My native-speaking Japanese lecturer informed us that Australians speaking Japanese tend not to have accents. Or at least, comparatively slight accents. Go us.

Still not entirely sure if she was just trying to be nice, though. =P

Generally if you’re reading romaji and you see an M followed by a consonant (especially if said consonant is an M, B or P) then it’s actually an N that’s being pronounced as M. And N on its own is ん. That is to say, it’s not AM+PU, but A+M+PU, which is A+N+PU. Which is あんぷ.

That said, this particular word is an English loanword (i.e. from “amp”) so it should be written in katakana. アンプ.

What are you looking them up in? Any decent Japanese dictionary should be giving you the word in kana anyway, even if it’s giving romaji as well.

I gotta admit, I’m not entirely certain. I really wouldn’t rely on Google Translate, though.

Basically, した is the past tense of する (which, if you’ve not encountered it yet, is the plain form of します) the verb “to do”. する likes to form compound verbs by tacking on a noun – so noun+する means “to do noun“. For example, 勉強する = to study.

結婚 means “marriage”. So, 結婚する means “to get married”. So 結婚した means “got married”. But like I said, I’m not entirely sure whether that can be extended to mean “was formerly in a state of being married, but isn’t any more”. We’re getting into usage here, and I’m less confident on usage.

One of the sentences on Jisho is 彼は彼女の妹と結婚した, translated as “He was married to her sister.” This might mean he used to be married, but now we’re just getting confusion in English too. =P

Well, 結婚 (けっこん) is the more usual word, but I wonder if writing “ミシェルは結婚した” will make people think “Michelle got married” (i.e. to Fred, and is still married)… though come to think of it, something similar happens in English too.

I’m in Australia also. And have a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering (though I’m not working as an engineer right now).

To be frank, though, you’re going to have difficulty finding work in Japanese companies. It’s much easier for a company to hire someone who’s a native speaker of Japanese, even if you’d be the better engineer…

Google’s getting better, but yeah – so much is implied in Japanese sentences which Google just can’t infer.

It’s not different, that’s the thing. It’s the kanji you’ve learnt up until that point that are different, and silly Koichi never mentions that. After “two people”, the reading for the counter 人 is にん.

So:

一人　＝　ひとり
二人　＝　ふたり
三人　＝　さんにん
四人　＝　よにん
五人　＝　ごにん
六人　＝　ろくにん
七人　＝　しちにん

Et cetera. Always にん.

Incidentally, 七 is a weird one in that its readings tend to be interchangeable – I have also heard ななにん in the past.