Saturday, April 22, 2017

中級から学ぶ日本語 第2章 「つたえる」 Chuukyuu kara manabu nihongo lesson 2 - Conveying (messages)

Hey guys. I had enough time to translate the second text from 中級から学ぶ日本語.

Original text coming from the "Chuukyuu kara manabu nihongo" textbook:


第2課「つたえる」
 陽一さんとアンさんから結婚式の招待状が来た。二人とは、学生時代から学部もク
ラブもずっと同じだったので、家族のだれかが結婚するようで、とてもうれしい。招待
状も、昔からの決まった言葉をたくさん並べたものではなく、二人の気持ちを伝える
大変いいもので、二人がにこにこしながら「来てください」と言っているようだった。
 招待状をもらってすぐに、陽一の勤めている広告会社に「おめでとう。良かったな」
と言って、電話をかけた。「いい招待状だな」と言うと「あれはアンが書いたのを、僕
が少し直したんだよ。1DKのマンションで六畳一間だけれど、また遊びに来てくれ
よ」言っていた。
 国際結婚は難しいと言うけれど、二人は大丈夫。きっと言い家庭を作るだろう。

And here's my translation:

An invitation to Yoichi and Ann’s wedding has come. Because back in school those two were always in the same classes and clubs with me, it’s like a wedding of a family member and that makes me really happy. The invitation itself does not include words and phrases used traditionally from a long time ago, but it expresses their feelings, so It’s like they would say “Please come!” smiling vibrantly. When the invitation came, I immediately called to his advertising company to say “Congratulations!” I complemented on their invitation and Youichi said that it had been written by Ann, he had just corrected some mistakes. Even though he lives in an apartment with only 1 room, kitchen and dining room, he invited me to drop by to hang out together.

People say that international marriages are difficult, but those two will be fine. Surely they will establish a great family.

中級から学ぶ日本語 第1章 「たとえる」 Chuukyuu kara manabu nihongo lesson 1 - Comparison

Hey guys. I'm going through 中級から学ぶ日本語 (Chuukyuu kara manabu nihongo) and on this blog I'm going to upload the translations for every single chapter. When i finish, I'll probably start translating New Approach:Intermediate, as well as 上級で学ぶ日本語 (Joukyuu de manabu nihongo.)
Here's the first text #1

Original text coming from the "Chuukyuu kara manabu nihongo" textbook:

忙しくて忙しくて、だれでもいいから一人でも多くの人に手伝ってもらいたい。そんなとき、日本語では「猫の手も借りたいほどだ」とたとえて言います。たとえ猫が手伝ってくれてもそれほど役に立つとは思えませんが、何か口に出して言いたいと思って、こう言うのです。
また、「私の家には庭があります。でも、狭いですよ」と言いたければ、これも「猫」を使って、「猫の額ほどの庭があります」と言います。猫にも額の広い猫と狭い猫がいると思うので、日本語の分かる猫に聞かれたら、「失礼じゃないですか」と怒られてしまいそうです。
まだまだたくさん「猫」のお世話になる便利な言い方はあるのですが、「猫に小判」という言い方ほど面白いものはないでしょう。小判は昔のお金ですから、今なら「猫に一万円」と言えば、意味が分かるでしょうか。高い辞書を持っていても、全然使わずに本棚に並べておくだけの人に、「猫に小判だね」と言うのです。
猫だけではなく、犬、牛、馬など、人と昔から生活をしてきた動物たちを使った言い方がたくさんあります。皆さんの国の言葉にも「猫の手」や「猫の額」、そして、「猫に小判」などと同じような言い方がありますか。あれば是非それを紹介してください。

And here's my translation:

Being really busy, we want to get help from people, even if there's only one person to help us. In times like these, in Japanese, people say that they would even accept help from a cat. It's not that help from a cat would make a big difference, but it's just a way to put our need for help.
What's more, if we want to say that we have a garden, but it's really small, we also use a saying that consists of [a cat] = "I have a garden as tiny as a cat's forehead". There are cats with big heads and there are cats with small heads, so if a cat that understands japanese heard us, it would probably get mad at us thinking we're not very polite. There are more useful proverbs that use [cat], but probably the most interesting one is "gold coins/koban to a cat" ("to cast pearls before swine"?). Koban is a coin from old times, which nowadays can be understand as 10000 yens. If a person has an expensive dictionaru, but it lies unused on a bookshelf, we call that situation a koban for a cat.
It's not only about cats. Dogs, cows, horses and so on are all animals that live among us since long time ago and we have a lot of different proverbs that consist of them. Do you have similar expressions like those in your languages? Please let us know if you do!






That's it for today. If you're having any questions or suggestions, just let me know!

Monday, April 17, 2017

Vocabulary banks

Vocabulary Banks












Translations

Translations


  • 中級から学ぶ日本語 (Chūkyū kara manabu nihongo)

      • Chapter 1
      • Chapter 2
      • Chapter 3
      • Chapter 4
      • Chapter 5
      • Chapter 6
      • Chapter 7
      • Chapter 8
      • Chapter 9
      • Chapter 10
      • Chapter 11
      • Chapter 12
      • Chapter 13
      • Chapter 14
      • Chapter 15
      • Chapter 16
      • Chapter 17
      • Chapter 18
      • Chapter 19
      • Chapter 20
      • Chapter 21

  • 上級で学ぶ日本語 (Joukyū de manabu nihongo)
  • New Approach: Intermediate

Resources

Highly recommended

Textbooks

Grammar

  • Jgram – An online grammar dictionary.

Kanji

Readings 



  • Japanese Graded Readers level 1
    • vol 1



  • Japanese Graded Readers level 4


Listenings

Apps & Tools



  • Rikaikun/Rikaichan - a popup dictionary tool for Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Google Chrome etc. (the name varies) - it's an addon, so you have to search your brower in order to add it.
  • Anki - flash cards. Tons of prepared decks that consist of materials from different textbooks (Genki, Minna no nihongo, New Approach etc.)
  • zKanji  - a free study tool. Dictionary, example sentences, kanji search and information with animated stroke order diagrams, vocabulary list printing, study functions and much more.
  • Tatoeba – Search for sentence examples from the Tanaka Corpus.



Books






About the author

Japanese lessons


Reviews

Reviews


Learning materials

  1. みんなの日本語 (Minna no nihongo)
  2. 中級から学ぶ日本語 (Chūkyū kara manabu nihongo)
  3. 上級から学ぶ日本語 (Shokyū kara manaby nihongo)
  4. ニューアプローチ中級日本語 (New Approach: Japanese Intermediate Course)
  5. ニューアプローチ中上級日本語 (New Approach: Japanese Pre-Advanced Course)
  6. 新完全マスタ (Shin Kanzen Master series)
  7. GENKI
  8. 日本語総まとめ (Nihongo Sō Matome)
  9. Oxford Japanese Grammar & Verbs


Anime


Manga


Drama


Movies




New Approach: Japanese Intermediate Course - Chapter 4 - 「アナウンスと親切」

Original text coming from the "New Approach: Japanese Intermediate Course" textbook: ある人が鉄道会社に行って文句を言ったそうです。「駅のホームと車内の放送はなんとか...