月曜日, 10月 02, 2006

わかりました。

For this week's topic, let's hear about instances where you could actually read, hear something in Japanese outside our class. Or you made someone understand with your Japanese. So わかりました could be "(わたしは)わかりました。" or "(someone elseは)わかりました。"

Let me share mine with you.

きのう エッサベーグルへ いきました。エッサベーグルはイーストサイドの51ちょうめと 3rd アヴェニューです。When we went in, the guy at the counter looked at us, and asked "こんにちは?" He asked if we were Japanese by saying the greeting with a rising intonation. We got the bagels and creemcheese and came back to the checkout counter. The man said どうもありがとう(I don't remember if he said ございます afterwards...)。 Then he said, "また きます。"

また is again. So it was "(You) come again." Because it didn't have "てください" form, it wasn't "(Please) come again."

Of course I could guess he meant to say "Come again." I had an urge to tell him that he should say "また きてください," but I held it back, my professional/personal obsession to teach... Contrary to his expectation, I didn't say anything in Japanese. Maybe I should have to make him feel good about himeself speaking Japanese to us. But then I again, I didn't know what to say. If I said anything too long, he wouldn't have understood. And the awkwardness would have continued.

But then again, I do the same thing. I say "Bona cera" to one of the staff in my building just because he is from Italy. It's just a friendly gesture and my naive use of the language.

It doesn't have to be entertaining (mine certainly isn't...) or anything, this is just an example to get you started. Maybe I wrote too much. It can be shorter.

Let's say your deadline for your post is by this Friday.
Also, please feel free to comment on each others' post.

hiroshi

17 Comments:

At 10/02/2006 7:51 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

When I went to Japan in December to celebrate my grandfather's birthday, I was shopping at a mall in 千葉. Well... my cousins are (or used to be) obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh cards and I would get it for them as a gift everytime I went back to Taiwan so I decided to get them some Japanese ones this time. I wanted the newest ones, but the only words I knew was 新しい (あたらしい) so I just pointed at the Yu-Gi-Oh cards and kept on repeating that. Thank goodness he actually understood what I meant, and I gave me the newest pack... but it ended up that my cousins didn't like Yu-Gi-Oh anymore and were obsessed with Fullmetal Alchemist... so it was all for nothing.

 
At 10/02/2006 8:09 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

せんげつ ともだちと ソーネー(SoHo)へ いきました. There was a new store with a strange name: UNIQLO. We all argued over how to pronounce UNIQLO and we ignored these symbols on the right of the logo. Recently, わたしは タクシー で いきました. I saw the ad for UNIQLO on another タクシー and I finally realized that those "symbols" were actually カタカナ. In short, UNIQLO is pronouced ユニクロ.

 
At 10/02/2006 9:25 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

私の友達は日本語を勉強します。For many years and is fluent (as far as I can tell). He has a Japanese joke he tells where he looks wistfully into the distance, strokes his chin and says "Long, long ago." Well 'chin'は英語で"あご"です。 It never fails to crack up a native speaker, but it took me a while to appreciate it.あの人はトロントの英語学校で働きます。

 
At 10/02/2006 9:44 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

On the 1 train downtown they have a translation of the south ferry instructions in japanese and i didnt understand all of it, especially since a lot of it was in kanji, but I could read "South Ferry" in katakana and doomo arigatou gozaimasu. I think they had ikimasu somewhere in there too.

 
At 10/03/2006 2:11 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

Oh (ナタリーさん)! I see those UNIQLO signs all the time. One time a few friends and I had a ゴスローリ romp around/between Union Square and St. Mark's (kind of like Harajuku style) and we saw the big sign "From Tokyo to New York" (??) and couldn't resist taking a big group shot beneath it. But yeah it took me a few times to notice it was カタカナ, as well. I was really proud I could read it, though.

スコットさんの洒落 made me laugh because I'm a sucker for puns. すみません! There's this one song I like, part of the title is ベタですまん。Which is a pun that has to do with 関西弁, I think. If I understood it correctly (and it's very likely I didn't), it can work two ways: if you read it as ベタ で すまん, it's supposed to be something like "Sorry I'm not better" or "Sorry for not being better" (with すまん=すみません), but if you read it as "ベタ です マン" it's supposed to be like "I'll be a better man" but in a really grammatically incorrect order. Actually the more I look at it the less any of it makes sense......... ;__;

Um I don't know. The other night I saw some business-looking guys (サラリーマン?) walking down the street and decided to be creepy (and real stealth-like) and follow them for a block or so because I thought they were maybe 日本語を話します but I couldn't tell from a distance? All I could pick up from the conversation was "これは..." T_T Their accents were different...

I don't have any good stories, wow. I guess I have a couple from this past summer でもこれはだれも聞たかません. (Did I conjugate that correctly, or did I just completely make up my own verb tense/form?) But it all basically revolves around my friend teaching me to say ちゅうしって and 抱きしめってください! And 林佳樹様. And KARYUさん from D'espairsRay. Heh.

 
At 10/03/2006 11:42 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

Okay I know I've already posted this week, but today was 日本tacular so i decided to update.

I was at the 1 traiinnn attttt 42nd street and there was a guy playing 三味線!!! :D So I went up to him and was all, "すみません, 日本人ですか?" and he was all "いいえ, 中国人ですか?" (でも、英語で言いました.) So he was all, "You know Japanese?" and I was all "a little bit" and then he was like "I know a little too. こんにちは! さよなら!" and that was the end of that.

Just a question - did the 三味線 develop from the Chinese erhu? He was definitely playing 三味線 because there were three strings and there was no bow. But the two look similar. (I don't know how the erhu sounds so I can't compare their sounds).

And then 私の地下鉄の列車(?) there as this guy wearing a shirt that said something in 日本語 but I was too far from him/he was kind of turned away so I couldn't read it. It said "ヤンキー ...... 行く" and then some writing underneath. I'm pretty sure it was something to do with juvenille delinquents rather than ベースボール, though.

Oh and I was listening to my mePod and a song came on that I really liked and halfway through, the singer said "いっしょに" and I was like "zomg I know what that means!!!いいですよ!!" Even though I didn't understand the rest of the song.

I am way too hyper all things considered.

 
At 10/04/2006 8:59 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

I doubt that the samisen developed from the erhu; the way of playing them is so different, because as you said the erhu is played with a bow whereas the samisen is plucked, but check out the pipa. I believe there's a Pipa Lake outside of きょうと as well...

 
At 10/06/2006 1:27 午後, Blogger Melissa said...

My friend and I went to the Jas Mart on Broadway and went to the back where they had these shelves stacked full of Japanese videos. I assumed they are some type of Japanese soap operas. So her and I were getting all exciting because we could actually read some of the titles. Then I bought some yummy Japanese curry and some curry pan, and some Japanese gum (it looked good, but sucked). I made the curry that weekend just like my Japanese grandfather does (he's a professional Japanese chef) but all I did was read instructions!

 
At 10/06/2006 3:20 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

I really enjoy watching anime (I'm kind of a dork). So I was watching one of my favorite anime Bleach. At the beginning of the show, a message appeared that read (sorry I don't have the Japanese typing plug in yet): terebi anime o mirutoki wa, heya o akaruku shite chikazuki suginaiyoo ni shite mite kudasai ne. Even though I was able to read it, I don't understand what all of it says. I was able to pick up terebi, anime, ni, mite kudasai, and ne. I wonder what the message says in its entirety.

 
At 10/06/2006 5:29 午後, Anonymous 匿名 said...

sorry, hatakeyama sense! I have no idea of typing in Japanese.. sorry.. I have no windows CD-_-; can I type just in Romanji?

ナタリー san! I love UNIQLO so much! I first saw it when I went to Japan, Tokyo last summer, and its clothes were so cute! So I bought some! Then ユニクロ is in New York right now! Awesome!

I heard a fun story few days ago. 'Bathing one's body' is 'Nyuyokku' in Japanese? So it sounds like 'New York.' A Japanese built a public bath place for 'Nyuyokku' cuz he thought it would succeed in New York. And the sign was 'Nyuyokku in Nyuyokku.' Unfortunately, the place just disappeared cuz New Yorkers were not at all accustomed with the public bathing...(maybe it was so embarrassing?? anyways...)

Well... And I recently saw a drama '1リットルの 淚'. It was so sad...Everyone should watch it! ANd yesterday, I saw a movie 'the blue light'靑 の 炎.' A member of Arashi starred in it, and it's about children committing suicide... very gloomy...anyways! I also enjoyed the JApanese movie 'Nobody knows!' well... Is this all done? Ja mata raishu~

 
At 10/07/2006 1:22 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

Since I lived in Japan, it's kind of hard to pick one instance where I understood or used Japanese. So I guess, in general, the best thing for me (not knowing any Japanese) was that most menus had pictures and, even if they didn't, the restaurants had fake food displays in their windows. For a while I had to do a lot of things like pointing to pictures and holding up my fingers (for numbers) while saying "kore o hitotsu to kore o futatsu onegaishimasu." It wasn't great Japanese, but it always worked.

Lack of Japanese was kind of embarassing sometimes, though. For example, one of my friends from England thought that, since many words were borrowed from English (like terebi or naifu), he could just speak very loudly, add an "o" or a "u" & people would understand him. We went to Mc Donald's & it was terrible--he would say (in a very loud voice with big hand gestures) "Bigu Macu to chickeno macnugetto pleasu" and everybody (understandably) would look at him like he was crazy while I would try to hide.

 
At 10/07/2006 1:38 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

Actually, maybe McDonald's wasn't the best example since that spelling is kind of close to the way Big Mac & chicken nuggets are really pronounced. It was weird more for the way he would say it. Like "BIG(pause)UU MAC(pause)UU" while holding up a finger in the cashier's face to show he only wanted 1. (Sorry to post twice.)

 
At 10/08/2006 10:58 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

My grandpa was in Taiwan during the Japanese reigning period. He also went to college in Japan. I thought it was interesting since I did not know that till recently. The first time he tried teaching me, he started with ichi, ni, san...and then with all these sentences that I don't remember. My brother and friends also watch anime. I never liked them, but now I can try to catch a word here or there when someone is watching! exciting!

 
At 10/09/2006 10:54 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

I know some Japanesee food names befroe this class started, and simply because I love to eat Japanese food. When I was in Taiwan, I like to watch a cooking show call 料理東西軍. When they ask brabrabra dochi!? I always wanna choose them both. So delicious!!!
I'm very happy that I can read their them in hiragana when I went to Japanese resterunt now. Next time when I go to Japan, very likely this winter break, I can order by my self, haha...toro, uni, taco...^^

 
At 10/11/2006 10:37 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

I had to take a long business trip last week. As I was waiting for my flight to come home, I overheard some Japanese conversations among the noises made by those slot machines at the gate. To my surprises, I could pick out these:

1. Their flight back to nihhon is at 6 O'clock pm on Wed.

2. Someone is going to おんせん(温泉) soon. And this draws a comment of よかだね from his travel companion.

 
At 10/19/2006 3:04 午前, Blogger The Can said...

Living in Tokyo this past summer without knowing hardly any Japanese was always a constant adventure in terms of trying to make myself understood by anyone who, well, didn't speak any English (or French ... belive it or not, I met and chatted with a couple tourists from Marseilles on the train once). Perhaps my most memorable moment of finally making myself understood came when a good buddy of mine from New York came to visit me for a few days. By this time, I'd had a few Japanese language lessons under my belt, so after my friend and I had gone out for a night on the town, we took a cab back to my apartment at something like ごぜんよじ, and I directed my cab driver all the way back to my apartment from the nearest えき using a series of commands such as, まっすぐいてください、みぎいてください、and ひだりいてください. It was a first for me ... and just in time, too, because my buddy and I both got pretty drunk, and he ended up throwing up on the sidewalk as soon as we stumbled out of the cab. Hearing him hurl on the sidewalk grossed me out so much that I, in turn, ended up puking on the sidewalk right next to him. Upon reflection, perhaps it's best that I have been so tardy about posting my comment to this topic, as I'm not incredibly excited about all my classmates ever reading about this.

 
At 10/23/2008 2:11 午前, Anonymous 匿名 said...

こんにちは、

 

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