Learn about relative time expressions such as "last week" or "next month" in Japanese
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| Jessi: Relative Time Expressions. Hi everyone and welcome to appendix lesson #8. In this lesson, we will be going over relative time expressions. |
| Naomi: That phrase makes it sound like something difficult but these are actually very simple. |
| Jessi: Right. By relative time expressions, we just mean words like today, tomorrow, next week, next year, words like that that express time. |
| Naomi: Right. Let’s look at the words for days. |
| Jessi: I will give the English and Naomi-sensei will follow with the Japanese. The first word yesterday is |
| Naomi: 昨日 (kinō). There is a long vowel. 昨日 (kinō). |
| Jessi: The word for today is |
| Naomi: 今日 (kyō). There is also a long vowel here. 今日 (kyō). |
| Jessi: And the word for tomorrow is |
| Naomi: 明日 (ashita) |
| Jessi: If you look at the lesson notes, you will notice that all of these words have the kanji for day (日) in them but the readings of these words are all irregular. |
| Jessi: So, can we hear them again? Yesterday |
| Naomi: 昨日 (kinō) |
| Jessi: Today |
| Naomi: 今日 (kyō) |
| Jessi: And tomorrow |
| Naomi: 明日 (ashita). Next we have the words for weeks. The word for week is 週 (shū). So all of these words will have 週 (shū). |
| Jessi: Right. Let’s take a look. The word for last week is |
| Naomi: 先週 (senshū) |
| Jessi: The word for this week is |
| Naomi: 今週 (konshū) |
| Jessi: And the word for next week is |
| Naomi: 来週 (raishū) |
| Jessi: So we have 週 (shū) in all of these words. Next we have the words for months. |
| Naomi: The word for month is 月 (getsu). So all of these words will have 月 (getsu). |
| Jessi: Right. Let’s take a look. The word for last month is |
| Naomi: 先月 (sengetsu) |
| Jessi: The word for this month is |
| Naomi: 今月 (kongetsu) |
| Jessi: And the word for next month is |
| Naomi: 来月 (raigetsu) |
| Jessi: So we have 月 (getsu) in all of these words and you may have noticed that the prefixes were the same for the words for weeks. |
| Naomi: Yes. In these phrases 先 (sen) means last, 今 (kon) means this, and 来 (rai) means next. |
| Jessi: Right. So knowing that, let’s look at those again. The word for last week is |
| Naomi: 先週 (senshū) |
| Jessi: Last month is |
| Naomi: 先月 (sengetsu) |
| Jessi: So notice how both last week and last month start with the same prefix 先 (sen). How about this week? |
| Naomi: 今週 (konshū) |
| Jessi: The word for this month is |
| Naomi: 今月 (kongetsu) |
| Jessi: Did you see how they both started with 今 (kon). Finally, the word for next week is? |
| Naomi: 来週 (raishū) |
| Jessi: The word for next month is? |
| Naomi: 来月 (raigetsu) |
| Jessi: So, as you can see, these both start with 来 (rai). And lastly we have the words for years. |
| Naomi: The word for year is 年 (toshi) but the kanji for year also has the reading of (nen). So we will hear both. |
| Jessi: That’s right. So let’s take a look. The word for last year is |
| Naomi: 去年 (kyonen) |
| Jessi: The word for this year is |
| Naomi: 今年 (kotoshi) |
| Jessi: And the word for next year is |
| Naomi: 来年 (rainen) |
| Jessi: The kanji reading for this year 今年 (kotoshi) is irregular. So be careful and don’t forget to take a look at the lesson notes so that you can compare them all side by side. That’s all for relative time expressions. See you next time. |
| Naomi: じゃ、また。(Ja, mata.) |
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