Could someone please check this for me?
 

Part of the application for a cultural exchange program I'll be doing in Kanazawa later this year is a self introduction that will be given to the host family I'll be staying with. Could someone please check my grammar? I don't want to appear a total noob to these people, since I should technically be pretty decent by now ^^;

What I want to say:
My name is Teresa Watts. I am 23 years old and live in Australia. I have been studying Japanese for about 3 years and am very interested in Japanese culture. Currently I work as a web designer. I have been to Japan once before on holiday, and am very much looking forward to doing a homestay in Kanazawa.

私はテレサ　ワッツです。私は２３さいそしてオストラ リアに住んでいます。日本語を３年ぐらい勉強していて 、日本文化が好きです。今、私はウェッブデザインに仕 事します。お休みに日本へ行きいました、そしてホムス テイ金沢で...[really not sure how to say looking forward to...]


You'd think I'd be able to write a simple self introduction by now... I really need to study harder ^^; I know my sentence structure is probably a bit too simplistic, but would anyone mind taking a look at it for me?

And does anyone know how to say 'looking forward to'?

テレサ・ワッツと申します。２３さいで、オーストラリ アに住んでいます。日本語を３年ぐらい勉強していて、 日本文化が好きです。今、私はウェッブデザインの仕事 をしています。お休みで日本へ行ったことがあります。 今回金沢でホームステイをすることを楽しみにしていま す。

Deleted two 私's. I left one undeleted but you would sound better if you deleted that one as well. The reader(s) will know exactly who you are talking about. Unlike English, Japanese isn't a me-me-me language.

looking forward to ~ = ~ を楽しみにしている

Please feel free to ask for further explanations.

Ah! You are a lifesaver :) Thankyou so much.

Looking at your corrections, my grammar is quite horrible ^^; I have a lot of studying to do so I don't embarrass myself there.

No offence, Teresa.. but after 3 years.. you should be almost fluent by now..?

That would all depend on the frequency and intensity of studying sir.

I was going to say that but my internet connection died ^_^ If I was keeping up with the part time course material and revising as I should be, I should have been able to complete JLPT level 3 and be a bit further than that by now. I'm not. I have a lot of things going on in my life, and unfortunately Japanese study is the one that has sunk low on the priority list. I'm trying to remedy that, but it's hard! I should definitely be far, far better than I am by now, I'll admit that, but I don't think even if I was keeping up I'd be able to claim to be fluent.

Japanese is quite a difficult language though - honestly I'd be a little skeptical if someone studied for 3 years then claimed they were fluent, especially in both speaking and reading/writing. Maybe if they lived in Japan and were studying Japanese full time the whole time?

This could be where your going wrong.. a second language needs dedication. In the class that I'm in, people turn up, take very little notes, try to avoid answering questions and never offer feedback and then never study between classes, yet they complain when they don't understand whats going on.

I'm full time at uni doing teacher training and i have two jobs (1 daytime, 1 evening and weekends) and quite a steady social life considering the amount of work i get from each, yet i still manage to keep up to a study routine (daily kanji practise, listening practise and reading practise with class on a monday night for speaking practise).

I'm by no means putting my all into learning Japanese, I wish I had more time for it, but if i can do it, anyone can :)

If I'm not at a substancial level by the time i get to 3 years study ill be rather upset.. but ill keep on going.. I mean, I've been into the language for nearly 2 years now and have "seriously" studied for.. 8 months.. and I'd like to say i could have written what you have no probs..

You only have to look at the progress of people such as "darksyndrem' and "lucas89" to see what I mean. They obviously have more time than I do, but look what can be done! I'm sure other JF members will back me up on this!

Quite the contrary, actually. Most people say that Japanese is one of the easiest languages to learn. Its just so logical!

日本語の勉強も頑張って下さい！

shad0w, a couple of points.

(1) Not everyone has the opportunity to attend a full-time class. Although in this case, Teresa is doing to do a homestay, so presumably she's a student. She has less excuse unless she lives in a small area without much opportunity to practice the language (community college, etc.).

(2) It is absolutely impossible to be fluent in a second language after three years of study unless (a) you are a genius/savant, or (b) you are in the country of the foreign language.

Even after living in Japan for a year, studying for three in a university setting, including getting a degree in the language (in addition to another, to be fair), and continuing my usage for the past three years since graduation, I still wouldn't consider myself to be fluent.

Fluency is very, very difficult to achieve. It takes years and years. Hell, it takes years and years of living in the country in which the language is spoken natively.

It is very possible, with hard work, to be conversational after three years. But fluent? Highly unlikely.

In my honest evaluation, I'd say Teresa is where I was after a year. However, I was attending a group of native Japanese speakers to practice with them, and I have a natural gift with languages. I wouldn't be too quick to judge her work ethic.

I think her composition skill is decent for an off-and-on three-year student of the language.

And there's no way anyone who has ever attempted a language other than Japanese will say it's an easy language. Aside from the ridiculously complex writing system compared to 95% of the other languages out there, anyone who is coming from an Indo-European language system is in for a shock, as word order and so many culturally-affected grammar points are extremely different. Just for one example, auxiliary verbs in Japanese become part of the verbs themselves, while in English, Spanish, etc., they are still separable:

Yo he comido.
I have eaten.
食べます。Yes, "-masu" is an auxiliary verb! Origin of -masu There's an excellent discussion about where it comes from (by a knowledgeable native speaker), if you care to broaden your knowledge of Japanese language history.

Japanese is considered by many US government organizations who have studied language acquisition (CIA, State Department, etc.) in order to effectively instruct their employees to be one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn.

In case anyone's curious, if I recall correctly, Dutch was considered one of the group of easiest languages to learn. I think it was classified as easier even than German, Spanish, etc.

I speak Spanish, English, and Japanese, can read French, Italian, Portuguese, and have some small ability in Chinese. The only language harder than Japanese in that list is Chinese, in my opinion.

And the only reason I say Chinese is harder is because of the writing system. Despite "seven" years of study in Japanese, compared to a semester of Chinese, my Chinese accent is closer to native. Furthermore, the sentence order is very much similar to English. It's just those darn hanzi!

I agree with everything that was just posted. You will not be fluent in Japanese after three years of study. You may have an advanced knowledge of the language and could possibly even hold a limited conversation with a native speaker (with plenty of "what does XXX mean?") but you will not be fluent by any means unless you really have no life. By fluent I mean that you should be able to understand a multitude of words that aren't used in every day speech, like "Algebra", "Documentary", etc. Native understanding would require much longer of course. I would say that Nagoyankee has a native understanding of English, so it would be interesting to see how fluent he was in English after three years of study.

I also disagree about Japanese being very easy... Certain aspects of it are easy (reading/writing Hiragana/Katakana is very easy) and others are much more difficult (native pronunciation of certain words and Kanji, and the numerous dialects.)

Some things can also be very hard for English speakers to understand, like descriptor words that seem odd when translated (鼻が高い = tall nose?)

As Kyle said, there are a multitude of other languages that are much easier to learn (for an English speaker, at least) like Spanish.

To further expound on my discussion of language difficulty for an English speaker, the US government has a list. The original list is gone from the government's website, but Wikibooks has preserved the list: Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Among the simplest languages to learn according to actual studies done by the government are Afrikaans, Dutch, and Spanish.

The most difficult level contains, among others, Japanese, Chinese, Cantonese, Arabic, and Korean. So congratulations on picking such a damn hard language, everyone! ;)

@KyleGoetz:
1 - Who needs a full time class? My class is once a week for 2 hours, and it’s a year 1 class so I’m way beyond the lesson content, I just go for the speaking practice and to hang out with my friends who are just begginers.
2 - can you prove it isn't possible? - how much do you study each day? who says someone cant study more than you and become fluent in 1 - 2 years? (AJATT anyone?)
3 - How do you define fluent?
4 - If you were at ChisaChi's current level after year then you dont deserve to be bragging about having a natural gift with languages, especially when your example of “I have eaten > 食べます” was WRONG. Your link doesn’t back you up much, either.
5 - I found German and French much more difficult than Japanese
6 - It's only a different writing system, just becasue it takes longer to master it doesn't make it any more difficult. Get over it.
7 - What about verb conjugation is so hard?
8 - What difference does it make that "US government organizations who have studied language acquisition" say it's more difficult?
9 - You say Chinese is harder because of the writing system, again, refer back to point 6.

In short everything you have posted is down to personal definition and preference.

@Jesselt:
After 3 years of constant study you would have to be pretty bad to only be able to hold up conversations in which you ask plenty of "what does XXX mean?" questions.
And how can you say someone has no life if they choose to spend their time mastering a language? (Small minded much?)

If you say that by fluent you "mean that you should be able to understand a multitude of words that aren't used in every day speech" then 3 years is plenty of time,
here i'll give you some random words now 宇宙人、政治、機械翻訳、睡眠誘発ガス、俳句、オブジ ェクト指向　ah the wonders of learning some random words in only a couple of days, with the excpeption of オブジェクト指向 i can assure you they are not daily words for me.
Dialects and kanji are hard?!?! news to me, as for dialects they are still set in general rules and usages, whats so hard about learning a dialect if you've learned an entire langauge already?
As for kanji, well, refer to point 6 above.

"鼻が高い = tall nose?" ← Anyone who knows japanese would also know that 高い can be translated into English as "high", and that 鼻が高い is just an idiom for "Proud"
(Makes sense when in English you can "hold your head high" doesn't it? oh but wait, thats too complicated for english speakers to understand, sorry)
That basically like me throwing out the phrase 朝飯前 and saying "OMG!! morning meal before?!?! what does that mean?!?!?" when it's the equivalent of the English phrase "Piece of cake"
It really isn't difficult stuff, and you could come up with any example like that for any language so i really don't see your point.

Again, your multitude of languages that are "easier to learn" are only based off of personal opinion and definition.

Shadow, there's no reason to get defensive. There's also no need to act as if Japanese is just so simple you master it in your sleep. I'm glad you know some random words; good for you! There's still a big difference between that and knowing a lot of random words. After three years you will still have to ask what certain things are, I'm sorry to say. You will not know every word you come across, and unless you plan on sticking to simple conversations about the weather and how school is going, you are going to need help understanding certain advanced topics.

And please don't tell me you really didn't understand what I was saying about 鼻が高い... If you were seeing this for the first time, you might translate it as something like "Tall (or yes, HIGH) nose" which sounds a little weird. As you pointed out, languages are full of these things, and to be fluent in that language you need to understand them all.

Let me know how fluent you are after three years though.

With certain advanced topics in English I have to ask what words mean, and I've been living in England for 20 years now.

Although this is all just a standard "you cant be fluent in X time" - "Yes you can" argument, I have to say that if I read both of your posts together it gives me the impression that by your current logic and explanations, I would not be fluent in English if I had to ask what every other word meant in an advanced English conversation.

Of course this is without knowing what you mean by "advanced"

I feel as though I have to point out here, that when reading your post it did seem like you were just stating general fact, instead of giving an example of seeing it for the first time.

Um.. okay.

I realise that I'm not as dedicated as some - I go to classes a couple of hours a week, and often don't have time to study much beyond that. Currently I run a business (which often means more than full time work), take belly dancing classes, teach web design, do a lot of crafts, have a busy social and professional networking life and study Japanese. Yes, I could study more - I am trying to. But at this point in my life when I finish my work for the day I want to do something relaxing, and Japanese is not relaxing for me.

I will stand by my statement that Japanese is a difficult language to learn compared to some. For example, I studied Indonesian in highschool - easiest freaking language ever! Just being able to use the same writing system that you're used to makes things so much easier. So I do have an issue with this statement:

It definitely makes things more difficult to learn, as the scope of what you have to learn to be functional is so much wider. Add to that the number of kanji and complexity of characters is far greater than the alphabet that we use - I absolutely think that it's harder to learn. When I speak to Japanese people other than my teacher about my struggles with kanji, they often admit that they have trouble with them too - even that reading a newspaper they often see kanji that they don't know the exact meaning of. If native speakers/writers of the language have trouble with it themselves.... I'd say it's a difficult language.

Definitely think that Chinese is harder though! Tones, I do not get them O_O

That is rediculously unneccessarily rude. This thread was not made inquiring about your opinion. She undoubtedly has other things that are more pertinent than your silly opinions. You should highly consider keeping useless thought drainage to yourself. As if your uninvolved lack of sensitivity wasn't enough, your arrogance toward language learning is shocking. Dedication towards language learning can be as spaced out as each individual person wants in accordance to their goals. Her current level of japanese and apparent goal of wanting to go to Japan are in perfect synch, if not her abilities being past to her goal. Besides, when she does go to Japan, her Japanese will get a lot better.

But let me say, how dare a person who claims -through being a member of this site- they are a fan of Japan speak so someone with such disrespect. You'd think someone who is a fan of Japan would know how to bite their tongue (or superglue their fingers together, in this case.)

Also, you'd think someone who studies Japanese as 'much' as you do would have enough knowledge of Japan to know that they consider it taboo to dye one's hair. Good Job.

If thats so, howcome OP didn't say something? my post was not with evil intent, infact, some might say it was motivational. i only fought back after I was jumped on by kyle and jesselt brown nosed him.

Edit: I'm not Japanese nor am I living in Japan, so i can do whatever the hell I like with my hair - Also, my friend Ayumi has blonde streaks in her hair, so it can't be so bad.

While I didn't take offense to your initial question, I do consider your later statements regarding how supposedly easy it is to study Japanese and passing judgment on my own lack of skill rude. Not everyone is in the same situation as you.

You should read your own signature. If YOU'RE going to japan, I feel very bad for whatever country you'll be representing while you're there and I pray to GOD that you're not from America. Your profile says you are 'I'm a grumpy old man whos set into his ways. Dont like it? Tough :)' I hope your ways are towards being respectful to your superiors/elders (which you've already showed you're anything BUT) and you're okay with conforming (which, if that's your attitude towards dying your hair, you are also anything but). Please, whatever you say next, or ever, please don't let it be that you are from America. The world's vision of America is already wrongly ruined, and I already have enough to make up for when I go to Japan. I don't need your grotesque attitude hitting the fan.

In that case, do excuse me. T'was not my intention.

Too long, didn't read :)

I love that US governement (at your saying) puts Spanish and Italian amongst the easiest languages to learn.
I haven't heard so far an American (even amongst Italian-American) who can speak a decent Italian. Not to mention the huge amount of idiomatic expression they get wrong (Italian I can easily say it is made 70% of idiomatic expressions) I haven't heard a very good quality of conjugation or way of using our 25+ tenses.
I am not a perfect Spanish speaker, but I know it a little bit and I have to say that even for Spanish I have heard alot of buchering from English native speakers. What cracks me up is the (here in the USA) widespread idiomatic expression "no problemo" of which I guess only 1% of the American population realizes it is very wrong. And I would like to know how many English speaker would immediately understand what it means "tiene que ir" (has to go). Who has to go? Me or someone else? Coz it can mean both. In French it can be "vous devaiz aller" as in the English "yous". Does that mean again me or you all? Yes it can mean both. Not to mention Italian where we have 3 level of politeness where when I am speaking to you I might use conjugation for second person singualr, third person singular or secon person plural. Not to mention that you better know conjugations pretty well because like in Japanese, Italian and Spanish do not use pronouns.
Not to mention agreement of gender. In English is pretty easy...talk about a woman, female possesive and all the rest is normal (like for example "her car"). Is it so easy in other languages? Car in Italian is a female name, so if I talk about my brother's car should I say his or her car? Even past participle in Italian agree with gender, so saying before that in Italian apple (mela) is female, if I say I have eaten an apple what gender should eaten be? Does it always work with the same rule with the gender of past pariciple? Well, no it doesn't.

My 4 year old daughter says clearly that she hates Italian coz it is so dang hard to learn and English is her favourite because it is very easy. I mean, I am sure people have different thought about what language is hard and what language is easy. However I still have to find strangers (even resident in Italy) who speak a decent Italian, if not only after 10-15 years living in Italy.

"Fluent" means "near native." Anything less than that is "conversant." JLPT2 is not fluent in my opinion.

I lived in Japan for a year (and was highly conversant before I went). I returned still not being fluent. I'm JLPT2 for those who care or know what that means.

It is nearly impossible to be fluent in three years. If you're a language savant, then yes. But you cannot build up the requisite level of vocabulary in three years to be fluent.

AJATT will not make you fluent in 2 years. I'm sorry you've been misled to believe that. It is nearly impossible to learn a language to fluency in two years.

If you found German and French harder than Japanese, then you had terrible teachers or you are a linguistic anomaly. There are so many more cultural similarities, sentence structure, syntax, and cognates between Germanic languages and Romance languages than between English and a linguistic island like Japanese.

And yes, I'm pretty sure that "takes longer to master" means "is harder" for anyone's definition of "harder" but yours, apparently. Compare the writing system of English (26 letters) with Spanish (the same 26 letters plus four (which are basically either combinations of others—rr, ll, ch—or ñ) and ´+¨. Compare English with German (English + ß + ¨). Compare English with Japanese (an extra 2,000 characters minimum). How is Japanese easier to write than German or Spanish again?

As for why I cite to US government organizations, I do so because they are more credible than your opinion. I mean, for one thing, they performed research. Research beats anecdotal evidence any day of the week.

As for your absolutely bewildering implication that Chinese writing is not hard to master...I'm not even sure what to make of that.

Next, there is a huge difference between being naturally gifted with languages and actually speaking a specific language well. It is beyond question that I can pick up languages faster than the average human. I say this not to brag, but merely to make a point. Just because I pick up languages quickly doesn't mean that I'm not going to make an error in Japanese. I make errors in my native language. That doesn't mean I'm not good at learning languages!

Finally, conflating the "high" in "hold your head high" and　鼻が高い means you don't seem to know that "pride" has two meanings. One is self-assurance and the other is self-aggrandizement. "Hold your head high" means to have self-assurance (pride). 鼻が高い is a reference to having a self-aggrandizing feeling about oneself (again, pride). Two different meanings of "pride," however. define:pride - Google Search

Edit: Response to chryuop: You may not hear good Italian or Spanish coming from Americans, but that doesn't mean the languages are necessarily harder than anything else. It just means that Americans don't learn any second language sufficiently. Come on! Do you hear good Chinese or Russian from the average American that makes those languages seem easier than Spanish, etc.? And even if that didn't bear out, you can still explain it away by the fact that Spanish is basically the default language for Americans to learn in high school and college. It is often picked because they have to as opposed to because they want to. Because the language is forced upon many, they slack off and don't learn the language well.

On the other hand, those who speak Japanese might actually, on average in the US, speak it better than the average Spanish-as-a-second-language American would speak Spanish simply because those who study Japanese tend to do so because they want to as opposed to because they have to.

Furthermore, it's almost impossible to have a kid learn a second language before they're well past the critical period for language learning. Couple that with the facts that (1) English is one of the de facto languages of the world and (2) the USA is so huge means that there is relatively no incentive for Americans to learn a second language since we rarely venture outside our own borders.

And sure, you can find idiomatic expressions in any language that are not immediately obvious to a non-native. You point out that almost no English speaker would understand the idiomatic meaning of "tener que ir." However, no English speaker would understand "tener," "que," or "ir" without studying the language first!

And if you want to start talking difficulty, look at English prepositions. They are numerous, and in my opinion are the hardest part about learning/teaching English.

But all that is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that, for an English speaker, learning French or Spanish is easier based on almost any metric than learning Japanese. I make no claims about who finds English easy, or whether English is easier than another langauge. I'm just saying for English speakers, Japanese is much harder than Romance languages.

Sure :) Perhaps you need to consider what you're writing before posting it, as you seem to be rubbing people the wrong way and come off as somewhat arrogant?

Me thinks you haven't taken a spin in the Harujuku photo gallery on this site.......or the JRock gallery =\

Now, not only are you insensitive, arrogent, and ignorant, but you are also immature. You say you're 21, yeah right. More like 12. And you want to be a teacher? Hah.

I have an extra one.

I would argue that Japanese is a far simpler system than English, in so far as verbs.

You say Japanese has different dialects. So does English. Even the major subsectors (US/Canada, Australia, NZ, UK) have sub-dialects. You can't tell me someone from Ireland won't have a different speach pattern than someone from British Columbia.

The Verb conjucation has a lot of rules, this is true. But it sticks to them far more than English does. I would argue verb conjugation is far easier in Japanese. I would agree with Shadow on this point, French conjucation is farm more complex (and also why I put French on the back-burner).

The only major hinderance to learning would be the Kanji characters. Otherwise, its no more difficult than other languages for an English speaker. English is ass-backwards from most in terms of grammar.


**Note on dyed hair **
There are young people in Japan who dye their hair. There are also young people with tattoos. Cultures do adapt good sirs.

Is it really so different from Western culture? If someone has dyed hair at a music store, you don't care. However, if your teacher or bank manager has dyed hair, it is suddenly an issue. I would apply the same to Japan. If someone is in a position of public authority, act accordingly. Otherwise, who cares?

Oh English is a hard language - I don't at all envy people learning it as a second language, since there are so many rules and then so many exceptions to those rules, for no apparent reason. In terms of speaking it probably is harder than Japanese. I expect Japanese gets the difficulty rating due to the writing aspect.

But, as an English speaker, I do find Japanese hard.

Haha it always takes a while for people to come round to me, but I like it that way. It tells me which people are genuine and who doesnt care. Also, I think it takes a bit of intellegence and a good sense of humour to get me anyways, as my dry, british sense of humour just doesnt travel across the internet :)

oh noes, these words - they hurt sooooo much!

Your a n00b here - your hardly in a position to throw your weight around. The amount of people that have popped up here to defend me clearly shows that I'm not those things above. I've had my fun with you and the games over now. just drop it, will ya?

Many culture-specific websites in relation to Japan excessively promote the notion that conformity is a strong attribute of the Japanese, and the youth have been taking on some popular Western trends. That is where I got what I said from. If Harujuku and JRock is a majority I have not taken into what I said, then I am sorry for my wrongful indirectl quoting of my Japanese culture research. And I'll check those out :)

Alan X- lol! Cute :)

Being a noob does not make me unintelligent. I'm sorry if my tone in the past couple of replies has been a bit harsh, I was worried the reputation of my country in Japan was at stake and I guess my worry got the best of my tone. Now knowing it's not, I don't dislike you so much :) Also, your attitude towards language learning bothers me. Cooling down now, I can see now that perhaps your being blessed with more time to learn a language than I perhaps has gotten me a bit jealous. I have been working veerrrrryyyy loosely at learning japanese, and, though my goal was to finish the beginning language book by now, many things have gotten in the way. You can say that it's evidentally my choice having not accomplished my goal, but people(as in me) will like you a lot more if you could be sensitive to other commitments people have that conflict with their desire to learn a language. It's a rare thing in America, perhaps anywhere, for a person to genuinely adore learning a language, as the luxuries of diversity have probably spoiled the majority. So your negative attitude towards a person's desire to learn a language set me off. If I have been too harsh, I apologize.

So your method of making friends is to be a jerk and hope some people stick around? :confused: How odd. Is this a British thing too, or just a you thing?

No, but being stupid does.
And you fit into both categories, kid :ywave:

First, I'd assume that spanish is up there as easy because the word order itself is pretty similar to english. As for italian, I hear it's similar to spanish in some ways, but haven't had any actual significant interaction with the language so I'll trust your judgement.

As for tiene que ir, I would take it to mean that 'he, she or you' have to go based on the context of el, la or usted. I'm actually a little confused about your point there, was 'tiene que ir' being told to you? If that's the case, I can see why the options are what they are.

I understand your contempt (or what I perceive as contempt, anyways) for slang like 'no problemo' and know that problema is a feminine noun. As far as american culture is concerned, though, most people will jokingly '-o' to the end of English words to make fake spanish. I don't really want to get carried away, so I'm not going to explain my own various observations about why people use this fake spanish.

Sounds so harsh when you put it that way..

Nope :)

But it works here :p

I'm Ash btw :p

And how am I stupid? Just wondering.

deleted...

tengo que ir - I have to go
tienes que it - You have to go

Depends on the conjugation, my dear. "Tiene que ir" simply means "It goes"

Lack of intelligence? That's usually a sign....

Well, el tiene que ir (he has to go) ella tiene que ir (she has to go) usted tiene que ir (you have to go). The only reason I could've seen 'tiene que ir' meaning the 'me' in the context given before was if it was a statement directed towards chryuop and conjugated with usted, which would be tiene.

PockyMePink: No, "tiene que ir" means "it/he/she has to go." "It goes" is "va." Note the fact that the conjugated form of "tener" is in "tiene que ir." "Tener" means "to have to."

To elucidate a bit more,

Ir (to go)
yo voy
tú vas
el/ella/Ud. va
nosotros vamos
ellos/ellas/Uds. van

Then there's some "vosotros vais" in there (I think), but I was taught Mexican Spanish, so I don't know vos. stuff, so take that with a grain of salt.

On the other hand
Tener que ir (to have to go)
Yo tengo que ir
Tú tienes que ir
el/ella/Ud. tiene que ir
nosotros tenemos que ir
ellos/ellas/Uds. tienen que ir

Of course, the translation of "tener que ir" is "to have to go [somewhere]." "To have to go [as in "to depart"]" would be "tener que irse."