The place I long for

Today we have a special treat. We get to span two pages today. First we'll finish off the first page.

憧(あこが)れの地(ち) 「東京(とうきょう)」に。。。
鳴滝荘(なるたきそう) か。。。

Our hero has finally arrived. But where has he arrived? Let's break it down. The first word is 憧(あこが)れ. This word means "longing". The word is followed by the preposition の. In this case の indicates the possesive and the previous word is the noun that is doing the possesing. So in english it would translate to "The longing's". Japanese is great this way. As we've seen, almost always a noun is followed by a preposition that indicates the noun's purpose in a sentence. It can't get easier than that. But what is the "longing" possessing?

Well in this case it's 地(ち) which means "land". So 憧(あこが)れの地(ち) means "longing's land", or more easily in English, "The land of longing". Personally, I like to keep thinking about の as the "possesive" particle rather than translating it to "of". But to each their own.

There's a little bit left to this sentence. It's 「 東京(とうきょう)(toukyou)」に。。。 The first word means "Tokyo". However, if you are paying attention, you will notice that there seems to be a couple of うs in there extra. The "correct" romanization of the place we know as "Tokyo" is "Toukyou", or possibly "Tookyoo" (depending on your romanization method). The "o" sound in both parts of the word needs to be extended to 2 syllables, making 4 in total. People have a habit of ignoring this very important step when romanizing Japanese words. It is very important to pronounce this word properly, otherwise nobody in Japan will know what you are talking about.

You may be curious to know what the kanji characters mean. 東 means "east" and 京 means capital. Originally Kyoto was the captital of Japan. It was moved to the city of Edo in the 1600s. Edo was renamed Tokyo as it is the "eastern capital".

Finally, there is just one more particle to deal with: に. This is used to describe where an action is leading to. But what's going on here? "To Tokyo" doesn't mean anything at all. This brings up a very important issue in Japanese. You constantly have to keep context in mind. Sentences without verbs are completely fine as long as everyone knows what you are talking about. In this case, our hero has finally arrived. Where? To the place he has longed for, Tokyo.

Incidently, the two characters surrounding 「東京」 are simply quotation marks. Yes, they look different than our quotation marks. But it's pretty easy to get used to them (and they make more sense to me that " anyway).

In the book, we see that the hero has a map. And there are some kanji characters on the map. Look at the panel to the left. You can see that the same characters show up in his dialog. He says, 鳴滝荘(なるたきそう) か。。。We can infer that 鳴滝荘(なるたきそう) is a place. Then he follows the place name with the preposition か. か is just a spoken question mark. Again, we see the convenience of Japanese grammar in that everything (including punctuation) has a verbal component. Basically, our hero is wondering about this place (which he has obviously never been to before).

If you were wondering what the characters in the place name mean, here they are. 鳴 means "animal cry" or "chirp". 滝 means "waterfall". 荘 means "villa". So 鳴滝荘(なるたきそう) is the "Waterfall Cry Villa". Since a villa is a sort of estate, we can assume that our hero (who has just arrived in Tokyo) is looking for the place where he will stay.

Look at that! We have finished the first page and we only hit one character that we didn't already know. Now on to the next page.

どんな所(ところ)なのかなあ。。。？
ねぇねぇ 聞(き)いた？ 聞(き)いた！？

The first word word is どんな. This word means "What kind of". Just like many other words in Japanese, this one is one of a foursome. どんな means "what kind of", こんな means "this kind of", そんな means "that kind of" (something I can point to) and あんな means "that kind of" (something I can't point to). It's not really important right now, but the more often you get exposed to it, the more natural it will become.

The next word has a new character. The word is 所(ところ)(tokoro). The word simply means place. So どんな 所(ところ)(tokoro) means "What kind of place". Pretty easy, isn't it?

The last bit is a bit complicated, but it's easy once you memorize it. Do you remember when we said that ending a sentence in の puts it in "explaining mode"? Well, なの is the "explaining" mode version of だ. Why is it なの rather than だの? Well, that's a good question and it has a complicated answer that we will broach when we discuss something called "な adjectives".

So the whole sentence up to this point says "What kind of place is it", hoping that someone will give an explanation. And really, you could end the sentence like that with no problem at all. But who the heck is our hero talking to? The next two characters give us our answer.

If you end a sentence with かな, it's exactly the same as if you said "I wonder" in English. So the sentence with everything added simply means "What kind of place is it, I wonder", or more easily "I wonder what kind of place it is". There is one more detail of かな that will be important later, but isn't so important now. It's just that you must put everything before it in plain form, as opposed to polite form.

One more small detail about かな is in order. Both sexes can use it. However, there's a female-only form that is often used. It is かしら and it works exactly the same way. But only women can use かしら, while both can use かな.

Let's move on to the next sentence. It starts out with ね(ne)ぇ ね(ne)ぇ. ね(ne) is generally a sentence ending particle that is used exactly the same way that a Canadian would use "eh". It is often translated as "isn't it". However, in the usage here, it's closer to "Hey, hey". So what's with the ぇ at the end of the ね, you ask? Well, it just means that the え sound is being held on a bit. This is just something you have to get used to. It's not really the right way to pronounce it, but in conversational Japanese things are not always pronounced properly.

Using it like that is mostly a way for a little child to speak. It's not really something you would want to use as an adult unless you were intentionally trying to sound child like. It transmits a certain sense of excitement.

We're almost done. The word 聞(き)いた is then repeated twice. This is simply the word 聞(き)く in the plain past tense form. And 聞(き)く means "to hear" or "to ask". The sentence is asking "Heard? Heard!?" Again, remember that it is unnecessary to add excess words in Japanese. The above is far more convenient than the English equivalent "Have you heard? Have you Heard!?"

Before we end this rather long lesson, I want you to take a look at the kanji for the last bit. Did you notice that the root of the word is represented by the kanji and doesn't change when we change tenses? The part that represents the tense, or inflection of the word is represented in hiragana. This bit is called okurigana, and it tells you exactly what inflection you are using every time.

I'm sorry to sound like a cheerleader, but this is exactly why kanji rocks. When you are reading, you can almost always tell when a new word starts. That's because the root of the word is always at the beginning. And it's almost always written in kanji. Then you can always tell what inflection the word has by looking at the okurigana. It changes depending on what inflection is being used. There aren't too many of these to memorize and once you do, you can always know the use of the word in the sentence even if you don't know the word. This is a great advantage over virtually any other language on earth.

After such a long lesson, you'd think we would have lots of new characters to learn. But it isn't the case. There are only 4. Just think of that! You can already read a very large number of characters (as long as you are studying!). If you are still having trouble recognizing the characters, don't worry. It will come with time. But make sure you study them every day with mnemosyne.

Wow. I went a bit overboard today. There are 7 new words to learn. Well, I haven't been keeping up lately, so this is a bit of a bonus.

There is even more of a bonus with the grammar. There are eight sentences to play with. I decided to jam a bit with our hero's last sentence. It's important to realize that you can mix and match these little bits with impunity. It just changes the mood of the sentence a little bit. It's very easy to get overwhelmed when you see a string of particles at the end of the sentence. But if you realize that stripping them all off makes almost no difference to the main meaning of the sentence, you can then relax. Even if you don't remember what they mean, it usually doesn't matter too much.

Today's Mnemosyne file. Practice, practice, practice. Even if I don't post new lessons, it's no excuse not to do your Mnemosyne practice. This is the only way to improve quickly. If you can memorize all of these things, you will be able to read in no time. So don't skip even one day. And if you are unfortunate enough to miss a day, make sure that you don't make it two. And no matter if you have not studied for a while, now is the time to catch up!

Today your reading is for past tense. You have no idea how excited I am that we are finally talking about a verb inflection. I can finally stop skirting around the issue. Read through it all and try to absorb what you can. As we continue, I'll point out the past tenses and how the verb was inflected.