なぜ?どうして?Finished!

Grammar is a fun beast. Back in my college days that was probably what we focused on the most. If you need help dissecting, just post questions and I’m sure there will be peeps about to help. I’m not entirely sure what to expect from the book since I don’t have it yet, but I did complete Genki I&II in college and did a complete review of both books in the last year. So, at the very least, if there’s grammar that’s in Genki I can direct you to where it is. But, I’m a little afraid of the inevitable grammar that isn’t in there. :laughing: Even second graders have been exposed to more grammar than I have.

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Can you give examples of how you transform verbs to indicate that one is able to perform the action of the verb?
to fly
can fly

to run
can run

Simplified: u verbs will just go to -eru, ru verbs to -rareru.

Tobu → toberu (u verb)

hashiru → hashireru (u verb)

taberu → taberareru (ru verb)

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I heard this one for this first time yesterday. I had to have it repeated. When do people use “can eat” in Japanese. I rarely hear it in English. Like, “I can eat after work?” Or, “I can eat wheat and lots of other foods that people are allergic to.”

Okay, sorry. I’ll keep my comments related to the thread.

arerugii ga arimasu kara, hondo no mame wo taberareimasen. Demo, daizu wa taberaremasu.

Because I have an allergy, I can’t eat most beans. But, I can eat soy beans.

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Lol this actually answered a question I just posted in the Natsume thread :slight_smile:

On another note, I’m hoping I can still join this group as I’ll be reading Natsume at the same time, + starting Girl who leapt through time right around the first few days of this… Where will I find the time???

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Ordered Girl Who Leapt Through Time just now. :laughing: We’ll just roll with it. When things get rough and clustered I do as follows:

  1. Just peruse the page in question quickly, not really expecting comprehension. Just quickly note a) words you know b) kanji you know (even if you don’t recognize the word it’s in) c) grammar patterns you know
  2. Compare what you understand with what’s in the picture
  3. Begin dissecting sentences that contain those elements that you do understand.
  4. Dissect the rest as time permits.

This helped me in college because I would always at least have SOMETHING to contribute to a conversation or homework assignment even if I couldn’t always do everything that I wanted.

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Many languages have the verb “to be able to” that is modified in front of the other verb - at least, this is true in both French and German. (I expect it will be to with Koine Greek, but I haven’t learned it yet.) When that is the case, it tends to have it’s own set of irregular rules that you must learn, aside from the usual.

I feel like it’s a particular set of endings in Japanese, though. Like 出来ました! (I did it!) vs. 出来ましょう。(Let’s do it!)

I hope that helps? This got mostly written almost 3 hours ago on my commute home and it appears that a few others have responded already.

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Oooh, that’s really great advice! And since I’ve seen the movie, maybe I’ll get this for myself in the summer as a reward if I do better this year!

Bookmarking your post for future reference.

: D

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This group is about reading Japanese to better understand how Japanese works, so I’d say your questions are on point! Once we actually get reading, keeping the questions more closely related to the text is a good idea, but asking for other examples to better understand how the grammar in the text works is fine.

@marcusp, would you be so good as to add this link to Tae Kim’s (legally free resource) Japanese Grammar Guide to the OP for those who would like to do a bit of grammar prep before we get started? I also expect to refer to it in the notes of the Google doc as we progress. Cheers!

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Done, it’s in the OP.

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Oh man I suck at grammar stuff. I just sort of read a lot and get the gist of how something is supposed to sound and then kinda wing it? I guess it’s time to start formally learning it T.T At least then I’ll be able to participate some more.

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Wow! Can’t wait!

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Why didn’t I thought of that? :sweat_smile: Thanks a lot!!

Same here lol… I can understand what the sentence is all about based on the words that I can understand :grin: But to ask me to make my own sentence :dizzy_face:

What anime’s that from?

I just realised there’s a google docs vocab list. How is that going to work? Is it a list that anybody can add to, and will it eventually have all of the vocabulary in the book? I’ve never done one of these reading groups before.

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Yes, whoever is able to contribute can fill in the vocab and grammar in the book. The intention is to have grammar and vocab explanations in the thread, but the list should be a quicker reference for anyone wanting to review / catch up than scrolling through the thread.

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and me, lol.

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