Learn about making small talk, greeting people
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sakura: さくらです。(Sakura desu.) |
| Peter: Peter here and we are back with another lesson. Now today we are feeling very good. I am feeling much better. As some of you might have known, if you can tell the last few weeks, I have been a bit 風邪気味 (kazegimi) |
| Sakura: Umm… |
| Peter: Let’s see if Sakura can work her magic as she always does and give us a good translation of 風邪気味 (kazegimi), Sakura, help us out here. |
| Sakura: 風邪気味 (kazegimi) is like not so serious. Like you don’t have a fever but your throat is sore and you know, you have a runny nose and it lingers, you know. It doesn’t go away. |
| Peter: Nail on the head. Lingers, it’s a cold that lingers. You are not really – it just won’t quit and just for a long period of time, you feel like you have cold symptoms. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So can you give us that one more time please. |
| Sakura: 風邪気味 (kazegimi) |
| Peter: It’s a very popular term here because… |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: For some reason, the germs here are すごい (sugoi). They are amazing like they don’t quit. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So… |
| Sakura: So… |
| Peter: Very important word for winter. Right, Sakura? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So while I am better, Sakura is now |
| Sakura: 風邪気味 (kazegimi) |
| Peter: Yes, so we are taking turns. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: We just want to let you know that word because I think some of you out there might be in the same position as us. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: And this is a very useful phrase. |
| Sakura: Yes and well, if you have these you know, symptoms and you want some drug, medicine for it, you can go to a pharmacy and say 風邪気味です (kazegimi desu) and they will help you out. |
| Peter: Really? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Again I didn’t know that. That’s very, very useful. Give us that one more time please. |
| Sakura: 風邪気味です。(Kazegimi desu.) |
| Peter: Okay, very, very nice. Okay enough about our personal conditions. Let’s move on to today’s lesson. Today we have a great lesson. We’d like to introduce one key vocabulary word that you are going to hear over and over again and we feel that you should know it first. Sakura, please give us today’s key vocabulary. |
| Sakura: 今日 (kyō) |
| Peter: Yes. One more time, please. |
| Sakura: 今日 (kyō) |
| Peter: What does this mean, Sakura? |
| Sakura: It’s today. |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Please break it down into syllables. |
| Sakura: (slow)きょう (kyō) |
| Peter: Very nice and one time fast. |
| Sakura: 今日 (kyō) |
| Peter: Okay, everybody. Get that key vocabulary word. Okay, now we are going to start the lesson. |
| DIALOGUE |
| ピーター (Pītā) : おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : 今日は寒いですね。(Kyō wa samui desu ne.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : 今日は何度ですか。(Kyō wa nan-do desu ka.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : 今日は三度でしょう。(Kyō wa san-do deshō.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : なんて寒い！(Nante samui!) |
| Peter: Okay everybody, we are going to try that lesson one more time. Please listen. Don’t worry about getting everything. We are going to break it down afterwards. We are going to explain everything in detail. Now just listen to see if you can get the general idea. Okay, here we go. |
| ピーター (Pītā) : おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : 今日は寒いですね。(Kyō wa samui desu ne.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : 今日は何度ですか。(Kyō wa nan-do desu ka.) |
| さくら (Sakura) : 今日は三度でしょう。(Kyō wa san-do deshō.) |
| ピーター (Pītā) : なんて寒い！(Nante samui!) |
| Peter: Okay, very, very nice Sakura. You were natural at this. Very, very nice. Okay, enough of my poor pronunciation. We are going to move on to the translation section of our lesson and for this section, I will do the translation. Sakura will do all the reading so you get the proper Japanese pronunciation. Without further adieu, here we go. |
| Sakura: おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| Peter: Good morning, informal way of saying good morning. |
| Sakura: おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| Peter: And good morning. |
| Sakura: 今日は寒いですね。(Kyō wa samui desu ne.) |
| Peter: It’s cold today. |
| Sakura: そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| Peter: Yes, that’s right. |
| Sakura: 今日は何度ですか。(Kyō wa nan-do desu ka.) |
| Peter: How many degrees is it? |
| Sakura: 今日は3度でしょう。(Kyō wa san-do deshō.) |
| Peter: It’s probably 3 degrees. |
| Sakura: なんて寒い！(Nante samui!) |
| Peter: How cold! Okay, very, very nice Sakura. So what we are going to do now is we are going to move on and break it down a little further. So first, we are going to take out the key vocabulary. Let’s go through the key vocabulary. Again, what is the word for today? |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Sakura: 今日 (kyō) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Now we had another word in there for cold. |
| Sakura: 寒い (samui) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Can you break this word down for us? |
| Sakura: (slow)さむい (samui) |
| Peter: Cold, very nice and one time fast. |
| Sakura: 寒い (samui) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Now we had this word before as some of you might remember and what I’d like to do here is take one second out. This is also a very useful word for general conversations. The Japanese for some reason if you say something that’s not funny, you can use this word too, right? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Now I was told to use the shorter version of this, not 寒い (samui) but |
| Sakura: さむっ (samu) |
| Peter: Yes, please give us one more time, please. |
| Sakura: さむっ (samu) |
| Peter: Yes and what does this mean, Sakura? |
| Sakura: It’s not funny. |
| Peter: Yeah. The reason I am a specialist regardless whereas my jokes do not seem to be funny to Japanese people. Sakura, you are laughing too much. So again, very, very useful, very practical and a very, very up-to-date word. Right, Sakura? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So for example, if I say a poor joke, Sakura. |
| Sakura: さむっ (samu) |
| Peter: Yes. Okay, and the next word we have is for degrees. |
| Sakura: 度 (do) |
| Peter: I like that word. One more time, please. |
| Sakura: 度 (do) |
| Peter: It’s just one syllable, correct? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: One more time, please. |
| Sakura: 度 (do |
| Peter: Yes, it’s kind of similar to Homer Simpson. I don’t know if Sakura – if you’ve seen the show but he always says 度 (do) |
| Sakura: Does he? |
| Peter: Yes. So a very easy way for you to remember this is 度 (do) and we asked how many. So we combined the word for what. It’s a little strange the way this works out, right? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: What degrees, right? The direction translation, but it means how many or how much, right? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Again what is the word for what? |
| Sakura: 何 (nani) |
| Peter: But again we combine this to with another word to make |
| Sakura: 何（なん）(nan) |
| Peter: Yes. So give us the expression. |
| Sakura: 何度 (nan-do) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Okay then we also had the word for three. |
| Sakura: 3 (san) |
| Peter: Very nice. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Okay, and now what we are going to do is we are going to break down the dialogue completely. So let’s start from the top one more time. |
| Sakura: おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| Peter: Good morning, informal way of saying good morning and again give us the formal. |
| Sakura: おはようございます。(Ohayō gozaimasu.) |
| Peter: Very nice. Okay, and then the other person said. |
| Sakura: おはよう。(Ohayō.) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. And then we moved on to |
| Sakura: 今日は寒いですね。(Kyō wa samui desu ne.) |
| Peter: Yes, and this means it’s cold today and again we can take out the cold part and substitute other words to talk about today. Correct? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Now I remember last week when we talked about delicious, there were different degrees of delicious, correct? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So we can say today it's cold but give us some other ways of saying, it’s really cold or it’s incredibly cold. |
| Sakura: 今日はすごく寒い (kyō wa sugoku samui) |
| Peter: Yes. Do you remember that word? See how these words come back into play. Can we say – can we say 今日はとても寒いです (kyō wa totemo samui desu), right? |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: Okay, so we have a very or we have really a bunch of other ways to spice up saying this phrase. So not just 寒いです (samui desu). So we can say today it’s really cold. |
| Sakura: 今日はとても寒いです。(Kyō wa totemo samui desu.) |
| Peter: Yeah, or we could say it’s incredibly cold. |
| Sakura: 今日はすごく寒いです。(Kyō wa sugoku samui desu.) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Okay, on to the next sentence. |
| Sakura: そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| Peter: Okay. Do you remember last week, we introduced this one as a filler? When we needed time, we said |
| Sakura: そうですね...。(Sō desu ne...) |
| Peter: So it was kind of hmm…In this context, it means that’s right. So again, you will find that this has – much like any expression in any language, it has multiple meanings. Last week, we used it as, hmm, as a filler to bite some time for answering. Here we use it as that’s right. |
| Sakura: That’s right. |
| Peter: When you are agreeing with someone’s statement. そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) Right, so today it’s cold. That’s right, I agree, right? For example, let’s use last week’s episodes. We said, this is delicious. Can you give us that one more time? |
| Sakura: これはおいしいです。(Kore wa oishii desu.) |
| Peter: This is delicious and I can say そうですね (sō desu ne), agreeing that with her statement. So usually when someone gives a statement and you say |
| Sakura: そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| Peter: It’s an agreement but when someone asks you a question and you use this expression, it’s a filler. |
| Sakura: そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| Peter: So for example, let’s give you a little bit of practice. Again we are eating and we are always eating here. That’s why we haven’t put my picture up. Just kidding, you could find me in last week’s video but we are going to give you the two differences. This is delicious, the statement and then, is this delicious and then we are going to use the expression そうですね (sō desu ne) to show you how to use the two meanings. Okay, so first give us the statement. |
| Sakura: これは美味しいです。(Kore wa oishii desu.) |
| Peter: そうですね。 (Sō desu ne.) So this is delicious. That’s right. Okay… |
| Sakura: これは美味しいですか。(Kore wa oishii desu ka.) |
| Peter: Is this delicious? そうですね...。(Sō desu ne...) So I don’t think so. So I am trying to find, biting myself a little bit of time, okay. So we are going to give you the conversation in these two little exchanges one more time. And Sakura is going to do the Japanese and I will give you the translations. Okay, so here we go. |
| Sakura: これは美味しいです。(Kore wa oishii desu.) |
| Peter: This is delicious. |
| Sakura: そうですね。(Sō desu ne.) |
| Peter: That’s right. So in agreement. Okay. |
| Sakura: これは美味しいですか。(Kore wa oishii desu ka.) |
| Peter: Is this delicious? |
| Sakura: そうですね...。(Sō desu ne….) |
| Peter: Hmm….So most likely the person answering doesn’t think that it is delicious. So he or she is using this to bite some time to get a very good answer on how to respond. Okay, so this is very, very important stuff. Okay, next. |
| Sakura: 今日は何度ですか。(Kyō wa nan-do desu ka.) |
| Peter: How many degrees is it? Okay. |
| Sakura: 今日は3度でしょう。(Kyō wa san-do deshō.) |
| Peter: Okay, it’s probably or it’s about 3 degrees. Notice at the end, we would like to introduce you today to |
| Sakura: でしょう (deshō) |
| Peter: Yes, please break this down by syllable. |
| Sakura: (slow)でしょう (deshō) |
| Peter: Okay, and what does this mean, Sakura? |
| Sakura: It’s not definite but you are imagining or… |
| Peter: Assuming. |
| Sakura: Assuming, yeah. |
| Peter: Yes. So you have some information but not all of it. So you are taking a guess kind of like an educated guess and this is one of the Japanese most favorite words. They cannot get enough of this word. They don’t like to be definite about things. Right, Sakura? |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: It’s a great fallback because you are never wrong. It’s not 100%. Right, 100% is |
| Sakura: です (desu) |
| Peter: So it’s very useful for talking about other people, talking about situations. So in this kind of exchange, we are not sure. Maybe it’s around 3 degrees but we don’t have the thermometer outside and we don’t have the direct reading right now. So we use this expression, right? |
| Sakura: Uhoo… |
| Peter: And we can use it all the time. For example, we introduced Canada. I think it’s pretty cold in Canada but I am not there. I don’t know for sure, so I can say |
| Sakura: カナダは寒いでしょう。(Kanada wa samui deshō.) |
| Peter: Yes. I have some information. I know Canada is cold and this and that but I am not there. I am not definitely sure. It's a very, very, very useful phrase. So today Kazunori and Natsuko couldn’t make it. So we could assume |
| Sakura: 彼らは忙しいでしょう。(Kare-ra wa isogashii deshō.) |
| Peter: Yes, they are probably busy. One more time. |
| Sakura: 彼らは忙しいでしょう。(Kare-ra wa isogashii deshō.) |
| Peter: Yes, very nice. Also we could do it individually. Natsuko, |
| Sakura: 彼女は忙しいでしょう。(Kanojo wa isogashii deshō.) |
| Peter: Yes. She is probably busy, or we can do Kazunori, |
| Sakura: 彼は忙しいでしょう。(Kare wa isogashii deshō.) |
| Peter: Very, very nice. Again we just wanted to introduce you to this today. This is one of the most useful phrases in all of Japanese. So please remember this one. And finally we have |
| Sakura: 何て (nante) |
| Peter: Yes. How. One more time. |
| Sakura: 何て (nante) |
| Peter: Yes, how. Yes, and |
| Sakura: 何て寒い (nante samui) |
| Peter: This means how cold! Now of course, we have the word for cold which is |
| Sakura: 寒い (samui) |
| Peter: The descriptive word is |
| Sakura: 何て (nante) |
| Peter: Yes, and break this down by syllable. |
| Sakura: (slow)なんて (nante) |
| Peter: This word is great. This is one of the words that you can use to really spice up your expressions. How cold! Now I will show you how we can use this in all types of situations. How about, delicious? |
| Sakura: おいしい。何て美味しい！(Oishii. Nante oishii!) |
| Peter: Yes, and this is kind of like you are in shock. How delicious! Right, Sakura? |
| Sakura: Yes, very natural. |
| Peter: Yes, and if we see a beautiful girl, we could say |
| Sakura: 何て美しい！(Nante utsukushii!) |
| Peter: Very nice. One more time, please. |
| Sakura: 何て美しい！(Nante utsukushii!) |
| Peter: Yes. How beautiful! So how but yeah you want to reserve this for special occasions because you don’t want to go around using this word all the time. It’s that important, kind of like, breathtaking, just blowing away. Okay, we ran way over today but today we introduced you to a lot of important topics and a lot of important things. So please review this lesson because there is a lot in here. Especially the main point about today is |
| Sakura: でしょう (deshō) |
Outro |
| Peter: Okay. So that’s going to wrap it up for today. So we will see you tomorrow. |
| Sakura: また明日ね。(Mata ashita ne.) |
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