Something Borrowed

Well, it took a little bit longer for me to post this lesson than I had originally intended. Gomen nasai! (That means "I'm sorry!"). But I spent the time productively building my documentation system. I will describe that more another time. Today we have some more manga to read!

Today's installment has something new, something borrowed and something blue. Well, actually, nothing is blue. But the new thing is katakana characters. These characters are used for foreign "loan" words, emphasis, or signs. You can think of them a bit like italicized characters in english. So without further ado, here is the next installment.

ドラマ(DORAMA)  や(ya)  小(しょう)(shou)説(せつ)(setsu)  で(de)は(wa)

Let's break this apart. ドラマ is a so called "loan" word. They are so called because they come from other languages. In this case, the language this word comes from is english. In romaji, the characters are "DORAMA" (note: I will generally used capital letters to discuss katakana, and lower case letters to discuss hiragana). Say this word fast enough and you will get the english word "drama".

In Japanese, there is no sound for "dra", so they substitute the two sounds "DO" and "RA". When you read it to yourself, try to pronounce it the Japanese way. That way if a Japanese person says it to you, you will be able to recognize it. There is nothing more embarrassing than struggling with a word only to realize that it is an english load word!

The next word in the sentence is や(ya). This word is a grammar particle. We met a "particle" last lesson. Generally, a particle is a short grammatical word that describes the function of the word or clause that preceeds it. Last lesson, we had the は particle. は indicates that the word or clause preceeding it is the topic of the sentence.

In today's lesson, the や(ya) particle acts to tie the preceeding noun to the next one. It functions like the word "and" in an english list. So I might say that I have "apples and bananas". However, the や(ya) particle also indicates that the list is incomplete. It has the effect of saying "apples and bananas and other things I haven't mentioned".

The next word in the sentence is 小(しょう)(shou)説(せつ)(setsu). It's meaning is "novel, story". The writing is a little bit complicated here, but we will discuss it further in the next section. However, it is important the note that in the "shou", the "u" is not pronounced as "u", but rather lengthens the "o" sound. So, it's a bit like saying "sho" "o". There is no break in the sounds, but the "o" is held for 2 syllables.

So far, the sentence says "drama and novel (among other things)". Here we run into a very important point about Japanese. Plural words are pronounced exactly the same as non-plural words. So "drama" and "dramas" are pronounced the same. Generally, there is no indication that the word is plural. You might think that would be confusing, but actually, it's usually quite clear by context what is meant. Context is hugely important in Japanese, and this will not be the first time we will encounter it. But, I think you will agree that the sentence so far should be "Dramas and novels (among other things)"

The last two characters in today's lesson are particles. The first one is で(de). It acts to tell you that the previous word or noun clause is the context in which the verb (which we haven't seen yet) is performed. You can think of it like the english phrase "by way of". In this case, the で(de) is acting with the noun phrase ドラマ(DORAMA)や(ya)小(しょう)(shou)説(せつ)(setsu) ("Dramas and novels, etc"). So the piece of the sentence we have so far is "By way of dramas and novels, etc".

The last character in today's lesson is は, which we have already seen before. It is the "topic" particle and indicates that the preceding noun or noun phrase is the topic of the sentence. You can think of it like the english phrase "As for". In the last lesson, we has "As for me, didn't know". In this lesson we have "As for by way of dramas and novels, etc". This is a bit awkward in english, but it's a good idea to try to visualize it this way. A more english way of saying it might be "In dramas and novels, ....".

This is where we'll leave it today. I know it's a bit of a cliff hanger, but there is plenty of material work on. Just before we move on to the characters section, I want to point out that the particles で(de) and は often act in a tag team. The combination is so common, that it is contracted to the sound じゃ(ja) in casual speak (both written and spoken). The fact that it is written here as では(dewa) indicates that the author is being a little more formal than ordinary.

There are many characters to get through today, so I won't waste time. Today we also have katakana characters for the first time. It's annoying that we have to learn yet another character set, but think of it just like upper and lower case letters in the roman character set.

As in previous lesson, be careful of the writing animation forド. The animation is for ト(TO), since they are exactly the same except for the diacritical marks.

A lot of the hiragana letters should be familiar this time around. We only have 4 new ones. But I will add a few more for fun.

OK, there are a lot of characters there, especially since we only encountered 4 new ones in our text. However, the last two are simply combinations of previous characters. Please note that there are no animations for writing these characters together. But you should pay attention that in しょ (sho) and じゃ(ja), the second character is "half height" (i.e., half the height it would normally be). That's because the sounds are supposed to run together.

The other important point to remember here is that, as was stated above, any time you have う(u) following an "o" sound, it lengthens the "o" sound. Japanese is a very rhythmic language. Each hiragana or katakana character should be pronounced for exactly the same amount of time. However, "ou" sounds extend the "o" for two beats. In our case we had しょう(shou). This is pronounces "sho", where the "o" sound is twice as long as normal.

A new thing we ran into today is a word that is composed of more than one kanji character. 小(しょう)説(せつ) is made up of the kanji characters 小, which means "small", and 説, which means "rumour". So a novel or story can be thought of as a "small rumour". We will discuss kanji another time. But it is important to understand that kanji characters don't necessarily represent words on their own. Many words are made up of several kanji characters.

We have another 2 pieces of vocabulary today. Since we are running long already (and my dogs are hungry), I will present them without much fanfare.

Today's grammar points are the particles や and は. As we discovered, や links two nouns together in a non-exhaustive list. は is the topic particle. It is imortant to try to remember these so that next time you see them, you will remember them. However, "thinking harder" won't make you remember it better. Instead, we want something that we can memorize to help us remember. What better than an example plucked from the actual text of the manga.

Of course in the case of 僕(ぼく) は 知(し)る, the actual text was 僕 (ぼく) は 知(し)らなかった. But, I don't want to work on the verb inflection just yet. So we will use the positive present tense for our example. It's a little bit unfortunate, because this is not actually a phrase you will use (normally you would say "I am knowing" rather than "I know"), but it is grammatically correct none-the-less.

On a slightly unrelated note, see how in both examples, the particle is easy to find. In the first, it is surrounded by kanji. In the second, it has katakana on the left and kanji on the right. In both cases, as the only hiragana character in the mix, it stands out. This is usually the case, and helps you find the particles in a sentence. I have been putting spaces in the sentences to help you read them, but normally one does not use spaces. With kanji, there is no need because the word separations are obvious.

Today's Mnemosyne file. This one is huge! There are 15 new entries in today's update. After you import it, you should be at 32. Hopefully you've been practicing every day. As the number of entries get larger, the amount of review you have to do increases as well. If you miss a day or two, it becomes a large task to review.

One thing I don't like about Mnemosyne is that I can't define the introduction order for new material. It does it mostly in the order I perscribe, but it introduces a bit of randomness. So, it might be that you will hit the grammar points before you hit the vocabulary. That's not really a problem. Just try to remember the words, and if you can't assign the item a score of 0. As you repeat it, you will begin to remember it. You can think of the grammar items as "bonus" review, since they will also test your character and vocabulary.

Today's reading is Katakana. As usual, we aren't trying to memorize anything at the moment. I just want you to get the benefit of Tae Kim's view of the katakana writing system. I would also like you to reread "The state of being". Just refresh your memory on this. It should be slightly easier to read since you have more characters under your belt now.

This was a really long lesson today. This is the longest that I would like them to go. As I mentioned before, there is a lot of material to cover at the beginning, so the lessons will be longer. Take your time to internalize the information. I will try to post the next lesson tomorrow, but after that I will take a 2 day break. So don't feel you have to rush yourself into anything.

That's all for today. Tomorrow is part 2 of our sentence. What are we going to do with dramas and novels, I wonder...