Help Me With Japanese Homework [Week 1]

I need a bit of help with my homework. So if you know anything, feel free to help me out. Please note that we are only working in Hiragana at this time, so if you do type in that format please use Hiragana. Secondly, you don't have to. You can just type something like "sensee" instead of typing in Hiragana. In fact I hope you type without using Hiragana.

I don't want to help you to much, but I'll remind you of something :

Nihon = Japan
Nihongo = Japanese language
Nihonjin = Japanese person

To type out kana and kanji, click show the language toolbar to expand it and once it's set to japanese, there should be an 'input mode' section where you can select from hiragana and katakana.

I think you've got the sentences correct though. In the first instance, nihon no sensei could be read as 'Japan's teacher', but could also be 'teacher of Japan' which makes more sense. That's assuming it means a teacher who is japanese, rather than someone who actually teaches the Japanese language. You'd have to substitute 'nihon' in that case.

Once you've constructed that part of the sentence, you could then put 'watashi no' in front of that to make it 'My... so and so'.


In the second instance, there's no need to put a desu since you're just stating a noun. If you were to go further, marking it as a topic and saying 'Masao's telephone number is... so and so' then you'd need to finish it with desu.

Go get KaosAngel.

I'm on my newer laptop so I can't type in Japanese but it's Nihongo no sensei and the second one is right except for the bango spelling. I can't remember if it's bango or bangou. It never ends with double O characters. And you need finish the sentence with desu.

Can't help with Japanese but this is a better Scandal tune.

Vinchenzo, you have Japanese in your damn XBL tag.  That should mean that you can figure all this out with little to no problem, right?  lol

I brilliantly hit F5 on accident when typing my original response, so I'm just going to make this quick. Feel free to ask for more clarification here if needed, though.

I have a "fucked up Japanese shit" quota and my avatar (and subsequently Metal Gear in general) have that filled and reserved. Anymore of this nonsense and my brain will melt.

Yeah, to elaborate further, while thinking 'driver of/belonging to the taxi' makes most sense when reading it literally rather than 'taxi's driver', it doesn't apply to all situations.

In that second example, 'Masao no denwa bangou', the phrase could also be read as 'telephone number of [the] Masao' or 'telephone number belonging to Masao', but it's most logical in English to understand it as 'Masao's telephone number'.

If there's a bunch of 'no' particles in a sentence, it can be easier to work backwards. Taking the sweet ghibli animation 'nausicaa of the valley of the wind', the japanese name is 'kaze no tani no naushika'. You might see it as 'wind's valley's nausicaa' which is confusing, but by working backwards and noting the posessive particles you could read it as 'nausicaa of the valley of the wind', which makes sense in english.

You just type out the romaji for each hiragana as you would on a standard US English keyboard and the IME will convert it on the fly. So for something like せんせい, you'd type "se" which would become せ, n (probably have to be tapped twice to tell it it's specifically an n and not no, na, etc) for ん, se for せ again, and i for い.

I knew Pepsiman had to be in this topic somewhere.  Our resident Japanese language expert  : )

Thanks, but my fluency isn't much in comparison to some other people on the site I know and chat with on occasion, especially when considering that I'm just starting my second year of university-level courses. I guess I just try to help out when I can because learning the ropes initially isn't the most intuitive thing. I'm just glad I've proven to be handy from time to time. :)

国語教師 is Japanese language teacher. Kokugo Kyoshi or Nihongo Kyoshi I guess..... 日本語教師  Sensei is a honourific for calling a teacher, it's not the word for teacher. There's no posessive character in a profession. But if we have to play by the rules for the exercise and say 'nihongo no sensei' then it's 日本語の先生

I've actually been pretty interested in uh, obtaining rosetta stone to see what it's like, since i've been wanting to properly learn Japanese for a while. Of course i wouldn't be solely using that, but yeah, i need to study more intensively. I've been mainly listening to podcasts, but my listening habits for those tend to be sporadic.

I'm okay with some basic stuff, but i mainly remember the grammar like particles and sentence structures. It's like i have templates for sentences, but i don't really have a 'word bank' of nouns and verbs to actually place in the gaps. My writing side is severly underdeveloped, meaning practically nonexistant outside of romaji. I fully intend to get stuck in further once my exams are over, so i'll have to keep track of all these useful resources.

desu doesn't mean "is", this is simply put after a noun or something that is a question(with adding desu ka)

にほんごのせんせい nihongo no sensei but the correct word would be
にほんごきょうし nihongo kyoushi which would be a high-school teacher
or
にほんごきょうかん nihongo kyoukan which would be a university teacher
no の in an occupation and sensei is a title not an occupation. With nihongo no sensei you'd be basically saying Mr. of Japanese which would make no sense and in Japan you'd get a blank stare or be corrected...

inu soupu wo tabimashyo

Here's what I put on some of my homework.

'Anata no onamae wa nan desu ka' It doesn't need a question mark because ka turns the sentence into a question. は is 'spelt' ha, but pronounced wa.
'You (possessive) name is what (to be)?', in Pirate 'what be your name? arrrr' so in English 'What is your name?' ^_^ To which you reply...

'nan desu ka' on its own is 'what is it?' You can use it to ask what objects, concepts or animals are, but not people as that would be rude. Nan is 'what', so you'd basically be saying 'what is THAT?' in a person's direction. In the previous sentence you are asking what someone's name is rather than what they are so it's okay :) In that way, the thinking and structure is the same in Japanese and English.

anata means you

When someone is saying "Onamae wa?"(Your name is?), you could say [Vince] desu

'Anata' is 'You'
wa is a topic marker, so let's just say it's 'is/are/am' etc in English
so 'Anata wa' is 'You are/ you're'
no is a possession marker
so 'Anata no' is 'Your' as in belonging to you.

Just replying 'Vince!' is disrespectful if you think about it,  'My name is Vince' is formal, 'I'm Vince' is informal. So, depends who you're talking to.
'Vince desu'  ヴンス です is 'I'm Vince'
'desu' is basically a catch-all version of the English verb 'to be' as you know.

Your name is foreign so you'd spell it out in Katakana. Bi ヴ N  ン Su ス
You can write ヴィ for Vi but Japanese people don't get along too well with 'Vee's so get used to being called Bince xD
If you've not learned Katakana though then でんす is fine for this assignment.

Just a note, you don't say Vince-san because '-san' is a honorific,which is the equvalent in english of 'Mr' so you'd be being arrogant like 'That's MR Vince to you, buddy' or an equivalent smug comment. You always use honorifics to other people unless you're REALLY close to them though, so that can be confusing.

'watashi no namae wa Vince desu'
'わたし の なまえ は Vince です'

as solidsnake360 says is textbook 'My name is Vince'