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You can conjugate pre-nominal adjectives, but the resultant meaning is slightly different.
それは高い建物でした – that was a tall building (but it’s not a building any more)
それは高かった建物です – that was a tall building (but it’s not tall any more)
Perhaps not the best of examples, but you get the picture, yes?
兄上 (あにうえ) – it’s a very formal way of referring to one’s older brother. And possibly slightly archaic, I’m not really sure. Others in the same vein are 母上 (ははうえ) and 父上 (ちちうえ).
When my lecturers say 円 after an ん, it sounds to me like they say “yen”. They were surprised when I asked them about it – apparently it’s just a natural effect of shifting from ん to え.
But now I’m just muddying the waters. It’s “sen-en” =P
What I was trying to say is that animal names are often written in katakana rather than kanji, but I’ve not learnt enough yet to know just how often. And the danger of all dictionaries is that they never give a feel for what words are typically used, or the subtle implications behind words, et cetera. It’s fine to use a dictionary, but if you rely too heavily on it, you’re going to learn how to speak like, well, a dictionary.
アオウミガメ sounds like a specific breed of turtle. Green sea turtle, or something.
“Question word” means who, what, why, where, when, how, et cetera. And don’t get too fixated on “は emphasizes this and が emphasizes that”, because it’s not going to help you in the long run. Simply put, は marks the topic of a sentence – which is often, but not always, the subject of the verb. When you use は, you assume the speaker knows what it is you’re talking about – when you’re referring to an unknown element like だれ, that’s not possible, because even you don’t know who it is you’re talking about. That’s why it’s が, the subject marker.
… or he’s in Japan?
Only thing I know about Rhode Island is that it’s America’s smallest state, but has the biggest name. Also, it’s somewhere on the right-hand end. Guess the same goes for the forum posts of its inhabitants? =P
Welcome, in any case. =)
七 is one of the weird ones in that its readings are fairly interchangeable.
だれが亀ですか. Not だれの. だれの亀ですか would be “whose turtle (is this)?”
You seem to rely on の quite a bit when guessing the translations of sentences, but の really doesn’t have all that many uses. Personally, I’d have expected you to guess だれは, but は is also incorrect, because a question word can’t be the topic – it’s gotta be が. =)
あなたは is ok grammar, except it’s unlikely you’d use the word あなた. In casual situations you might use きみ or おまえ or the person’s name. In more formal situations, you’d always use their name, never “you”.
As for your question itself. わたし is fine. A boy might use ぼく, a guy might use おれ, a girl could use あたし. There’s about twenty different ways to say “I”. If they wanted to emphasise – “It’s me!” – they could say わたしだ!
And on an unrelated note, I’m not sure whether 亀 or カメ is in more common usage.
Though the first might confuse people unless it’s clear from the context that you’re talking about cups. “Is this your cup?” “No, that one’s not mine.”
Ah, yes, that’s the one. =)
Ok, forum software is being even more of a pain on the iPad lately, so I can’t paste links (for some reason). However, we have had a thread on this topic recently that might help – it’s on the second page at the moment, called something like “Confusion over は/が”.
Bump for ピタゴラスイッチ. Maybe?
Only show I could name, anyway. =P
バスガスばくはつ
But yeah. We had to have a (pre-prepared) conversation with a classmate as an assessment task in class, and for some odd reason, I made myself say あたたかそうです (looks warm). Fail. =P
In casual speech, people tend to say あったかい.
が = subject marker
を = direct object marker
Subject =/= object
P.S. invest in an IME. Means you don’t have to rely on romaji. =P
Like I said, though, learn it whichever way makes the most sense to you. In the end, it’s all about you, not Koichi.
