た方がいいです　と てもいいです
 

I'm a little confused using both.

Can someone break down both of these so I can understand how it works.
Also How can i put these in negative form?

Lastly, How do you say "you must do this" ex: you must take of your shoes at the genkan

and how to say "it's okay to" ex: "it's okay to use a fork"

ありがとう
　　　　　　、幽すけ

た方がいい：it is better to do...
～ない方がいい：it is better to NOT do
靴をぬがなければなりません＝＝＞～ければ　ならない ：if you dont do it, it wont be good (so you HAVE to do it)
フォくをつかってもいい： it is ok to use the fork

hhh lol I ordered ur japanese grammar textbook yesterday, hopefully it will be delivered soon;))) I look forward to be as fluent as you are in Japanese!
貴方みたいに日本語で流暢になるのを楽しみにしてます ！！

Actually the more I read Japanese and look up for stuff in dictionaries the more those forms become confusing.
ばいい
ばだめ
ばならない
and many more started making my head spin bad LOL. It was so nice when I read my textbook...all so nicely explained. Then when they used them I start feeling dizy (;-;)

(It was just a little venting :) ).

マア、インターネットで明らかにhatsuto11さんはどのぐら い日本語ができるかを全然分からないものです。けーれ ーどっ、いままで文法の間違いや変な言い方は使ったこ とがありません。
ですから、多分もう十分で上手な日本語が使えるわけで はないでしょうか；－)
ところで、どんな本買っちゃったんですか？あれの名前 何だけ?

Just because I feel as though this needs to be pointed out:

貴方 - Why the kanji? And why not use your name?
日本語で - Should it be 日本語が? (“fluent in”の検索結果（31 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク)
Why みたいに with a sentence ending in ます? surely this is an imbalance?

Don't worry, my post is not just to point these things out, but also to give useful links on the grammar the OP asked about:
てもいい - Expressing "must" or "have to" | Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese
方がいい - Using 「方」 and 「よる」 | Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese

:)

たほうがいい suggestion
てもいい sort-of permission
なければならない／なければいけない requirement

薬を飲めばいいよ You should take your medicine.
薬を飲んでもいいよ It's OK to take your medicine.
薬を飲まなければならない You must take your medicine.

Variations on that:
薬をのんだらいいよ You should take your medicine.
薬を飲んだほうがいいよ You should take your medicine.
薬を飲まなくてもいいよ You don't have to take your medicine. [Even if you don't take your medicine, it's OK.]
薬を飲んではだめだ You must take your medicine. [Not taking your medicine is bad.]
薬を飲んじゃだめだ You gotta take your medicine. (just a contraction for the previous one)
薬を飲まなくちゃいけない You gotta take your medicine. (just a contraction for 飲まなくてはいけない)
薬を飲まないほうがいい You shouldn't take your medicine.

Note that you cannot use the ほうがいい construction to indicate past tense because it takes the past tense in order to construct the present. You can also use the present form + ほうがいい, but it has something to do with comparisons. Actually, in over seven years of speaking the language, I don't think I've ever encountered this, even when I lived in Japan. Maybe I did but just forgot.
Aw, heck, this URL explains it better than I: 38

I had always just assumed this is what this meant without ever bothering to look it up.
Glad I haven't made any bad habits lol.
Thanks for posting that link, it's a nice explanation :)

I also think reading this particular part of the quote is quite important too, since all too often I hear people being told that they can't use present tense with ほうがいい at all :rolleyes:

I have but only a couple of times.
An example was that one of my friends said something like:
映画によっては本を読む方がいい時もある。

Those may not have beeen her exact words, I can't remember too well.
But the point is it seems to me like it might be used far less.
(And going by the explanation in your link it's easy to see why :))

た方がいい is completely new to me.. the sentence above doesn't make sense to me..

Halp!

EDIT: HANG ON

Its better to read a book than watch a film if you have time?!!?

Methinks a penny about the size of king kongs testicles just dropped!

映画によっては本を読む方がいい時もある
Depending on the film sometimes reading the book is better.

In this case:
~によって - Depending on
読む方がいい - Reading is better
~時もある - Sometimes (Lit. There are also times when~)

Hhh do ya really think so?! Anyway, as to your question regarding the books i've been using so far, i think that i already told ya i learn japanese through the interent, therefore, i don't have books. But I ordered a parcel of textbooks a while ago and unfortunately the moment they reached my home, i discovered they were difficult to my level and i could not get any advantage of them. Moreover, i ordered どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型 but i am not sure it will be delivered since it is my first time to by from that website and i might me scammed, i donno:O
Anyway, there's no use comparing your academic Japanese with mine lol:)))

Look, you might be right about the wrong usage of the particle 'de'. Yes that's right, i should use 'ga' because 'de' makes no sense there. As for mitaini, I don't know if you are right or wrong! Maybe you are better than me in using that word:) I mean, it may be unsuitable to use it in that context as you mentioned. Can ya plz tell me with wut i can replace it?
As to 貴方, i don't think that Japanese might have any rules that prevent me from writing it with kanji! It is not wrong! for instance, the word kawaii can sometimes be written as:かわいいand sometimes they write is as:可愛い. I don't think that you can consider that a mistake! Do never forget that Japanese was formerly written using kanji ONLY. And kanji is the main element in the japanese script. Those characters are the source of the concept themselves! Anyway, thx 4 ur notes:)

Actually, it was CHINESE that was written using only Hanzi before, and in the times when stories like the Tales of Genji were written, male intellectuals wrote using Chinese, not Japanese. I'm not entirely up on my history of Hiragana, but I'm pretty sure that it was an adaptation that women used so they had a way to communicate and was later adopted by men too.
Quoting the wiki article on The Tales of Genji:
As with most Heian literature, the Genji was probably written mostly (or perhaps entirely) in kana (Japanese phonetic script) and not in Chinese characters because it was written by a woman for a female audience. Writing in Chinese characters was at the time a masculine pursuit; women were generally discreet when using Chinese symbols, confining themselves mostly to pure Japanese words.

There is no explicit rule that you can't use as much kanji as you want, but for the same reason that it is considered incorrect and awkward for me to write in elizabethan english, native Japanese speakers don't use kanji for everything. Even with my limited experience reading Japanese, I've seen あなた written in kanji only a few times, and it was for a more complex purpose than 'using kanji for kanji's sake'.

Another reason you don't always use kanji is that one compound can have multiple readings. The easiest example for me to think of is 今日. When I see 今日 my first instinct is *always* that it is read きょう but another way to read it is こんにち. The salutation こんにちは！ will sometimes be written by beginners as 今日は！ and even though I'm not a native speaker as I'm reading I always expect there to be more sentence following, as in 今日は雨が降りました (Today it rained). Don't get me wrong, any native speaker will realize from context that the speaker means こんにちは and not きょうは, but it can be a bit jarring and it disrupts the flow of the sentence. Just like in your own native language, the flow of a composition (or readability) goes a long way towards making you seem more natural.

Just one more time before I finish my post I want to emphasize: If Japanese was EVER written using only Kanji, it was almost immediately after they were introduced to Hanzi (Kanji) and the standard now is NOT all Kanji. Just because there is a Kanji for a word or compound does not mean it is considered correct to use it (I believe the yahoo.jp dictionary actually indicates when it's standard to write using ひらがな instead of 漢字 for a fair number of words). It's not always a matter of personal opinion, sometimes it's a matter of being proper or not.

Great thread :)

Thanx alot Kyle, a very complete post.

[quote=duo797;789803]Actually, it was CHINESE that was written using only Hanzi beforeQUOTE]

You should be kidding lol:) The chinese is STILL written using only hanzi:) You don't need to say before:P

Just as you mentioned, the context can clarify anything.... But I don't really understand how is that related to 'anata'. Obviously that word cannot be read in a different way!
Furthermore, I am still totally persuaded that Japanese was formerly written using Kanji ONLY. And the best evidence for that is the 古事記 which was the first japanese book ever!
Since the Japanese did NOT have a way to write at first, they adopted the Chinese hanzi and started to write their own language using it following the Chinese grammar. Afterwards, they started to express the japanese grammatical patterns using phonetic hanzi and the language was still written using only hanzi at that time! But as you mentioned, women were finding it difficult to remember a very huge amount of kanji which was used at that time and consequently they innovated the kana.

As for what you mentioned (concerning whether it is a personal opinion or not....), i believe you are biased to the japanese alphabet and i don't know why you really are:) Have ya ever thought of the origin of hiragana and katakana???? They didn't come from the air lol! They Japanese people simplified some phonetic kanji into those silly letters and you can check that in wikipedia if you want. The beauty of the japanese script is in its kanji and there's no use defending hiragana which made japanese look simple and hid its beauty!
Even though the US tried to get rid of them after it defeated japan post WW2 forcing the japanese people to reduce their number, Japan NEVER EVER stopped using them and they tried to protect them as much as they could. i believe that Kanji is not entirely chinese and it is an indispensable part of the Japanese culture.
＊＊＊＊漢字＝文化
＊＊＊＊平仮名・片仮名＝戯言
Bear that in mind;)

I was thinking のように

There is no law or anything saying you mustn't write it in kanji, but it can look un-natural to write absolutely everything in kanji... Especially when most people will write that word in hiragana.

Just for the sake of throwing some random very rough numbers out here lets use google hits:
"貴方" の検索結果 約 19,200,000
"あなた" の検索結果 約 269,000,000

Also I decided to bring it up because I wanted to know why you decided on あなた when Harumaki's user name is clearly visible.
Surely if you have to refer to him Harumakiさん would be better.
And just because I'm on the subject of pronouns, if you don't do it already avoid using pronouns as much as possible.

Hope this helps you out :)

Look, i know very well that i should avoid using pronouns in Japanese since they don't like to refer to each other directly, but what do you think I can do?! I simply like the pronoun 'anata' because it is the same that we use in Arabic! That's all.... I just like that pronoun.... and if Harumaki felt offended of that (i don't think he may feel so), i would avoid using it with him.
Plus, I prefer using 貴方 (written in kanji) because i see it nicer that way... And believe me the japanese themselves also write it that way and they did that multiple times when e-mailing me, therefore, i would never think of asking ya to correct that:)

Well, 十人十色 I guess :p

I can also say from personal experience that for some bizarre reason, some Japanese seem to go into pronoun overdrive only when they are talking to me.
It's strange because the pronouns are obviously not needed, and they would obviously not use them with another Japanese.
The other day someone actually used 私 in every sentence.
I was in shock lol

Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I have a little correction on your English.
(Or rather, not correction, but something for you to take note of)

Using the word "Look" like this makes you sound quite rude, which I am sure you don't mean to do.
It makes it seem as though you are speaking down on me, despite the fact that I have tried to help you out.
But since you are not a native English speaker I'm hoping it's just a mistake because you don't know the feeling it can give. :)

(Any future English corrections I will just PM you :))

I don't think people get as offended on the internet (because it's the internet), and they're also more direct. Also, you may be interested in knowing that あなた is also a way that a wife might affectionately call for her husband instead of using his name. It's obvious no one here is married to you, but just so you know :p

To the first part, women didn't have problems remembering the Hanzi or using them, it's just that during that time period women were not involved in 'higher learning' so they weren't really taught classical chinese.The japanese people adapted the Kanji through a variety of ways, by the way. Some were borrowed for their sound, some were borrowed for their meaning. I'm not trying to say that you should write using only hiragana or katakana, that'd be harder to read in more complex sentences.

As for the comment about World War 2, that is just plain wrong. The US didn't try to alter the Japanese language after WW2. The 常用漢字 are entirely Japanese in origin. It started with the 当用漢字 that were decided upon and implemented in 1946. The 常用漢字 then took the place of the 当用漢字 in 1981 with the number of 1945 kanji and just recently (I think a month or two ago?) even more kanji were added to the jouyou list.

You're arguing against the evolution of a language. The communist government didn't come in to china and force everyone to write in simplified characters, they just standardized what was already a nationally used short-hand. The US government didn't force Japan to do anything about their own language. Japan *chose* to implement a list of 常用漢字 which is what you need to know to be (technically, not actually) considered literate. The only reason it would be considered odd or incorrect to use kanji instead of just ひらがな in a certain place is if the vast majority of Japan has moved away from using that kanji in that context. You say that Kanji are culture but you're also denying the current culture that exists now by insisting that you do it your way.

This does not refute the assertion that Japanese used to be written using only kanji with no kana. In fact, it is true that Japanese used to only be written with kanji. For example, the Kojiki was written entirely with kanji, but in 上代日本語.

Here is the Kojiki (with other texts). It is in Japanese, believe it or not: http://www.ceres.dti.ne.jp/~alex-x/wakan/menu-w.html

Well, this isn't true, either. Kanji were introduced to Japan in like the first century AD, but the Kojiki was written in the 9th century AD. Kanji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I was not aware the US tried to get rid of kanji after WWII. I studied 日米交流史 at university in Japan and never heard of this. I'm pretty sure this is not true.

This is bullcrap. Are you seriously suggesting that a writing system developed in Japan is not part of Japanese culture, and is, in fact, baloney?

Also, if you write あなた in kanji, people will know you are not a careful Japanese writer. There are exceptions, but in general, you will not write it in kanji. Especially not in an online forum.

There are times when using kanji instead of kana is uneducated. There is a native speaker here who has repeatedly said this.

Fair enough, I'm wrong on that point. Be that as it may, (and this isn't directed at you kyle) that doesn't really weaken the rest of my explanation. 常用漢字 was a creation of the Japanese government, not the American one. I don't really feel like arguing this point any further, though, so consider this post the end of my discussion on this topic.

I'm pretty sure you guys are going off topic...