Hi.

Welcome back to Fun with Flags, presented by Sheldon Cooper, PhD.

Sorry, I have an obsession with the Big Bang Theory.

Welcome back to Japanese Language Log! In this episode, we’ll be dealing with past tense nouns and kanji. Kanji. Holy crap. We’re already at Kanji. Sorta…

Well, I’ll stop trying to make this introduction as awkward for you as possible, so I’ll just jump right into the actual Japanese. Let’s go!

Making Nouns Travel Back (To the Future)

So far, we’ve learned the present tense です and negative じゃありません. Now, we learn…PAST TENSE. We’re going to use でした (deshita) for this. Notice how it’s kinda the same as です, but minus the す and plus the した.

Now, this is going to follow the same concept as です and じゃありません, so it’ll be really easy. Which is exactly why we’re gonna spice this up with some unique seasonings…

The first thing we’ll add here is VOCABULARY.

Although at this point, vocabulary isn’t a majorly important thing, the main premise of this point is to show how TextFugu teaches vocabulary.

One of the major things is keeping vocabulary and kanji separate. One of the problems with learning kanji is that a lot of people try to learn the kanji to their vocabulary, meaning that it’s very out of order. This is a bad idea. So, we’ll learn the actual Japanese vocabulary in hiragana and then learn the kanji in order – later on, we’ll combine the two and everything will come together in the end “like an episode of Seinfeld”.

One of the major processes is using Anki to learn the vocab at a pace that it set for your own personal learning. Other than that, it’s just mainly comprised of practicing on your own and getting the vocab banged into your head from grammar exercises.

One more thing I have to add is how awesome Anki is. I mean, as long as your true to yourself and as long as you come back to it everyday, you’ll be pretty good to go for learning material. I’m going to start using it not just for Japanese but also for other languages, including English, and some other terms for school.

Starting with….KANJI

Now that we have some of the vocab down, it’s time to start with some kanji. Don’t fret – this shouldn’t be too difficult. Lucky for us, we know our 1-2 stroke radicals like the back of our hands, so it won’t be too painful!

We’ll only start with FOUR kanji, just to get our feet wet and our minds prepared.

Okay, since you have to be a member to access the kanji section of TextFugu, I’ll just put out there that each kanji has so much material to help you remember it – everything is there.

Really, I don’t want to give away too much, but really, learning this kanji is just going to be from self-study, Anki, and perfectly placed worksheets and practice placed throughout TextFugu.

This is a really off-note.

I’m hoping that, as I go along, I don’t bore you all to death with me constantly saying “oh, I can’t tell you this or else it’ll give away TextFugu’s secrets and completely ruin everything!” but, really, that’s all I can do. I’m trying not to re-write the actual textbook, but a lot of the stuff I’m writing isn’t to try to teach people, but rather just “tell them how things are going” really. Anyways, now that we’ve practiced kanji and have been able to start reading on’yomi and kun’yomi, let’s jump to grammar.

It was.

For the expression “it was”, we are going to use the Japanese でした. Now, like a lot of the Japanese grammar, this has a slightly off pronunciation. Like です except swapping out letters, the “i” in でした is not pronounced, kinda like how the “u” is not pronounced in です.

After you understand that, it’s really just pretty simple – this concept works the same way that です or じゃありません would, so we’re pretty much golden on that concept.

Okay, so here’s something that I’m extremely confused on and maybe someone can help me out here. So, I’m learning the different kanji and how to put them together and such. So far I have the kanji for one, two, seven, and nine, which are all based on radicals.

Now, here’s my problem. For the words “one person” or “alone” and “two people”, you combine 一人 for “hitori” where the “hito” is for the first kanji and the “ri” is for the second. BUT!!! When you combine it with the kanji for seven, why do you suddenly use the on’yomi reading when all the others use kun’yomi and then instead of “ri”, which is apparently an exception, you use “nin”? I FIND THAT REALLY CONFUZILLING.

Welp, that’ll wrap up this session of the Japanese Language Log.

If you’ve been wondering why this hasn’t been posted for a week or so, I’ve been basically living at my aunt’s this past week and haven’t gotten hold of a computer I could type on and use for Japanese, so this has been the first day back for me. Also, I wanted to take a break from Japanese, partly because I’d been studying ALL. DAY. LONG. and it was probably very unhealthy, so I wanted to see if the information I was learning was actually going into my long-term memory, which it surprisingly was. I didn’t forget one piece of information (okay, maybe a half). That shows you how great TextFugu is, and an even better reason why you should go out and get yourself a subscription right now!

ANYWAYS…

To stop myself from blabbering on, I’m going to read some crappy American (or should I say アメリカ人) literature. See that? アメリカ人 has “amerika” in Katakana (foreign word) and the second on’yomi reading of “person” kanji.

I swear, the “person” kanji has to be the most difficult for me so far.

I’ll release one of the helpful hints on how to remember アメリカ人 or フランス人. Both of the katakana in those words are foreign – “AMERIKA” and “FURANSU” which, if you sound them out, are, you got it!, America and France. The way to remember which pronunciation of 人 is that, in the sense of America (and then that just goes to France), people want to drink “jin” (gin) instead of “nin”, partly because “nin” is nothing in English.

I thought that was pretty good.

ANYWAYS… (for the second time)

I will leave you now, at 1:23 AM (although WordPress says 5:22) to go and sleep. Because I’m tired. And my bed looks super comfy.

PEACE MA HOMIES