Daily Japanese: April 10, 2011 - "I don't know."

Hi again, everyone, and welcome to today's daily Japanese. Today we're going to learn about an important word that you will be using in everyday Japanese.

分かる wakaru

If you're studying on your own, chances are you've heard this word plenty. Often it translates to things like "to understand." Let's learn a little bit more of this word.

First, look at the kanji that is used to write it: 分

Now, kanji are not pictograms, and you shouldn't look at them as pictures most of the time, but the kanji used in wakaru is literally a 刀 katana (Japanese war sword) cutting through something (see the split wood above the "sword"?)

Of course, wakaru doesn't mean to cut through things, but this kanji is also used to mean things like "divide." The idea behind wakaru is that, in your head, you are "cutting up" or dividing information into understandable parts -- you are making your brain able to comprehend information.

The reason I'm bringing up this word is because its dictionary definition can be misleading. It's always better to pick up words by hearing their usage rather than seeing a translation and assuming they are used the same way.

I was inspired to write this post again after playing UNLIMITED:Saga and realized this a mistake a lot of beginners and self-study students can make.

A lot of times, when you want to say "I don't know," you will use 分からない wakaranai. If you were to use a dictionary, you would probably come up with 知らない siranai/shiranai; however, often it is a lot more natural to use wakaranai instead.

In the opening of U:Sg (Laura's quest), Laura is asking Henri why there are people after him, who they are, if they are bandits or hired, etc. To her questions, he answers simply 分かりません wakarimasen  each time. He's saying this not because he's claiming not to understand her questions, but he's saying that he doesn't know the answers -- he doesn't understand the meaning behind his chasers' actions.

But it's used in all kinds of situations. Usually if someone is asking you "how" or "why," even if in English you would answer "I don't know," you would answer wakaranai in Japanese.

The dictionary translation of "to know," 知る siru/shiru, is about knowing in the sense of being familiar with things. Like how you "know" a person, "know" of a place, or "know" a fact. It's used for that kind of "know." Of course, in the case where someone asks you a question about how or why and you absolutely don't know the answer, you can say siranai/shiranai, but if you're not using it with someone who knows you well or you are casual with, it can have a nuance of something like "I don't know (and I really don't care)." unless you say it just right. Often, it's what little kids will say when their 1st grade teacher asks them a question and they don't want to answer because they don't feel like being in school. It's like "Why would you even ask me that? How could I possibly know?" That kind of feeling is carried in siranai/shiranai.

When you're talking about knowing someone or knowing a fact, you can use siru/shiru, but when you're talking about "knowing" anything else, I'd say it's safe to say wakaru first.

Even still, though, in a lot of situations, people still will use wakaru to state that they don't know something.

A lot of times when I see people asking for the title of a song (like, they've heard a song but don't know the name), they will state their request by saying 曲名が分かりません kyoukumei ga wakarimasen, meaning "I don't know the (song) title."

When you want to say you don't know Korean, you would say 韓国語がわからない kankokugo ga wakaranai, which means by a dictionary that you don't "understand" Korean, but it's the same way that you would say you don't understand/speak/know Korean. If someone is speaking Japanese to you, but you aren't good enough to understand them, you can say すみません、日本語分かりません。 Sumimasen, nihongo wakarimasen. This would mean "Sorry, I don't speak Japanese." A lot of people who were using a dictionary would try to say something like 話せない hanasenai, but this isn't very natural (and you're talking about understanding their speech in your apology, not your ability to speak... although it is true that you're not able to speak back. But if you're saying your response in Japanese, even if that's all you know, you do technically have that ability to speak, so it would be weird to say that.)

Check out these Google instructions that teach you how to look up the spelling of words when you don't know the spelling. 分からない単語の正しいスペル wakaranai tango no tadasii/tadashii superu is a phrase that refers to not knowing the spelling of a word, not that you don't understand the word, even though a dictionary would translate wakaranai to "don't understand."

The main point here is that wakaru, although a dictionary will say "to understand," is used to mean "know" in the sense that we use it in English, among many other things, and it's important to listen out for it and pick it up this way. A lot of times when you want to use what we would say as "know" in English, it's better to use wakaru instead of siru/shiru or other words.

And since we're talking about the word, another important use of wakaru is receiving directions or information. When someone has explained something to you or told you to do something, you can say 分かった wakatta to confirm that you understood what was said. It means kind of like "got it" or "ok," though literally means "understood." But you will hear this a lot, so listen for it, too.

Daily Japanese: April 08, 2011 - Yes & No

Hello, friends! Welcome to another daily helping of random Japanese stuff that you can incorporate into your Japanese right away naturally :)

Today we're going to talk about various ways to say yes and no. You'd be surprised that it's not as simple as it seems, but it's also not that difficult.

Let's start out with what you will usually see in a dictionary:

はい hai is the proper word for "Yes."
いいえ iie is the proper word for "No."

I say "proper" because they are more formal words. While you can certainly use them in casual situations, too, they definitely sound more polite and stiff than their casual counterparts. Consider how it sounds when someone says "Yes." instead of "Yeah." in English. It is a good idea to use these forms when you are talking to someone of a higher position than you (boss, teacher, senior, etc.) or when you are writing formally.

ええ ee is a more casual form of "Yes." (like "Yeah.")
いや iya is a more casual form of "No."

These are used a lot more often casually in everday speech than their polite counterparts. You can use them politely, as well. You can use them in polite situations and with strangers and things.  They are probably the most commonly used in regular speech.

うん written un is said like an "nn" or "mm" sound. It is even more casual than ee.
ううん written uun is said like two nn sounds back to back. The first one is higher pitched.

These are very casual, a lot like saying "uh-huh" in English to mean "yes."

These are the most common ways that people say yes and no in Japanese. There are all kinds away you can affirm and negate, of course, but these are simple "yes" and "no" phrases that you can use exactly like you would use them in English, as a type of interjection-like word.

One thing to note is that when asked questions, Japanese people always answer yes or no based on the question asked. So if someone asked "Are there no drinks left in the fridge?" a proper reply would be "Yes, there are no drinks." The "yes" part means "Yes, you are right." If you say "No, there are no drinks." It would not make any sense in Japanese and would be confusing.

Another thing you will notice is that people say "yes" in Japanese to signify that they are listening and understand you. It is not uncommon for a Japanese person to answer "Yes" to any question you ask before giving their answer. When they do this, it means that they followed what you said, but they're not actually answering "Yes" to anything. In fact, even if the answer is "No," someone may say "Yes" before the "No" to show that they understood the question. It would be natural for you to practice doing this as well.

You may also notice that Japanese people may constantly say ee and un while listening. They are not trying to interrupt you; this is a way to show that they are following what you're saying as you say it.

I think the best way to learn these is to pick them up through listening to natural speech. Try watching talk shows and things like that to see people talking naturally rather than following a script.



Here's a video of the music talk show "Utaban." In this show, the hosts interview various musical acts. In this episode, they talk to a very large girl group with many memebers. Notice the uses of all three hai, ee, and un in their speech. Notice how the hosts often go un un un as they listen and follow the girls. Note how the young girl interviewed first in this clip answers the question about her school grade with ee. See what other instances of the "yes words" you can find.

Try to listen for them everywhere, and try to incorporate them into your own Japanese. It will sound very natural and native-like if you copy those kinds of examples :)

Also note there may not be a Daily Japanese tomorrow because my band is giving a concert :)

Daily Japanese: April 07, 2011 - Date & Time

こんにちは～ Sorry for missing out yesterday. Here's the return of the Japanese of the Day spot :) So I'll make it extra long today, ahaha...

Today we're going to talk about writing the date and time. This is the first time we're going to focus more on reading and writing than speaking usage in Daily Japanese!

Anyway, I'm going to point out how time is written in Japanese. It's quite easy to learn, but if you don't know about it when you're first starting out, you may be confused.

In Japanese, you can reference the time with punctuation symbols like you're used to in English (so 10/24 or 10.24 would mean October 24). You can also write the time of day off the clock with a colon like "4:45."

But you can also write date and time with the 漢字 kanzi/kanji (Chinese characters) to represent them. This also corresponds with the way you say them aloud. It is written like this often in Japanese, so you should learn how to recognize and read it early.

年 is the kanji that means "year."
月 is the kanji that means "month."
日 is the kanji that means "day."
時 is the kanji that means "hour."
分 is the kanji that means "minute."

Of course, these characters can mean different things when they're not used to write the time of day or the date. We're only talking about their meanings when using them to write the date and time right now. Also note that they can also be used to count time, so　７時 can mean 7 o'clock OR 7 hours. ２０日 can mean the 20th OR 20 days.

When writing time, you always write from big to small. So if you wanted to denote a certain month in a certain year, you would put the year first because it is bigger. In English, we commonly do the opposite (saying "March 2004" instead of "2004 March"). In English outside of the US (and sometimes in the US, too) we even do the entire date from small to big (24 October 1985).

In Japanese, you go from small to big... so Year-Month-Day-Hour-Minute.

To write them, you can still use Arabic numbers, however, so it's just a matter of knowing the order and which kanji corresponds to which. You place the kanji after the number. Japanese months are actually named by number.

Let's look at the aspects of today's date:

２０１１年 is how you would write the year (2011).
４月 is how you would write the month (April).
７日 is how you would write the day (the 7th).

I write the date by writing ２０１１年４月７日.

When you are writing vertically (top to bottom), you more often will write the entire numbers with kanji, like this: 二千十一年 to mean 2011. Either way, you always pronounce them the same way of course.

The time of day works the same. If it's 5:42, you can put the proper kanji after the hours and minutes to show the time: ５時４２分. You will more often see this when the time is written out as part of a sentence.

Another note about the time of day is that Japan uses 24-hour time. Japanese people understand both the 24 hour clock and the 12 hour clock (since circular clocks and watches only display 12 hours), but more often, you will come across 24-hour time.

What does this mean?

It means that the day starts at 00:00 (zero o'clock) at midnight, and continues counting hours until it reaches the 24th hour, which is zero again.

00:00 is midnight
05:00 is 5AM
10:00 is 10AM
12:00 is noon
14:00 is 2PM
21:00 is 9PM
23:59 is 11:59PM, and in one minute it will be midnight again, or 00:00.

As I'm typing this, my clock displaying 24 hour time says it is１３時１１分 . That means it's 1:11PM.

To reference AM and PM, you use the words 午前 gozen for AM (literally "before noon") and 午後  gogo for PM (literally "after noon.") Noon is called 正午 syougo/shougo (literally "exact noon").

You put it before the time, so 午後５時 gogo go ji is 5PM.

Lastly, I want to talk about the days of the week, since it will be helpful in reading calendars.

In Japan, the seven days of the week are named after astral bodies (from Roman astrology) and have corresponding elements (from Chinese astrology).

In Japanese, all days of the week end with the suffix 曜日 youbi, just like all days in English end with "day." Before the youbi is the name of the day.

Note that on Japanese calendars,  the week traditionally starts on Monday, not Sunday. However, this is not always the case since a lot of websites and things have calendars originally made for a western audience first, then are just translated straight into Japanese without changing the look of the calendar. Stuff like that. Just look at the calendar and make sure you've noticed which day is listed first.

These are the seven days, starting with Monday:

月曜日 getuyoubi/getsuyoubi is Monday, named after Moon.
火曜日 kayoubi is Tuesday, named after Mars. Day of Fire.
水曜日 suiyoubi is Wednesday, named after Mercury. Day of Water.
木曜日 mokuyoubi is Thursday, named after Jupiter. Day of Wood.
金曜日 kinyoubi is Friday, named after Venus. Day of Metal.
土曜日 douyoubi is Saturday, named after Saturn. Day of Earth.
日曜日 nichiyoubi is Sunday, named after Sun.

When you see the day written, you will come across the day of the week written after it to specify what day it was. You don't have to write the full day of the week, just the kanji that tells which day it is. So if you see this:

２０１１年４月７日（木）

You know that the moku part written at the end means that the 7th of April in 2011 falls on a Thursday. It doesn't mean wood or tree or Jupiter :)

It's a big blog post, but reading the date and time is actually pretty simple once you get used to it. Try looking in newspapers for things that talk about when events happened and you'll see it come up a lot. Another great place to see it is release dates for movies and games and things.

Here are two of Japan's biggest newspapers' websites:

朝日新聞 Asahi
毎日新聞 Mainichi

You can look around and look for things with dates and time :) Even if you can't read Japanese yet, the current date will always be displayed on the main page, so see if you can find it.

If you look at Asahi's newest stories (at the top middle of the page, usually with red squares next to them), you will also notice that the time the article was posted is listed next to them. These are written in 24-hour time!

If you scroll down a bit in the middle of Mainichi's page, you will see a section called ニュースセレクト nyuususerekuto (News Select, or "news selection") that lists current articles. The times for these articles are written using the kanji and also use 24-hour time.

Keep an eye out for dates and times. You can even change your computer to display the date and time in Japanese :)

Daily Japanese: April 05, 2011 - "It'll be fine."

I was playing UNLIMITED:Saga today, and I was reminded of a useful phrase that anyone can use. It's the favorite mantra of character Ruby, and even in a way her life philosophy, I guess, hehe.

This phrase is 何とかなる nan to ka naru. First, let's look at the parts that make up this phrase:

何  nan is an unknown thing (often this is translated as "what" when used alone). It stands for any thing that is not specified when you're talking. When you're asking questions, this asks about a specific thing. We're not asking a question here, though, so it just means something, but it's not specified what.

とか to ka is added to nan to make it more vague. You can use this in other ways, like 雑誌とか zassi/zasshi to ka would mean "magazines or something" or "magazines or stuff like that." Those kinds of things.

なる naru is our predicate here. It references some kind of changing from one thing to another. It's the same naru that is used in cases like 大人になる otona ni naru (to become an adult). In Japanese, naru can be used without talking about a certain thing changing. When you use it like this, it has a meaning of things turning out or working out.

When you put the whole phrase together, 何とかなる nan to ka naru means something literally like "Something or other will turn out." When you use it, it means "It'll work out somehow," "Things have a way of working out," "Everything will work out fine," or those kinds of things.

When your friend is worrying to much too much about something, reassure them that everything will be all right in the end by saying this phrase. まぁ、何とかなるだろうね～

Try it out, and listen for it!

Daily Japanese: April 04, 2011 - "Sugoi!"

I have found that, especially among anime and manga fans, there is a common misconception about the word すごい sugoi. I almost always see places referencing and teaching this word saying it means "cool" with no further description or explanation.

While in translation, there are certainly times in which an appropriate way to relate this word into English may be through the word "cool," the meaning of sugoi is actually much deeper, versatile, and a lot more interesting than that!

The word itself describes things that bring you awe. In a way, you could say it more literally means "awesome." Anything that is amazing or elicits a powerful feeling can be described as sugoi.

Try checking out the first couple minutes of this video on youtube, titled すごい雷雨 & 停電. In the title, and in the video itself, you can hear すごい used naturally many times :)


Using it alone:

Using it alone, you can say sugoi to express some kind of awe or amazement. Let's say you just saw a video of someone break through a stack of bricks with their hand. Amazed at the display of power, you could respond すごい！　sugoi! . In a lot of cases, this could be like saying "Wow!" in English. In fact, in pretty much any case you can say "wow" in English, you can say sugoi in Japanese to express your same feeling.


Modifying nouns: 

For example, a very fierce wind could be described as すごい風 sugoi kaze. Saying that this meant something like "cool wind" would be very inappropriate in most cases. Likewise, an amazing person who does something beyond what you would expect from most people could be a すごい人 sugoi hito.

Using sugoku to modify descriptive words:

Using the ~ku form of the word (すごく sugoku... no, not sudoku), you can use it to modify other modifying words. When you use it this way, it makes the word stronger, a lot like using the word "very" in English.

すごくうれしい sugoku uresii/ureshii -> "very happy"
すごく高い sugoku takai -> "very tall" or "very expensive"
すごく便利 sugoku benri -> "very convenient"

Just put すごく sugoku before these types of words, you can make them stronger. This simple word will make your Japanese more diverse, so try it out!

You can also use ものすごく monosugoku to make it even stronger. ものすごく悲しい monosugoku kanasii/kanashii would describe something that is extremely sad.

Note that you can't use sugoku to modify any word. Use it on other descriptive words. Depending on the text and resources you use, the kind of word you use here will go by different names. But descriptive words that conjugate with 'na' (like 駄目) and that conjugate with i/katta (like 楽しい) work here. (Some texts will call these all "adjectives," others will classify them based on how they are conjugated. If it's descriptive and takes na or katta, it should work).

In conclusion...

So, as you see, there's a lot more to sugoi than "cool," and you can use it in a lot of ways! If you see something so cool that you are amazed, you can say sugoi to express that, but you can use it so many other ways, too. So try it out and try to incorporate it into your Japanese. It's a very common and useful term to know :)

Daily Japanese: April 03, 2011 - "Anyway..."

Hello, everyone :) Today's Daily Japanese is going to be short and sweet. (I spilled the sugar when I was making iced tea...)

We are going to use a useful phrase that you will hear a lot and don't need to know any special structure or grammar to use it.

It is called とにかく tonikaku, and it means something like "anyway." You use it when you are changing subject. Like let's say you were talking about a crazy drive you were on, but then you got sidetracked talking about the price of gas, but you want to switch the topic back to the crazy drive. Just say tonikaku and you're good to go! It works best in these cases where you're returning to your main point. You could also say it means things like "in any case" or "at any rate."

The intonation rises up, like you're leading into something. Listen for it and you'll probably hear it a lot! Any time you want to switch subject or get a subject back on track while you are speaking Japanese, feel free to try this one out! You of course can do it while writing. And it can be used in some other ways, so keep an ear out and try to pick up how people are using it. The best way to learn is through exposure and picking stuff up :)

とにかく、急がなきゃなりません！

Daily Japanese: April 02, 2011 - "That sucks!"

Today I want to talk about two very common phrases that you can incorporate easily into everyday life. But first, here's a video of a cute Japanese girl learning the other way around -- how to say this in English:




I'd also like to note that the girl teaching the English in this video is a good example of yesterday's Daily Japanese, tarento. The pop-idol group, ココナツ娘。 (kokonatu musume. - Coconut Girls.), had very short-lived popularity, leeching from their sister group モーニング娘。 (mooningu musume. - Morning Girls.) While most of the girls left the group and went on to pursue other things, leader Ayaka got stuck in being a TV personality. The only real "talent" she had was her fluent English. So she appeared in little segments like this and other various things, and was talked about in the media.

But anyway, let's get to the real heart of the matter here. How to say "That sucks!" in Japanese! The two phrases I want to introduce you two today are the following:

最高 - さいこう - saikou
最低 - さいてい - saitei

If you look at the Chinese characters used to write them, the sai 最 part means "most," and the second parts, kou 高 and tei 低, mean "high" and "low" respectively. So essentially, these two phrases mean "Absolute Top" and "Absolute Bottom." More colloquially, you could think of them as meaning "best of the best" and "worst of the worst."

When just used alone, I often see saitei translated as "That sucks!" or "This sucks!" or things like that, and rightfully so. Saying that something 'sucks' is pretty much like saying "That's the worst!" right? So if you want to say something sucks or is really bad, just say saitei!

The same is true for the opposite. I can't say I see many translations of it saying something polar... I haven't ran into a translation of saikou as "This rocks!" but it does carry similar meaning.

Although they seem descriptive, like "best" and "worst," they are nominal words (which means to make a predicate of them, you'll use the copula, like 最高だ。) But when using them colloquially, you can easily drop most of what you're saying.

Quite often you'll hear a pattern like この番組、最高！(kono bangumi, saikou!) or その人、最低。 (sono hito, saitei.)

Basically, you just point out some object like kono bangumi - "this show," or sono hito - "that guy," and then modify it with one of the two words. It means "This show is the best!" or "That guy is the worst." It's very colloquial and sounds really natural, so try it out.

Next time you have your favorite coffee after not having it for a while and want to say to your friend "Damn, I love this coffee!" consider saying 「このコーヒー、最高！」 (kono koohii, saikou!) to express essentially the same thing in Japanese :)

Or maybe next time you are frustrated with something, just shout 最低！ (saite!) for a classic "This totally reeks!" feeling! I taught this to my friend, and now she says it all the time. (Don't be a Negative Nancy though. Some things are 最高, too!)

Be careful when saying saitei about another person, because it's a very mean thing to say!

Even though it's simple, saying little things like this in every day life helps get you used to thinking in Japanese! And remember, you could translate these little phrases tons of ways depending on your mood, so don't think of them in English, just let them flow naturally. They're pretty easy to understand, so after only a little bit of using them, they should feel natural to you :)

And if you don't understand この,その, and あの (kono, sono, and ano), be sure to look those up before you start using them!

Of course, you can use these phrases in all kinds of ways other than just how I mentioned them here. They can also be used a lot more literally and less colloquially. Just listen out for them when you're listening to Japanese. You may be surprised how often they turn up!

やっぱり日本語の勉強、最高ですよね！

Daily Japanese: April 01, 2011 - "Talent"

I'm going to try to write a short blurb a day introducing some Japanese phrase or word or something that is fun to learn.

Today we're going to talk about タレント (tarento). Written in katakana, this is a word borrowed from English. Can you guess what English word it sounds like? You may have guessed that it's the word "talent." If you did, well, you're right!

But there's a problem... this word means something quiet different than what you think it would mean.

タレント refers to some kind of famous person, generally a TV personality; however, this doesn't mean great actors on TV dramas and sitcoms. Rather, it just means someone who pops up in the media all the time. Sometimes this person is some kind of comedian, sometimes they are pretty girls, sometimes they're washed-up idols, and sometimes they can even be nothing more than the son or daughter of a famous actor or politician or something.

So why are they all over the media? Sometimes they have some kind of quirk or personality they have made up that gets them attention. Sometimes it's just because people like to gossip about them.

What's ironic about the word they chose from English is that more than often enough, these famous people have nothing particularly unique or special about them, and don't posses any real kind of talent.

So next time you hear something about a tarento being mentioned in the media, you'll know exactly what they're talking about. These people who are just famous for being famous :)