょなさん. So it isn't my family's name; it's my name, which my homestay family in Japan came up with for fun. 如＝じょ 奈＝な 山＝さん.
