The Family Tree Part 1

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family” - Anthony Brandt

We’re going to do a couple of things here. First, we’re going to learn about family. Then, we’re going to use that bit of “family” to practice the things you’ve been learning up to this point. First thing’s first, though. You should learn the vocab for this. Please take note that all the family vocab are “polite” versions of all the words. Much of the time you’d want to drop the お, especially when using these on your own family (your younger siblings obviously do not deserve this kind of respect, let alone any respect).

Family Vocab List

Import these words to your “TextFugu Vocab” deck and then run through them / the review really quick before moving on. To make things easier, try to cram one or two of the words on this list before starting in order to prime yourself to learn them more easily when they come up.

Now, using the grammar we just learned, let’s take a look at “the family tree” and use it to practice. Before we get started, though, I do want to take a look at one important thing (for the next page, and for your Japanese education), and that is the word だれ. The word だれ means “who,” and is used a lot like なに (what) was. As long as you learned なに／なん alright, だれ should be a breeze. For example, let’s take a look at this なに／なん example:

りんご　は なん　ですか。
As for the apple, what is it? / What is an apple?

Then, just take the same pattern (AはB!) and apply it to だれ (who).

Stephen　は だれ　ですか。
As for Stephen, who is (he)?

To respond to that question, you might say…

Stephen　は　Jeffさん　の　おとうさん　です。
As for Stephen, (he) is Jeff’s father / Stephen is Jeff’s father.

We’re going to take this further in the Family Tree Part 2, where we look at an actual family tree and figure out how to explain things about each person as well as how they’re related to each other.

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