I’m sure this is a blindingly obvious thing that i’m not picking up on (and I hope i’m posting this correctly)
but I noticed that in the Memrise Japanese 1 course in chapter 9, when stating likes and dislikes it goes like this:
Is happy (polite) - shiawase desu (しあわせです)
Is correct (polite) - tadashii desu (ただしいです)
Is bad (polite) - warui desu (わるいです)
Which is all well and good, then we get to this:
Is sad (polite) - kanashin DE IMASU (かなしんでいます)
So my question is this, why were the others just “desu” when “is sad” in particular breaks this and ends with “de imasu”
Cheers!
(side note - is it kanashin or kanashii? my search turned up lots of hits for the latter but none for the former)
Hello,
Yes, they aren’t following the same pattern - “kanashin de imasu” is still a good phrase, but it is the odd one out in this lesson. In this phrase it’s behaving like a verb “to be feeling sad” - which is why it has the “-masu” polite verb ending, rather than the “-desu” polite ending you see in all the other adjectives.
There is an adjective “kanashii” - but it doesn’t quite mean the same thing. Like, you could use “kanashii” to say a film was sad. But to say that a person is feeling sad you need “kanashin de imasu”.
Excellent stuff, cheers for that. I’ve had that particular little niggle on my notes for ages, glad to finally have an answer to put with it. Thanks again mate I appreciate it.
The big problem with the sponsored Japanese courses is that they don’t offer any instruction to their entries. Your example also shows they’re offering more along lines of direct translations instead of structured exposure to see patterns.
Assuming you’re good with Hiragana, Katakana and recognizing basic Kanji, I recommend my SGJL 04 - Tae Kim Japanese Grammar - Basic course as it presents the Tae Kim lesson, then vocabulary, then example sentences drawn from the lesson.
Oh hey Nukemarine, I saw your impressive SGJL course thread which had all the beginner to advanced level courses on, I got directed there from /r/learnjapanese, very useful for a complete self-studier like my self. I started learning only a few days into the new year, so at the moment all I have down is Hiragana, the few Kanji that the Memrise initial course has taught, and little to no Katakana at this present time, although that’s something I plan to work on within the next week.
I have to say, I’m fortunate in the fact that I’m on my gap year from uni this year so I can spend considerable time hammering all of this home (hopefully for hours everyday until September), but despite my efforts to break up the sentences memrise has been giving me, I still notice what seem like to me little discrepancies (such as my initial post), due to the fact that of course i’m severally lacking in the grammar and other departments. Do the courses you provide fill in the gaps so to speak? I tell you, I took one look at some verb conjugation chart when I heard it was something that had to be learnt and was almost sick haha.
I have copies of the books Genki 1 and RTK that everyone seems to recommend too, I plan to start Genki today to supplement my Memrise study. Honestly my biggest concern with learning something like this with no tutor involved is making a misstep early on and it catching up with me later in my studies, one thing I noticed what the memrise course was doing to me was when I was trying to recall something, I’d recall the whole Memrise sample sentence instead of pulling the individual words and particles by memory and then assembling them myself into a sentence, if that makes sense. I assume I can’t go wrong by following your courses and the textbooks everyone bangs on about right?
Please forgive the wall of text, I’m absolutely committed to learning this and want to make sure I have the right idea/am on the right track.
The course is laid out to go one to the next, they all basically build on each other pushing you farther and farther. Yes, the SGJL 04 - Tae Kim grammar begins to fill in the gaps. There’s 500 vocabulary words to learn after that (SGJL 05) then it’s on to more grammar.
Now, I recommend you make a choice between Tae Kim or Genki. They both cover roughly the same material though in different ways. Don’t fall into the trap of getting lots of study material that all cover the same thing. Pick one and move forward. My choice is Tae Kim due to it being free and all the work I put in making it a functional Memrise course. Genki is also fine, just outside my roadmap.
Excellent points, thanks for that. I have of course come across Tae Kim’s guide when I was first gathering resources to get started. I supposed it’s important to not get bogged down in a bunch of different resources as I imagine that would do more harm than good, especially in terms of allocating time efficiently.
I’ll take your advice and crack on with Tae Kim’s guide along with using the courses you have assembled, that seems like an ideal and well structured way to approach all of this.
Cheers again mate, can’t thank you enough for all your advice.
