h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

paranoid

hehehehe i decided im gonna take a course in japanese and im gonna start by getting one of them listen and learn cd's to learn "holiday and buisness basics" over 6 weeks

and good news midnight-chan your lessons can resume cos i am now able to go on h2g2 every day at work thnx to a new dept move


ogenki desu ka? (lately god knows how you say lately in japanese)

i realise your in bed by now anyway so ill have to wait for a reply post tommrow look forward to it lol

just think if i get this down we can have conversations in japanese

i recently got every episode of dbz in japanese and the translation is a bit off so a few words im gonna ask will sound a bit wierd theres som im gonna take a stab at the japanese of and a few ill just ask in english and see if you know the japanese for it

erm first

enai- is that come here/on

yata- success

whats die?

anywho im boring you now talk to ya soon

Hey -

Sorry I haven't been on in ages. I'm @ boarding school and the summer holidays have just finished - my Net connection at home is not too great so now that I'm back at school with this glorious broadband I'll be able to post again!!!

It's great that you're going to take a Japanese course - it should be better to learn IRL than over the Net. And my Japanese is not fluent, so I'm probably not your best teacher, but I'm glad I've got you started. If you want me to keep teaching you stuff that's fine though.

I'm ashamed to say I don't actually know what "enai" means, but "yata" (which is actually written "yatta" with a double "t" is sort of like a victory cry when you're playing games, like if you were playing bingo in Japan and you won, you would yell out "yatta" instead of "bingo". I think (but don't quote me) it means something like "I've got it!".

The verb "to die" is, in plain form something like "shinderu", although I think that's slang. My Japanese classmates use it to each other when we're joking around, like "I'm going to kill you", but considering none of us are Japanese, we've probably got it wrong.
Another thing that would probably be worthwhile you buying if you can spare the cash is a Japanese-English/English-Japanese two-way dictionary, so you can look words up in either language and see their translation. I have one and it's been really helpful.

I hope we'll be able to talk in Japanese soon.

And btw, I'm totemo genki (very good) because I've just got back to boarding school, I'm seeing my friends and I get to have my own room this semester, which is something of a privelege. Hehehe...

Á,so

well i want you to keep teaching me any way then ill learn twice as fast, at the moment ive got a book and tape teach myself japanese

i know how to ask questions (to an extent)

nihonjin desu ka <?>

which i suppose you shoulda asked me at the beginning of the thread (i think)

glad to hear you can get online again

Iie, watashi wa Nihonjin ja nai desu. Australiajin desu.
Anata wa?

Did you get all that?

I'm so stoked because there's a Japanese exchange student here at the boarding house right now and I have a practice partner!! And I actually had a whole conversation with her in Japanese and I understood the whole thing *feels proud*

What would you like to learn now?

"Iie, watashi wa Nihonjin ja nai desu. Australiajin desu.
Anata wa?"

no, as for me japanese (ja nai?) i am/it is im australian (anata wa?)



i dont know lol im still learning midnight-chan

Okay, a loose translation is "No, I'm not Japanese, I'm Australian. What about you?"

"Ja nai" is in some cases used to indicate a negative, but there are rules about when it should be used and a lot of it has leaked out of my head during the holidays... I'll get back to you on that when you feel you're ready to learn it.

"Anata" means "you", and I probably shouldn't have used it because it's normally a pet name for married couples but they do use it for people if they don't know their name (like on fill-in forms on the Internet and such), but in face-to-face conversation they usually try to find out the persons' name first. I should have said "Himura-san wa?" The "wa" means literally "as for", so you could loosely say it means "what about..."
Which means I said "What about you?"

you can marry me if ya want midnight


i get it now, its trying to piece it all together its like a lingual jigsaw kinda like french

i did write out what i know so far but then i deleted it by accident and cant be bothered to type it out again i got me pronounciation down

whats it like having some one to converse with? bet your improving by leaps and bound from it

Yeah, well especially when they're better than you so they can correct you when you go wrong. And I can correct her on her English too

I hope you're not offended but I think I'll pass on the marriage offer I'm flattered though.

You're right - it is like a jigsaw... just got to work out how it fits together. It's also a bit like a game because it's got rules that have to be followed or it just doesn't work.
What other kind of things would you like to know? If I know it I'll teach it to you...