Would listening to audio lessons be a good idea? I got a few, and they seemed fairly helpful (native speakers) but seems to be a little inefficient as you can't "go over" the same thing easily like with a book.
And is there anything else I can do before i finish learning my kanji? (going through RTK atm) Could I go over grammar or would it be fairly useless until I finish it?
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Anonymous2011-05-17 5:59
how would I ask "how strong is he?"
どんなに強いのか？
or
どのぐらい強いのか？ or would it be 強さがどのぐらいですか？
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Anonymous2011-05-17 11:01
>>120
「（どうして、なぜ、なんで、）田中さんはもうギターが弾いていませんか？」
or
「どうして、なぜ、なんで、）田中さんはギターを弾くことを止めましたか？」 >>122
「強さはどのぐらいですか？」 is ｔhe most correct
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Anonymous2011-05-17 11:30
>>121
Of course you can be doing grammar at the same time and you SHOULD be.
Any kind of listening is going to help, the more Japanese the better. >>122
any are fine really but the bottom with 強さ is probably the most grammatically correct.
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Anonymous2011-05-17 12:30
I didn't want to create a new thread, but I don't really know if this thread is the right place to ask this question.
My question is about something I did in 5th grade.
I found a piece of rice paper where we had painted kanji on it (I think it's kanji since 3 of the characters looks like 1, 10 and 6 from kanji.
What do the characters mean and do the characters I painted on it actually make any sense at all?
Since I don't have a camera at the moment I tried to recreate it in paint.
I'm having a tough time finding information about the usage of "だって"; especially at the end of a sentence, but not to indicate something being quoted.
For example, in the sentence, "生徒達に毎日の食事番だって--"
Does "だって" in this case perhaps link it to a following sentence somehow? Based on context, I know for sure that "だって" in this case is not used to quote what someone else had said. Any help with this would be appreciated.
And I forgot to ask directly what might the "生徒達に毎日の食事番だって--" in >>128 translate to? The only thing I can think of is, "There are lunch-ladies* for the students every day."
*I couldn't exactly find a clear definition of "食事番", but I assume it means "one in charge of meals" like how "門番" is "one in charge of the gate".
>>134
I would say:
There's no way we can supply nothing but excellence
Like providing meals to students every day-
No matter how excellent, there's a limit to what one human being can do...
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Anonymous2011-05-18 23:09
>>134
My take:
Academic excellence isn't the only thing we can do--
Take for example the people who provide meals to the students every day--
It doesn't matter how superior you are; every human has a limit to what they can do.
Honestly, I don't know what the だって is doing there, but I think this is the message that's trying to be conveyed.
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Anonymous2011-05-19 16:16
This is probably a question that's been asked before, but say I'm reading a manga and come across a kanji I don't recognize, is it possible to extract the kanji from the image via a program so that I can look it up? I'd use a dictionary, but I don't own one.
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Anonymous2011-05-19 16:35
Okay, I'm reading a book in Japanese and I've stumbled upon a passage that I can't understand. It's a narrative describing a location - a beautifully decorated city avenue. The description concludes with the following two sentences:
I simply don't get what the second one is supposed to mean. I would take it as an expression of the author's or some character's intention and\or duty to expose some negative inner details hidden under a veneer of beauty, but that interpretation falls completely out of context.
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Anonymous2011-05-19 18:47
can anyone tell me what this says?
"壊"
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Anonymous2011-05-19 21:58
>>138
My attempt:
どれほど苦労をしていながらも、そんなものは屁でもないと見せなければ。
No matter how much one struggles, such must be shown as a trifle.
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Anonymous2011-05-19 22:23
>>139
be broken, fall apart, be damaged, be destroyed
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Anonymous2011-05-20 18:34
I'm starting learning Japanese with Remember the Kanji and an SRS. My question is, how exactly should I do this? Do I read RTK then the next day use the SRS, or what?
I'm having trouble with this sentence:
この作業のこれからの部分はお任せして
I'm not sure of the meaning of the "お任せして" at the end. Would this sentence be, "I'll leave the rest of the parts of this job to you," or, "Leave the rest of the part of this job to me."
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random rant2011-05-21 0:34
Why kakeru is so fucked up? It's almost as screwed up as English "set" and that's not something to be proud about.
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Anonymous2011-05-21 2:22
Hey,my Japanesepod101 free trial ran out, so where should an absolute beginner look for lessons online?
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Anonymous2011-05-21 8:16
>>144
Don't be confused, it is still "leave it to me".
The grammar may be a bit wonky but the meaning is still there.
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Anonymous2011-05-22 2:39
そうそう器用にできたら苦労しません
それなら今頃 奥さんとかいっぱいいます
What does this mean? I'm trying to translate a manga and I have no idea what this means. Is it saying the equivilant of:
"Don't give me a hard time" for the first line?
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Anonymous2011-05-22 7:36
>>148
器用に(ふるまう) means "cope" and "good at deal with ...".
If I were to be able to cope with thing like that, I wouldn't have any hard time.
If so, I could have many wives or women like that now.
I'm not sure what the hell the context is here but "If you can go about it skillfully it won't take much effort."
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Anonymous2011-05-23 0:47
>>137
Go to jisho.org and go to the "look up kanji by radicals" function. Look at the parts of the kanji you dont know in the book and put them in on the site, then click the kanji that looks like what you're looking for.
A: 全ての女友達の誕生日を覚えろ。それぞれの誕生日にプレゼントを渡せ。そうすれば君にも彼女ができるだろう。
Remember all women friends' birthdays. Give them presents on each birthday. And you'll get a girlfriend.
B: そうそう器用にできたら苦労しません
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Anonymous2011-05-23 8:59
>>153
Is this the page from the manga? At any rate what I wrote gets the meaning across but you can fiddle with the English to make it flow better.
eg: If you're crafty about it you won't have much trouble.
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駄目書生2011-05-24 1:46
When Japanese students type in Japanese, native speakers can always tell within at most 3 posts that they aren't native, and will go from friendly -> meh
What are some of the most common mistakes aspiring Japanese speakers make online?
Am I right in thinking this says "A frightening vampire symbol" and not "Vampires fear this symbol"?
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Anonymous2011-05-29 13:20
>>155
Well, for starters, using "。。。" is probably a clue right off the bat. I usually see "・・・".
But I have my own question that's kind of related. What would be the best way to say something like, "Sorry if my Japanese isn't too good. I'm just a beginner." If I ever do have to communicate with a Japanese person, I feel like I should at least know how to give a little disclaimer about my ability. My reading is pretty good, but putting sentences together on my own is a totally different story.