Learn how to ask what something is
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Jessi: Hi everyone! ジェシーです。Jessi here! |
| Natsuko: こんにちは！なつこです！Hi everyone, I'm Natsuko. |
| Jessi: Welcome to Lower Beginner Season 1 lesson 5 - What's Your Japanese Address?. So Natsuko, what are we going to learn in this lesson? |
| Natsuko: In this lesson we're going to learn how to give a taxi driver directions using までお願いします, and how to ask what something is using [something] はなんですか。 |
| Jessi: And where does this lesson's dialogue take place? |
| Natsuko: Ken and Emily are going home from the party in the previous lesson in a taxi. |
| Jessi: Okay, sounds good! |
| Natsuko: では聞きましょう。 |
| Jessi: Let's listen to the dialogue. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Jessi: Wow, so it seems Ken and Emily are rather well-off! |
| Natsuko: Why do you say that? |
| Jessi: Well, when she gave their address, Emily said they live in イノベーティブマンション... they live in a mansion! |
| Natsuko: (笑）Actually, the word マンション in Japanese and the word "mansion" in English mean very different things! |
| Jessi: OK, so what would you imagine when you hear the word マンション, Natsuko? |
| Natsuko: A マンション is what we would call an "apartment building" in English. A マンション tends to be a concrete building over four stories high. |
| Jessi: But to complicate things, in Japanese we also have the word アパート... which comes from the English "apartment". |
| Natsuko: An アパート is also a building divided into multiple apartments, but it tends to be smaller, usually only two to three stories high. It's kind of confusing! (笑） |
| Jessi: In Tokyo and other big cities, many people live in a マンション, I think... but if you lived in a detached or stand-alone house, how would you say that in Japanese? |
| Natsuko: That's an 一軒家. |
| Jessi: いっけんや。Okay, so now you have the vocabulary to talk about what kind of place you live in! Now let's look at some other vocabulary and phrases for this lesson. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Jessi: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Natsuko: The first word/phrase we’ll look at is.... |
| Natsuko: まで おねがいします |
| Jessi: In the dialogue, we heard Emily say to the taxi driver... |
| Natsuko: イノベーティブマンションまで、おねがいします。 |
| Jessi: "To Innovative Mansion, please." So [name], let's break this down. |
| Natsuko: Well, まで is a word meaning "until", "to", or "as far as". So in Japanese we put the name of the place, then this word まで. |
| Jessi: So for example to say "to my office" or "to my workplace", we would say... |
| Natsuko: 会社まで |
| Jessi: And then what about the おねがいします？ |
| Natsuko: This is a really useful phrase for asking people to do things politely. |
| Jessi: That's right. It literally means "I humbly request". You can use it in so many situations - for example if a cashier asks you if you'd like your item to be put in a bag, you can reply with "yes please" by saying おねがいします。 |
| Natsuko: Yes, that's right. It's really useful, so definitely memorize it! |
| Jessi: OK, so to get back to asking a taxi driver to go to a specific place, let's put this all together. Can we say "To Narita airport, please."? |
| Natsuko: 成田空港まで、おねがいします。 |
| Jessi: Great! Now let's move on to this week's Lesson Focus. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Jessi: In this lesson we're going to learn how to ask what something is, as in "what's the address?". So Natsuko, how do we go about doing this? Let's use "what's the address?" as an example. |
| Natsuko: First of all, we heard the word 住所 in the dialogue. It means "address". Then, to ask "what is it?" we just add は なん です か？ |
| Jessi: What you're literally asking is "As for the address, what is it?" Remember the は marks the subject of the sentence. So can we have the whole sentence, [name]? |
| Natsuko: 住所はなんですか？ |
| Jessi: Note that the word for "what", なに, is =always= shortened to なん when followed by ですか. Can we hear it one more time? Listeners, listen and repeat. "What's the address?" |
| Natsuko: 住所はなんですか？ |
| Jessi: (wait 5 secs) Now listeners, try saying "What's the address?" in Japanese. |
| Natsuko: (wait 5 secs) 住所はなんですか？ |
| Jessi: Great! Now listeners, you remember the ko-so-a-do words we're always talking about? |
| Natsuko: これ、それ、あれ、and どれ. |
| Jessi: "This, that, that over there, which one". You can pair one of these words with this はなんですか phrase to ask questions like "What's this?" or "What's that?". Can we hear how to say "What's this?" in Japanese? |
| Natsuko: これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: Listeners, listen and repeat. "What's this?" |
| Natsuko: これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: (wait 5 secs) Now listeners, try asking in Japanese "What's this?" |
| Natsuko: (wait 5 secs) これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: In terms of when you might use this sentence in real life... You could use it at a restaurant when you want to know what you're about to eat (笑）! But Natsuko, this sounds kind of abrupt, doesn't it? Is there any way we could make it sound a bit more polite? |
| Natsuko: Sure - just add すみません at the beginning. すみません、これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: "Excuse me, what's this?" Listeners, listen and repeat. |
| Natsuko: すみません、これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: (wait 5 secs) Now listeners, try asking in Japanese "Excuse me, what's this?" |
| Natsuko: (wait 5 secs) すみません、これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: OK, so we've mastered how to ask... but what if we're on the receiving end? How would we answer this question? In the dialogue Emily was asked by the driver, "What's the address?" And she answered... |
| Natsuko: これです。 |
| Jessi: She handed over a piece of paper and said "This is it". It's really easy - just add です after the noun to answer. So, if in our imaginary restaurant the waiter answered "It's salmon" in answer to our question, he would say... |
| Natsuko: サーモンです。 |
| Jessi: Easy, right? Now let's see how much you remember! Listeners, try asking "Excuse me, what's this?" |
| Natsuko: (wait 5 seconds) すみません、これはなんですか？ |
| Jessi: Now answer "It's salmon". |
| Natsuko: (wait 5 secs) サーモンです。 |
Outro |
| Jessi: How did you do? Okay, well that’s going to do it for today! |
| Natsuko: Thanks for listening everyone! |
| Jessi: We’ll see you next time. |
| Natsuko: じゃ、また！ |
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