Randomness

And here's some random vocab from the next chapter:

world - sekai

egg - tamago

hand - te

pretty, clean - kirei

to see, watch, look at - mimasu

I'm trying to avoid learning antonyms (or words that are too closely related) at the same time, so next time I will deal with ugly, dirty, and the like. :)

Lesson 3 exercises

A. 

1. Kutsu wa yasui desu yo.

Shoes are inexpensive, you know.

2. Doko no depaato de kaimashoo ka.

At which department store should we buy it?

3. Nani o nomimasu ka.

What will you drink?

4. Yamada san wa gakusei desu kedo, Suzuki san wa gakusei ja arimasen.

Mr. Yamada is a student, but Ms. Suzuki is not. 

B.

1. Enpitsu wa hyaku en deshita.

The pencil was one hundred yen.

2. Unagi wa sen'en deshita.

Eel was one thousand yen.

3. Booshi wa nisen'en deshita.

The hat was two thousand yen.

4. Kutsu mo nisen'en deshita.

The shoes were also two thousand yen.

C. 

1. Moo gohan o tabemashita ka.

Iie, kore kara tabemasu.

2. Kore wa nisen'en desu.

Kinoo sen'en deshita yo.

3. Kore kara nani o shimashoo ka.

Depaato e ikimashoo.

D. Antonyms

1. akarui / kurai

bright / dark

2. chiisai / ookii

small / big

3. ii / warui

good / bad

4. yasui / takai

inexpensive / expensive

E. 

1. Ookii uchi desu ne.

Your house is big.

2. Hiroi ima desu ne.

Your living room is wide.

3. Akarui kitchin/daidokoro desu ne. 

Your kitchen is bright.

F.

1. Doko e ikimashoo ka.

Where should we go?

2. Nani o tabemashoo ka.

What should we eat?

3. Dono depaato ga ii desu ka.

Which department store is good?

The book I stole these exercises from is listed in the first post. Hooray for finishing a chapter!

Verbs and the 'like' adjective...

My words of the day today:

yoofuku - clothes (This one makes sense to me because 'clothes' in Chinese is 'fu'... they're kind of similar.)

kookyuuhin - quality goods (This word totally doesn't exist in English... it sounds really slow on my recording because of the long vowels.)

shimasu - to do

dekakemasu - to go out

And the strange ones:

suki - to like 

daisuki - to like very much

Obviously, this phrase words as a verb in English and is translated as a verb, but it is used as an adjective in Japanese, so I think a more exacted translation would be 'liked' or perhaps 'beloved' in a weaker way... as in:

Kookyuuhin wa suki desu. - Quality goods are well liked; or, I like quality goods.

The word itself is easy to remember because it's one of my friends' nicknames! The usage will take a while to get used to, I think.

I haven't forgotten my hiragana! My words of the day in hiragana are:

ゅぉふく- yoofuku

こうきゆうひん - kookyuuhin

します - shimasu

でかけます - dekakemasu

すき - suki

だいすき - daisuki

Also, I think that 'dai' means 'very' or 'big'. It sounds like the word for 'big' in Mandarin (da) and it's the prefix in 'daigaku', which means 'university', which could be like a big school... It works for me, anyhow... :)

I'm learning again! Hooray!

A few vocab items

Wow, an entire month with only one post... with any luck (and a little determination), December will be better... I just need to get back into good habits. 

I think most of my previous vocabulary is still firmly entrenched in my brain. I'd thought that some of it might have disappeared due to lack of use, but I reviewed my little book today and didn't get stuck!

My new words and phrases of the day:

tatta - only

totemo - very

demo - but

tokoro de - by the way

itsu ka - sometime, someday

Demo is confusing me a bit because I've already learned a word for 'but', and it's kedo. But apparently they are used differently... kedo is a particle, demo is not. Kedo goes at the end of a phrase, demo is a conjunction used at the beginning of a sentence. I think this explains why Japanese people sometimes end up with phrases like this:

The lunch is expensive. But the breakfast is in expensive.

...which, in Japanese, looks something like this:

Hirugohan wa takai desu. Demo, asagohan wa yasui desu.

...which is perfectly acceptable. 

Also, through random readings about ESL learning and teaching, I've discovered that learning opposites at the same time can result in confusion... which I suppose I would have realized myself if I'd actually thought about it. I'm having troubles remembering telling words like 'akarui' and 'kurai' apart (bright and dark). In the future, I'll try to learn half of the pair first, and then add the second half later.