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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 473 of 1702 14 August 2012 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Well I ordered the cheap edition. It's 5 bucks versus 40+ dollars elsewhere. It's well worth the risk I think.
Thanks for recommendation the sample pages looked good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 474 of 1702 14 August 2012 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm proceeding through my N3 vocabulary book I have that I think I started last Friday I am not sure.. It
includes about a thousand words. I'm up to 220. It started out with nouns which were pretty much all Chinese type words... The last chapter had verbs which are Japanese. I find the Japanese words easier.. The Chinese ones all sound like homonyms to me but they're sticking with effort. I'm liking this leitner style I'm doing and just reviewing the decks as I see fit. It's called a cram study mode by the app author and it works well for that. I can study a deck of cards and learn it pretty well by the end of the day. I'm not necessarily forgetting it over night either. It seems a lot better for me than the spaced repetition mode where I don't review a card again the same day once I get it right. I'm going back and doing groups of cards that were in my spaced repetition deck but breaking them up and doing them leitner style.. Hope it works better. We'll see. I might just be doing better with the book because of the way they group the words and the words they choose. I'm also making decks of kanji to study the sounds to go with the vocabulary and it seems to be working well although I'm not giving them as much attention as the vocab themselves... But it's progressing. One thing I'm disliking about the verbs I'm doing... I'm remembering the meanings pretty well but mixing up if they're transitive or intransitive. I haven't formally studied it in my textbook yet or spent much time on my own. I get the feeling that Japanese uses intransitive verbs to express what we use the passive voice to express... IE if the subject or doer us unknown. I know there's a passive voice in Japanese but I think it has something more to do with formality... Not positive. I will say the definitions of the intransitive verbs sound passive... And include the helping verb to be a lot of the time. Edited by kraemder on 14 August 2012 at 6:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 475 of 1702 14 August 2012 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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In short, a transitive verb has an object and an intransitive verb doesn't. It's the difference between saying "He opens the door" and "The door opens". I quite like the Japanese words for each, 他動詞 (transitive) and 自動詞 (intransitive), I think the meaning of the initial kanji of each acts as a helpful reminder of the difference.
We don't really make this distinction with our verbs in English. The only possible exception I can think of is the difference between the verbs "to rise" and "to raise". Most verbs in Japanese do come in a transitive and intransitive pair though. As a result, in many cases it's a bit difficult to translate the difference between Japanese and English and very often the most natural translation is to use the English passive, although technically the meaning is slightly different. That's the problem with choosing such an exotic language, I guess! The other issue is learning to tell which verb is transitive and which is intransitive. For many verbs, as long as you know both verbs in the pair there are a couple of simple rules which help you to distinguish them. If only one of the verbs in the pair ends in す, that verb is the transitive one, e.g: 落とす:transitive 落ちる:intransitive 消す:transitive 消える:intransitive Also, if the pair is of the form where they are both identical except one verb ends in -aru and one ends in -eru, the verb ending in -eru is the transitive one, e.g: 閉める：transitive 閉まる:intransitive 始める:transitive 始まる:intransitive Unfortunately, there are also a number of pairs where they are both identical except one verb ends in -u and one ends in -eru, and in this case you cannot predict which verb will be transitive and which intransitive. You just have to memorise them. Examples include: 開ける:transitive 開く:intransitive 解く:transitive 解ける:intransitive 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4839 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 476 of 1702 15 August 2012 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Ugh! I hate such pairs. I always mix up 始める and 始まる - although it makes for good
comedy relief for my wife. :) Oh, and throw in 初めて as well... ugh. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 477 of 1702 15 August 2012 at 8:15am | IP Logged | ||
Or "to lie" and "to lay." My nephew and his family have a dog and they give it commands using both hand signals and verbal cues. "Sit" is accompanied by the hand held palm up with the thumb and index finger making a circle. "Lie" is the same except with palm down. However, they say "lay" instead of "lie." I told my nephew that he should say "lie" because it is intransitive. He gave me a funny look (I don't think he knows what "intransitive" means) and said, "It doesn't matter. The dog is too stupid to know the difference." There are other pairs too though the only other one I can think of off-hand is sit/sett. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 478 of 1702 15 August 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it and the head start on the grammar for this semester.... And my
vocab list is giving it to me in pairs too. I think it's good that I got this book instead of just making random lists on m own. And so I was right about the intransitive being the Japanese way of hiding the subject then? We can the door opens or the door was opened... I think the latter happens a lot more often. And I don't think the Japanese passive has anything to do with either one? Btw I had to get the more expensive version of that book you recommended... I got a message from the seller that he mislisted it and its the JLPT 3 version. Yes I'm studying for JLPT 3 but I've done Heisig so for respect to kanji would rather do the harder one. Plus it would be the 1995 JLPT 3 which might be like the JLPT 4 now which is super easy with respect to kanji. The price went up for it and I paid closer to 50. Oh well. Side note... I've gotten 7+ hours sleep every night for the past two weeks and it's really nice. I'm sure it's helping my studying. Normally I wouldn't worry at all about such things if I weren't trying to learn a foreign language but I'm wondering if 7 and a half hours would be better than 7 hours... Heh. I think I'll try it. Silly but whatever. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 479 of 1702 15 August 2012 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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The difference between transitive and intransitive is that transitive requires an object and intransitive doesn't. It has nothing to do with the passive.
So: Intransitive: The door opens. (The door is the subject. There is no object.) Transitive: I open the door. (I am the subject. The door is the object.) Here is a pair where the verbs are different in case that is easier: Intransitive: I lie down. (I am the subject. There is no object.) Transitive: I lay the book down. (I am the subject. The book is the object.) I often find the Japanese words for intransitive and transitive to be more self-explanatory. Intransitive = 自動詞 = "self" verb - ie. the thing is doing something "by itself," or at least no agent is mentioned. Transitive = 他動詞 = "other" verb - ie. someone else is doing something to the thing. Edited by Brun Ugle on 15 August 2012 at 7:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 480 of 1702 15 August 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm really glad you raised the issue of transitivity, kraemder. Thinking about it and trying to explain is really helping me try to get my head around it myself! Apologies if the following is completely incomprehensible.
To emphasise, transitivity has nothing to do with hiding the subject. Given the fact that it is quite normal and natural to drop subjects in Japanese sentences, you can create ambiguity about the subject without having to rely on the passive voice we use in English. Transitivity is about whether or not an object exists. If a transitive verb is used, it means that, regardless of whether subject and object are explicitly stated, the subject is doing the verb to something else. If an intransitive verb is used, the implication is that the subject is doing the verb on its own. Translating intransitive verbs to something that looks like the passive voice may be the easiest way to make it look like natural English, but it is pretty misleading for us learners. To stick with doors, I would agree that the English phrase "the door was opened" seems to imply that somebody, at some point, took the action of opening the door, and therefore from a Japanese perspective, the verb is transitive - the door is the object and an unspecified subject opened it at some point. But what about "the door is open"? It is possible that from a Japanese perspective the use of "to be open" here is intransitive, because there is no implication that anything other than the door itself has been involved in whether or not it is open - the door is the subject and there is no object. I think in Japanese you would say something like ドアが開けてあります for "the door was opened" in the case I described above, but ドアが開いています for "the door is open". You are also quite right that the passive in Japanese is, in most cases, not used like the English passive. It might be worth having a read around the passive, even if you're not going to study it properly yet, because it might help to start to answer your questions. Oh and I agree, a good nights sleep is a very important tool for language learning! I remember things so much better if I've been able to sleep on them properly. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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