Learn about asking about the weather
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Yoshi＆Sakura: おはよう東京。 |
| Sakura: サクラです。 |
| Yoshi: ヨシです。 |
| Peter: Peter here. Survival phrases #24. Today in the studio, we are joined by the lovely Sakura san. |
| Sakura: サクラでーす！ |
| Peter: And Yoshi san. |
| Yoshi: ラブリーヨシでーす！ |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Ah Yoshi san, it is great to have you back and Sakura san too. We are back with Weather part II. Now last time, we got a bit into the weather and we promised more this week and today, we are going to take, we are going to delve further into the weather. Now last week, how was the weather, Sakura san? |
| Sakura: 雨 |
| Peter: Rainy. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So it wasn’t too good. |
| Sakura: Um. |
| Peter: But this week, I have a feeling that the weather is going to take a turn for the better. |
| Sakura: Um. |
| Peter: Sounds nice right? |
| Sakura: Um. |
| Peter: So let’s just recap some vocab we covered last week. Sakura san, お願いします。 |
| Sakura: 天気 |
| Peter: Weather. |
| Yoshi: 今日(きょう) |
| Peter: Today. |
| Sakura: 明日(あす) |
| Peter: Tomorrow. |
| Yoshi: 明後日(あさって) |
| Peter: The day after tomorrow. |
| Sakura: 雨 |
| Peter: Rain and our main focus last week was? |
| Sakura: 天気はどうですか？ |
| Peter: How is the weather? Now in front of |
| Sakura: 天気 |
| Peter: We can add a time specifier such as today |
| Sakura: 今日 |
| Peter: But if we do this, we need the possessive particle |
| Sakura: の |
| Peter: So if we want to talk about tomorrow’s weather, we say |
| Yoshi: 明日の、天気は、どうですか？ |
| Peter: Okay and Sakura san, one more time |
| Sakura: 明日の天気は、どうですか？ |
| Peter: Okay. So we covered that. Now we are going to give you another dialogue to start with. It has some stuff we covered last week and some new stuff. So let’s see what you can pick up first. Now the setting again is, you are about to leave the hotel. So we have Yoshi san staying in the fourth floor penthouse and Sakura san doing the front desk. |
| Sakura: はい。 |
| Peter: Just get a bell ding ding, here we go! |
| Yoshi: すみません。今日の天気はどうですか？ |
| Sakura: 午前中は雨ですが、午後は晴れます。 |
| Yoshi: 傘は必要ですか？ |
| Sakura: そうですねえ。大丈夫でしょう。 |
| Yoshi: どうもありがとう。 |
| Sakura: ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: All right. Let’s get that conversation one more time. |
| Peter: もう一度お願いします。ゆっくりお願いします。 |
| すみません。きょうの、てんきは、どうですか？ |
| Sakura: ごぜんちゅうは、あめですが、ごごは、はれます。 |
| Peter: かさは、ひつようですか？ |
| Sakura: そうですねえ。だいじょうぶでしょう。 |
| Peter: どうも、ありがとう。 |
| Sakura: ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: All right and one time with the translation. Here we go. |
| Peter: すみません。今日の天気はどうですか？ |
| Peter: Excuse me, how is today’s weather is the literal translation and it means, what will the weather be for today or how about today’s weather in the sense what will today’s weather be. |
| Sakura: 午前中は雨ですが |
| Peter: Rainy during the morning but |
| Sakura: 午後は晴れます。 |
| Peter: Sunny in the afternoon. |
| Yoshi: 傘は必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Is an umbrella necessary? |
| Sakura: そうですねえ。 |
| Peter: Hmm |
| Sakura: 大丈夫でしょう。 |
| Peter: It will probably be alright. |
| Yoshi: どうも、ありがとう。 |
| Peter: Thank you. |
| Sakura: ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: Thank you. Okay now what we are going to do is we are going to break it down line by line. Sakura san お願いします。 |
| Sakura: すみません。 |
| Peter: Excuse me. Again this can be used to get someone’s attention or it can be used to say you are sorry if you, say, bump into somebody or you step on someone’s foot and the reason we say this is you will understand once you are in a crowded train. I can never understand why in textbooks they always had stepping up fee, stepping up fee. I didn’t think the verb step on, was that important, but yes it is. Okay and this was followed by |
| Sakura: 今日の天気はどうですか？ |
| Peter: And last week we covered that. Again in front of weather which is |
| Sakura: 天気 |
| Peter: When you use a time specifier, we need definitely the possessive |
| Sakura: の |
| Peter: So one more time, what do we have in today’s dialogue? |
| Sakura: 今日の天気は |
| Peter: Today’s weather. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Now how about tomorrow’s weather? |
| Sakura: 明日の天気 |
| Peter: Day after tomorrow’s weather. |
| Sakura: 明後日の天気 |
| Peter: And last week, we also covered locations. You can take a location such as Tokyo. |
| Sakura: 東京の天気 |
| Peter: Yes. Okay just a quick recap. Next line we had |
| Yohsi: 午前中は雨ですが、午後は晴れます。 |
| Peter: Here we have two sentences. Now the sentences are separated by |
| Yoshi: が |
| Peter: Okay so the first sentence which is |
| Yoshi: 午前中は、雨ですが |
| Peter: Okay. Last week we had rain which is |
| Yoshi: 雨 |
| Peter: Now we are defining when this rain is going to occur and then we have morning which is |
| Yoshi: 午前 |
| Peter: Now during the morning, for the morning, we add on |
| Yoshi: 中(ちゅう) |
| Peter: So the phrase becomes |
| Yoshi: 午前中 |
| Peter: And then it’s during the morning. Then we had |
| Yoshi: 午後 |
| Peter: Afternoon and what kind of weather in the afternoon? |
| Peter: 晴れ、晴れます。 |
| Peter: Now this is the verb we have here. And we find this in the polite present form. What is the dictionary form of this verb? |
| Yoshi: 晴れる |
| Peter: But we make it into the polite present which is |
| Yoshi: 晴れます。 |
| Peter: Okay. So this sentence talks about two different times of the day, rainy in the morning, sunny in the afternoon. So now we are getting a bit more into detail because especially during the rainy season. |
| Sakura: 梅雨(つゆ) |
| Peter: It can be nice one minute, rainy the next. So we want to get you more familiar with changing weather during the day. Next we had |
| Sakura: 傘は必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Do you need an umbrella, is an umbrella necessary. Now again, give us the last part of this sentence. |
| Sakura: 必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Necessary. Now we can use this construction to ask all kinds of questions regarding if something is necessary. For example, if you want to go out somewhere, say your friends go into the museum, you want to know, is it going to cost money or not? You can ask your friends. |
| Sakura: お金は必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Is money necessary? Or maybe you go to the park because some parks in Japan, they are very nice ones. They do cost money to get into. Maybe you can’t read the characters or maybe you will go up and ask the person working there |
| Sakura: すみません。お金は必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Now this sentence is going to come into play a bit later but for now, please notice the construction. |
| Sakura: は、必要ですか？ |
| Peter: All right. Next we had |
| Yoshi: そうですね。 |
| Peter: Now this is a filler. The person who is about to answer the question is thinking about what he is going to say or thinking about the situation. そう in order to bite a bit of time he puts in this filler. This is followed by |
| Yoshi: 大丈夫でしょう。 |
| Peter: Now let’s get an expert. Sakura san, what’s the literal translation? |
| Sakura: It’s probably okay or maybe it’s okay. |
| Peter: So the question is, is an umbrella necessary? It's probably okay, it’s maybe okay. So it might be a little hard to pick up the nuance. What is the person trying to say? |
| Sakura: It’s okay not to bring an umbrella. |
| Peter: Exactly. It’s probably okay without it. And that’s the nuance in here. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: And in Japan and when you speak in Japanese, you will probably come across this expression a lot. |
| Sakura: うん。大丈夫でしょう。 |
| Peter: Okay. So getting the meaning behind it might take a little bit of time. So we are going to introduce you to more and more of these situations when they give you a kind of ambiguous answer and then finally we have |
| Sakura: どうもありがとう。 |
| Peter: And that’s the customer speaking to the person at the hotel. Now we have the person at the hotel speaking to the customer. |
| Yoshi: ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: So which is more polite, Sakura san? |
| Sakura: ありがとうございますね。 |
| Peter: Yes. The situation will never be reversed. So while it’s okay for you as a customer or as a client to use a bit of a less informal way to greet someone, the opposite is never true. So if you are conducting business in Japan and you are speaking with a client, you would never say |
| Sakura: とうもありがとう。 |
| Peter: You would always say |
| Sakura:ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: Or |
| Sakura: どうもありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: Yes you need that ございますto give it the correct degree of politeness. Now let’s get into the vocabulary we had in there. |
| Sakura: 午前 |
| Peter: AM |
| Sakura: 午前、ご・ぜ・ん、午前 |
| Peter: Now this is the word for AM. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: What’s the word for morning? |
| Sakura: 朝 |
| Peter: Break that down. |
| Sakura: 朝、あ・さ、朝 |
| Peter: Okay next. |
| Yoshi: 午後 |
| Peter: PM. |
| Yoshi: 午後 also means afternoon. |
| Peter: So yes 午後 can be both but morning is |
| Sakura: 朝 |
| Peter: AM is |
| Sakura: 午前 |
| Peter: While for the afternoon, 午後 is both. Now Sakura san, what about the word for noon, how do we say noon, 12 noon, 12 noon. |
| Sakura: 正午 |
| Peter: Break it down. |
| Sakura: 正午、しょ・う・ご、正午 |
| Peter: Okay. What do we have next? |
| Sakura: 晴れる |
| Peter: To clear up. Now this is a verb in the dictionary form we gave you and we gave you the polite form in the dialogue. For more about conjugation, we have other lessons. Go to the beginner lessons, start those, we cover conjugation there. |
| Sakura: We can also say 晴れです。 |
| Peter: Yes using 晴れ sunny as a noun. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: It is sunny. And that is |
| Sakura: 晴れです。 |
| Peter: And finally we have |
| Sakura: でしょう |
| Peter: Now this is used when you are not entirely sure about something. So it’s the best part of Japanese because it allows you to be ambiguous about things. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So in the dialogue we had |
| Sakura: 大丈夫でしょう。 |
| Peter: It’s probably all right. Now if it comes pouring rain and you come back to the hotel drenched, he is not responsible because he is probably in there. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: If a typhoon comes out of nowhere and you know he is not responsible because it’s probably okay, a very useful expression. Now we had planned to get into one more dialogue today. Now we talked about the grammatical structure は必要です. Now [0:10:53.1] we get back to this and here we go. A very practical way to use this construction is, now Japan is spread out very, very far from north to south. Hokkaido’s weather is very different from Okinawa’s weather. So for most people when you come to Japan, you will start your trip in Tokyo or Osaka or a big city and maybe you will work your way around. So you are going to want to ask about weather in other parts of Japan and last week we covered that. How do we ask about the weather in Kyoto and also we reviewed it a bit today. One more time Sakura san. |
| Sakura: 京都の天気はどうですか？ |
| Peter: Okay so the answer will vary but instead of an umbrella, if you are heading up to Hokkaido, maybe you need a jacket or if you are heading to Okinawa, maybe you don’t need a jacket but what do you need, what’s necessary. So many Japanese people are quite familiar with the seasonal temperatures in whatever part of the country you may ask or you know even if they are not professionals, they should have a good idea. We are not talking about stopping random strangers on the street or calling Sakura san’s house, you know. Usually when you leave the hotel, the person at the hotel will have enough information for you to give you, kind of general idea. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So Sakura san, what would a good question be if we were heading to Hokkaido? |
| Sakura: 上着は必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Is a jacket necessary and what was the new word you gave us in there Sakura san? |
| Sakura: 上着 |
| Peter: Break it down. |
| Sakura: う・わ・ぎ、上着 |
| Peter: Coat or jacket but in Japanese, they also have the katakana equivalent of coat and jacket which are |
| Sakura: コート |
| Peter: Coat. |
| Sakura: ジャケット |
| Peter: Jacket. Now again, this assumes that you know the vocabulary. Now we can flip this around and ask the person what’s necessary. |
| Sakura: 何が必要ですか？ |
| Peter: What’s necessary? One more time Sakura san? |
| Sakura: 何が、必要ですか？ |
| Peter: Okay. Now what we are going to do is we are going to construct the sentence that will bring everything together. So for example, tomorrow you are going to climb a mountain. You got to Japan and at the hotel, they had an optional tour that you could take. You decided to take the tour. So tomorrow, you are going to go climb a mountain. So you definitely want to find out what the weather is going to be and if you need something, what do you need? So we are going to have a quick conversation. Yoshi will be the foreigner and Sakura san will be a [00:13:21] Okay here we go. |
| Yoshi: すみません。 |
| Sakura: はい。 |
| Peter: 明日、富士山に、登るんですが、静岡の、天気はどうですか。 |
| Sakura: 明日、静岡は、晴れですよ。 |
| Peter: 何か、必要ですか？ |
| Sakura: そうですね、寒いので、上着が必要でしょう。 |
| Peter: どうも、ありがとうございます。 |
| Sakura: どういたしまして。 |
| Peter: One more time with the translation. Here we go |
| Yoshi: すみません。 |
| Peter: Excuse me. |
| Sakura: はい。 |
| Peter: Yes. |
| Yoshi: 明日、富士山に登るんですが。 |
| Peter: Tomorrow I will climb Mt. Fuji. |
| Yoshi: 静岡の天気はどうですか？ |
| Peter: How is Shizuoka’s weather? |
| Sakura: 明日、静岡は晴れですよ。 |
| Peter: Tomorrow it will be sunny in Shizuoka. |
| Yoshi: 何か、必要でしょうか？ |
| Peter: Is something necessary? |
| Sakura: そうですねえ。寒いので、上着が必要でしょう。 |
| Peter: Because it will be cold, you may need a jacket. |
| Yoshi: どうも、ありがとうございます。 |
| Peter: Thank you. |
| Sakura: どういたしまして。 |
Outro |
| Peter: You are welcome. All right, way too long today. Oh boy, all right well that’s going to do it for today. |
| Sakura: またね。 |
| Peter: またね。 |
| Peter: And don’t forget to stop by japanesepod101.com, all right see you tomorrow. |
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