Welcome to Gaia! ::

Topics

Coming Soon!

A friend directed me to this thread earlier. It may help. It's pretty basic.

Name Suffix
arrow beginner; vocab, culture

Japanese almost always attach a kind of suffix to names, but you have to be careful to used the right one! (Anyone whose been to Japan, please feel free to tell me when you've heard each suffix)

-san: the most common suffix, average politeness. I say when in doubt go with san, it'll will be acceptable for 95% of the people you meet.
chan: kind of like calling someone names Katherine "Kathy" or Thomas "Tommy" just a term of affection. It's okay for both boys and girls that are younger than you or are your friends.(probably girls more so than boys)
kun: this generally used for young men, though people who want to tease a tomboyish girl would call her "kun"
sama: very polite, and probably rarely used in conversaton, though it's polite to put sama on letters.
dono: also very polite, I think I heard someone say this is only used in writing form
sensei: a term of respect for someone who is a master at what they do. Teachers and doctors are sensei. This also work by itself (which just saying san or chan doesn't)
senpai (sempai) in a school enviroment, this is someone whose your upperclassmen.
kouhai lowerclassman, though I've been taught so far that a senpai would address their kouhai as "san" and not "____-kouhai"

Note: you never use suffix with yourself, like if someone's asks whose calling, you wouldn' say "Brown-san."

VOCAB

some basic vocab for the beginning Japanese Student (as i learned it) are:

Enpitsu　えんぴつ Pencil
Kyoshitsu 教室　Classroom
Sensei 先生 Teacher
Chizu 地図　Map
Hata はた　Flag
Tenjou　天井　Ceiling　(is that spelled right?)
Yuka　ゆか　Floor

that's it for now... i'll be back with the rest.

Just to let you know, the stuff that was posted here helped me.
Oh, and how do you say "Love ya!" In Japanese?
OH, and would there be a nickname for Mai or Oki ?

Basic Sentance structure
arrow beginner, grammer

The very basic English sentance is Subject-verb-Object (I drink Coffee, She eats carrots)

The basic Japanese sentance is Subject-object-verb. Verbs are always at the end of Japanese sentances the exception is emphasis markers like yo, ne, wa, ga, or the question marker ka.

watashi wa koohii o nomimasu

watashi=I
wa=subject marker
koohii= coffee
o=direct object marker
nomimasu=non-past, polite form of "nomu", to drink

Perhaps I'll post more example later. I always say Yoda from Starwars talks in a Japanese way, he put his verbs at the end of his sentances.

More Basic Sentance Structure
as written by eleraama

In English, we tend to use Subject- Verb- Object order, like in 'Sally eats the apple'.
But in Japanese, it's a bit different: Subject- object-verb: Sally the apple eats. (Saarii wa ringo wo taberu).

Of course, you can mix it up a tiny bit but remember that the verb ALWAYS comes at the end. ALWAYS. AL. WAYS. (Particles, of course, don't count)

To mark various parts of speech, you use 'particles': little "words" (not really) that don't mean anything but tell you who is doing what.
Like:
Wa (written as hiragana ha) = topic marker
ga = subject marker
wo (pronounced 'o' in standard Tokyo dialect) = object marker
ni = setting marker (time and place) as well as a destination
he = a goal or destination

those are all the ones I can think of now...