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10-16-2010, 07:58 AM
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10-16-2010, 03:46 PM
I don't mean to stir things up, I just want to clarify something. When using google as a tool for language, (for like... semi 'statistics') you have to consider the alternatives. I don't think any of the クラスは/クラスが example exceeded even 100 results. The クラスで example got over a hundred thousand results. When taken into consideration statistics-wise, you're talking about a grain of sand on a beach type of situation. This is just proof that natives make mistakes, too. It can also be proof that you CAN use certain abnormal grammar occasionally in very particular circumstances.
I don't think that what chiuchimu was saying about は/が was WRONG, persay. It was certainly a bit misleading, though. I don't think it was intended at all though. Part of the purpose of my post after that was to clarify the "rules" as they are *to my best knowledge* officially written in my basic Japanese grammar book (written in Japanese to teach to Japanese people). I was in the same boat as Kyle for a few minutes in that I got kinda discomfortable with my knowledge of Japanese... chiuchimu's post set off a red flag, and after some review I realized there were a couple of points that could've been better clarified. He covered SOME of the usage, but not all of it. Without covering the remaining usages of は/が it made it look like his examples were the only differences in the usages of は/が. I don't mean any offense by this though. When teaching English it's hard for me to recall ALL of the rules for certain grammar and then explain it articulately to my students. Keep in mind that as a "native" speaker of our langauge, we are all pro (even people who have terrible grammar...). That doesn't mean that we have a perfect grasp on the mechanics of it though. It's kind of like how there are some really great improvisors (like in Jazz) who have no idea what the hell they are doing half the time. They can explain some of what they're doing, but they're gonna be leaving out a lot because they might not know that playing an F# over a Cmaj7 is going to sound better than an F... even though they are both a half step away from a chord tone. I mentioned it before, but I said there were certain characteristics about chiuchimu's Japanese that seemed like some Japanese-American's Japanese that I've encountered. I think I remember that chiuchimu has lived outside of Japan for an extended amount of time, right? If I'm wrong I apologize for being rude! I tried looking up certain japanese-american specific Japanese the other day but didn't have much luck. I know it exists though and I wish I had known more Japanese when I was in frequent contact with it. My post is gonna get long with this thought, but I'll go ahead and say it. I think and talk a lot about "interlanguage *中間言語*". I think that EVERYONE speaks an 'interlanguage'. By that, I mean everyone speaks an approximation of their own langauge. We all have certain qualities and mistakes in our writing or speech that vary from what is "official". So there are a lot of areas that can be looked at in a different light depending on who's looking at it. I talked about the は/が thing with some co-workers and they said some things were hard to call even for a native. They gave one example that "had" to be は, and much to their surprise I found a loophole that could make it が (not that an exmaple like I gave was very realistic). The topic took like 3-5 pages in a grammar book that is like 400 pages long... we probably talked about it for 20 minutes. That's just 3-5 pages of a BASIC grammar book for crying out loud. While it's certainly a fundamental area of Japanese, it's one of those areas where you shouldn't let yourself get hung up on, or else you'll never move on. This might be straying from the topic of the thread quite a bit, but I think it has a lot to do with what I'm trying to say. For all of you English speakers out there, I have a question for you to think about. Which is correct? "My favorite memory was when..." or "My favorite memory is when..." I'm sure there is an officially correct answer, but people probably frequently use both phrases. You can make a decent argument for either one. Your memory is about the past, but it's a memory that you have now. There's a lot of gray area like that in a language, so it can be hard to teach a language in that sense. Sometimes you have to teach what is 'used' instead of what is 'correct' (I don't mean to imply that because 1 in a hundred thousand Japanese speakers of all ages messes up his or her は/が usage you should too, by the way). Another thing, just tonight I went out to eat/drink and I talked to a man from Ibaraki-ken. I could tell he couldn't understand more than 50% of what i was saying. He was jokingly saying things like "speak Japanese". I admit that I couldn't understand most of what he was saying either. This isn't because I'm a foreigner and I don't understand Japanese, by the way. This has to do with the fact that he had a thick accent from where he's from and I have a thick accent from where I live. He couldn't understand one of the guys with whom he came-- another one of the guys who was there (who I happen to know) has a little cleaner Japanese and even still he could probably only understand about 70% of what he said. This is part of what I'm saying with interlanguage-- there are many different dialects, which I would categorize as an "approximation" of "japanese" (with all do respect to Japanese dialects and standard Japanese). We had a good time though. Our different 'versions' of Japanese wasn't seen as a reson to get personal with one another. We had a couple drinks together and laughed at each others stupid accents and I frankly told him that even though he was from 水戸 I still didn't like natto. We had fun communicating. I think that's all that language should and is really about.
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10-16-2010, 04:53 PM
Dear OP,
私(わたし)は土曜日（どようび）に時々（ときどき）学� ��（がっこう）に行きます。 私は時々土曜日に学校に行きます。 are both fine. I'm not very good at explaining grammar, but as far as I can think of, there is no rule in the order you write "time" and "place". Japanese word order is pretty flexible in general. For instance, 彼(かれ)がそこに行（い）く そこに彼が行く They both mean the same thing, "He goes there", and it is not even an inversion. Neither is "There he goes", although the latter has a hint of emphasis on "there". As for 「たまに」, it's just a slightly more informal form of 時々. I would drop "私は" before changing 時々 to たまに if I wanted to sound more colloquial though. 時々土曜日に学校にいく(んだけど、) or 土曜日に時々学校にいく(んだけど、) sounds more speech-like. Hope this helps. P.S. There are many different rules in using は and が, and it is highly dependent on the context. There are even some books dedicated to the topic, and it's best you consult a good grammar book, but your examples here sound correct to me.
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10-17-2010, 09:36 PM
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10-17-2010, 09:49 PM
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2. it's んだけど not んだいけど. んだけど is ん＋だ＋けど, where ん adds a colloquial, slightly emphatic feel to the preceding plain form sentence, then だ makes everything up through ん into a grammatical sentence by itself (です is the plain form of だ), and then けど means "however/but." Altogether, often 〜んだけど is a less direct, nicer-sounding way of saying whatever came before it. Contrast 寝坊してしまった with 寝坊してしまったんだ They both mean something like "I overslept/slept in" but the former is more direct/harsh/abrupt than the second. The art of Japanese is the art of saying as little as possible with as many syllables as possible  hehehehe
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10-18-2010, 03:44 AM
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10-18-2010, 04:05 AM
Kyle, です is the polite form of だ, silly :P
But yeah, you're spot on. Also, if you're interested in colloquial speech, the verbs are very easy to memorize, because they all end in with an う sound--I learned verbs this way: 行かない plain present negative 行きますpolite present positive 行く plain present positive 行けば if 行こう let's do SO... other verbs are like this: 見る to see 読む to read 聞く to listen/ask, etc. also 行かなかった plain past negative (uses the あ sound) 行った (ta-form) for plain past positive SO... 図書館へいったよ～ I went to the library. 学校へ行く？ You going to school? 飲みすがなかったね。 I didn't drink too much, right? ソーダーを飲まないんだよ～ If course I don't drink soda. and so on and so forth, hope that helps (and I hope that's right, I'm not perfect in colloquial speech either :P)
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10-18-2010, 04:20 AM
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