1.4-2.2 Useful Pre- and Suffixes

 Through prefixes and suffixes, you can expand your Japanese vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and form new words, sentences, etc.


1.1 HONORING PREFIX お～ AND ご～

Both are used to specify that you are talking about something related to someone involved such as 'your', when talking to someone else.

お～ is used for authentic Japanese words, and ご～ for words that are semi-Japanese and originate from languages like Chinese.

For example: 'my friend' is simply ともだち. 'Your friend' is おともだち. 'My country' is くに, and 'your country' is おくに.

せんもん (meaning subject/specialization/class) is a word of Chinese origin. When referring to a subject you yourself take, you use 'せんもん', but when referring to someone else's subject, use 'ごせんもん'.

NEVER use the prefixes お～ and ご～ when talking about yourself! That's just wrong.

___________________________________________________________________________________

1.2 NATIONALITY SUFFIX ～人 (じん)

人 is the kanji for 'person', read as ひと by itself. But when used with anything else, it becomes ～じん.

For example: a Japanese person = にほん人. a Belgian person = べるぎい人.

There is no rule for differentiating between genders in Japanese, or plurals. かんこく人 could mean one single South Korean person, but also a whole group, and they could all be either male, or all female, or a mix.

___________________________________________________________________________________

1.3 LANGUAGE SUFFIX ～語 (ご)

Use this suffix after a country or community, if you want to say something about the language spoken there.

For example: Japanese = にほん語. German = どいつ語.

Beware! There is no such thing as べるぎい語! We speak おらんだ語 here.

___________________________________________________________________________________

2.2 SUFFIX FOR STUDENTS, SPECIFIC TO THEIR YEAR ～ねんせい

がくせい = student

だいがくせい = university student

いちねんせい = first year student

にねんせい = second year student

さんねんせい = third year student

And you may as well continue on counting with this pattern!

___________________________________________________________________________________

2.2 YEN ～えん

In Japanese, we don't say 'yen', but 'en'. The kanji for it is 円.

So, 10 yen would be １０円, or じゅうえん.

1 miljoen yen would be １，０００，０００円, or ひゃくまんえん.

etc!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rest of Hiragana

Image
 We have to learn to write the rest of the hiragana rows by ourselves as homework. Here is a chart with the stroke order for the remaining ones! It is important to know that letters may look different digitally and handwritten. This has to do with fonts. Sometimes, the 3rd line in き (ki) for example, is connected to the curve on the bottom. However, our books show a version where the curve and slanted line are disconnected. Know that both are correct. It's a matter of preference, but Takeyama-sensei writes letters like this disconnected, so lets stick to that! Extra... for anyone interested: Exercises related to learning to write hiragana provide MANY new words for us to learn. However, without any sort of context, determining their definition proves to be tricky.. Therefore, I decided to only list the new words with meanings that seemed more likely to be given to us as beginners, which are also more commonly used in everyday life. That I felt sure about, at least. Words with just ...
Read more

Hiragana (first 4 rows)

Image
Today we learned to write some of the first of the 46 hiragana that exist, as well as some vocabulary. It is important to note that strokes can end with a small line - which looks as if you lifted a brush off of the page (fig.1), abruptly (fig.2), or curve as in figure 3. We covered these letters, and this is the stroke order: *keep the way strokes end and their direction in mind. We need to know the order of the letters in the alphabet, from right to left. There are many memory aids we can use for this. Come up with something that works for you. Here are two I made; "Arima Kana Said To Not Hinder Mean Yakuza Rioters When Night (comes)." *Arima Kana is a character from Oshi no Ko. "All (the) Kids Sleep Tonight, Never Having (had the) Mochi Yuna Ran (away) With." *Sounds like an actual scene! I also figured the memory aid for ぬ they presented during the lesson was useful, since it looks a lot like め (me). Remember the NOOdle being 'sloppier' and forming the c...
Read more

2.1 - Counting in Japanese (pg.6-8)

Image
 We learned to count from 1-1.000.000, as part of our homework and in class. Now try it for yourself!  Cover the right part of this post as to hide the answers, and try writing the following numbers out, or saying them out loud: a) 405 a)   よんひゃく　ご b) 2,946 b) にせん　きゅうひゃく　よんじゅう　ろく c) 3,899 c) さんぜん　はっぴゃく　きゅうじゅう　きゅう (or く at the end instead of the last きゅう) d) 64,311 d)   ろくまん　よんせん　さんびゃく　じゅういち e) 304,953 e) さんじゅうまん　よんせん　きゅうひゃく　ごじゅう　さん f) 7,059,007 f) ななひゃく　ごまん　きゅうせん　なな (or しち at the end instead of なな) Did you score okay out of 6? :3
Read more