Heads up: This post is 19 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
I stumbled upon japanesepod101.com by chance when I was browsing for podcasts to listen to on iTunes. Since then I have been hooked! On my last trip to Tokyo, I bought the incredibly expensive Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100 Linux PDA, mainly for its dictionary. With JPod101, I started taking notes with my PDA during my commute to work. This combination has helped improved my Japanese level a lot! (Well, still not good enough to pass a Japanese interview…) A while ago however, the PDA somehow fucked up and corrupted the file, I tried my best to recover it but the characters inside the recovered file had become garbage! :( Since then, I had stopped writing notes. What I’m going to do now, is to transfer all my notes from a back up file onto my blog. Storing it online seems to be my best bet against losing the data! This first post is a summary of the really important rules of the Japanese language. I’m going to re-listen to the podcasts and list here the rules, plus which episode it was explained on. Hopefully, it will become a good reference for people using JPod101 to learn Japanese.
The difference between ”は” and ”が” ~ http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=319 ”な”形容詞（けいようし） ＝ 形容動詞
- 優秀 － ゆうしゅうな
- 貧乏 ー びんぼうな
”い”形容詞 ー drop い and add く for negatives.
- 凄い ー すごい ー 凄く
- 激しい ー はげしい ー 激しく
- 逞しい ー たくましい ー 逞しく
Class 1 verbs conjugation: (to get the stem)
- romanji, just drop U and add I
- hiragana, jump back from U column to I column － 違う ー ちがいます － 聞く ー ききます － 分かる ー わかります － 頑張る ー がんばります － 叫ぶ ー さけびます － 言う － 言います － 思う － 思います － 読む － 読みます － 待つ － 待ちます － 楽しむ － 楽しみます Passive for class 2 verbs
- add られる to the ます stem ー 食べられる - got eaten ー 傷つけられる - got hurt ー Point: Passive of Class 1 verbs
- the “う” column becomes the “あ” column + add れる － 轢く ・ 轢かれる - to be run over (by a car) － 引く - to pull ・ 引かれる - to be pulled － 読む - to read ・ 読まれる - to be read 太る ー ふとる 過ごす