Tag Archives: Japanese grammar
~ませんか Posted by Ginny on Nov 18, 2009
For today’s post we’ll take a look at the ませんか construction. Let’s take a look at this sample sentence, “にほんご を べんきょうしませんか“. (にほんご = Japanese language. を = wo. べんきょうしませんか = won’t you study.) In English this sentence would mean “Won’t you study Japanese [with me]?”. To form the “Won’t you” construction, take the present polite negative…
Let’s/Shall Posted by Ginny on Nov 15, 2009
For today’s grammar point, let’s look at a sentence like this, “レストラン に いきましょう“. (レストラン = restaurant. に = ni particle. いきましょう = let’s go.) This sentence means, “Let’s go to [a/the] restaurant”. To form the “let’s” construction, just add ましょう to the stem of the verb. In this case the verb we used was いく, which…
The Ne Particle Posted by Ginny on Jul 25, 2009
Today’s post will deal with the particle: ne (ね). When will you see ne (ね)? At the end of a sentence. Take a look at this sentence for an example, “いい てんきですね” (ii tenki desne). This sentence means, ‘the weather is nice, isn’t it?’ Ii (いい) means ‘good/nice’ and tenki (てんき) means ‘weather’ and in this…
Simple Japanese Sentences Posted by Ginny on Feb 11, 2009
This is going to be a great post for beginners of Japanese. Today I’m going to show you how to construct simple sentences. Let’s start with a simple sentece such as, “I am Takeshi”. To say “I” you would use the word “watashi” (わたし). For the verb “am” you would use “des” (です). In Japanese…