Episode 21 – Japanese Made Easy

Full Episode Audio (download link is to the right of the volume icon)

Exercises Only

Hi Greg here. Welcome to Episode 21. Remember that all episodes are cumulative, so please start with Episode 1. Along with picking up more need to know Japanese, I’ll be showing you a cool technique for acquiring new vocabulary.

First let’s review the counters we’ve learned so far. Talking about pet cats, your friend says…

一匹(いっぴき)飼(か)ってるよ。How would you translate that? Literally, one combined with the counter for small animals, then the verb used for having pets. More naturally.. I have one. Still on the topic of pet cats, tell a friend.

I have two.

二匹(にひき)飼ってるよ。and again three…

三匹(さんびき)飼ってるよ。

A person asks how many ice-cubes you want in your jack..dani.. cola… tell them.. one.

一個(いっこ) tell them two…

二個(にこ) and three

三個(さんこ) When talking about prices we heard

百円(ひゃくえん) or 100 yen. Given that, A person’s grandmother is how many years old?

100歳(ひゃくさい)

One-hundred and the counter we use for age, or years old. How would you say.. Ninety years old?

90歳(きゅうじゅっさい) and Eighty years old?

80歳(はちじゅっさい) You come into work on Wednesday morning with messy hair and blood shot eyes… Speaking of the party last night, tell your boss in polite Japanese. There were 100 people. More literally…

100 people, existed

100人(ひゃくにん)いました。

Let’s get a new verb.

切(き)る 切る

As usual from context first… Can you help me make this salad? While I wash the lettuce, you use the knife to

切る these carrots into small slices. The meaning isn’t crystal clear yet, so let’s do another one.

Watch out for that broken glass. If you pick it up, use gloves so you don’t

切る your finger.

So the core meaning of this is “cut” but the reason we want to know it early on, is it’s used more widely in Japanese than it is in English. So first let’s get used to the idea of cutting something, as we might say in English. Then we’ll expand on it.

First, just listen to this dialog. See if you can get the gist. Two family members are in the kitchen preparing various food. One asks the other…

A: トマト切(き)った？

B: うん、四個(よんこ)切ったよ。

A: ピザ切った？

B: うん、切ったよ。

Let’s break that down line by line.

トマト切った？Tomatoes.. cut？ Did you cut the tomatoes? We dropped the を particle there, since it’s very casual. Then…

うん、四個切ったよ。Yeah, I cut four. As usual no particle needed since it’s obvious who is talking to who. Then we heard…

ピザ切った？Pizza cut? In English we would say slice, but in Japanese

切る pretty much covers all these ideas.. cutting, slicing, chopping, etc.

Then the last line.

うん、切ったよ。 Yeah, (I) sliced it.

The whole thing, one more time.

A: トマト切った？

B: うん、四個切ったよ。

A: ピザ切った？

B: うん、切ったよ。

Ask a family member, “Did you cut the tomatoes?”

トマト切った？Did you cut the cake?

ケーキ切った？Did you cut the cheese?

チーズ切った？

And polite. Jjust listen. I cut the sandwiches.

サンドイッチを切りました。Making that into a question.. Did you cut the sandwiches?

サンドイッチを切りましたか？Yes, (I) cut them.

はい、切りましたよ。

Back in episode 16 we heard this word….

電話(でんわ) 電話 Let’s learn it officially.

A bit of trivia.. Alexander Graham Bell, invented the

電話 When I was a kid there was only one

電話 in the house. If we wanted to

電話(でんわ)する we had to use the

電話 that was in the kitchen.

This is true…  Here in Japan, I have a

スマホ　 It’s a

グーグルアンドロイド That is a.. Google Android.

グーグルアンドロイド

My wife also has one. But, in case of emergencies we also have a regular land line style

電話 next to our テレビ。 So, with the change in technology we can refer to phones in a couple different ways depending on what type it is. But what hasn’t changed is how we say “to make a phone call” which we heard.

電話(でんわ)する

Mayumi mentioned wanting to invite a guy she met named

小太郎（こたろう）to go have coffee. A couple days later, I followed up asking her…

小太郎に電話した？How would we break that down?

小太郎に電話した？

Kotaro, a guys name, ni.. or is the target of the following action.. to make a phone call

電話する, in this case the past.. so

電話した？Keep in mind, there isn’t a missing を in there. The actual word is a combination of phone and do, a compound word so to speak.

Just for the practice… If she answers with any of the following.. “Yeah, I called on my smartphone. Yeah, I called with my smart phone. or.. Yeah, I called using my smartphone”… how might the idea be expressed in Japanese?

うん、スマホで電話した。Yeah, smartphone utilized, made a phone call.

Simple enough once you hear the answer, but still kind of tricky too. Great job if you got that one.

Just listen. Polite Japanese. Did you call 丸山(まるやま)さん？

丸山さんに電話(でんわ)しましたか？

はい。三時(さんじ)に電話しました。

Yes, at 3:00, (I) called (him). Where “I” and “him” are implied.

————————————– Tip Of The Day

From a couple episodes back, I told the story of how I wanted to get a drivers license, so I took some driving lessons here in Japan, just to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road. And, that when asked to signal right or left, I instead flipped on the windshield wipers a bunch of times. Ultimately though, I broke the habit and was ready to take the official test.

There were two parts. A written test in English, then a driving test. The written test was for non-Japanese people who already had a license from another country. It was around twelve questions. Three or so were about actual traffic laws. For example. How many meters before turning do you need to signal? The rest were just to determine if you were a danger to society or not. One question was, and I’m not kidding…

Circle the answer.

It is ok to take drugs and drink alcohol before driving. Yes. No. Hmm… I’ll have to think about that one.. but let’s go with.. No.

Question 2. You stop at a stop light at an intersection. An elderly person walks in front of your car, but you arrived first. You can continue even though the elderly person is in front of your car. Yes, or no?

Guys, I’m not kidding. This is what the questions were like. Simply put, it was a sanity test. That’s it.

Then another alcohol question. Something like.. You had five beers but you feel you drive better after drinking. It’s ok to drive your vehicle. Yes or no.

Once I realized it wasn’t a trick, and this was the actual test. I quickly read through them and finished in just a few minutes. I got 9 out of 12 right. I missed all the questions that had to do with actual traffic rules, and got all the “sanity” questions right. A passing score.

On to the driving test. It was on a closed government driving course with no other cars. As I was told to do in practice, I checked all around the car before getting in. Got in and checked and adjust the mirrors, and put my seatbelt on. As I was doing this, the guy was checking off boxes on his clipboard. Perfect so far.

Then in Japanese, he says… “Pull on to the road, then make a right at the corner.” I signaled to turn right, no windshield wipers, and… turned into the wrong and therefore, oncoming lane of traffic. Automatic fail, and in just under 10 seconds.

There were no other cars for reference, just six empty lanes to choose from. He then said in broken English.. “This is not America.” Then he said.. “Let’s just drive through the course for practice then.” After that he said to come back in two weeks and try again. Again, this is kind of long so I’ll wrap up the story in the next episode. But the tip…

Take one extra moment to process what someone says. Be certain you understand, and if you don’t then ask clarifying questions. “I might have pointed and asked… That lane there? or I should go this way…Yes?” Sometimes a little clarifying, can save a lot of trouble.

————————————– Tip Of The Day

Ok, I want to show you a cool trick for expanding your vocabulary. Earlier we worked with

電話(でんわ) , and we are going to go over a few words fairly quickly here.

Just listen and get the gist of the underlying concept. Don’t worry about recalling them or not. Ok, Next word that starts with “den”…

電車(でんしゃ) 電車

Have you ever heard of a movie called.. Planes,

電車 and Automobiles ? Either way, it’s a funny movie.

When I was a kid, for my birthday I got an electric

電車 set. It had an locomotive style engine, about 10 cars, and a caboose.

Here in Japan, there are local

電車 that go through cities, and from town to town, and high speed

電車 that travel across country.

So what do

電話(でんわ) or telephone and

電車(でんしゃ) have in common?

Of course they both start with the sound “den”.. but that isn’t just a sound, it also has a meaning or a general idea behind it. Let’s see if we can figure it out by learning more related words.

How about this word… Years ago, my portable CD player wasn’t working. It wasn’t broken, it was just that the

電池(でんち) had died. So, I went to the store and bought a pack of double AA

電池 So batteries in Japanese are

電池　電池 From a meaning standpoint, what do telephones, modern trains and batteries all have in common?

How about this one. Every modern kitchen has a

電子(でんし)レンジ You can put food in it, set it to a minute or two, and it will heat up the food really quickly. Never put metal or aluminum foil in a

電子レンジ So hopefully you got microwave oven, from that. In English sometimes we hear “range” when talking about different types of ovens.

レンジ

電子レンジ

So, what core underlying idea runs through all these words?

Basically… the “den” part of these words is having to do with electricity, or electric power. Den, is not a standalone word. It’s written with the kanji that has a core meaning of electric.

Just understand that the sound “den” in these words has the core meaning of “electric”. There are a tons of words in Japanese that are combinations of underlying ideas being put together, and we can use this to our advantage.

So..

電話(でんわ) electric combined with the core idea of speak.. electric speak, or electric talk equals…a phone

電車(でんしゃ) electric and the core idea of vehicle.. in this case it means train. Then we heard

電池(でんち) electric and pond, we can use our imagination and consider a battery to be a little pond of electricity in our pocket.

電子(でんし) electric and child.. means electron… The child of electron, a little electron.

電子(でんし)レンジ The word electron with range, and we get microwave oven…

Running through them one more time…

electric talk.. or telephone

電話 electric vehicle or train

電車 electric pond or battery

電池 electric child an electron..

電子 electron and range… a microwave oven

電子レンジ

Let’s add another word that has nothing to do with electric, and then we’ll tie it all together.

野球(やきゅう) 野球

A major sport we haven’t learned yet. In the United States football, basketball and Major League

野球 are the top three sports. Played with a bat and ball, originating in New York,

野球 is popular in both the U.S. and Japan.

“Ya” has the general meaning of “field” and “kyu” has the general meaning of ball, round, or sphere. Giving us.. field ball, in English.. baseball.

So you know some words with “den” the core idea of “electric” in them… and you know a word with “kyu” with the core idea of ball, or sphere.

So imagine it’s night, and you walk into a room and flip on the light switch. It’s not as bright as usual. Your Japanese homestay dad says something about the

電球(でんきゅう) You didn’t understand exactly.. but you can make an educated guess, based on the situation. Thinking about … den.. electric.. and kyu.. spherical, … in this situation what electric ball or sphere related to lighting in a room are we probably talking about? Well.. let’s confirm… by asking.

You ask your homestay mom…

電話(でんわ)の電(でん)？Basically… the den of the word denwa?

She says.. そうよ。

野球(やきゅう)の球(きゅう)？The kyu of yakyu?

そうよ。You point to a light bulb in the room and say..

電球(でんきゅう)？She says..

そうよ。電球だよ。That’s right. It’s a lightbulb.

So, that’s how you can confirm meaning of words if you think you recognize the parts of. The more words you know, the more parts you have to work with. This does come up actually. Often when trying to figure out what kanji to use, but it does work for sounds too. Here are some more interesting combinations…

地球(ちきゅう) ground, land, soil.. and ball, or sphere… gives us.. Earth.

地球

electric sphere…

電球(でんきゅう) light bulb…

field sphere

野球(やきゅう) baseball…

ground or dirt, and sphere

地球(ちきゅう) earth…

What I suggest is that when you learn a new word out in the wild, or when studying, go to jisho.org, that’s j i s h o dot org.

…and put in a word in English to get the readings and meanings that make up the word. You’ll see some common need to know words and you can then just make associations to remember them. You’ll see all the ones we heard today… electric talk or telephone

電話(でんわ) electric pond or … battery

電池(でんち) electric vehicle or.. train

電車(でんしゃ) electric child or electron…

電子(でんし) microwave oven

電子(でんし)レンジ microwave oven

Since baseball is

野球(やきゅう) field and sphere and earth is ground and sphere… is earth..

地球(ちきゅう) What’s the word for light bulb?

電球(でんきゅう)

Again, let’s confirm by asking…

Is that the “den” of densha…

電車の電ですか？ 野球の球ですか？

そうですよ。

As always, for the shorter practice exercise version go to Japanese Made Easy

If you are liking these episodes, it’d be awesome if you could mention to others if the subject of learning Japanese comes up, and I’ll see you in the next episode.