doesn O make a verb, polite too?
what does "ni" mean in Omenikakarate?
whats difference between Kakaru and Kakarate?
hi, i just finished 1½ years of language studies in japan. that makes me in no way an expert, but i wanted to share some thoughts. however, i hate romaji, and all the romaji in this thread is making my eyes bleed so i probably won't stick around for long. my advice to all of you is to first properly learn to read at least hiragana. partly because you won't get very far using romaji, and partly because i think that knowing hiragana gives you a better understanding of how words and sentences are constructed. you need to learn to think of the spelling in syllables, not roman letters.
i did not read this entire thread, but one thought on it is that trying to teach someone something is a really good way of getting better, because you need to learn the subject better in order to be able to explain to someone who knows nothing. that being said, i'm not sure if it's a very good idea for the learner to learn from a beginner, even if it is easier than trying for yourself. if you are serious about learning you should do more than read a thread on a forum. the only thing i really did before going to japan was listen to pimsleurs sound tapes, and i found them quite good. i would listen to each chapter several times until i knew it by heart, and then move on to the next chapter when i felt confident enough. timeconsuming, yes, but i felt like i was making progress. i think i covered 16 chapters, and what i learned from them, i belive we covered in class in the first two weeks when i came to japan, still it helped a little to have studied by myself.
a forum can still be a good place to get help though.
with my little rant being done, i thought i'd answer the questions at the end of the thread:
adding o (?) at the beginning of some nouns and verbs does make it more polite, but you can't add it as you please. before some nouns you add go (?) instead of o (?), and when adding o (?) in front of a verb, you have to conjugate it for everything to be correct. however, by conjugating and adding o (?) or go (?) in front of a verb, it will become very polite, a form of speaking known as keigo (???), and apart from the occational word or phrase, this is not something that we covered in class until we had studied intensly for almost six months. i recommend just using normal verb forms for now. masu (??) form and dictionary form is sufficient, and there are a couple of other forms too that you use for different grammar patterns.
ni (?) is a particle that can have several meanings, usually indicating a direction (can not think of another meaning now). the ni (?) in ome ni kakaru (??????) (or "ome ni kakarimasu", "ome ni kakaru" being the dictionary form) would indicate the direction towards, but is not translated. ome ni kakarimasu is an expression that means meet, and it is quite a polite way of saying it. i am not a good teacher so i won't try to directly translate the phrase, but knowing what it means is enough. according to a dictionary the english translation is [see; meet; have the honor/pleasure of seeing]. the normal way of saying meet would be aimasu (????). most selfstudy material for learning japanese starts with very polite stuff, and it's not wrong to remember it, but i think just using the masu form would be easier to begin with.
in the last question i believe the spelling is a little off, i read the earlier posts and i belive it's supposed to be kakarete (????) and not kakarate.
just knowing what the phrase ome ni kakarete ureshii desu means is enough for now, but i can try to break it down. don't worry if you don't understand the following cause i'll be brief, and it covers like three grammar points.
kakaru (???) is the dictionary form
kararete (????) is the te-form of the potential form of kakaru (conjugated twice: kakaru - kakareru - kakarete)
kakareru (????) would be the potential form in normal (dictionary) form
ome ni kakarete ureshii desu (potential form) would literally mean "i'm glad to be able to meet you" (or "able to meet, glad" if you translate directly, leaving the i and you out as it is understood in japanese).
if you instead say
ome ni kakatte ureshii desu (kakatte being the te-form of the dictionary form: kakaru - kakatte) it would mean "i'm glad to meet you" (or translating directly: "glad to meet"). notice how the "be able to" is left out from the translation when not using the potential form. that's really short on potential verbs.
the last thing is the te-form, it is used in this phrase because an emotion is expressed and is a grammar pattern you use instead of dividing the sentence into two sentences, which would be weird. another exampel would be using the verb moraimasu (?????), meaning recieve:
morau (???) is the dictionary form
moratte (????) is the te-form
purezento wo moratte ureshii desu (????????????????) meaning "i am happy to recieve a present", or directly translated "recieve present, happy"
phew, this turned out a little longer than expected, not sure if anyone will benefit much from it.
i'm not sure if my explanations makes much sense if you don't know how the conjugation is done, but a good way to begin is just to learn the phrases and their meanings that you read, and worry about the conjugations later, when that step comes.
i realized when writing this post that some of you might not even be able to read japanese symbols on you computers at all. i would recommend installing japanese fonts if that is the case.
