In this lesson, we learn about how to make the formal past forms of verbs. We also learn how to use adverbs in Japanese, and meet the evil twin of the nouny thing… We then learn a new kanji, 間, and apply it as a suffix. Music by In-sist.
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Sincerest apologies, but it looks like I was really tired when I recorded this one… Several mistakes that I’ve found:
* At one point I say “you’re combining a present positive with a past negative”, where I should have said “present negative with a past positive” (the graphic is correct, narration isn’t)
* Part of the audio was accidentally deleted during editing, so 間 is not introduced correctly. Should have said, “For example, the kanji that we want to use the gate radical with in this lesson has the kanji for “sun” placed underneath the gate radical” just before that kanji was introduced.
* The narration says “一時間 means ‘one year’”. That of course should have been “…means one hour”. Again, the graphic is correct, but the narration isn’t.
I will be sure to correct these errors when I get a chance to re-record. Please let me know if you notice anything else.
The part right after the “combining the present negative with a past positive” part you give a little more explanation on the “I did not take a photo” example. The narration says “The situation is that I did not take photos” while the graphic shows “the situation was one of not taking photos”
Sensei,
at the end of the podcast you go over the kanji for SPAN. Just wondering about the months part…you write ーケ月間, but when you say it the ケsuperceeds the pronunciation of the 間 character? So it’s just there to let you know that your writing about a span of time?
@Shutoh— I’m sorry, I probably didn’t explain that very well. The kanji that looks like a small ケ (but isn’t—it’s actually an abbreviation for the kanji 箇) is read か, and everything else is read as normal. So 一ヶ月間 (or the older form 一箇月間) would be read いっかげつかん, 二ヶ月間 is read にかげつかん, etc.
（For reference, the other month counters would be さんかげつ、よんかげつ、ごかげつ、ろっかげつ、ななかげつ、はちかげつ、きゅうかげつ、じゅっかげつ)
はい。 （わたしは）たくさん わかりました。 Except at the end when you were reading the “a span of one month” etc. in Japanese, I thought you read each one as ～かげつ, and left off the かん. I also see that you didn’t include かん at the end of “…the other month counters…” above. So does that mean we only say it for ICHI, but don’t say it with the other month counters? OR we say it with all month counters and you were just listing them with the intention that this is how you say them when you use 間 and that when you say, for example: “a span of 3 months” it should be said as さんかげつかん ＝ 三ヶ月間.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I was probably focusing on the か part of the words, and not reading the 間 part. Sorry about that!
You always read the かん if it is there, but the difference in meaning between 一ヶ月（いっかげつ） and 一ヶ月間（いっかげつかん） is pretty small. It’s very similar to the difference between “I was in Japan for one month” and “I was in Japan for a period of one month”. Both, in effect, mean the same thing, but the latter is putting emphasis on the amount of time spent, rather than the action that occurred.
In Japanese, I would probably be more likely to say ５分まちました (I waited for 5 minutes), because I’m putting emphasis on the wait, but I might say ５分間ゆでました (I boiled it for 5 minutes), because I’m putting emphasis on the time. One exception, however, is “hours”, which will always take the 間 suffix, perhaps to make it differentiate between times and lengths of times. In other words, 1:00 is always 一時, but 1 hour is always 一時間.