^ Hey another translation tool! I usually use Google Translate, and at times Babel Fish if I'm desperate for a second opinion. But yeah, thanks for sharing!
You can also go to the main translation site: http://excite.co.jp/world/ That page also has Chinese <=> Japanese and Korean <=> Japanese translations, which might help some of you I sometimes use it when I want a second or third opinion. Like hillshire said, the translations are rarely ever perfect. Or anywhere near perfect. I sometimes find it useful for individual words or very short phrases. I've mentioned two Yahoo! Japan sites here before, but I'll list them here so you don't have to go searching for them: http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/ If you want to translate words, this is sometimes a useful tool. It gives you more than a translation. You get example sentences, example sentences with similar words, stuff like that. If you enter a phrase that it doesn't have a match for, it will offer you info on parts of your phrase. http://honyaku.yahoo.co.jp/ This is like the Excite translation site, though it seems to return slightly different translations.
I have a new question. Now translating Sae's Q&A. She's asked her fav food. So she says: めん類とモチモチ系 What is めん類とモチモチ系 ? Cannot find it Does she mean something with race cakes? @__@ (I'm being beaten by colloquial Japanese)
めん類 is noodles, and I'm assuming the モチモチ is what you might call "rice cakes" in English. The best way to translate the 系 afterwards would be like "mochi related foods".
Arigatou ^___^ That's what I thought, but my Japanese self-confidence is almost null nowadays so I doubt everything. ^^;
I forgot to mention this before, but "yoroshiku onegai shimasu" (よろしくお願いします) can also be translated as "(it's) nice to meet you" when meeting someone for the first time. The example Ange gave before was a slightly different usage.
I'm in my second year of Japanese lessons, so my knowledge of the language is still fairly limited, but I feel confident enough that when I applied for a job for the first time a couple of weeks ago (no, I've never worked before D: ), I wrote that I have partial knowledge of Japanese. XD I'm watching Chocomimi, the drama Kayano is in, now, and I can understand generally what they're talking about from what I can understand of what they're saying. But I feel especially proud of myself when I understand entire sentences. I have to work harder and study much more than I currently do, though! But it also felt pretty cool the other day when someone posted Yuko's Q&A from the visual book and I was able to translate a few little things here and there. Not much of anything, since I have little knowledge of Japanese, but understanding always feels great. =) On a related note, everything in Japanese class the other day reminded me of AKB. When I walked into class, I was given a randomly selected verb and noun and told to make a sentence with them, and my noun was "watashi" and my verb was "kau", so I immediately thought of the "Dareka, watashi wo katte kudasai" at the beginning of "Namida uri no shoujo." When my sensei passed by my table, I mentioned the song and that line to her, and she YELLED out "EHHH? PROSTITUTE?!" The entire class looked in our direction like "WHAT?" It was the highlight of my morning. XDDD And then, we learned the word "mizuumi", which I had just learned from "Kinjirareta Futari", and then in our new verb forms, the word "aitakatta" popped up. So I spent half the class singing Kinjirareta and Aitakatta to myself quietly. xD
^That's total win in my book. I'm really proud of the fact that I am starting to figure out where to break words during songs... what I mean is that now I've 'read' enough Japanese to at least sub-consciously be reminded of some words. I should try learning the actual language...
I've been watching a lot subbed PV's and subbed japanese shows, so I understand a few words. Even better, my spanish teacher is going to teach me Japanese! She can basically speak every language.
Well, my personal learning style is to crash through the material one time around, and then go back to sort out the mess, LOL. With that said, I recently finished looking over all of the Japanese kanji in the four volumes of Kanji Cards by Tuttle - all 1945 of them. I trudged through them at a rate of about 20 kanji a day, but of course I only retained about 20% of that. Now I'm going back to the very beginning to study 5 kanji a day as one Japanese teacher suggested. I plan on focusing on those 5 kanji - the meanings, the On-yomi, the Kun-yomi, the stroke order, and maybe even the individual radicals within the kanji if I have the time. I did the math, and it should take me about 13 to 14 months to finish the kanji again using that method. I don't know if my method will work for you guys, but I figured I'd toss it out there anyway. As for my learning strategies for the other aspects of the Japanese language...I'll get back to you on that when I get the chance - and by that, I mean when I figure out a solid method that works for me, LOL.
I'm also studying about five kanji a day at the moment. How many I'm retaining... who knows. But I can certainly read a lot more than I could a few months ago! I also bought an awesome Japanese idioms dictionary the other day, it just arrived. The damn thing is huge.
There was actually this great Japanese speaker who commented on my blog entries on Keibetsu and the first Chocolove PV awhile back, with notes on lyric translations, and he/she practically gave me entire mini-lessons on certain idioms used in Ashita wa blahblah. It was great! Also because I'd watched a subbed version of the PV and I disagreed with their translation of the title, so I posted my own translation of the title, and the commenter liked mine. =) (The subbers wrote "Tomorrow is the tomorrow of your birth," but I hear it as "The you of tomorrow is born tomorrow"...and frankly, I really think mine is more correct.) Anyway, I borrowed a HUGE box of homemade kanji flash cards from my friend awhile back, but I'm only now trying to actually sit down and study them. I should be studying now, since I have Japanese class tomorrow...but I rarely do study before class. Ahh well. I know that it's my loss if I don't study, because I won't learn as fast.
Yay! Japanese class was somehow more productive than usual today. I think we went over more things than we usually do in one class. And I think I showed my sensei my comprehension more than I usually do. She asked us to make any sentence about wanting to do something with a "~tai" verb form, so I combined that concept with the "shi ni iku" kind of structure and said 「私はコンサートを見に行きたい。」 ("Watashi wa konsaato wo mi ni ikitai." - "I want to go watch a concert." I think I should've used a "desu" at the end to make it more polite, but whatever, my sensei didn't correct me anyway.) We learned about that in a class once, but I think "Cinderella wa damasarenai" has helped remind me of what I've learned by sticking the line "sagashi ni kite, ole!" in my head. xD And hey, I really do want to go to a concert. Then we were supposed to use "~tai to omotteimasu" to make sentences about things we've been planning/hoping to do, like dreams or whatever, so I used the epic phrase that I first learned from Yaguchi Mari's "Morning Musume ni naritai" upon her audition for Momusu - 「私はアイドルに成りたいと思っています。」 ("Watashi wa aidoru ni naritai to omotteimasu." I typically go around saying to myself "aidoru ni nartai" - "I want to become an idol" - but I'm not totally sure how to translate the "to omotteimasu", though I understand how to use it, for hopes/dreams, and I know it comes from the verb "to think.") I was actually really nervous to say that sentence just because of the way people judge sometimes...but my sensei just laughed and almost danced before just explaining, "Singing, dancing, acting." She's adorable. xD My heart was pounding after that, though...XDD. Then we spent a lot of time on "tagaru"/"tagatteiru" and "~tai to itteimashita" and "hoshigaru" and whatnot for saying what other people want, and learning what is polite to use in front of someone you're not close to and what isn't. And we stood in front of the class and acted out mini scenes where someone would say "I want to eat [whatever]" and someone else would say "[so and so] said she wanted to eat [whatever] so let's go to [whatever] restaurant!" and yet another person would say "Ii desu ne." XD And then we did "~tari" (like "shitari") and I can't really tell you everything we learned about how to use it because I wasn't fully paying attention anymore by that point. I was really hungry. But it's in the textbook, so I'll just make sure to study it. ...And that was my morning. XD I also saw my sensei from last year and her face went all =O when she saw me and she went "Ohayou~~!" She's adorable, too.
Tara -- I'd recommend buying a newspaper. it sucks for grammar since you'll never speak the way a Japanese newspaper is written but it is incredible for 2 kanji/3 kanji/4 kanji vocabulary building. Having a reverse look-up kanji dictionary sure helps a lot (Nintendo DS has one where you write the kanji -- I use that and it works really well)
My friend has the DS thing. When she writes kanji into it I'm always amazed because she writes these complicated-looking characters and the thing recognizes them. I need to learn more! Anyway, I'm planning on going to a Japanese restaurant on Saturday where the people who work there actually are and speak Japanese (unlike the usual Korean-owned Japanese restaurants around here), and I want to try ordering in Japanese this time. My friend told me saying "[whatever] wo kudasai" would work, but I just want to double check to make sure that I'm being polite enough. And if I wanted to order a tempura bento and water, would I say "Tempura bento to mizu wo kudasai"? I can just ask my Japanese teacher before I leave Japanese school for the restaurant anyway, but figured I'd just throw this out there. And when you walk into a restaurant you say "one" or "two" or "five" or however many people there are, so in a Japanese restaurant would you say "hitori desu" or "futari desu" or "go nin desu" or whatever? Also, I'm probably going to sit at the bar, so I want to understand if they're asking me where I want to sit or if I want to sit at the bar, and know how to answer. And if they come over and ask if everything is fine, would an "ii desu" be good? ...I'm probably over-thinking some of this, but I just want to make sure I'm as correct and polite as possible. Even if I'm not Japanese so they'd probably forgive me, I don't want to sound like a n00b. I even asked my friend how to say "I only speak a little Japanese", a sentence I could never figure out. She came up with "Nihongo wo sukoshi dake hanasemasu." That sound good?
^ Dude, don't think too much - just use whatever Japanese you can. If you botch...well, at least you're not dead. B-) Seriously, just focus more on all of it being a learning experience rather than worrying about impressing people.The staff will be happy that you're trying at all.
^^I think in restaurants they use Ichi mei , Nimei ,san mei I´m training kanjis in the nintendo DS too I use 250mannin something
yeah, that sounds about right, and i don't know much Japanese, and yeah, i used "ii desu" quite a bit, Menu wo kudasai, o-mizu kudasai, futari onegaishimasu, arigatou gozaimashita, so so so many times over and over, i've memorized it. I used, Sukoshi nihongo hanasemasu, wakarimasu.....probably left off the particle, ga, wo, wa...etc, but they got the idea what i was conveying and understood me clearly.
