Question about Grammer in Japanese
 

Well, i'm very new to learning Japanese. Started a few hours ago.
I've learnt a lot of the basics and to be honest it seems like a rather easy language to learn to speak. (i'm learning via audiobook)

However, i also want to learn to write it, which i find much harder.

The first thing i'm not sure about is when to use a space in a sentence?

For instance (keeping it simple):
Mainichi terebi o mimas, soshite tokidoki sushi o tabemas
Typing it as it's spoken would result in:
まいにち　てれび　お　みまｓ　そして　ときどき　す し　お　たべまｓ

However, when i scan through random Japanese writing on the net there do not appear to be as many spaces as i'd expect.
I'm going to guess that the 'o' should be added to the end of the verb for starters?
てれびお　instead of てれび　お ?


But any clarification on this would be appretiated.
I have other questions, but 1 at a time.

The only place you will see a space is at the beginning of a paragraph. This might shock you but it's the truth. :)

Nice try for someone who has been studying only a few hours! You will probably learn rather quickly because you are using the real Japanese letters from the start. The earlier you abandon romaji, the faster you will learn Japanese. That's a promise. Besides, there 's nothing written in romaji for you to read in the future. No books, no magazines, no websites, no restaurant menus, nothing. There's a member here that pounces on me everytime I state this. But please ignore him if he does so here. He knows nothing about Japanese.

Your sentence まいにち　てれび　お　みまｓ　そして　ときどき　す し　お　たべまｓ has a few problems.

1. Spaces. There should be no spacing within the sentence.

2. The two s's. Did you not feel anything about them?
The parts you wrote as "s" in the romaji sentence should each be す. There is no "s" that isn't immediately followed by a vowel in Japanese. In conversation, however, す can often sound like "s" without a vowel, but in writing it's always す.

3. Have you learned katakana? If so, テレビ (TV) is a katakana word. You wrote it てれび in hiragana. If you haven't, you can write it in hiragana for now. Ideally, you shouldn't worry about writing sentences until you have learned both hiragana and katakana, which won't take more than a week or two.

4. The object particle is written を, not お. The pronunciation stays the same.　
So, writen correctly without using any kanji, it is:　(It's actually two sentences.)

まいにちテレビをみます。そしてときどきおすしをたべます。

The "no spacing" rule may baffle you now, but as you learn kanji and start replacing the kana words by kanji, each word will pretty much visually stand out clearly as if there were spaces. Katakana words help in this direction as well.

No one can learn writing and reading Japanese and its grammer only from Audiobook.
Why do you believe spaces are used in Japanese?

毎日テレビを見ます。そして、時々、寿司を食べます。

Hiragana,Katakana,Kanji,Kutouten.
There are so many things you should learn to write and read Japanese.

OP has only been studying Japanese for a few hours...

日本語を初めてまだ数時間という方なのですが・・・:)

Thanks for the reply.

I've only started using audiobook as i do primarily want to learn to speak Japanese first and foremost.
This will be more usseful during my visit which i am planning.

However i will go more in depth into the writing of Japanese soon.
I agree that using Romanji isn't a good way to go but i'm using it initially and then using my keyboard to type the pronunciation and it displays the symbols.
Just until i get used to seeing them.

I haven't looked at katakana yet. That is something i wasp lanning on going into tomorrow.
I am not very good at languages to be honest, but i excel at most other studies so it's my belief that i can do well at Japanese because i really want to learn mroe than anything and i think that will help me.



No spaces only for paragraphs. Thanks, i didn't realise that. I knew i was wrong to put spaces in but wasn't sure why.



Do you think it is worth studying Kanji at the beginning? Or leaving it until i've mastered Hiragana and Katakana first?
I've got a print out of the alphabets so i'm going to read it over and over every day until they stick in my head.

Also, i think if i actually write it out on paper everyday in full then it'll embed it in my memory. (hopefully)

I'll keep posing in this thread as i progress and require and information etc.

Not at the beginning! If you do that, you will end up hating the language.

1. Master hiragana perfectly. Then,
2. Master katakana perfectly.

When you feel 100% comfortable with BOTH, you can start learning kanji. When learning kanji, always do so in context. DO NOT try to cram random kanji, please. Even Japanese kids don't do that. Start with the simplest ones and work your way up. Only you can decide what pace is suitable for you (like how many you should learn every week).

Using paper and pencil is the best method (and by far the funnest and most effectice). I feel too many people rely too much on the PC to learn Japanese (and other things).

知ってましたがAudiobookというのが気になったのと、文法 以前に、この方が日本語の文章を見たことがあるんだろ うかという疑問があったので最終形を提示しました。ラ スボスを。
Newcastle ほどの都市でも教科書売ってないのかなぁ:confused:
too much on the PCの一例かも知れませんね。それでは:ywave:

I have no idea what you are saying. As i said, i've only just started learning today.

I started by audiobook, this does not mean i expect to learn everything this way. it is purely a way to get started with speaking Japanese.

However, i would also like to learn to write Japanese and understand the characters. This will take me a lot longer so for now i can't understand most responses if they are in Japanese.




@Sashimister - Noted. I'll make sure to leave Kanji alone for now.

I certainly thinkg writing them down is also the best method. That way i'll remember them much better because i have to actually sit and write them out time and time again. So i'll get used to the symbols and what each one means.
I see little point in using the keyboard to translate it other than to communicate some words across to see if i'm doing things correctly.
If i use it too much it's just doing the work for me and i won't have as much of an understanding.

Initially my plan is to learn the basics in speaking the language for about a week. In this time i expect to be able to describe hobbies, past times etc, order foods, drinks, greetings etc etc. The usual stuff required if i was visiting as a tourist.
After that week or so, i'll start on understanding the characters used in Hiragana and see how long it takes me to memorise those and go from there.

I'm going to second this. I realized that I can learn about 300 kanji with most of their readings with no context, but then I start losing some as I learn others. But with context, they all stay in, pretty much.

A great book for learning kanji is Kanji in Context because it gives you a lot of words that use the kanji, so you get context easily.

Also, OP, OH MY GOD you learned a lot in just a few hours!

Don't worry about it. Allhailhata was talking to SashiMister (a native Japanese speaker).

Hiragana and katakana should only take a couple of weeks to master at the most if you are putting in plenty of study. Then, onto the first few hundred kanji!

This is me :o This is a really ridiculous but effective way and you have a chance to practice your writing as well. Moreoever, by writing kana and kanji one by one, using your pen, the sentence structure and grammar will gradually imprint into your brain. Also you can read every word out when you are jotting them down.

Thanks for all the replies guys.

I'm picking Japanese up faster than i expected to be honest given my poor history in language learning. I guess it's because i'm very serious about it.

I just spent 10 minutes looking at a chart or of all the Japanese characters in Hiragana and Katakana. Initially it looks like a nightmare to memorise but when you have a look there is a huge pattern to the continuinity of all the symbols when it comes to the 3 letter symbols like kyu etc.



1 question with regards to this though:

The symbol for 'ki' is キ and the symbol for 'yu' is ユ
Likewise for the rest, 'shi' シ and 'ｙu' ユ and so on (the pattern)

Is this how the 3 letter symbols are pronounced?
So 'キュ' would be pronounced ki-yu and 'シュ' would be pronounced shi-yu?

Or are they pronounced how they are written? So simply 'kyu' and 'shu'

Yes, this is correct...though without hearing you say it, I cannot be sure.

Found just the video for you.

It's ok, you still confirmed which way i should be doing it. Mainly just wanted to clear up that they are not split into their initial symbols for pronouncing them.

Even if i'm still slightly off, as long as i'm on the right path before i start going into the finer details.




Can't see a video, must be the work computer blocking it. I'll check it tonight at home.

sorry to change the subject from you but i was wondering if someone could help me? I asked someone if they could teach me the basics of japanese to get me started and they replied in japanese. I tried looking up the meanings of the words online but i couldnt, i think it maybe because she mispelled them?
anyway here is the sentence:

haha combanwa,shibaraku desu ne!nande nihongo shabe tai?

thanks in advance!

This person doesn't know much Japanese. There are serious mistakes in the phrase. S/He is trying to say:

"Good evening, long time no see. Why do you want to speak Japanese?"

whoa! thanks for the quick reply! very helpfull!

To reiterate, this person would not be a good teacher. Their Japanese has a few errors. One really jumped out at me, and another did after I re-read it.

Thanks so much Sashimister! This video is just awesome except I hate the background music :D (pretty annoying) Anyway, the Japanese speaker speaks so loud and clear which makes us easier to learn.

Just thought i'd make another post and see if there are still any errors left in what i'm doing.
I just want to iron out all the mistakes before i start progressing more. I have all the time in the world when i'm at work to learn so before i start spending hours and hours everyday i just want to make sure i'm on the right track.

こんいちはすしをたべますか
いいえチキンをたべます

Anything i'm missing there?
That's meant to be a question and then a response below.
I was told that words like たべます refer to all scenarios (i will eat, i eat, she eats etc) unlike English where you need to change it slightly.

if that is correct, (or not and i understand where i went wrong) then i'll feel very comfortable about moving forward and memorising the symbols.
I started on Hiragana yesturday and quickly memorised あ　い　う　え　お and printed out 300 blank tables. I'm going to fill the tables in multiple times a day and hopefully by the end of the week (approx) i can fill it in by memory alone. :D

こんいち　＞　きょう

There is actually a reading こんにち for the word　今日(today), but it is not used in saying "doing this and that today". It's used to say "today's Japan" or "the world today". For the everyday "today", it's read きょう.

きょうはすしをたべますか。
いいえ、チキンをたべます。

Correct.

My bad, it was meant to say 'hello' at the start but i typed in the wrong character!
こんにちは
This is the problem when typing via an English keyboard. I need to get a japanese one i think.

I'm trying not to use the romanji but just for this example if i type:
konnichiha as normal it comes out like: こんいちは
It seems to discount the second 'n' and just puts in the Hiragana for 'i' instead of 'ni'
However if i type kon(space bar)nichiha it comes out correctly: こんにちは


Clearly i need to get away from doing it this way as it's prone to errors.

I think i'll stop using the PC to type up what i'm learning. I'll just write them down myself the same way i'm doing with learning the symbols.

No just pay attention when you type through the IME. Usually the bigger problems are when you meet pair of letters like んに which turn out as んい or words where you have にや which turn out as にゃ. But I agree that writing helps you learn faster than typing.
Trust me after almost 3 years I still send in my written exercises with those mistakes LOL.

BTW, from what I hear, even native speakers use English IME to type in Japanese and not a Japanese keyboard.

I may have came down on IME a little prematurely. I have just noticed that it auto-corrects it if i press 'enter' afterwards. So that's ok.

Unfortunately i tend to have correction turned off because it tries to change it to Kanji which i don't understand yet...naturally i only want to write things i understand myself so i don't want the computer doing the corrections for me.

I'm going to have to stick with it anyway really but i'm certainly going to write down as much as i can as it is always the best way.


I will need some kind of official learning program soon though. I'm currently just teaching myself the basics with help fro mpeople on this forum and an audiobook for pronunciation.
However i'd really like a course type layout so i could see how i'm pressing properly.

Had a brief look at Rosetta Stone but it looked rubbish to be honest. The methods it claims to use would never work. Teaching you like you learnt your primary language doesn't work when you are only studying a few hours a day. Just can't see the methods working at all.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Repeat after me, everyone: You type Japanese exactly the same way on both keyboards, and the letter keys are in exactly the same place.

(Of course, there is a very, very slight exception, but it has nothing to do with OP making typing mistakes.)

The secret my friend is to hit the "n" key three times in a row. konnnichi　

Also
works.

Whoa, it does. Cool. I never knew that.

To be more precise, I'd say it's because ん is either typed as nn or n' on IME. So whenever you want to input ん, just simply hit n twice (or n' but personally I prefer the former). :)