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Sunny Western Australia? Is this some application of irony, or are you just far enough from Pilbara that you’re not feeling any effects from Rusty? =P
The trick is to learn words rather than kanji in isolation – you wouldn’t teach someone English by saying “C is pronounced K some of the time and S other times” and then just leave it at that. Once you get a fair bit of vocab under your belt, you start to get a pretty good feel for which readings should be used in any new words you encounter. 七 is a bit of a weird one, anyway – its readings are fairly interchangeable.
The issue with “kanji use on’yomi when they’re in words and kun’yomi when they’re alone” is that there’s a ridiculous number of exceptions. Of course, the “every rule has exceptions” rule also has an exception: kanji with attached okurigana (hiragana tacked onto the end of adjectives and verbs to indicate conjugation and whatnot) always use the kun’yomi.
Business hotels are also a viable option. I’m sure I’ve posted this before, but my friend and I stayed in Toyoko Inn branches most of the time.
http://www.toyoko-inn.com/eng/
Interestingly, they seem to have changed their signage since I was there. The Japanese name used to be 東横イン, now it seems to be 東横INN…
Also, strongly agree on the JR Pass. If you take a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and back, that’s most of the cost of a two-week pass covered right there. If you’re only staying in one city, it’s probably not worth it so much, but certainly look into getting a Suica card (or the local equivalent).
I was there for fifteen days, and spent 68,250 yen, though this doesn’t include hotels (which my friend paid by credit card – and many of which included free breakfast) or most of our train travel (since we bought JR Passes before we went). I didn’t spend a whole bunch on shopping either (though I did waste five thousand on a taxi when I (mistakenly) thought the train I wanted had stopped for the night…)
As for the cheapest airport, Google searches suggest Narita, Kansai, Chubu and Fukuoka in varying order. Keeping in mind some of them will be just plain unavailable depending on your country of origin (for example, flights from Australia only land at Narita or Kansai), and it’s going to depend heavily on the time of year anyway.
I’m just about to start third-year at uni (next week!) and our new textbook is very nearly completely mono-lingual. I’ve had a bit of a flip through, and it looks like English is only used to explain brand new words, though I’ve not actually looked at it in detail. Probably should. Either way, I’m gonna be getting an idea of what it’s like this year…
You don’t think it’s a little self-referential to define a noun by using the verb form of the same word?
Well, with the ～ありません ending on both, they’re close enough that it probably doesn’t really matter – they’re both at the です/ます level of formality.
Informal would be じゃない or ではない.
では is very slightly more formal, and more likely to be used in writing. じゃ tends to be used more in speech.
The meaning is the same, though.
Frankly, I can never remember which type of verb Koichi’s categories refer to, and I’m fairly sure I learnt “group 1″ and “group 2″ the other way around.
Fortunately, I also learnt it as う-verbs and る-verbs, plus the two irregular verbs する and くる, which are unconfusable, since the defining characteristic is right in the name of the groups. I was never taught anything about ～いる or ～える.
る-verbs always end in る, the trick is in spotting which of the verbs ending in る are actually う-verbs. Like Kanjiman said, you get the feel for it after a while. By now, I can generally intuit which is which, but one trick I’ve developed (which may not be flawless) is to assume it’s a る-verb, then if the resulting conjugation sounds silly, it was probably a う-verb to start with. For example, はじまる -> はじまます sounds kinda silly. Reductio ad absurdum. =P
So yeah, あやまる is a う-verb. Whichever type that happens to be.
Oh? Do tell.
Aye, that’s exactly the problem with dictionaries. Like kanjiman said, context.
Sonkeigo is only important if there’s someone you need to bow and scrape before – it’s extremely polite language, which I’ve been told even native speakers sometimes struggle with.
He wants you to write the kana and the romaji for each. So if one question reads (for example) chi __ -> dzi __, what you should write in the blanks is ち and ぢ. The later ones have less and less written down – that’s where you have to work out the voiced equivalents yourself. =P
whereas ぐうぜん gets pronounced “guuzen” with the hard g.
That’s probably because comes at the front of the word – as I mentioned in my first post in this thread, the nasal G only happens when it comes in the middle of a word.
音楽 is… I guess “music itself” is the best way to phrase it. The sound of music. Sheet music is 譜面 (ふめん) or just 譜 (ふ), while notes and musical notation is 音譜 (おんぷ). The katakana ミュージック also exists, but I’m not sure what the specific usage is.
As for what I said above, a hint: けいおんぶ. =D
P.S. 「ギタ」じゃない。「ギター」だよ。
